(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: 1/31/2010] 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: 4/3/2010] 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.
Would you like more? Send me a letter...
{ 12 comments }
Excellent info, this is my new go to page! Thanks for sharing the info on manual wordpress installs, very, very, helpful. BTW, I use hostgator but I heard blue host is very good too.
Internet Marketing Alchemy´s last blog ..Web Host – How To Make A Right Choice?
Thanks, and glad to see you’re taking action.
Hostgator is likely as good as Bluehost, they are both shared hosting services, same advantages, same disadvantages.
Go ahead and get yourself a gravatar too, it helps drive traffic.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Where Good Design Begins: Getting to know your customer
Yes, I’m so surprised so many people still don’t use gravatars. It makes you look so much more trustworthy.
Gordie´s last blog ..Old Tianjin Is Destroyed.
Gordie, I think it’s because using a photo image of yourself – a gravatar is often a photo – makes people feel somehow vulnerable, and picking out a drawn one seems like too much work. People are lazy on one hand and unaware of the benefits on the other!
[Edit: Please, if you are going to post links to companies in competition to who I'm affiliated with, use a real name with a real gravatar. Thanks. Dave Doolin]
I am so jealous of all the blessed and fortunate people that have this to look at for building their site. such an awesome resource!
I haven’t followed the links yet, but plan to so I can see if I missed anything important in building my site.
You are doing something good here. Keep on providing value!
Thanks Carlos.
I’ve had this material loafing around since summer; it’s time to put it to work!
Good to set it out for people. I was working on a 4 hour timetable earlier today as it was Saturday and I got so much more done than normal cause I had it planned out with goals
It is the way forward!
Niall Harbison´s last blog ..5 Incredible Social Media Campaigns That Leveraged Video For Worldwide Coverage
Niall – if I don’t spend some time thinking about what I want to get done, then write it out, it’s not likely I get it done.
I have a number of tools I use.
The most important tools are 1. vision, and 2. committing to structure.
Thus: ship a product by end of month… by working on it every morning for 60 minutes before doing anything else. It’s really starting to come together.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Made to Stick: Earworms for your brain
I like your schedule breakdown of Website in a Weekend, but is Wordpress really the best platform to create a website? I’m looking to create a website but I’ve always thought of Wordpress’s services as fit only for those who blog and write articles. I want to put up something that features my products and maybe let people purchase stuff through it. I don’t think Wordpress is capable of doing that for me…
Gochi – WordPress is definitely NOT one-size-fits-all, no matter how much it’s touted that way.
I do know that you can use plugins for small shopping carts on WordPress, but I haven’t compared how they work with other solutions such as Zen Cart or 1 Shopping Cart. I suspect WordPress would work fine for up to a few dozen items, but no more than that.
What you can do is this:
Take action now!
Get your website installed and working using a WordPress static site setup, get all your product descriptions and sales copy indexed in search engines as fast as possible (you really do want to do this now, longevity really does matter), and put up a half dozen of your best products for sale.
This gives you two things:
1. Fast action
2. Experience with ecommerce.
Getting the experience is huge. Even if WordPress sucks, until you dig into it, you don’t have any way to really understand the mechanics of selling online.
I’m considering taking on a client in the fashion business who is currently on Zen Cart, and wants off. I won’t necessarily point her at WordPress.
Another fashion client is on Zen Cart and it’s kicking her butt in a major way. She wants off it.
But Zen Cart might work for you. Who knows?
If you have the time, set up 3 or 4 shopping carts and compare how they work. Choose the best.
Would love to have an update when you figure out what you’re going to do.
Dr Wordpress!´s last blog ..Your Next Killer Technique for Telling Compelling Stories (It’s easier than you think)
Hello. I saw your link on Extreme John. Great post. Hopefully people who want to do this will get started now that they know how
Dasche Bledsoe´s last blog ..Jennifer Love Hewitt Talks About Her Disco Ball of a Vagina
Dasche, I’m planning to offer this monthly, but I haven’t worked out exactly how.
It will be easier once surf season is over in mid-March. Hard to give up good waves right now!
Dave´s last blog ..Website In A Weekend: Thursday evening – Get into the gate
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