The Ultimate Designing Guide for WordPress Website

As a designer you must be accustomed with countless content management system (CMS), be it open-source or paid CMS. However, amongst them, WordPress is one of the most effective CMS for your website. You do not have to look back while working with WordPress, it’s a way to go.

In fact, WordPress is the most preferred web design and development platform for the majority of the designers. So it is their prime responsibility to incorporate the best functionalities in WordPress. And to do the same, you need to focus on some of the best designing principles for creating the best WordPress website.

1. Search engine optimization

SEO ensures that your site draws the maximum targeted traffic, and, therefore is an important aspect to consider. You’ll find some WordPress plugins have in-built SEO features and are great to use. Following are the some of the best WordPress plugins in 2014.

2. Breadcrumb NavXT

Breadcrumb NavXT provides the current location navigation links with parent category to improve user experiences

3. Use Google Libraries

Use Google Libraries help to enhance the speed of your website by using the commonly used script files from Google content delivery network and default script like jQuery

4. W3 Total Cache
[related_posts] W3 Total Cache help to optimize WordPress website, and make your website superfast by following the Google page speed guidelines

5. Google XML Sitemap

Google XML sitemap help search engine index your website in an easy format by generating a clear XML sitemap.

6. Responsive design – the new buzz

Responsive web design has become a necessity for designing WordPress websites. In fact, responsive WordPress themes are in constant development. It has been seen that in 2013, 22 percent of the page views came from mobile devices - nearly double its 2012 figures. The reason is, responsive design ensure maximum usability and readability on mobile devices. And this in turn guarantees maximum ROI to the business.

7. The full screen video

Now a days, WordPress developers have started integrating videos in the WordPress site. This technique is fully supported by HTML5 video and audio support and HTML5 media features. The idea of video content as visual creatures when developing WordPress site is vital for encouraging online traffic. One can easily convey messages through videos and create strong online presence. Recent research shows that roughly 100 million users are sharing, posting and commenting on YouTube every second.

8. Flat design

Flat design websites incorporate different shades of skeuomorphic design to keep the balance. Few shades of gradient with images or color help to make message clear and navigation much easier. Flat designs attract users to your site, especially when they find it extremely difficult to navigate complicated websites of the competitors.

9. Effective fonts

Using some of the best fonts dramatically enhance the design and professionalism of your website. How about using Google Fonts? If you want to use Google Font in your WordPress sites, you need to add code into your theme’s style.css file. The biggest advantage of using this plugin is that it allow you to modify any CSS and work with different fonts in the directly very smoothly. Moreover, with Google Fonts you can also trial and change fonts on your site anytime without having to change any code. The best part about working with Google Fonts is that they can be directly accessed from Google directory and function on any machine with any browser. Google Fonts help to capture the interests of the site’s readers. However, as a good practice, do not use too many fonts for a particular WordPress site design. Using too many typefaces on one site can create visual issues.

10. The one-page site technique

If you want to enhance user experience and help people find everything they need from your site quickly, then one-page technique perfectly fits in. One-page site can fit all the information under one roof instead of directing users to different pages such as Home page, about page, or Product page. It is always a good idea to help users view different pages and sections in one shot. The one-page site technique is gaining in popularity as more and more businesses are keen to have their web presence not only in desktop computers but also in mobile and tablets. Besides, single page websites are less expensive to design.

11. Use of cache

Usually WordPress processes those pages on the server when multiple users are viewing the same pages. However, this affects other processes as it involves recovering both the title and content from the database. Therefore, it is best to display a static version instead of processing the page for every requests. In this context, it is highly recommended to use W3 total cache plugin that offers Minification features and removes all white space from CSS, JavaScript files HTML and make the file faster to load.

12. Large background image

Adding full screen background image is perhaps the best way to make your site looks distinctive. Visitors usually take note of the background and the header, as these two are the important graphical components. This designing strategy is similar to minimalist design. Most importantly, consider the scaling and size of images for different devices, browsers and screen resolutions.

13. Building the basic elements

After you have chosen a few WordPress, consider the following basic configurations to enhance the function of your website

14. Design permalinks

To make URLs much friendlier to RSS readers and search engines, enable the permalink structure and paste in %postname%

15. Start Akismet

If you allow comments on your article and want to detect spam comment, use the most popular tool called AKismet. All you need to do is activate it and generate API key

16. De-activate comments

If you do not wish to allow comments, direct to

• Settings
• Discussions
• Uncheck ‘allow people to post comments on new articles’.

17. Integrate Analytics

Google Analytics is the preferred analytics for the designers. Google Analytics allow you to track visitors with huge amount of data including

• How they visited your website?
• How many pages they viewed?
• Which pages they viewed?
• How long they stayed?
• How they interact with your site’s content?

The important aspect of Google Analytics in WordPress website is to track the following information

• Geographical location of the audiences
• JavaScript
• Flash support
• Screen resolution
• Language.

However the best part is, Analytics generate wide-ranging site statistics for your website.

18. Use Drag-and-drop plugins mo customiza your layouts

When you start building your websites you may face certain diffuculties trying to arrange pieces of content the way you need. In this case you will need to have strong knowledge of HTML, or just get one of those awesome drag'n'drop plugins. With the help of functionalities provided by WPBakery you'll be able to build any page you want just like that.

No wonder, you can build the best WordPress website with the above mentioned designing principles.