by Rachel Smith
13 February 2015
If you’ve joined the List and you have a website, I’ve sticky-beaked at it. Guaranteed. Partly because I’m nosy, but also because I’m genuinely interested to see how creative people tell their own story / promote themselves online. That said, a lot of you – 52 percent according to this year’s survey – don’t yet have a website promoting their work (and 24 percent of you think you need one).
I’ve created a few sites for myself over the years (and other people too, more recently) so I thought I’d do a quick go-to guide for what you need to do, in order, if you’re making your website a priority this year. Here goes…
1. Decide on a domain name. This is the first thing you should do, before getting any design organised. It’s much cheaper registering a domain name (a dot com or dot com au) through a hosting company like UberGlobal or GoDaddy. Go through Melbourne IT and you may pay hundreds as opposed to $10-30. Ideally you want to choose a domain name that is your name – like www.pipharry.com or www.lisaschofield.com, a business name like www.redlinewritingservices.org, or something memorable and meaningful to what you do, like www.slyonwords.com or www.thesmallestroom.com.au.
2. Choose a hosting company. You might want to do this in conjunction with registering your domain – for if you register your domain through the company who’ll be hosting your site, you will probably find it much easier and quicker to go live once you’re ready to do so. You want a reliable host for your site (about $5-10/month) that offers decent performance, great tech support and ideally, a 1-click WordPress installation so you can get going building your site straight away. Ask friends for recommendations. Don’t go for the cheapest hosting you can find – it always ends in tears. (Probably because your site goes down the day you have an important meeting with a potential client.)
3. Get a logo designed. Depending on who you use, it could cost you anything from $5 to $500, although I don’t recommend using those sites that offer cut-price design. Not least because they’re exploiting talented designers desperate for work. It always hurts when I see people praising bidding sites like Fiverr as if it’s this great thing. Hire a decent designer, people. See what they’ve done, offer them some ideas of logos you like, and let them loose on yours. While you’re at it, get them to design you a business card at the same time so you start to create a branded look that’s unique to you.
4. Research a theme. Look’n’feel is everything when it comes to your website and of course there are many platforms – Blogger, Joomla, WIX – that you could use. But I would go for WordPress.org. Why? Because it’s an open source tool with literally thousands of developers creating themes and plugins for it (free and low-cost), which really can make your site shine – and work better. Free is great, but I think you’re always better off spending $50-odd bucks on a theme that has a good support forum in place. When little things need fixing you can just search the forum for a solution or email the support people, which is invaluable. Finding a theme you like can take time so devote a day to creating a short list, and start with Google – search something like, ‘Top journalist themes’ or ‘top WordPress themes for freelancers’. You should also search sites like themeforest.net, StudioPress, MyThemeShop and even Etsy for good themes. Expect to pay between $30-60 for a great theme. If you want to highlight clippings look for a theme that has inbuilt portfolio or gallery functionality, like Ubergrid, the Freelancer WordPress theme or Dante. Bear in mind the demo of a theme may look overwhelming and complex, but you can always pare it back to what you need – or get a great developer to do it for you, if you like the bones of the theme itself.
5. Plan your design. Keep your navigation simple (About Me, What I do, Clippings, Testimonials and Contact might be all you need). Collect your clippings (pdfs, jpegs – optimised for the web, so not too large) and if you have a lot, separate them by genre. A pull-down menu on your clippings nav item can help editors and employers go to what interests them fast when checking out your previous work. Include a social links bar that connects visitors to your site to your Facebook, Twitter account, LinkedIn and so on. If this bar can be prominent and include links to your email and phone, that’s even better. You want your site to make it really, really easy for someone to hire you, after all.
6. Set it up. Your host can probably help you install WordPress and your theme if you’re struggling or aren’t sure how to do it – or you could hire a developer who can get you up and running and tweak bits and pieces you can’t do (between $40-100/hr). Again, friends may be able to recommend developers or check out MeetUp.com for developer meet-ups and go along to meet potential contacts you can chat to on the spot. Or, email me and I’ll give you some people to contact.
Got any questions? Feel free to ask them below and I’ll answer as best I can!
Thanks Rachel. I am still horribly confused about the difference between wordpress.com and wordpress.org. I have a blog but I am not self-hosted. Should I upgrade to a .org site? Can I keep my same domain name and do so? Thanks very much 🙂
Hi Michaela. Yep it can be a bit of a minefield but it’s much better being on .org as you have access to so many more plugins, themes and the chance to customise your site however you’d like to. You can keep your existing domain name, you just need to find a hosting company and they can help you change the nameservers so your site points to the new hosting provider.
You can also export all your content and move it onto a .org theme. However if you’re not confident doing all this I would probably hire someone to do it for you. It won’t cost the earth but it’ll give you peace of mind that everything is being done correctly. There are also a few more things to consider like offsite redirection – which sends visitors and search engines to your new site automatically. I think there might be a fee involved for this but well worth it. Hope that helps 🙂