I am doing something that I really dislike, but with the understanding that I am creating something amazing: building a site from scratch.

I have built many blogs from scratch, but the effort, and time it takes to get a site from the start of its life to being a powerful player online can be quite trying and so I try to avoid building a site from scratch if I can, but my new employment requires me to build a site, using WordPress as a platform, and much of the first few days has been just dealing with the plugin requirements of the site, and the required configurations of said plugins.

Thus far, I have added eighteen plugins to the site, and configured them all as needed for the site. I have also begun to create blank pages to fill out the directory tree, and give myself a better understanding of the final overall depth and berth of the final site.

I have also begun to collect and create the content specific graphics that I will need to include as well. All this, while building out content templates, as many pages will have the same flow, with different content and context within.

It is a long process of data entry, and continues to be very trying, but as each section continues to grow and be finalized, I am more and more excited by the overall site that I am creating.

One thing I have quickly learned as the developer of this project is to remind the owner of this site that the results are not immediately apparent because the planning and implementation takes a fair bit of time. I recommend that anyone building a site from scratch build an immediate understanding with the site owner that planning is important. Had I not spent so much time on this phase, I would have needed much more time to re-work the interlinking between pages as the site grew and changed.

I have to admit though, I have had a hard time sticking to just planning, and am anxious to implement every idea, and piece of content I come up with.

Also, I have learned that removing as much manual editing of certain pieces of content as possible can save many headaches later on. With a large length of terms listed on many pages, I would hate to manually edit dozens of pages each time a new term is added, and so it is important for me to use my knowledge of PHP to attempt to move all such pieces of content to a single include file that I can edit and have propagate throughout the site.

WordPress is a great piece of software, but I have definitely run into some annoying limitations as I continue to build up this site. I hope to continue to provide you all with many insights as I continue to build up the pages in the new site I am working on.

Originally posted on July 4, 2011 @ 4:41 pm