meteoracle

Choose the right CMS.

Don’t decide what CMS platform you’re going to use before you’ve got the brief.

Forcing a complex site into WordPress will cause more problems than it’s worth. Using something like Magento can be overkill for an e-commerce site selling just a handful of products.

Get your site requirements down on paper, then see what fits best. I tend to stick to WordPress for standard blogs, ExpressionEngine for more complex blogs through to large dynamic multi-lingual site, and a bespoke CMS system for small dynamic sites which only require content like News and Events to be updated.

These are obviously just my opinions, it’s up to you what works best for your situation, your knowledge and your preferences. Just don’t crowbar your preferred CMS into something that it won’t fit. Round peg, square holes and all that.

Step beck for some perspective.

Everyone gets a mental block at some time or another, whether it’s during planning, designing, or coding.

You’ll be amazed at what can happen if you step back when you “can’t see the wood for the trees”.

Simply take a break, go for a walk, make a cuppa, or work on something else. When you come back to it, whether in 5 minutes or 5 hours, you’ll be taking a fresh perspective, and hopefully something will click and you’ll realise the solution.

Organise your content before your site plan.

If content truly is king, as I’ve read that it is many, many times, then spend more time with it.

Your content can be the main factor in forming your site plan. Organisation of information will produce a clear structure which can be put to use as the framework of content around which a site can be built.

Then you only need to worry about design and getting people to look at it…