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Tips For Making A WordPress Website 2023
WordPress powers around 34% of the internet. Not only is
WordPress powering blogs, but many eCommerce sites are using WordPress as well.
If you’re thinking about starting your own website, you
might be considering WordPress but are wondering how hard WordPress web design
is. If you aren’t very technically inclined, it can seem daunting to design
your own website but we can help. Continue reading this article and learn some
simple tips for designing your website on WordPress.
Choose a Theme That Will Work for You
Depending on how good you are with technical matters, you
might need to choose a pretty simple theme. WordPress themes are what make your
website show up the way they do online. WordPress themes allow you to have
certain functions and ways to showcase your content without coding it yourself.
There are literally thousands of themes available online.
You will find some themes are paid themes and some are free. You’ll find themes
that require a yearly subscription and other themes that you can buy with a
one-time investment.
Depending on the type of site you want to make, you’ll find
that certain themes work better for you than others. If you’re building a
magazine-style website, there are themes that are specifically for this style
of website. If you want to build a photography website, you’ll be able to find
themes optimized for sharing your photography.
Keep a Tidy Sidebar
The sidebar of your WordPress site is seen on every page on
most designs. The sidebar isn’t where you should put everything that you can
think of. Recent posts, ads, promotions, about sections and many other sections
could confuse or distract your readers.
Be purposeful when you put things into your sidebar. Whether
you’re using managed hosting or cpanel hosting, you access your sidebar
settings the same way. Go into your dashboard, go to appearance and click on
widgets. When you are in the widgets section, you’ll be able to easily change
what’s in your sidebar.
Make It Easy to Navigate Your Website
Nothing is more frustrating than going to a website where
you can’t find what you’re looking for. Your website navigation should make
sense when people come to find information.
Group related topics, create categories, and structure your
menu section in a way where people can see your system and thought process. If
you have a finance section on your website, you might add subsections like Debt
Resolution, Savings, Investing, and anything else related that can be
considered a subtopic.
User experience is an important part of web design. Focus on
planning out your website navigation before you even create content and it will
work much better for you.
Choose a Clean Permalink Structure
Permalink structure is your website link structure. For
instance, if your website is yourwebsite.com, your permalink might be
yourwebsite.com/post1 or yourwebsite.com/posttitle. You can choose what your
permalink structure is in the settings section near the bottom of the dashboard
sidebar.
Use Images to Drive Your Point Home
Images help your readers stay engaged. We all remember
loving to read picture books and getting excited to see what was on the next
page. Now as adults, images still help drive points home so we are able to
understand the information.
Not only do images make your page look better and engage
your readers but they can also help with search engine optimization (SEO). You
have the ability to put “alt text” with the keyword when you upload it to your
WordPress page or post for better SEO results.
You can use stock images or you can take your own images and
use them on your site. Stock images are inexpensive these days or you can even
find some online for free.
Select an Appealing Font
If you don’t want to look like every other website online
and use the Arial font, you might want to look into other fonts. You are going
to find that there are a lot of options available but you need to find fonts
that go along with your brand’s look.
You don’t necessarily have to use a different font
throughout your website but you might want to use a fancy font on your headers.
While you want your website to be attractive to your visitors, you don’t want
to visually overload them or make your website difficult for them to read.
There are even places where you can create your own font,
download it and use it on your site to make it uniquely yours. This is a little
bit of a pro-tip but it might be something you want to consider later down the
road when you’re working on your branding.
Don’t Forget the Footer
While the footer might seem a little boring, it is prime
real estate. People scroll to the bottom of your page to get an idea of how
long the content is. Make sure you have important information there so they can
see it and possibly decide to stay on your page longer.
Depending on the theme you choose for your website, you may
even be able to pull images from your Instagram feed, show excerpts from your
About page and more.
