Well, I recently cut over our new rendition of the JaveLLin Solutions, LLC website. Overall, things went ok, but I certainly learned some lessons for next time. One of our biggest changes was moving over to a theme called Optimize Press. Our site is built on WordPress, so that makes things pretty easy. The theme is hyped up as being completely customizable, great for landing pages, blah blah blah. Well, this is true is true in certain areas, but certainly has a some areas to be improved.
When I bought this theme, I certainly thought it looked cool, easy to use and would give me exactly what I needed to start building a better site. One of the biggest things I quickly discovered is the inability to really create a good header. A couple of different issues on this point.
1. you can add a logo, but you can’t add anything next to it, not even a text version of the company name.2. No easy way to add phone numbers, RSS links, social media connections, etc.
3. Creating a template once and applying it to all the pages that already exist, not happening.
The designer itself is really nice and easy to use. It comes with lots of templates to get you started, and it’s all drag and drop. This is especially helpful, since I’m trying to push the website over to my partner for the majority of stuff. Of course, I’m sure I’ll be tweaking content forever, but as I learn more marketing, I come up with better ways to say things =) However, without creating a brand new page, it’s very difficult to take existing content and just drop it into the new theme. I resorted to copy and paste for each existing page. Not the end of the world, but certainly tedious.
I’ll talk more about the cutover next time. That came with it’s own challenges. Anyway, thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike