Most small businesses can develop their own website using WordPress. Developed as OpenSource software, WordPress is free to use, though you will have to arrange some hosting for your website, which Simply Better IT can help with, indeed this site is hosted on a site for £50 + vat.
Assuming you have installed and configured yourself a WordPress site for these pointers.Some quick and easy changes made to ensure WordPress works here for Simply Better IT, with the free to use template PhilNa2 produced by Yineli, are noted below:
1. Optimise your site to help Search Engines send web traffic to your site by configuring the URLs of each page or post be Search Engine Friendly by making them use the Permalink of the Post in their url:
- From the WordPress Admin menu structure, in Settings, Permalinks, select the Post name option. Ensure the Permalink postnames are as short as possible whilst making them readable and containing some searchable keywords.
2. Install the AddToAny Share Buttons Plugin by Lockerz from the Plugins section of the WordPress Admin menu. The settings for this site are as follows:
- Standalone Services: Add the Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Pinterest, Email and Google +1 icons to allow readers to share with their friends and colleagues.
- Button: Select the middle-sized Share/Save button image
- Placement: Select the Display at the bottom of posts, Display at the bottom of posts excerpts, Display at the bottom of posts on archive pages, Display at the bottom of posts in the feed, and the Display at the bottom of Pages options.
3. Personalise the template to suit your business, for example:
- Replace default header image. Prepare a 920px by 145px (72dpi) image with company logo on right hand side and upload to the wp-content\themes\philna2\images\headers directory. This newly uploaded image can be selected for display in the header from the PhilNa2 sub-menu in the Appearance section of the WordPress Admin menu.
- Change the Site Title and Tagline to express a business focussed message and help with the Search Engine Optimistation of your site. As these appear prominently on each page of the website, use wisely.
- Change the text sizes in the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file appropriate to how much text there is, so currently I have amended the #blog_title to have a{font-size:35px}, #blog_description to have {font-size:18px;}, #header .navigation ul li a{font-size:14px;} and #header .navigation ul li ul li a{width:130px;}
4. Change the favicon.ico file for the nice touch finish of how the web browser displays the logo for the website. The favicon.ico needs to be a 16px by 16px image and should overwrite the file in the wp-content\themes\philna2\images directory.