New year in, making a new project website? Build your own project website or create your own website that looks professional. Read how you can achieve this yourself.
How to make a WordPress website for a project?
Nowadays you can create your own zzp or project website. Just take a few minutes and sail on my WordPress knowledge. Yeah, that’s gonna buy you a lot of time! And a lot of website visitors. There is no website of a website builder that gives away so much knowledge for free. That’s because I’m not a web builder, but a web editor. I share my knowledge, because I like to keep up with my profession. So, choose WordPress. Your site will be coming soon!
Create your own project website in 2020
Just follow these steps…
Squarespace vs WordPress?
Which #website tool is suitable for your project or zzp situation? If you’re not really technical and just want some kind of business card online, then Squarespace and Weebly.com are cool enough. Do you want a website that loads quickly, that allows you to blog and that allows you to get in touch with new newsletter followers for leads? Then choose WordPress (read my message: Why WordPress).
Steps towards a new project website 2020
Cheap WordPress hosting 2020
Cheap hosting for WordPress can also if you create a simple WordPress site on WordPress.com, for 13 euros per year you can link it to your domain name on transip.nl. In that case you do not work with the theme that I recommend here (generatepress), but with a standard theme of WordPress. Could also be a great solution. Then you don’t need a hosting party. I have my own domain. I host this site www.gerbengvandijk.nl at Neostrada. If you immediately pay for 3 years there, you get a substantial discount. Great, that Neostrada.
Domain name capture cheap 2020
You can register a domain name cheaply. Register it at transip.nl, you can register your domain name there. And then start looking for a hosting party (see below). You pay your domain per year, costs up to 15 Euro the year. For the Dutch market you choose a .nl domain. For Europe a .eu domain and for the world a .com domain.
Download WordPress
You go to WordPress.org to download the free software. Follow this link:
Project website creation, which WordPress theme?
There are as many as 10,000 WordPress themes, but I’ll give you one platform to choose from. Because these websites load quickly, which is necessary to win from your competitors, below you and above you, in the Google Search results page. Take a WordPress theme that gets you higher by default. Choose from the collection of Generate Press. Even if you don’t have any money, I still recommend you buy a theme. :-). For little money you can watch a video course for GeneratePress.
Web design and contentdesign
Within the world of WordPress you have all kinds of tools to help shape your website. These tools are called website builders. I have already described the most popular site builders. I recommend Elementor, don’t worry, but about 3 million sites use this plugin to build a WordPress website. Amazing. Get on with it. You can learn all about Elementor on Youtube, even in the Dutch language. You don’t need a WordPress course or WordPress training.
Website functionalities 2020?
Which website functionalities does my zzp or project website need? What you need differs per website. Possibly you want people to be able to schedule appointments via a Google Calendar. It’s all possible, and you can get out of it. But do me a favor and just start simple, so you at least have a website. Even if the website is there, you can continue dreaming. Start with this menu, it’s customizable! Home, Offer, About me/us/project, Contact. That’s your first menu. Ready. And… In the end, there are 20,000 website functions to choose from. Within the WordPress community and on the WordPress forum we don’t talk about website functionalities but about popular and free WordPress plugins. These are the best plugins 2020.
How do I get free website pictures?
My post about list of free photo banks has been very popular for years. Everybody wants everything for free, but also consider a photographer (is also in that message, a name of a good one in the city of Utrecht). Take a look at free photos first. Logical. The golden tips are Pixabay.com and Flickr.com (do filter on free photos: Filter Creative Commons). The advantage of Flickr.com is that they are real photos and don’t look fake, like stock photos.
And how do I create good copy or webtext?
Remember that any text measured across a web page must be at least 500 words. So it is also possible that you can scroll for a long time over a website with all short and concise texts. That is also possible. Is not a problem. What you need to know is that you need to make short paragraphs and use headers. These headers should not be ‘bold’ (Bold), but really set them as headers. In practice: main title (h1 header), section title (h2 header), paragraph title (h3 header). Furthermore, you need to make a text readable. So go box language or difficult words. Dare to enter into colloquial language. As a preparation, put questions from your future readers on paper. And write the answers. And follow these B1 writing tips and these tips for good titles. No more than 65 characters long. Well, writing webcopy for Google is a profession in itself. I wouldn’t get into Google findability until later if I were you.
How do I promote my new project website?
My tips for business-to-business (B2B): on LinkedIn and in specific LinkedIn groups. And on Twitter. And on Slideshare (whitepapers and presentations you put there).
My tips for business-to-consumer (B2C): Try: LinkedIn again! But also Facebook and put a few pennies per message in “Lead Advertisements”. The characteristic of Lead advertising on Facebook is that you can add a whitepaper to these messages, which people can download. Just put in a few pennies. Then you finally get phone calls. Thanks to your ad and thanks to your professional website on which people base their trust in you!
ZZP website or project website: build it yourself
So now that you’ve got all your knowledge on a silver platter, why don’t you just build that zzp or project website yourself?
I say, do it. :-)
Good luck with your challenge to build your zzp or project website in WordPress in the year 2020 (and beyond). :-)
Greetings,
Gerben G van Dijk
The Netherlands / Holland.
(Text has been translated from Dutch)
Het creëren en beheren van content kost vaak meer tijd dan je denkt. Daarom heeft Gerben Webredactie blog opgezet. Hier deelt hij niet alleen praktische handleidingen en online tips met jou, maar ook met zichzelf: "Oh ja, zo moet ik dat aanpakken!".
Naast zijn bijdragen aan Webredactie blog, schrijft Gerben voor Frankwatching.nl en heeft hij een boek over communicatiewerk organiseren op Amazon.com. De afgelopen tijd onderzoekt hij hoe ChatGPT SEO kan bijdragen aan contentcreatie.