Christina Hills: Take Charge of Your Website – WordPress Fundamentals

We brought “heroine to entrepreneurs” Christina Hills in to demystify the steps to getting websites live, without having to rely on geeks (or having to outsource to strangers living on the other side of the world, who can’t be held accountable). She has taken hundreds and hundreds of technology-phobic writers, consultants and entrepreneurs…

… and empowered them to quickly (using simple steps that even techno-scaredy-cats can easily implement) put up sites, test new copy, launch new products… everything needed to grow your biz as if you had a full staff of geeks at your beck-and-call.

Never again be at the mercy of someone else for essential tech know-how.

She teaches non-techy business owners how to use WordPress to create a website.

She started out by setting up shopping carts for businesses, and soon found out that one of their biggest roadblocks was setting up a website.

So she transitioned into helping business owners set up their own sites.

10:37 Types of Sites

• Sales page sites
• Membership sites
• video landing page sites
• Consulting Services/Coaching site
• Ecommerce Site
• Newsletter/Blog site

WordPress is known as a blogging platform, but she uses it for regular sites.

11:42 She shows some examples of sites created by her students

14:13 Action Item #1: Decide what kind of site you are building

What is the purpose of your site? What do you want people to do?

You should have only one goal for the site

15:25 Why is WordPress the best for building a site?

• It is the most popular way to build sites
• It is easy to make changes and test different “looks”

16:20: Please note that, according to W3TechsTypePad is now used by less than 0.1% of websites.

16:46: Please note that Joomla sits at 2.5% Drupal now sits at 1.5% marketshare while WordPress is at 62.8.

20:35 Illustration and analysis of different layouts

Christina shows several layouts and dissects them, showing the components and different ways they can be presented.

She also shows some unorthodox layouts

Major Components (you do not need all of them on all sties):

• Header
• Navigation
• Widgets
• Content

Widgets: In the sidebar. You can put whatever you want there and move them around.

26:10: Action Item #2: Draw on paper the Layout of your site

The more planning you do the faster it is going to go. We are slowed down by our decision-making, not implementation.

27:28: Why you should use WordPress

• Search engines love WordPress: It is easy to update and search engines love new material
• It works on Macs as well as PCs
• You can delegate access for biz partners and assistants by creating separate logins.
• Your design is separate from your content
• There is worldwide support from developers because it is free “open source” software
• You can access it from any internet connection
• No HTML knowledge is required

31:35 Christina describes the steps to create a WordPress site.

33:07: For those who might want something a little more in-depth, from domain name onward: https://wordpress.com/support/tutorials/five-step-website-setup/

37:34 Creating a website is a “core business activity”. You must know how to do it first before you can outsource it

38:37 WordPress can help you build your email list

The RSS feed sends your posts out to everyone who has subscribed and brings people back to your site.

You can create an opt-in offer on your site to build your list.

The process of writing your offer will help you get clear on where to go with it.

45:02 Your website can grow with your business.

You don’t have to be perfect. Just take the next step.

45:26 She shows the evolution of a couple of sites

50:47 Your Website is a Way for you to Build Relationships

WordPress allows comments which increases SEO.

Communicate/Interact with your audience

Use social media to send traffic (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin)

Comments give you feedback on what your audience likes/dislikes

Gravatar: Your image that appears whenever you comment on a WordPress site.

You can also have blog posts automatically post to Facebook.

1. Decide what kind of site you are building.
2. Draw on paper the Layout of your site.
3. Install WordPress and get the site set up on your server.
4. Find a theme that looks similar to the layout you wrote on paper.
5. If this is a stumbling block for you have someone else set the site up but make sure you know how to make changes. Have them make it simple and you can grow as you go.
6. Start creating content for your site.

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