Client Website

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Your Client Website is due for in-class presentation on April 25 .

Final Client meetings, as well as Posts and Site Export Files (.wpress files) are due by Friday April 29.  

Please try to find a Final Client Meeting time I can attend. I will post times on Slack.

Each of your Clients has different levels of expertise and need; so your work with clients is likely to reflect those differences.  That main outcome of this work should be

  1. You’ve made some mistakes, discovered some solutions, and figured things out!!  Welcome to how learning happens in the transition away from school.
  2. You’ve increased your skills and confidence with WordPress and building websites.
  3. You learned some important lessons about working on a team
  4. You’ve got some experience working with clients and offering your skills and advice as well as learning how to use feedback.
  5. You’ve developed some insights about what makes a good website that you can use for both clients and your own website.
  6. You’ve been able to work independently of client pressure if you have been working on a template–and trying to anticipate what a client might want–using placeholders.

Your client site should have many features similar to your portfolio site, as well as some differences.  Your site should have most of the following:

  1. Home page–telling the best bried=f story about your client that you can manage with images and (little) text.
  2. About page–more detailed client description geared to good stories that would interest viewers
  3. Menu Navigation to key client info–for many this is an emphasis on offering or selling services products, so make action buttons that allow this on every page/post/menu…
  4. Client products and/or services. You should have enough of these done, so your client take over adding their own within the clear and clear structure you have provided. You may want to add a few samples templates they could use in future?
  5. Contact Page with social media icons if they use social media.
  6. Blog with a few posts about “what’s new” as well as a schedule for adding new content if this is appropriate for your client site. For example, sailing & guiding clients may want to add “monthly stories” from customers.  If you set up 2-3 of these, they can use them as well as your “blog” section to build on this in the future.  If not, they can eliminate the “blog” part of the menu.
  7. Users include me with Role: Administrator with my work email. This allows me to help client troubleshoot after the class is done.

Optional:

  1. Shop/Market–a few clients can benefit from an initial set up of WooCommerce plug-in. You can set up the main pages, as well as a few sample pages, and then let them fill in email, and other client info afterwards.
  2. Backup strategy–You should all add the All-In-One WP Migration Plugin, and activate it.
  3. Brief handoff tutorial for client during last meeting about how to work with Dashboard and how to add photos and text content in either pages or posts, and how to use categories, and add/change menu items.

Site export file:

  1. Follow export instructions from How to Migrate and upload your .wpress export file to your Slack team channel
  2. Also be sure your site (if online) has me as a User with Administration role.  This is critical for helping clients after the class is over.  Sites will be moved by the end of May, but your Dreamhost accounts need stay open through the ned of the month.

Post:

ALL students must submit a post in order to get graded & get credit for your client site as individuals. Include:

  1. Category; Client Site
  2. Client name
  3. Team members
  4. Site URL
  5. Your specific contributions
  6. What you learned from working on a team and with clients ; 1-2 paragraphs
    ie What worked well on your team ( or as a solo template creator)  What could be improved and how?  In this process learning counts in your evaluation even when the outcome is less that you had hoped. And we often learn best from out mistakes.