Building A Solid Foundation for Your Website
Your website is a reflection of where you are in life. It's what people see when they Google “you”, so the appearance and quality of it is critical. But you don't have to be an expert web programmer or designer to build a beautiful website that tells your story and catches people's attention.
In this article I'm going to show you how to build a solid foundation for your website, and keep it that way. We'll go over the basics, but if you already have experience developing websites I'd recommend reading Part 2 of this article, which covers some of the more advanced concepts.
My name is Nick Chang and I was born in Philadelphia, grew up in South Jersey, and currently live with my wife and two daughters in the suburbs of Chicago. I've been an entrepreneur for most of my life—and a few years ago decided to share my experience by building commercial websites for small businesses. Now I own and run Nick's Web Services Inc. We're a web design and development company, specializing in simple, cost-effective websites for local small businesses.
Here's a typical day at work...
Early mornings I'm on my phone checking my email and volunteering at the local elementary school. Then I review the previous day's work to plan out the tasks for the new day, save clickable PDFs of articles to read later, and start collecting quotes from other companies' websites. At lunchtime I update Facebook and Twitter while eating a sandwich at Subway. Sometime after getting home I do some more work around the house, prepare dinner with my family, check emails again once more, and then sit down to grab a fresh cup of coffee before continuing on setting up website pages.
After the kids are in bed, sometimes I'll watch a few YouTube videos for new design ideas, look through design galleries for inspiration, or start programming some new functionality. Friday nights I like getting together with friends to play board games.
I work from around 6 to 11 hours per day, 5 days per week—depending on how busy we are and what's going on at home. My wife and older daughter help out by pitching in with the babysitting duties sometimes. Working in a small business means never taking more time off than you absolutely have to—which can be challenging since my family was used to having me around more when I worked at a big software company as an engineer.
Conclusion: building a solid foundation
To be successful, it's important to be able to take care of business around the clock. Rather than pulling all-nighters every week (which is unhealthy for your family, and can cause you to miss deadlines), takeaway the weekends and plan for them when you're not working.
Stand Up 4 Your Brand!
In Part 2 I'll go over more of the details that come with creating a website from scratch (and keeping it up to date). From choosing the best CMS for scalability and ease of use, establishing a content plan and updating your site regularly, to customizing pages with images and content blocks, these are all essential skills.