Your Website Step by Step

Step 1 – Get to know your New Website

The video below takes you an a quick tour around your new website, showing you what’s where.

Also print off the handy Quick Reference Sheet to keep nearby whenever you are working on your website.

Step 2 – (optional) – Editing your coming soon page

We have set a coming soon page for your website, so that no-one can see your website while you are still building it. If you’d like to make some quick changes to the page we’ve set up for you, head over here.

Step 3 – Your site’s Logo and Branding

In the class Your Site’s Logo & Branding we show you how to set your logo, and set fonts and colours. With these in place you are ready to start creating site content  and add graphics and images that fit your branding. Head over to our class to get started with branding your site.

Step 4 – What you need to know about WordPress

Your website is working on WordPress. If you have already worked with WordPress before, you can probably skip this step. If this is your first experience with WordPress, then please head over to our class The basics of WordPress.  We’ll show you briefly how to manage and create your pages, and how to work with the media library. Once finished, please come back to the next step here.

Step 5 –  the Divi Builder

In this step you’ll learn about how the Divi builder works.

The Divi Builder is a powerful page builder that makes creating beautiful content intuitive and fun!  Head over to our class Working with the Divi Builder to learn all you’ll need to know (and not more!) to start creating beautiful web content with ease.

Step 6 – Creating Content

 Now you are going to learn how to create content, both from scratch and by using pre-designed layouts. You’ll learn about inserting modules from the library, loading layouts into your pages, working with text, and working with images in your Divi site. Head over to our class Creating Content to get started, and return here for the next step once you have finished.

Step 7 – The Menu

Menus are explained in the class Your menus. For now you’ll only need to look at the info and videos under point 1 – the other points explain about other types of menus that you may not use, or at least not immediately.

Step 8 – Other useful info you’ll likely need to create your core content

We’ve covered some really crucial skills  – you now know how to create pages using modules and premade layouts, and you can adapt these to your own needs!

You’re ready to go ahead and create your pages and add them to your menu, but there are some other things that  you may come across or that  you’ll want to be able to do. We’re covering those kinds of things in the classes below:

Step 9 – Your Blog page and Blogging

You already came across blogging in one of the earlier classes on the basics of WordPress.
In our class Blogging we show you how to create posts, set up your blog roll and manage comments.

Step 10 – Sidebars & footers

You’ve probably spotted a sidebar next to your blog roll on the blog page in your website. In the class Sidebars, footers and widgets you’ll learn how to edit sidebars and add items (called widgets). This is quite a comprehensive subject, but please stay with us because these are very useful skills to learn! You can create items advertising specific services for example next to key blog posts, or invite readers to learn more about you, or learn about special events.

Footers are also explained in this class. They are the items you can have coming back at the bottom of your page on every page (we have set up 3 items in your site as sample content, contact details, an instagram widget and a graphic highlighting a sale). Please note that having a footer is not a must. If you don’t want one, you can switch it off and in the section on footers you’ll learn how.

Step 11 – Your Homepage

Your homepage is a page like any other, in the sense that you create it exactly the same way. But to make it function as the homepage, you need to make a special setting. In the Class Create Your Homepage we show you how.

Step 12 – Social Media

You’ve probably spotted some social media icons in your website. There are various ways in which you can link from your website to your social media accounts. In the class Social Media we show you how you can setup these links and icons.

Step 13 – Email and Contact forms

Learn how to work with the contact options of your website, your webmail and your contact forms in the class Email & Contact Form.

Step 14 – Checking the responsiveness of your site

Your website pages will often be viewed on tablets or smartphones also, so it’s good to check if it all looks and works good there too, and to make any adjustments if necessary. In the class Responsiveness of your Website we explain how to do that.

Step 15 – Before you publish your Website

There are a few things we recommend you do and check before you make your website live. Go through the checklist and watch the video in the class Before publishing your website to make sure you are ready to show your new site to the world!

Maintenance of your new Website

Your website may need some maintenance every now and then, for example plugins or your wordpress installation may need to be updated. In the class Updating and Managing your website we explain how you can do that yourself.