Well! My plan to “start over” with one of my sites that I had abandoned was certainly an eye opener.
I mentioned in my last post that I was using Kevin Fahey’s Building a Business on WordPress Checklists to guide me through the process of starting over.
Site Checkup
When I last worked on that site roughly a year ago, I had it in my mind that it was ready to go. I had done all the setup and added a bit of content to get things started. Then I stopped… distracted by the next greatest tool/system/marketing thingy ever created.
So, I printed off the first checklist “Things to Know BEFORE Making a Website on WordPress”. There are 5 items on this list, all of them make perfect sense to do before you get started. I had done 2 out of the 5.
Really? That’s it?
That is all I had completed. I had some notes on the other 3 items but had not followed through. I had forgotten I had not done them and had no easy way to keep track.
Not an auspicious start!
Checklists 2 through 6 deal with installing WordPress, a theme and plugins – those items I had completed.
Yay!
Checklist 7 is about Google Analytics. I was quite sure I had that setup. Well, it turns out I had it only half setup and can do more with it, but, as you can see in the 5 month graph graph below, virtually no traffic.
Checklist 8 is all about blog posts and general setup. Here is an excerpt.
Create Your Blog
Huh… As I look back at the existing posts, it seems I just forged ahead without giving too much thought to items 2, 3 and 4.
Sigh.
While I use checklists now, when I first set this blog up I did not. I relied on the notes I made as I went along but those are really difficult to find things in. Now that I am using the checklists, I know exactly where I am.
If there is something I am not completing in the order found on the lists, I tag the page so I know to go back to it later.
Yes, I use paper (sorry trees) but I seem to be blind when I look at a document I know in digital format.
Well, now I am feeling ashamed of myself for the sloppy job I did the first time.
Only time will tell how much starting over using these checklists will help.
If you want to see what other checklists are available (I will be using others as I get this off the ground) have a look at my Resources Page.
Back to work now to get this up to snuff!
