Most small businesses can be described in about 4 key pages:-

• Home page
• One or more pages about Services or Products
• About us (the business, organisation or site)
• Contact details / form

Additional useful pages to consider are:-

• FAQs
• Examples or samples of work, products or services
• Testimonials / recommendations / satisfied customers

Weblines Pages

For this site, the main pages I will have are:-

1. Home
2. 1 page each summarising main services – Website Development and Website Maintenance (or Management)
3. About Weblines
4. Contact us
5. Portfolio of work

I want separate pages for Weblines’ services rather than one summary page for Search Engine Optimisation reasons – a link or heading “Services” is very generic and not particularly helpful; a link or heading “Website Development” is much more specific and helps search engines to know what that page is about.  

I will also do some Keyword Research, to check out what words people actually search on, before finally deciding what to call my pages.

Next steps are: -

1. Refresh the design – nothing too fancy, just clear and clean and lively
2. Plan the site pages properly – most small businesses can be described in 4 or 5 key pages and that’s the initial aim
3. Write good, clear copy for those pages (keeping keywords in mind for the search engines)
4. Clean up the site – and ensure there’s a helpful “404 File not Found” page for anyone who arrives at a page which has moved
5. And we’re ready to move on!

Next step is to write good, clear SEO-friendly content for the site main pages.

Next steps are: -

1. Refresh the design – nothing too fancy, just clear and clean and lively
2. Plan the site pages properly – most small businesses can be described in 4 or 5 key pages and that’s the initial aim
3. Write good, clear copy for those pages (keeping keywords in mind for the search engines)
4. Clean up the site – and ensure there’s a helpful “404 File not Found” page for anyone who arrives at a page which has moved
5. And we’re ready to move on!

Next is to plan the site main pages more coherently and write the copy for them.

There are times when you realise that your website is not doing all that it could be for you.  I had some feedback with comments on the site:-

• links not working
• header image conveying the wrong message
• page text too, at time 
• some text colour too light (doesn’t offer enough contrast to the background) 

So, it’s time to refresh the site.  Here is what is happening -

1. Refresh the design – nothing too fancy, just clear and clean and lively
2. Plan the site pages properly – most small businesses can be described in 4 or 5 key pages and that’s the initial aim
3. Write good, clear copy for those pages (keeping keywords in mind for the search engines)
4. Clean up the site – and ensure there’s a helpful “404 File not Found” page for anyone who arrives at a page which has moved
5. And we’re ready to move on!

Watch out for changes.

The home page can be static, in that its content can be changed by editing via the admin section only, or it can be dynamic, in that all or part of it can be updated whenever a post is added to the blog, as in perhaps a news section.

The main point is that a home.php template is required (see Template Hierarchy). If the theme already has one, copy and rename it (for safety) and then make as radical modifications as necessary to get the home page as you like it.  You might need to modify other templates too, such as post.php and sidebar.php – consider making copies of these and referencing the copies from the home page, so that the originally styled versions can be kept for use within the Blog proper (if there is going to be one).

Creating a Static Front Page is a helpful reference here.

If the plan is to have a blog as part of the website too, see http://weblines.com.au/learning-wordpress/home-page/ (but keep checking for updates to this method, if WordPress modifies its approach).

1. Maintenance mode – a handy option which allows you to display a polite ”website unavailable” message to visitors, while still allowing signed-in administrators access to view the website.
2. Visualize Advanced Features – provides additional editing buttons to users using the visual editor.  In particular, provides a button (paste from Word) to remove all the peculiar fonts, colours and other styles which may appear after copying text from other applications into this editor. 
3. the_excerpt Reloaded – provides an excerpt of a post (as the_excerpt does)  and supports customisation on which HTML tags to allow, length of the excerpt (in words), “more…” link, and filtering type
4. Fold Page List – a function which displays the top level of links on the home page, then, when a link in the list is clicked on, the sub-pages of that link are displayed.
5. WordFix – removes all the peculiar fonts, colours and other styles which may appear after copying text from other applications into this editor.  This is similar to my second plugin but seems simpler.  Unfortunately I can’t get this to work, so I may have to try it again with a fresh install of WordPress and its matching version of WordFix.