Suggestions to Set up Your Website
When creating your website, it is important to create it in the most user friendly and readable way possible. I am going to go over some suggestions that I think everyone here can benefit from.
I have found that it is better to use pages only for the important pages of your website such as your About Me page, Privacy Policy and Contact page as this is all static content. In regards to your Privacy Policy page keep it hidden from the main menu in the header of your site and use the pages widget to have your Privacy Policy page in the sidebar. This will give your site a better feel and cleaner look.
Whatever categories you are going to have on your site should be visible in the header as the main menu. You can accomplish this by going to menu under appearance and creating a new menu. When creating your menu add your important pages to the menu except for the privacy policy.
To add your main category headings to the menu and not have the heading linking to anywhere. Add a link for each category. In the website address put a hash tag(#) instead of a website address and then add the custom link to the menu. This will cause the link to do nothing (not even refresh the page). For the title put the category name you want to display in the main menu.
Having your website setup with this type of framework gives you much more control over displaying your website content. I noticed a lot of people use pages rather than blog posts. You should only use pages when the content doesn't change.
You can assign your blog posts to a category to make your blog posts easier for a reader to find. You can then go to your menu that you created, add the categories to that menu and put them as a sub-menu item of your main menu headings (the custom links). To do this just go to appearance->menu, go to categories, check all the categories you wish to add to the menu and move them under the appropriate custom link ensuring they are offset as shown in the inserted image.
You can place your privacy policy along with all the other pages in your sidebar by going to appearance->widgets, click on the pages widget, ensure that sidebar is checked, click add and then give your widget a title such as Important Pages.
Another suggestion for your sidebar is to place your recent posts there using the widget for recent posts, along with archives and categories to help readers easier navigate your site. With archives and categories I would suggest to use a drop down menu configuration as this gives your site a cleaner look.
I hope these suggestions will be helpful when creating your sites. If you have any questions or comments feel free to drop me a line.
Allen
Recent Comments
15
Hi,
You have made some really good suggestions here. Thanks for openly sharing these suggestions. These are good to keep in mind because we don't build our websites for ourselves we build them with the viewer in mind.
-Ash
Thank you. It was not a problem sharing these. I'm all about helping others to succeed and anything I can contribute to that is my pleasure.
Allen
Hello, Very good advice, I like your information that you have shared here!
Only one thing missing from the above, for a newbie their first decision would be which theme to use? To make a start they can change afterwards if they want? But to start first time a good theme would be...? PageLines!
Thank you. I figured this would be a help for most people. I probably should have put some theme suggestions in there but I did not think about this at the time. Me personally I like and use Copyblogger 2 for Genesis Framework.
Allen
That's good. A well structured website is an internet marketer's best friend. It is important to have a sound foundation to build on. I have found that the above suggestions will allow you to get the most out of your site. May you have many successes in your journey.
Allen
You are very welcome. I know the feeling LOL. I know for a fact that a high level of motivation and dedication are the keys to success. With these in place it like a law that success has to come.
Allen
You will get it Katie. Just be consistent and dedicate yourself to your website. This will pay off in the long run. To your success.
Allen
Thanks Alan and for the follow. My 'about me' is not the problem and was the easiest to write. It's regarding any other static pages I had a block about..(What pages and what to write in them) I think I shall do like you and keep them to a minimum for now. (one can always add later) Tried to look at your site but not opening. This goes for number of other links to websites on WA. Anyway probably all back to normal in morning. Bye for now.
The only other static page you would need is the privacy policy. Everything else can be done in blog posts. My website comes up just fine on my computer. Try clearing out your internet cache as this can have an effect on websites not coming up properly.
Thanks Alan, I am currently on Lesson 6 Level 2, and struggling with exactly how I want my site to look. This helps give me some idea. I also have 'writers block' in what to put in the static pages but hopefully this will resolve with time.
Hello skc. You are very welcome. As for the writer's block on the static pages. Your About Me page. Just give a description about yourself. Here is my About Me page for my site. Maybe you can get some suggestions from there and that will clear up that writer's block. I only have 2 static page. My About Me page and and my privacy policy page. Everything else is categories and blog posts. Check it out: http://ditchurboss.com/. Click on About Allen to see my about me page. You can use this as inspiration. If you need any help just hit me up.
Allen
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This is a really helpful post. I am working on creating my first website and I am also new to blogging. I wanted to stop by and say thank you for following me and I am following you back.
Also...thanks for your tips on this post! Hope all is well!