The first thing I do when setting up a new website from the top is to add it to the WA hosting. The tutorials in WA cover everything you need to know to get it up and running.

Once you do that you'll want to make it as search engine friendly as possible. The way I do this is probably back to front. I look down the left hand side and start from the bottom of that column and work my way up.

I use the Socrates premium WP theme just because I like it. There's no harm using the free ones and for that I like the Jenny theme.I've only mentioned this as different templates offer different levels of customization. If the layout doesn't apply, skip ahead to the next part.

So first I would start with the layout I want the site to have. Your themes will vary for this but for the one I use I customize the header, select the styling (color of links site wide), the navigation, go back to that when there's pages on the site to navigate to,

The Layout...

I like the 300px right sidebar but just now I'm leaning towards the double 150px option as it gives 2 sidebars which is great for adding extra advertising space. 2 adsense + 1 affiliate banner down the right sidebar and swap it to be 2 affiliate banners + 1 adsense down the left sidebar. That keeps you inline with googles adsense policy of maximum 3 ads per page.

Then you don't have to worry about that again.

You can still use more on your site if you want by using the link units but I've never used them so maybe I'm leaving cash on the table. (who knows) The setup works for me and I like the styling of it. Again, there's no need for premium templates. There are tons of free templates that have the double sidebar option.