What I’ve Learned Launching a Website

This post isn’t on sales operations. However, I wanted to share a number of things I’ve learned in the last year creating a website. These are all the basics you need to know about launching a website/blog, even for dummies!

Host 

I’ve been super happy with GoDaddy. There are other options but their customer service is great and the price is great. Simple.

WordPress and Recommended Plugins

Something like 75%+ of the websites in the world work on WordPress. Its pretty easy to teach yourself and also pretty easy to find help. I used PeoplePerHour and was able to get some developers to make a few customisations and tweaks I couldn’t figure out on my own. Take advantage of lower rates around the globe this makes a lot of sense and you can get some cool things for a few hundred £.

Recommended plugins:

  • WP-Polls – a fun little way to add polls and make your site a bit more interactive
  • Google Analytics Dashboard for WP – a no brainer
  • Snip.ly – you can link the tool below and ads a badge automatically to every link you add
  • Yoast SEO – a great plugin to manage SEO (search engine optimisation)

Tools

Some of these tools are WordPress plugins but all of them can work independently so I wanted to discuss separately. All of these are FREE! There are some other tools I’ve take a look at that I might use as I grow more but super happy with these for now.

Hackers

Assholes. From what I can gather most hackers these days just are just ‘practicing’ or using sites to embed malware. They, for the most part, are not trying to steal information – payment or personal – from what I am told.  I recently purchased Wordfence which is helping a bit with managing unintended visitors and those trying to login to the admin of my site.

Google AdWords

A total nightmare and one of the least intuitive pieces of software I’ve ever used. My recommendation is having a rummage around your own and then Google has some live chat help that can help walk you through how to use this stupid beast. Or better yet, hire someone to help you get started. Highly recommended if you want to use.

SEO

Its critical to ensure you have a site map loaded and refreshed to maximise SEO. The best plugin for this is Yoast. If you, like me couldn’t figure out how on earth to work the overcomplicated Google piece (see the theme…) I paid someone £20 from PeoplePerHour to do for me. Easy.

I hope this provides some great tips on launching a website. As you can tell, I’m not an expert but it is really easy and with some help, you too can get yours created in no time.