Website In A Weekend: Friday Evening – Off to the Races

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

You’ve been lurking around Website In A Weekend for months, soaking up information, reading, thinking, strategizing, planning, organizing, and getting ready to make it happen.

But you haven’t done anything.

Yet.

I know you’re out there, because I analyze my traffic statistics, including my commenting rate. You’re reading, but you’re not commenting, not interacting, not engaging… because you haven’t taken that first step: getting yourself on the web.

And you do need to be on the web.

Right now.

For example, I’ve read quite a bit of internet marketing material, and purchased a few products myself. What I found is this: internet marketing courses, websites and seminars invariably focus on high-level STRATEGY rather than tactical execution. But this strategy is irrelevant to an entrepreneur without a website, and without the skills to acquire a website rapidly.

These products and seminars assume you have the whole “website thing” handled… either you’re a web expert already, or you have a flock of web geeks at your beck and call.

How absurd.

To rectify to this patent absurdity, Website In A Weekend offers this Friday evening guide for getting you started on your own website, using the wildly popular WordPress personal publishing platform.

Some of these tasks may take a little more than an hour, some less than an hour, but it should all work out about right at the end.

Let’s get started on your Website In A Weekend.

The first 5 hours

Here’s the Friday evening curriculum. Make sure to take a break at 10 minutes to the hour.

6:00 pm

[Updated: 4/14/2011] Getting started, finding your hosting provider. Setting up your basic account structure: password and username handling, FTP setup, email setup.

IMPORTANT: A reasonable price for quality web hosting ranges between about $6 to $10 per month. It’s worth it!

7:00 pm

[Updated: 3/24/2010] Installing WordPress from scratch. It’s easy, and it’s the best way to do it in the long term. We’ll create the database on the hosting account, the database user, set the permissions, and record all the necessary usernames and passwords so you can find them easily later, when you really need them.

8:00 pm

[Updated: 3/27/2010] Install critical plugins. Every WordPress installation needs a few critical plugins that help provide security, tracking and statistics, and ease of use. We’ll install at least the top 5 most critical plugins, and possibly as many as 5 or 6 more, time permitting.

9:00 pm

[Updated: 5/9/2011] Write out your goals for your website. Keeping a mental picture is easier when you have everything written down for future reference. (Visualization is a technique recommended by ALL successful business people.) We’ll make sure your goals page is password protected if necessary.

10:00 pm

[Updated: 6/12/2010] Required pages. Every website that means business has a few pages that are absolutely required. We’re going to focus on a “Contact” page and an “About” page, so that all of your visitors can find out more about you and your website, and contact you safely and privately. Time permitting, we’ll add a copyright notice to your web page footer.

This is the knowledge you need to get started, all in one relaxing Friday evening.

We’re off to the races!

Tomorrow, Saturday, we’ll head down the back stretch and get some articles and pages posted, work out your goals, and handle a number of critical chores. Check it out when you’re ready: Website In A Weekend: Saturday – Accelerating on the Backstretch.

Sunday we’ll finish up; then you really will be on the web.

This is what I want you to do: commit. Send me that email and say: “Dave, thanks for the swift kick, I’m going to make this happen this weekend.

Updated: May 9, 2011