Step 11 of Building a Website: The Elements of a Site

There are several things you need to add to your site to show that your site is a legitimate site and not a spammer site Google and most readers have no interest in.

So far we have not paid a lot of attention to the appearance of your website, but appearance is important. We want to provide interesting and unique content to our readers, but in a way that also looks professional.

This post will talk about the “elements” a professional-looking site needs. These elements are basically static pages that contain information that will not change a lot over time. So you create “pages” not posts for these elements. And then you link these pages to menu items either on the top menu bar or the side menu (if you have one; I don’t) or in the footer.

We will talk about how to link pages in menus later. For now, you want to prepare these pages. If you don’t have the text for the page yet, don’t worry; you can go ahead and create the page and add the text later. The next post will tell you how to create pages.

Here is a list of the main elements a site needs:

1. An “About” page that tells what the site is about.
2. You may also want to have a page that tells about your “Contributors.” I linked this page off the “About” menu.
3. A “Contact Us” page that gives readers a way to contact you directly. I used a plug-in that let me generate a contact form on this page. We will talk about plugins later.
4. A “Terms and Conditions” and a “Privacy Policy.” I used a free plug-in that supplied a standard policy. I can update the policy if I like, but for now it reflects what I intend to do.
5. An “Advertising Notice.” You are required to put a notice on your site if you use affiliate advertising. Affiliate advertising is where a link in your site takes a reader to another site where they can buy something and that site pays you a commission or fee based on that purchase. You need to let your readers know you have a financial interest in the links you provide.

So at this point, you should start thinking about the content of these pages. We will talk about how to use plug-ins to get some content or a form in a future post.

If you are ready to create a page and add content to it, then check out Step 12: Adding Pages to Your Site.