How To Be A Winning Wordpress Webmaster - IN-DEPTH GUIDE - DRILL DOWN TO THE WONDERS OF WORDPRESS - WordPress To Go - How To Build A WordPress Website On Your Own Domain, From Scratch, Even If You Are A Complete Beginner (2013)

WordPress To Go - How To Build A WordPress Website On Your Own Domain, From Scratch, Even If You Are A Complete Beginner (2013)

IN-DEPTH GUIDE - DRILL DOWN TO THE WONDERS OF WORDPRESS

Lesson 20. How To Be A Winning Wordpress Webmaster

OK, this section of the book is for when you have completed Lessons 1-19 and you have a working website up and running. People in this situation often ask me, ‘Right, I’ve done my website, now what next?’

Well, I’ll let you into a little secret. Successful websites are never really finished. The point about a living website is that it reflects change through time and it is always up-to-date and fresh when visitors land on it. So, work on a winning website never really stops.

Build Up Your Website

So, you should embark on a schedule of constantly adding new pages and/or posts and fine-tuning your site navigation so that visitors can easily find the information they are looking for.

The more work you do, the more skilled you will get at it and you will effectively learn on the job. And, trust me, you will find it very rewarding to see your website coming to life.

Get Feedback

When you’re ready, ask others to give you an honest appraisal of your efforts. Find out what else they would like to see on the site and whether they can offer any positive suggestions for improvements.

Promote Your Website

Don’t forget the external promotion of your website.

You need to let everyone know about your website by adding your domain URL to all your publicity material and your email signature and your business cards and your profile on forums etc., etc.

If you are on Facebook or Twitter or Google+ or LinkedIn (or any other social media), make sure that all your friends, followers and contacts know about the website.

Where possible, ask others with websites to link to yours as this will help your search engine visibility.

Expand Your Skills

And, as you work away, you will find that your skill-set will grow. You will discover that you have mastered techniques that you once thought unfathomable and you will also gain the confidence to learn even more. That is, essentially, how I learned WordPress and you can do the same.

Get Help

As it says in the title, I wrote ‘WordPress To Go’ as a guide for beginners, not a definitive work on the whole topic of WordPress. But I hope that I have equipped and encouraged you to find out for yourself the answers to questions not covered here.

WordPress has its own self-contained, contextual ‘Help’ system. Look at the top right of each of the pages in the dashboard and you will see a little ‘Help’ tag. When you click on that you will see a drop-down box that contains text and links to provide more information about the type of page you are on and how to use it.

In addition to WordPress.org, there are many other websites offering useful information about WordPress.

Go on to Google and simply type in the question(s) that you want answered. Make sure you include the word ‘WordPress’ somewhere in the question.

You may be surprised at how much information there is out there for free. You will understand a lot more from that material after you’ve been through these lessons than you would have done before.

But one warning about picking up WordPress tips from external websites. Check the date of the page or article that you are referencing because WordPress information can quickly go out of date.

If what you are reading is more than one year old, be careful that the information you are reading is still current.

Finally…

So, my message in this final lesson is to keep at it. Expand and polish your website. Keep it all fresh and up-to-the-minute. Keep on learning. And take pride in your achievement.

That’s the way to become a winning, WordPress webmaster!