We run thorough this WordPress post-install checklist on every website we set up. It’s just good groundwork, which is always important before building something great.
If you’re installing WordPress yourself, it can feel like you’re done in 5 minutes. But we urge you to do as many of these as you can straight away. They’ll save you time and headaches later. It looks like a long list, but don’t be put off – it should take you about 30 minutes to complete.
Security still isn’t high on the agenda of most businesses, even though WordPress attacks are becoming more and more common. Yet most have spent a lot of money designing, building and maintaining their websites.
No successful attacks isn’t proof you’re secure, and we’ve seen too many hacked WordPress sites to be complacent anymore. Don’t panic though, if you take some reasonable precautions you can reduce the risks.
Below is our checklist of suggestions for you to follow yourself. It’s common sense stuff and doesn’t need high technical skills. Allow an hour for someone to run through it once each quarter for peace of mind, or ask us to do it for you.
If you have a WordPress website then you should allow time for regular housekeeping. Why? Well, WordPress is free software and as such doesn’t come with any support. You have to keep it running smoothly yourself. This includes running WordPress updates, updating plugins, security checks and so on.
I recommend clients do housekeeping once a month for busy blogs, or once per quarter for low traffic business websites. Below is the checklist of items we suggest. It’s not complicated, and you only need to allow about an hour a time. If you’d prefer someone to do it for you, we offer a basic monthly health checks service.
We create a lot of websites for startups and new businesses. High on their list of priorities and expectations is appearing high up on Google. Yet it can be hard to manage expectations, so here’s some very basic information on the subject.
“Why is this so hard? It’s just a name…”
Naming things is very hard. If you have children or pets you’ll know this already. Naming a business is harder as it’s something you want others to love as much as you do and many find it one of the hardest parts of starting up.
However, if you’re kicking yourself for not being able to crack it, annoying friends and family with endless desperate ideas and muttering something like the quote above, you’re probably over doing it.
Let’s say you’ve made you’re own business website, or you’re about to make one. It’s fairly easy these days, with the tools available online. But how do you make it a good website?
Starting your business means you’re at a creative stage in your brand building. Time to experiment a little. Have some fun. However, your potential customers don’t want you to.
A lack of simple consistency can damage your efforts and leave them unsure and less able to distinguish you from your competitors.
If you’ve got the name for your new business, the next step is to secure your domain name. You may even want to do this before you form a limited company, just in case the available choices affect your name decision.
It’s also well worth doing a bit of research on namechk.com to see if there are social names available for your preferred domain choice.
The best business blogs use images to grab attention, convey a message or just liven up their posts. However, we often get small businesses asking us how they can find good images that aren’t going to add much to their running costs.
Starting an online shop has never been easier. That’s a fact. But however tempting it is to plough straight in, you still need to make some smart decisions up front.
Although you may want to start simple, scaling these things once you get started requires some, well… answers from the future. No, this doesn’t require The DeLorean for a research trip. Instead, just think about it. Properly. Your future self will thank you for it.
So, to help you, below are the main questions we ask anyone looking to start in e-commerce.
