WordPress Planning Checklist
October 16, 2009 ·
If you are planning a new website using WordPress, here are some things to think about before you start. Planning or at least considering these will make the entire process easier and will ensure that you make the most of all of WordPress’ features and functionality. Plus, your website will be fabulous!
Design and Layout
Header - Logo and tagline, include ad banner or call to action
Sidebars
- 1 or 2, left or right, same on pages/posts/homepage or different
- What should be in them (recent posts, author box, social media links, twitter updates, newsletter signup, photo slideshow, YouTube video clip, graphics linking to other sections of your website)
Homepage – What should be on there (excerpts of certain categories, intro to business, featured content gallery)
Footer – What should be there (contact info, login button, copyright note)
Navigation
- 1 bar or 2, categories in a navigation bar
- What pages will you want in the navigation bar (what order, parent pages or child pages)
- Do you want a blog page with all categories or categories in the sidebar
- Do you want an Archive Page (grouped by categories, month, per post)
Functionality (plugins)
- Comments - Wording above comments box, show gravatars, approve before publishing
- Blog posts linked an email newsletter
- Downloads section for Acrobat files
- More than 1 user – login themselves/you create logins
- All posts visible or some password protected, membership site
- E-Commerce for online shopping, memberships, event registration etc
- Photo Gallery/Slideshow
- Video Blog or Portfolio Website
- Social media buttons on each post so readers can promote you
- Google Maps on contact/branch pages
- An events calendar for courses/workshops/regular events
- Forms for readers to fill in, contents are emailed to you
- Other functionality you would like your website to have
Search Engines/Useability
- Main website title and description
- Permalinks, descriptions and keywords for every page
- Slugs and descriptions for each category
- Tags on initial posts
- Show other posts in category
- What will you write about in your blog posts and how often will you write them
- What categories will you group your posts under
- WordPress.com account for your gravatar and online profile
- Best social media to promote your blog posts and website (YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Ning etc)
Please let me know anything you think I’ve missed in the comments box below.
Download this post as an Acrobat file from my WordPress Help Sheets page…
Download my Website Marketing Questionnaire for general information about planning a new website…
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Categories: Blogging, Design & Layout, Search Engines, Website Ideas, Wordpress Guides, Wordpress Tutorials
Tags: design and layout, functionality, meta tags, permalinks, website planning, WordPress planning, WordPress Plugins
About Jo Couchman
Chief website designer at Creative Web Ideas and author of the Creative Web Ideas blog. If you enjoyed this post - Subscribe to Email Newsletter to receive future posts by email.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by John Coonen, Michelle Ackers. Michelle Ackers said: Good summary RT @nzwebwoman: New Blog Post: Guide to Planning a Website Using #WordPress – http://tinyurl.com/yz3n8g3 [...]
Hi,
thanks for this checklist of items. I’m currently also planning an upgrade of my site. I would like to add some suggestions to your list. I think besides the “technical or functional” things you mention you should think about these in the planning phase:
- Who are my customers and what information do they need?
- Why are they comming to my website?
- Are they experienced users or just started with internet. If experienced you could add more features. If just started, you could give them the basic functionality first.
- What are the tasks the users want to accomplish and how can I facilitate these tasks with the least amount of clicks.
- How are the users arriving at my website (through google, through my adwords campaign or through my newsletter?). If they arrive through my adwords campaign I should let them arrive on the correct landing page.
- What statistics do I need to monitor about my users and site? E.g. what do I need to monitor, so I achieve my goals with my site?
And the last one I struggled with a lot: should I use WordPress, Joomla or just a flat site? Reason: I think some sites (professional, non blog sites) could be very difficult to present in WordPress. I love WordPress, so I decided to go with WordPress. But the platform you choose should match your goals you want to achieve with the site.
Thanks hope these comments help. Keep the good work.
Thanks for your suggestions Runy, You will find a lot more non WordPress-specific planning info on my Website Marketing Questionnaire too.
Hi Jo,
Have you got any tips for website owners who don’t currently use wordpress but want to add in a blog page on their existing website using wordpress? Is it possible to do this if a site is already set up using another CMS like Joomla for example?
Is there any information that describes the best process to merge a customised wordpress blog into an existing website in this way?
Michelle,
You can display your WordPress blog feed on any website using Feedburner’s BuzzBoost. Details here – http://www.creative-web-ideas.com/index.php/2008/07/feedburner-to-promote-your-blog/
Nice one, thanks this would work well and sounds very easy to implement.