Getting BelmoreDigital.com Up

The last few weeks, I have been beavering away, sorting out all the elements to launch this site: hosting, CMS (WordPress), Plugins, Theme Updates, Social Media Accounts, image sizes, fonts, analytics, schema – all sorts!

It is all a work in progress, built agile rather than waterfall – key things are up and next steps have been planned – which is why this is a Soft Site Launch.

#BelmoreDigital

The Site

The View From My Window – a blog:

  • Launching very gently, The View From My Window has one major section currently, The Week In Search, but more will be coming…
  • This is a weekly look at news, updates and issues affecting Organic Search primarily, and Paid Search, if it affects Organic Search. It’s intended to give a brief summary of the issue, things to to / be aware of, further discussion and sources to check out. Keeping on top of these issues will help your SEO efforts to keep up to date.

Consultancy, SEO Guides, About and Contact Sections:

Site Housekeeping:

  • There is a Sitemap Page, driven by the WP Sitemap Page plugin. This should list everything, although I haven’t played fully with the settings yet.
  • Slightly more prosaically, there are Terms and Privacy pages as well, these are definitely “initial” versions.

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Social Media Accounts

Follow Belmore Digital on Social Media:

  • There’s not a great deal on any of these accounts yet, but they are there and ready to be updated. Some play is needed with the settings – especially on OG Tags and making sure the most valuable information (to me and the user) is displayed to the social media user.
  • These are the current accounts:
  • Follow them, if you prefer to be kept updated through Social, although be aware that the jolly old social sites don’t always surface business content, even if you follow it. Grrrr.

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Hosting & CMS

SiteGround Hosting:

  • I chose SiteGround’s mid-range WordPress package, hosting out of their Singapore centre, using the .com domain variant.
  • So far, they’ve been pretty good. A couple of of support queries have been swiftly answered and resolved, and the service has been quick – with many options to make it quicker, should the site go big.

WordPress:

  • Half the world uses WordPress (or something like that). It’s grown an awful lot since I first used it in 2005 / 2006. It’s got more complex, but retains a basic ease of use, once you get used to it. There are other CMSs available these days, but they all seem to use some horrible JQuery / JavaScript to drive their admin & content. It looks easy, but under the hood, I think they’re a bit of a mess.
  • The main plugins in use are Yoast SEO, WP SitemapPage, NinjaForms, hashtagger, Add Tags & Category. So far, they mainly do what they say on the tin, or I’ve been able to tweak a workaround.
  • The theme in use is a modified version of XtremelySocial’s Flat Bootstrap theme. I like it. I like BootStrap, although making BootStrap work well with WordPress coding can be a bit hairy, usually there’s a workaround.

Analytics & Housekeeping

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Next Steps / Coming Soon…

SEO Guides, Consultancy, About:

  • The very next steps to take are to build out the Basic SEO Guide section, the Consultancy sections need more detail on the products offered and the About section needs info on how I engage with clients
  • I think the homepage, and the section pages need prettying up, more content & styling added. I just have to work my way through the fun of WordPress to make it happen, without relying too much on plugins or heavy code tinkering.
  • I also have to integrate cross-posting to social media for blog posts – automatically, or semi-automatically.

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