If you’re considering setting up a blog or website, you may be wondering what’s involved, or wonder where to even begin. Ponder no more. Here’s a list of the features we include when designing and setting up a blog or website. There’s much to developing websites, but here’s an overview so you can get an idea of some of the basics involved.
Pricing varies dependent upon what’s needed or planned.
Basic Design and Development
For the basic design and setup of a blog or website, we include these features.
- Consultation to determine theme selection and social media basics
- Up to five pages (Home, About, Contact, two content pages using provided material)
- Customization of StudioPress child theme of your choosing*
- Addition of plugins as indicated below
- Addition of existing Google Analytics code
- Addition of security features
- Basic copyedit of existing content
- Basic content strategy review
- Upload of existing images and logo
- Create and upload favicon (a miniature version of your logo used for browser tabs & shortcuts)
- Training to show how to add and edit posts for site maintenance
* We are not employees of or affiliated in any way with StudioPress. We just use their wonderful themes!
Suggested Plugins
Here is a sampling of some WordPress plugins you may find useful.
- SEO
- Social media account links (for existing accounts)
- Facebook Like buttons for blog posts
- Share buttons for posts
- Mobile version: WPtouch (see this site and 2morodocs.com on mobile for example)
- Comment policy
- Login lockdown
Process
- During development, site set up on password-protected area for review
- Final version backed up and transferred to you using Backup Buddy
- Regular status updates
- Meetings via Skype if necessary
Use of WordPress
I imagine you might be wondering what WordPress is, since I mention here, and perhaps you’ve heard of it as well. I thought I’d provide some information about it and why I use it. For years, I developed websites and online help pages from scratch, basically. However, I’ve switched totally to use of WordPress, and recommend it to anyone setting up a site.
WordPress is an open-source platform used for websites and blogs. Meaning what, exactly, you ask? Open-source means that it’s not specific to one company (proprietary) and sold for profit on the open market. For instance, any software you purchase is proprietary to one company and developed there. Open-source is developed by communities of developers, and is usually free of charge. The WordPress community is huge, it is world-wide, it is dedicated to maintenance and development of the code, and is collaborative in a very positive way.
Platform is just another term for the underlying software, as in the platform upon which you build. In this case, WordPress is the platform upon which you build websites and blogs. Think of it as the framing of your house.
Many large companies and sites use WordPress as well. For examples, look at the home page at WordPress.org.
There are two WordPress options: WordPress.com and self-hosted (WordPress.org). WordPress.com is free, but is not to be used for business. It also has limitations in functionality. Self-hosted sites use the basic app you can obtain free of charge. You are then responsible for installing it on your host server (usually very easy to set up with a few mouse clicks via their control panel) and upgrading it. There are regular updates to the WordPress software, and it’s important to upgrade. The upgrades themselves are usually quick, but may also require updates to plugins (which also regularly update). In any case, I’m explaining that there is some maintenance involved in terms of updates, but they don’t take long – just minutes, usually. I still highly recommend going this route, as you have the most options for easily adding functionality such as links to social media, mobile site prep – all sorts of things. It’s great.
Additional Costs to You
These are the components I use in my own sites, and are external costs I recommend.
- Hosting
- StudioPress theme
- Gravity Forms*
- Backup Buddy
- Purchase of any special fonts used (myfonts.com)
- Purchase of photos (iStockPhoto.com)
* I currently use their Business package, which also includes use of MailChimp for email marketing.
Add-Ons
We have a number of packages from which to choose. These include social media account setup, blog post writing, and more. For information and pricing, check the Packages page.
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