This is the second in my series of Wordcamp 2013 posts. The next session I attended was “Planning & Organizing Your Site” with Brandon Kraft. Since Kraft is an avid blogger, most of his talk was geared towards blogging. Here are some points I took down during the presentation:
- Figure Out a Niche Market. Focus your blogging on this niche. This is a great way to increase site traffic.
- Consider Your Audience. Have an ideal reader in mind & tailor your content towards that theme.
- Create a Call to Action. Figure out what the purpose of the blog is & develop a desired action you would like your audience to exhibit.
- Create a Sitemap. Search engines love site maps, so use them to increase your traffic.
- Don’t Use Sub-menus. They are bad for Search Engines & for mobile devices.
Tags vs. Categories
Both: direct reader to a specific topic.
Categories: Are the main taxonomy. You only want to have a few of them.
Tags: Should be more specific & there are a greater number of them.
Kraft recommended Studiopress, Woo Themes, Themify , Elegant Themes & Headway for premium WordPress themes.
One question that arose from his talk in my mind was:
What exactly does a WordPress designer do? Do they modify existing themes, customize already designed themes , design their own themes or a combination of all of those?
Let me know what you think in the comments section.
Thanks for sharing your notes!
I think a “designer” could be any of those things you mentioned. If their skill level restricts them to customizing already designed themes, their pool for potential work, the amount they could (in my opinion, justly) charge would be limited. (The key is not to say “WordPress can’t do that” though…) Must, must be sure of the license on the themes used too.
If you called yourself a “full-service designer” or something like that, I would expect you could design your own theme from scratch. The theme itself could be coded on the Genesis framework or _s or completely from scratch—the coding piece is a bit difference—but you’d know how to execute it either yourself or via someone on your team/in your network.
My two cents!
Thanks for stopping by & commenting. I really appreciate your feedback.
With WordPress it seems like there’s such a wide spectrum of how to get involved & start building things for people. Personally I’ve been grappling with the whole print vs. web aspect of my business as well as, what direction to expand/develop my current skill set (HTML,CSS) in context to WordPress. As you mentioned in your talk, I’m still in the “figuring out my niche market” stage. Thanks again for stopping in & dropping me a line, it’s much appreciated.