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Website Design

Coming soon – this page is currently under construction

On this page I’ll share the resources I have found most useful over the years relating to website design, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Content Management System

WordPress – This is the most popular content management system in the world, and rightly so. It is extremely powerful and versatile and can be used for a range of purposes. A content management system allows even inexperienced web users to update their website without needing technical skills such as HTML or CSS. It allows you to select from a wide variety of themes and plugins to suit your needs and can be adapted even further with a bit of tinkering.

I have used WordPress from years – this website and my computer repair business website is built using it (as well as my typing and transcription landing page). Everyone knows the saying ‘Why reinvent the wheel?’ and that’s exactly why I and millions of others use it. It is great for being able to quickly add new pages or posts with minimal effort, whilst keeping the theme consistent and for keeping in line with current SEO practices.

Pros
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  1. Completely free to use – WordPress has been open source software since the beginning and there are no hidden fees – the only way you would spend money when using WordPress is on premium plugins, although there are a lot of free ones
  2. Easy to navigate, customise and add content to – the admin panel has a user friendly layout and can be easily navigated to get to where you need – posts and pages can be added with ease, as well as setting up the navigation menu within your theme
  3. Hundreds of plugins available for different uses – maybe you want to add e-commerce functionality or set up regular backups – there are plugins, free and paid, for either of these
  4. Security and feature updates are pushed out regularly

Cons
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  1. Regular updates needed (can be set automatically) to prevent bugs being exploited by malicious people – this applies to the WordPress version itself, plugins and themes – this could mean that your website is vulnerable until the exploit is patched
  2. Pages, posts and contact forms can be susceptible to spam if you have comments enabled – there are plugins to combat this, however, and this is something that any website with this functionality is vulnerable to
  3. Knowledge of HTML and CSS is needed in order to make more advanced changes to the theme and layout of your website, although there are enough themes that means you may not need to alter it

Recommended WordPress Plugins

There are a few plugins that I use that I would recommend others use. Please bear in mind that there is always a chance that, as with any online system, vulnerabilities could be exposed and exploited at any time in the future, so always be wary and keep backups of your website and database.

  1. NextGen Gallery – This plugin is useful for setting up galleries that you can embed in pages or link directly to in posts. For example, you can add 5 images of cakes to a gallery called ‘Cake’ and then simply reference this gallery using a shortcode in the post or page where you want it to be embedded. There is heavy customisation available for the plugin and how galleries are displayed on the page.
  2. UpdraftPlus – I swear by this plugin for frequently backing up my website. It also gives you the ability to connect your cloud storage account and upload backups directly to there. They offer a premium version which offers further functionality if you desire, but you should get by just fine with the free version.
  3. Yoast SEO – It would be outrageous to not include Yoast in a list of recommended WordPress plugins. I could go into a lot of detail here but life is too short and it has been covered extensively all over the internet. To summarise, it is a comprehensive tool to streamline and optimise your search engine optimisation, and anybody hoping to rank high on Google or Bing would be mad to not use it.

I have used a lot of other WordPress plugins over the years, however the three above are the ones I install on nearly every website. You may find that Updraft isn’t applicable to you (if, for example, your website host provides the same functionality), and you may not be interested in SEO, but these are worth keeping in mind should the need for them arise.