Website Planning Archives - Montana Webmaster

“I’m Going to Make them Call Me” and Household Appliances

I’m Going to Make them Call Me and household appliances I thought I would try the Cuisinart food process that sits neglected on our kitchen counter to make gazpacho. I was hoping that it would chop instead of pureeing the vegetables. Then I found out why it sits there unused. …

What Good is Text if no one Reads it … Besides Google?

WHAT GOOD IS TEXT IF NO ONE READS IT … BESIDES GOOGLE At the top of the home page of my new site, I have added a MetaSlider. The images have captions that are web development planning tips. If I switch them out occasionally, Google will give me credit for …

Starting a new MontanaWebmaster.com Site

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I’m switching web hosts from Modwest to SiteGround. Considering how many clients I have made this move for, I am very, very late in doing my own. Mostly my hesitation in making the move will be the loss of stored email.

So, what steps would I take to set up my own WordPress website? First, I need to think through some bigger picture questions.

A WEBSITE IS FLUID, CHANGING OVER TIME
Question: What is the most important aspect of a website for me?
Answer: Providing information to both up-and-coming developers and website owners.

Question: What about branding?
Answer: Branding is very important. I can only work with a small number of clients so my branding should not be focusing on gaining new clients. Instead it should point to content.

Question: How does that carry out in specific web design?
Answer: Instead of focusing on me, I need to focus on the content and helping viewers find the specific content they want. So, the home page design should be doorways into specific topics and the inside pages should be topics with leads to related information.

I have been experimenting with the Kahuna theme. Instead of going hog wild on the graphic design, I will see how my ideas play out with Kahuna.

So, Step 1 is switching from the default Twenty Seventeen to Kahuna.

THEME WORKAROUNDS: How Do I Get Kahuna Feature Boxes to Represent Categories Instead of Posts?

THEME WORKAROUNDS: How Do I Get Kahuna Feature Boxes to Represent Categories Instead of Posts? See More about Working with Themes Basic Principles In all my years working with various CMS (content management systems) where themes written by someone else are available, I have never found a perfect theme. The …

Making Lousy Use of Website Navigation

The closer you can come to meeting the Viewer’s agenda, or at least promising to, the more likely they are to allow your agenda in their picture. Ideally, your agendas match, reciprocally. Your navigation should help your viewers find what they want, not what you want.

When Changing One Web Page Element Requires Rethinking the Others

I made the decision to use a slider in my home page banner, instead of a static image. The theme had branding text overlayed over the static image. Now the branding is gone. When a different slider plugin is used, the overlay code becomes ineffective. That is part of the …

The Nit-Picky Task of Choosing your Banner and Home Page Images

THE NIT-PICKY TASK OF CHOOSING YOUR BANNER AND HOME PAGE IMAGES … especially when your business activities are difficult to photograph. My first banner test failed in a big way. The photo had two major components I needed: a variety of people and computers. But the photo was too tall …

Thinking Past the “Normal” Case Gets Complicated

In Portland, you can use public transportation all day for $5.00 under the normal case. The normal case is that you stop at a Max station and buy an all day pass. But, if you start on a bus, you pay $2.50 + $5.00 if you need transportation all day. …

How the Kahuna Theme Does and Doesn’t Fit my Goals

OVERVIEW Yesterday, I discussed the idea that I want my site to be a resource of categorized web development information. Basically, the Kahuna theme provides many doorways into categories and information from the home page with: 1. Top navigation 2. Feature boxes, set 1 3. Feature boxes, set 2 One …