building a website

Now that your site is ready for the public eye, it’s important that you realize it’s not at all ready. Not yet. Before you publish a site, whether it’s brand new or a redo, it’s mission critical that you go through testing your new website. Broken links, browser issues, + faulty forms can cost you subscribers or clients. Thankfully this phase will help your pretty new site make a beautiful first impression. And it’s not even the last phase! All of the site creation phases are: Planning, Design, Development, Testing…

When it comes to building a site, the coding doesn’t happen until you’ve planned + then designed your website. Code without a plan or style is not going to serve your blog / business as well as it could. But once you have those two pieces, it’s time for developing your new website as the middle phase of a new or site redo project. Those phases are: Planning, Design, Development, Testing + Launch. Phase Three — Developing your new website If I could crack my knuckles on command, this is…

New sites + site redos have a few things in common, including following the same steps from start to finish. Check out what you need to know when planning your new website before we dive into designing your new website. Because no plan is no good. Curious what all of the main phases are: Planning, Design, Development, Testing + Launch. Phase Two — Designing your new website Design is a critical step to any project, but not all design phases look the same. Some projects are laid out page by…

Whether you have a site currently, or need one up + running, planning your new website can feel like a really big project. To keep things out of the overwhelming category, I like to break new site builds into 5 main phases: Planning, Design, Development, Testing + Launch. Let’s start at step one, shall we? Phase One — Planning your new website The best way to start any project is to create a plan. I know, seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? But what exactly are you planning for… that’s where…

Whether you’re into resolutions or not, the end of a year (and a decade) is a time for reflection. It’s a great opportunity to review what your site has done for your business. As well as what is possible in the new year. And with that information, you can set website goals if you’d like. Keep in mind that these are not “must have” goals. If you get excited about any of these elements, let that gut feeling be your guide into what goals you set for your website for…

Whether you didn’t know how — or that it was even an option — so many bloggers shy away from adding images to menus on their WordPress sites. Text links are great for many reasons, but there are times where it’s nice to add images to the menu in your header. Plus, it’s easy to do! How to add images to a menu First things first, you need to have your image created + ready to go in your Media Library. If you have the file saved to your computer,…

Buying a domain name can be tough enough because of all of the extensions available. Do you go for the .com, the .biz or something totally different? I’m a fan of .com because it’s the most well known, but what about the front of your domain. Do you need to use www in your site URL? I’ll cut to the chase — no, you don’t need www when sharing your website URL with anyone… assuming your domain is set up the right way + works with or without the prefix….

Having top-notch content is the best way to ensure that visitors want to stay on your website, or at least keep coming back to it. Content creation isn’t the only focus though. Which is why we need to talk about optimizing the small bit of browser real estate that you have to work with.

If you’re launching something on your own — especially a rebrand — you might be missing these three simple but important steps.