With all the options that are available within the headway themes framework, it can seem a little overwhelming, and may stall you as you work to create your site.
But by following a few simple steps, you can have your website or blog up and running in no time.
Here's a checklist that will take you through the steps: 1) Understand what your users are coming to your site for.
Make it very easy for them to find and see what they want.
Hide pages that don't immediately concern the user, such as the site map, contact form etc.
Put links in the footer to these pages though.
2) Create a new page called 'page-template'.
Hide it from the navigation menu.
Then use this to create your default layout for all of your site pages.
Once you have the layout done - link this page to the other pages on your website.
3) Use a good Blog Title and Tagline (- this is the general settings tab of the wordpress admin backend).
They will both be part of the link to your site, and used in the listing on search engines.
Include your main keywords within your tagline - the phrase that you want to be listed under on search engine results.
4) Unless you are a media site, follow conventions, don't confuse your users.
Have a navigation bar across the top or down the side.
Include an RSS subscribe box at the top of your sidebar.
Don't fill your sidebar with every widget, the clutter and information overload will not only make it hard for users to focus, but will also slow your site down.
5) Once you are happy with your layout, and have linked your other pages to the template page.
Check every page on your blog.
This includes variations of archives.
Check the blog index, single post, archives, category archives, tags archives, author archives, the search and finally the 404 page.
To test the 404 page, just type some random letters after your url in the browser address bar.
6) Once the layout has been checked, load the two essential plugins: for a contact form and both sitemaps - html and xml.
Then create the sitemap and contact pages, and check them both, along with the sitemap.
xml 7) Only now, can you start with the design process.
The default design is very clean and nice - but not unique.
We will look at how to create a unique site with background and header images in another article.
With all the available options, it can take time to matser.
The truth is though - that for a simple and effective site, you can do without many of the options.
Remember the great creative truth: getting it going is more important than getting it right!