As you begin to dive into the website designing process you’ll be surprised to know just how many steps are involved. Ranging from picking a theme to designing your webpages, you’ll have to make sure you’re covering each area with the right idea in mind. In this guide, it’s assumed you have:
- Decided on the Platform of your Website
- Registered with your Web-Hosting Service
- Registered your Websites Domain Name
- Set up your Website’s Content Management System
If you’re new to website development it’s a great idea to get a handle on all the steps that make up a complete website before you’re in over your head!
Following this guide will ensure you have an understanding of the entire development process and by doing so you’ll be in a far greater position to succeed.
In this post:
Picking a Theme
Now that you have WordPress installed, the very first thing you’ll want to do is install a theme.
Having chosen WordPress you now have the option of thousands of different free themes. Your theme offers you great pre-loaded designs, so for this step I recommend you to pick a theme that loosely resembles the look of your planned image for the website. That way you’re not wasting time with design features that could have been avoided by picking the right theme.
Install Child Theme Configurator
Assuming you are now happy with your theme, go ahead and install the Child Theme Configurator plugin.
Child themes basically inherit the design and functionality from the main theme without you having to directly edit the theme itself. It’s a great investment for your time as the theme and your child theme are separated, decreasing the probability of a theme related error within your website.
Once you’ve installed your Child Theme Configurator head over to the themes section in your WordPress dashboard (Appearance>Themes). Once you’re there make sure you’ve selected your child theme as the active theme
Designing Your Website
Once your themes setup, I bet you’re starting to feel more confident. Now its time to start designing your website.
WordPress as software itself hasn’t got many defining page building features, so we turn to a third party page builder built for WordPress.
There are a few directions you can go when choosing what page builder to use. You’ll need to keep your budget in mind here- are you going to be spending any money on a page builder? If the answers No, here are a few of the most popular free choices:
Most of the picks mentioned above also offer an extended paid plugin which basically offers you more functionality. It’s often unnecessary as you begin developing your first website, you only need basic functionality to express your ideas initially but at least you have the freedom to expand to higher functionality later on if need be.
Creating Your Header
It’s now time to build your header. A header is a block of data, usually incorporating your websites logo as well as functional navigation to allow ease of use to the user. Headers are staples in website development and are absolutely essential to include in your website!
Refer to your planning on how the header will appear. Depending on the page builder you’ve gone with, the ‘header’ section template can be edited allowing you to create your own unique header. But what should you include in your header?
After reviewing a few examples you can start to get an idea of just how to structure a header. For instance, including your websites logo on the left seems to be a pattern among high ranking websites. As well as listing links to your other pages aligned to the right.
If you haven’t got too many ideas, spring for the vanilla website logo on the left, links on the right option. It works well and looks great.
Creating Your Footer
A footer is a universal block of content always positioned at the bottom of a website. It usually includes helpful links and or information such as opening hours, email addresses or social links.
Again, footers are a staple of web design and you’ll want to include one of your own!
To Create your footer, you’ll be going about it in the same way as creating your header. If you’ve selected to use Elementor page builder, navigate from your WordPress dashboard to Elementor>Templates>Footer. From there you can create your footer!
What to include in your footer?
The design of footers isn’t set in stone as headers are. You can be creative with the appearance of your footer. However, there are few guidelines which can assist you in finding your perfect look:
- Keep it subtle
- Don’t overload the user
- Keep the footer to a reasonable size
Creating Your Homepage
The homepage of your website is high priority and you want to get it right! Most your visitors will navigate to your homepage first through google search so you want to catch their eye early!
If you’ve been following our full website development step guide you can now refer to your planned prototypes of your website. With your selected page builder, you now have all the tools at your disposal to create exactly what you planned.
Creating Your Sub Pages
Once you’ve installed your page builder you’re good to go and start designing your webpages! Manage them through your ‘pages’ tab on WordPress to start creating your webpages.
If you need more help on navigating through the WordPress interface, go ahead and check out this navigational WordPress video in a new tab.
Write Some Content
Now that your pages are up and running, there’s nothing stopping you from uploading some content. Get started on writing content that your target audience are going to be interested in- be engaging! That’s a good way to start getting traffic to your site. For more information on gaining traction and increasing traffic on your website through the use of content, check out this article.
Interlinking Your Pages
As you start finishing off your pages and uploading more content, remember to keep linking back to the homepage. A useful tip to keep in mind is to start from your homepage and try navigate to all your pages. How many clicks is it taking you?
There enough research to indicate that any page that takes over 3 steps to reach is inefficient. So always plan your pages and tie it to how they’ll be linking back!
Conclusion
If you’ve reached this point, congratulations you should now have an understanding of all the elements that will come up as you begin to develop your new website!
Once your website is developed it’s a great idea to further optimize it. Having a functional and well optimized website is the end goal. Once your websites in a position to be optimized check out these guides:
