By Thereasa Black
Hopefully, you read my post last week about how to start a business and are back to learn about building a website. I get it, trust me I do, you’re busy. Raising children isn’t an easy task and finding time to build a website in between laundry, dinner, bedtime, and work isn’t as easy as it sounds. Actually, it doesn’t even sound easy. But believe me, when you are able to log in an make a quick edit to your website on your own instead of paying someone else to do it, you’ll be thanking me.
“Raising children isn’t an easy task and finding time to build a website in between laundry, dinner, bedtime, and work isn’t as easy as it sounds.”
Build it Yourself or Outsource
The thought of building my own website was overwhelming at first, but the thought of paying someone else to do it seemed like an unnecessary expense. Paying someone else would mean that if I ever needed to edited something, I would have to spend time trying to contact my builder, explain the issue, pay them to fix it, and hope that they would be able to fix it right away. Not okay for me.
At first, I asked myself, “How can I possibly build a website when I don’t know anything about coding?” Then I thought about it. There is a Youtube video to teach children how to play with toys, there must be something that walks me through building a website. So, with a combination of Youtube and Google I figured it out.
Website Hosting
In order to build a website, you must first have a host. There are a lot of options, but in the end I went with Bluehost. I planned to create a few websites, so I selected the package appropriate for my needs. But, you get a free domain (website link www.whateverisavailable.com) when you sign up. I also got unlimited emails and websites because of the package that I chose. Anyway, after I created my website domain I began to build it using WordPress. WordPress is an entirely different beast.
“There is a Youtube video to teach children how to play with toys, there must be something that walks me through building a website.“
WordPress
It’s impossible for me to walk you through how to use ALL of WordPress, but this guy does a pretty good job at explaining it. Make sure that you activate the plugins that are already downloaded onto your Cpanel (you can find it on the left side in one of the tabs).
The plugin that I found to be the most important is Yoast SEO. This plugin tells you how readable your page or post is and helps you to make changes in order to make people more likely to read it. Tells you all of the things that you’re doing wrong and right and if you click the eye next to each thing that you’re doing wrong, it will show you where on your page you have messed up.
Elementor
When I discovered Elementor, it allowed me to take website building to a whole new level. Elementor is a plugin that helps you to build your website. It makes your website look like it was done by professionals and the basic version of it is free. WARNING, Elementor does not work in Microsoft Edge, so I switched over to Chrome.
Elementor provides you with web page templates so that you can take what someone else has already built and plug in your unique content OR you can just build it using their tools. Once again, I’m not expert, I’m just here to point you in the right direction when you need help. This is the video that shows you what Elementor helps you to do. Here, you can find Elementor’s Youtube video.
Bookly
I required a booking calendar for one of my websites. After much research, I discovered Bookly. While Bookly is easy to use, it is not pocketbook friendly. I had to pay for almost each feature. Of course, there is a free version that is useful for a simple operation. I needed more features, so I showed them the money, then more money. In the end, I am very happy with the product that I was able to produce using this plugin.
If you’re downloading Bookly Pro, there are instructions that they skip when explaining how to download it. This skipped step causes you to get a failure message when you’re trying to install it onto WordPress. They conveniently have a service that allows you to pay someone else to download it into WordPress for you… don’t do it, I’ll help you out.
After you download the file to your computer, go into the file and move the “bookly-addon-pro” file out of the “codecanyon” file. Then when you browse from WordPress choose the “bookly-addon-pro” file and it will download.
Site Manager
The site manager is accessible from the Bluehost page. It allows you to monitor site activity among many other things. This will let you know how many people have visited your site, which pages they scroll through, what links they click on, etc. It’s very useful once you launch. You can open your site manager by going to the “My Sites” tab on the left sidebar. Once the page opens, a manage site button will appear and you’re there.
Creating a Logo
Come back in two weeks to find out how to create a logo. Next week, we’ll explore a single mom topic: dating.
