Website Checklist

Photography Website Creation Checklist

Congratulations for recognizing the importance of the internet in your marketing plan. As you requested, below is your Step-By-Step Checklist for building an effective, low cost, and efficient website for your business.

This checklist came about through years and years of building websites online. I firmly believe that the best option for marketing today is to use a WordPress foundation for your site. Consequently, this checklist uses WordPress. It offers a clean interface, highly advanced SEO features, and is free. It is hard to beat that!

If you are new to the internet or struggle with the technical aspects, then I encourage you to join my Photography Internet Marketing Schoolhouse for access to complete tutorials and a complete and detailed manual for each of the steps below.

• Before building your site, it is important to first define its purpose. Do you want your website to bring in new clients? Are you going to provide online proofing? Do you want to collect email addresses for a mailing list?Be descriptive on what you are trying to accomplish.
• Next build list of keywords based on your services and location (i.e. “Tucson Wedding Photographer”). Think about what phrases potential clients would use to search on the internet for your services. Be sure to write these keywords down. You will need them when choosing domains and providing content for your site.
• Now register one or more domain names for your business (I recommend Godaddy.com). Register your business name for main site at a minimum. So if your photography business is “Wilson Photography”, try to register “WilsonPhotography.com”. Also I recommend registering additional domains from the keywords in step 2 if they available. These extra domains can be used to enhance search engine rankings through mini-sites.
• You will now need to sign up for a webhost. I recommend using Bluehost.com or Hostgator.com. Both of these have the key factors I look for in a website which include unlimited add-on domains and Simple Scripts or Fantastico installations.
• Now you need to tell your domain registrar where you are going to host your site. You do this by setting the nameservers for your domain on Godaddy or whoever you used to register the domain to the nameservers provided to you by your webhost. If you use the same company for both your domain and webhost then this is usually done automatically.
• Now you need to tell your webhost about the new domain. You do this by adding the domain to your webhost account through the webhost control panel. Again if you registered the domain through your webhost then this is automatic.
• Now write down the categories you will use on your site based on the type of services you offer. (i.e. Babies, Weddings, Seniors, etc.) These categories will be used to organize your blog postings and are important for search engine optimization.
• Now get a blank sheet of paper and define the structure of your site. This can be a simple wire diagram. Include the pages you will include such as the Home page, information pages, galleries, etc.
• Finally it is time to install WordPress on your webhost. If your webhost supports Simple Scripts or Fantastico this is extremely easy!
• Once WordPress is installed, you have a generic basic theme included. But you want something snazzy. So look for a WordPress theme that fits your style. Many are free, but the best of course cost a bit of money. However, they are still much cheaper than hiring your own designer! Here are some of my favorite sources of WordPress themes:
  
  Prophoto2 Blog – Designed specifically for photographers. Very professional appearance. Designed primarily for “blog” sites, but pages can be added for full website.
  
  Studiopress – One of the original premium theme providers. I use the “Streamline” theme throughout this manual.

  Ithemes – Contains a large variety of full-featured themes suitable for business purposes.

  One-theme – I love the features included with this theme! More of a upbeat style.

  Woo Themes – I like the look of these themes, though I personally have not used them.

  WP-Remix – This theme offers a lot of customization and layout options. Not the prettiest out of the box, but I love the ability to change layout easily for pages.Login to WordPress and in the “Settings” area modify the Title, Tagline, Email, Timezone and date as desired.

• Once you have chosen your theme, upload it to WordPress and activate it in the “Appearance” section. It will now be your default theme.
• Login to your WordPress dashboard and edit the following settings:- Under “Users” click the “admin” profile and enter your name, email, website URL as desired. Change the password if needed to something you can remember.- Get an API key from WordPress.com and activate Akismet plugin- Set permalinks in WordPress Dashboard in the “Settings” area to: /%year%/%monthnum%/%category%/%postname%- Delete default blogroll items in “Links” area.- Add categories you wrote down earlier to “Categories” list.- Change logo as desired based on your selected theme

  - Customize widgets as desired

  - Add email subscription widget using Feedburner

  - Set Update Services under “Settings->Writing” link.

• With that done, it is time to start having fun with some very cool plugins. These will add some great functionality to your theme and come highly recommended: Headspace - Important for SEO. Allows you to set post and page meta tags such as titles and descriptions easily. Also includes functionality for Google Analytics.NexGen Gallery – A great gallery for showing off all your cool photos.EZ Backup - No one likes worrying about doing backups. This plugin does it automatically once setup.Fast and Secure Contact Form – Create a contact form so your website visitors can reach you (and schedule sessions).

  Google XML Sitemaps- Creates a Google compliant XML sitemap. Don’t worry what that means. Just do it. It is important!

• Alright those are the basics. You can now go ahead and start creating all those pages that you defined in the site structure. WordPress is easy to use so don’t be afraid! Keep in consideration your keywords for SEO purposes.
• With your site all populated with good content, start spreading the word. The most important factor in Google ranking is the number of inbound links. So start spreading your website URL around the web!

Well, that is my quick Website Creation Checklist. This is the procedure I use when building my websites and is a good flow to follow. If you have any comments or suggestions, be sure to leave them in the comment form below!