Belinda Hodge

My uncle, Allan Handsley, recently self published his first Novel, The Nuclear Sting.

It only occurred to me last night how easy it would be to create a website for it.

I logged into my web hosting account, purchased a domain name, and a few hours later, this website was live.

Once again, I chose to use the Twenty Eleven WordPress theme.  When you remove ‘design’ from a website, you can create and launch a website within a few hours.  Essentially you cut out 90% of the work.  Adding content is so easy with WordPress.

Later in the week I’ll add a Paypal button so the purchases can be done online as well.  For now I’ve created a simple order form.

Today’s book launch up at Woodford may create some web sales as people who read the book buy another copy for a friend or family member.

Here is a snapshot of the book cover which was designed by my friend Michael Collins:

Belinda Hodge

As someone who has created more than a few WordPress themes, I recently had reason to re-think the whole WordPress Theme design issue when I was considering ways to make my own business more productive.

When I analysed everything I do from start to finish, regarding WordPress, there was one big thorn in my paw and that is Themes.

To summarise this, I will tell you that:

(a)  You can waste hours and hours looking for WordPress themes, trying to find the right one.  Even if you do find one that’s just right or almost right, I can guarantee that nine times out of ten you will want to change something, and then you need to figure out how to do that.

(b)  If you are a web designer, you can waste mega hours trying to get a theme just right for a client.  You may even end up gritting your teeth by the end of the project and loosing yourself in frustration – because whilst some clients are easily pleased, others can be downright pedantic.  You know it, I know it.

(c)  If you are building your own theme, you can kill just as many hours to get that design looking just right, not to mention all the time you will spend on making images, searching for images, choosing color schemes and so on.

I’m telling you this because I like to be productive.  I am never comfortable when I loose too many hours on a project or website building exercise.

Personally, what I have realised is that if I add up all the hours I’ve spent on Theme searching and design, (not to mention learning new theme frameworks) it would have been more productive to spend that time creating content and working on an SEO plan for my websites.  The latter are far more important than design, at least, initially.

I said to a group recently that if you loose too many hours on Theme design, you can easily loose your focus and energy for your website.  And that’s not a good way to start or launch a site.  You want to hit the ground running and bring a heap of positive energy into it at the beginning.

For me personally, I’ve now set myself a new rule.  I am using the Twenty Eleven theme with all my new sites, and I’m even suggesting to some clients that it may be wise to do the same.

My thinking is, get the website up, add some content, get the SEO work underway, and when the site or Blog proves to be a massive success or meets certain benchmarks, then invest the time and money on creating that all inviting, all mind blowing Theme.  After all, this is why we are using WordPress.  It’s dead easy to change the look of a website or blog site later by just installing another theme.

The design phase of a Theme is very exciting and creative though, and here’s the hook.  It’s the part we all love because it’s something we can see and in this world of fashion and looks being important we naturally tend to want to make the best impression.  “Everyone is developing a unique theme for their Blog so I should too” is the thinking of today.

But seriously, this doesn’t make much sense!  The truth is, when Google’s search bots and spiders crawl your site, they don’t take much notice of the Theme in terms of how good or bad it looks.  It takes much more notice of your content.  Your content is your site information.  How unique is it?  How relevant is it?

What also counts is how many other sites link to yours.

When visitors come to your site they want to buy something, book a service, or find out some information so they can solve a problem.  As long as you lay out your content in a way that they can easily find the product or service they want, or the solution to that overwhelming problem – you’re good.  You’ve done the job right.  That is what they want.

They may not even want to be “awestruck” by your Theme Design – they might get so lost in it’s coolness, they could forget why they arrived on your site in the first place.

So it just makes sense to think about what’s important and allocate priorities when creating a website.  Work on getting your site recongnised by other websites in the form of links.  Build that social media following.  Add that unique and interesting content.  Get the comments flowing on your Blog. Put great pictures on your site.

A WordPress theme like Twenty Eleven is beautiful and it’s an excellent Theme to start with.  You can make changes from the WordPress dashboard to individualise it.  For example, you can change the banner image (the one that goes across the top) and that might be enough to kick off with.

Something to think about is to set a goal for Theme Design when you have:

(a)  “X” number of visitors per month, or

(b)  when you are generating “X” number of dollars in income, or

(c)  when your site hits page one for local search.

My thinking is, when the goal is reached, then it’s time to be creative.  You could even treat it like a reward.  “If I do this, then I get to do that”.  Psychology.

Do the not-so-much-fun stuff first – write content and work on your SEO.  This makes so much more sense to me, and will probably create so much more Cents in the long run!

Belinda Hodge

Last week I received an email from Jane Teresa Anderson.  To celebrate her Blog’s first birthday it was decided that it would be a good idea if we gave Jane’s blog site a  makeover.

Thankfully, my wonderful friend Carmel Glover burned the midnight oil to come up with a beautiful new header for Jane’s site.  The ball was quickly passed to me for the template creation, along with a mock-up design of how Carmel wanted it to look.  By the day before  launch day we had a lovely new WordPress theme which I named “Birthday”.

So here is a happy snap of the new Blog face.

Jane Teresa Anderson's new Blog design

By keeping all the dimensions the same as her previous template we did not need to edit any content.  This is what I really love about WordPress.  We can change the look of a site completely and yet the content remains the same.