What I’ve Learned From Making WordPress Sites

Hello and welcome to this week’s version of Launch Letter! After last week’s edition, which reflected on my lack of productivity since returning from Spain, this week has been full of meaningful work.

My main focus has been a website for a new client. One of my friends is involved in the production of the TV show, “Legionarios con Jose Luis Estela”, that covers the lives and careers of professional soccer players. He needed a website to solidify the show’s online presence, and I told him I’d be more than happy to help.

This is my second WordPress site for a client, and I feel like I’ve started to get my workflow down to a science. It feels great to have my hard work pay off, not just through its immediate results, but the long lasting skills I’ve started to develop from my experiences.

In today’s edition, I’m going to break down everything I’ve learned from making WordPress sites for clients and how you can apply some of those lessons to do the same!

Lesson #1 - Define The Site’s Goals

I’ve emphasized the importance of planning before in Launch Letter and I’m going to do it again. Starting any project, website or not, without a plan can be devastating to the outcome.

That’s why the most important step is getting on the exact same page as your client. For this project, the task was pretty simple. It needed to look good, serve as a hub for all of their online pages, and have passable SEO (show up on Google search).

Once those three goals were outlined, it made getting to work so much easier. For whatever project I’m working on, planning is the most important step. It takes away any possible ambiguity, and lets you focus on the task at hand.

Lesson #2 - Experience Is Extremely Valuable

Over these past few months, I’ve done a lot of different work. From automating Google Sheets, to building websites, and coding web apps. Since every project requires a different skillset, it can be hard to get an idea of how much progress I’ve actually made on a certain tool or tech stack.

This project is the first time I’ve gotten to do something again, and that has been very eye-opening for me. Having some prior knowledge and experience this time around probably cut my development time in half. Every step of the process was familiar, and only required a quick refresher rather than a full blown tutorial.

I’ve tried to do a little bit of everything this summer, and I value being a jack of all trades. Having the ability to learn and apply new things quickly is extremely valuable, but there also lies a huge amount of value in focusing your efforts. If the difference in productivity from having just one website under my belt is this large, what would it be like if I had fifty?

Going forward, that notion is a reminder to prioritize a few truly meaningful experiences, over many shallower ones. What areas I want to dedicate that extra energy to isn’t clear just yet, but this journey with Launch Letter will certainly help me find out.

Lesson #3 - The Payoff

Sending over the site is always the best moment of making one. Its a great feeling to see a client’s reaction to you turning their vision into reality. At the end of the day, these projects are about the results.

Technology is intrinsically fun to play around with, but what we do with it is why it’s so valuable, and why I want to pursue a career in the field. I got to build a website for a friend with a pressing need in only a few days. That ability to deliver solutions is exactly what I’m trying to build here.

I think that was the missing piece of motivation I talked about in last week’s version. Doing work for others activates a different part of my brain than personal projects. Results oriented tasks force me to be productive, and give me a huge amount of satisfaction. Going forward, I want to figure out if I can find that feeling when doing personal projects or grinding LeetCode problems.

But for now, that’s all I’ve got. See you next week!

Have you ever done a project for the second time and been shocked at how much easier it is?

Reply and let me know what it was!

Till next time,

-Kirby