Before you install WordPress.

Think Before You Install - A Call To Action

MEET Russell Aaron

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I love WP more than 90% of the people who attend WordCamps across the world. I’m trying to become the lobbyist for WP on Capital Hill.

WP Enthusiast

I’ve built many things for many companies, including a mortgage broker, real estate agents and photographers. I’ve even built a site for rating celebrities.

Developer Guy

I’ve spoken a lot of time, at a lot of places. I like educating as many as I can. Speaker and ETC

Part 1. Be Solid!

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Before you install WordPress, you need to have a game plan. A game plan can be anything like an outline, project details or project scope. You need to have a game plan in order to pick the right players for your team.

In regards to building your website on WordPress, You need to have a game plan in order to know what theme and plugins you will need in order to accomplish this project or website. For example, let’s say you are going to start a website that allows people to post lost or found animals by city and state. That’s very useful information to a developer. Now, had you purchased a magazine WordPress theme, you would of already set your project back. Sure, you can make the theme work with some twerking, or hacking. But I do believe that some kind of charity or even a simple StudioPress Genesis theme would suit your project better. So already you see why it’s very important to have a game plan, before you pick out themes and plugins.

Part 1. Conflunction.

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Coming up with a really solid game plan is a lot easier than it sounds. At the same time, you need to be specific and as detailed as you can be. As you know, there are many ways to skin a cat. But, the possibility of a theme and a plugin having conflicting issues is more than likely to happen. For example, if you say that you would like a contact form that allows you to register new users, signs them up to a mail chimp campaign, and adds the user to a custom post type, then you can use gravity forms. But, if you are using Gravity and the Mail Chimp plugin together on the same page, and both are using a date picker, then you’re going to have conflicting issues. Now add a Magazine theme that has a lot of jQuery or Javascript running in the header and your site is already having issues, and you have not even launched by this point.

Part 1. My Plan. Your Plan.

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SO how do you create a game plan? That’s easy. Let’s decide on what the point of the website it. If it’s to make a profit by selling items, you are more than likely going to need a contact form plugin, some kind of E-commerce or Paypal plugin, a plugin to map that contact form to the e-commerce side of things, user registration, and a theme that can display your products. If you’re going to monetize your blog or website, you’re going to need a theme or a plugin that displays ads, author biographies, social sharing etc.

SO my game plan is simple. Write down everything you want your website to do, or not do, in very specific detail

You wouldn’t need to have a theme that shows e-commerce products for a site that is just about blogging. Unless at a later date you already pre-planned that you are going to sell things at some time. But if that’s not for a few years, its easier to have a theme just for blogging and then upgrading down the road. Having a theme for a specific thing also can make a website process a lot faster. Most of the e-commerce themes out there right now do some fancy j-query (fashy) type stuff. And if you’re just blogging, you don’t need to load those scripts In the header.

Part 2. Using Your Plan

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Now that you have a game plan, you have to do something with it. That’s where having an imagination really comes in. But if you are like me, and you’re not an imaginer for Disney, you need a better plan. So once I decide on what exactly the project is, I start building my website on paper. Not like drawing the website or anything, but I will list the main details of each page.

Part 2. I can doz more?

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Example, home page needs to have the menu in the top corner, slider, an area for content and a space for logos or brands. Well, I know the theme will handle the menu and the slider, as well as the content section. But now I know I either need to build something for the logo section, or find a plugin. But I do not go racing off to .org to find that plugin. I’ll wait until I’m done writing down the main pages. Because you might go and find a plugin that does what you need it to do, but what if there is a plugin that does that, and also allows you to do something else you need.

Part 2. A Job Well Done

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Once you have your plan written down, and you know what your going to need, then you can start looking for themes and plugins.

Part 3. Shepard and Sheeps

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We judge things by looks and not by function. I know, I know, In American society, the best person for the job always gets it. In WordPress, if you judge things by looks, you’re going to need to be very lucky. There are some theme demos out there that are totally spiffy. But then you buy them, and realize that the whole thing is put together by code, and anytime you want to make a change, you have to go back through it. What a nightmare. I’d rather have less to do, or one area (like an admin panel) where I can dictate certain area’s on pages and posts.

Part 3. Do An Action, Jackson!

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So before you buy a theme, there are a few tips and tricks you can do to look at what’s being done. First, Write the developer. Ask them how the theme works. Sure, the demo is cool, but is the home page made up of a million short codes or do you have to drag widgets around in a drag and drop editor, or is is all code?

Second, view the page source, search for plugin names and see if they are using something on a specific page. Sure there is a slide show on the home page, but is it using NextGen gallery to do that, or is it built in?

Most themes come with the same things, such as layout, columns, shortcodes etc. But what ever they are selling as their own clever trickery, what you need to question. Here is another thing to keep in mind.

There have ben a lot of themes that claim they are made for a specific plugin. That’s awesome. But will there be updates? Will their be documentation that states how to upgrade the theme if the developer dies tomorrow? These things are all important.

THANK YOU!