I created our landing page a few months ago with no previous knowledge of WordPress.
The internet is full of free resources that you can use as a reference. Here you find a free resource where I tell you what free resources I have clicked on to learn the foundations of WordPress.
And then I list the additional components, called plugins, that turned out to be indispensable.
Hosting, WordPress install and creating your landing page. In 32 minutes of Youtube videos
WordPress is a free open-source content management system.
Once installed on the server it allows you to manage your website by using the dashboard graphic interface. With WordPress you can create and modify web pages with nearly no need to act on the source code and without any knowledge about coding.
So do I need a server? Not quite. What you need is a hosting plan, meaning a service that offers memory and computation capacity to host your website. After considering various providers I decided to go for Hostgator. Click on the plan you need and follow the instructions. During this procedure Hostgator will let you pick a domain, which will determine the address of your website. Just to provide an idea of the costs involved, I bought a 3 year ‘Baby Plan’ for $170.
Many hosting services, and among them Hostgator, offer one click automated solutions to install WordPress directly from the control panel.
Now you are ready to create your landing page by watching this 24 minute video. The author also shows how to install themes and plugins from the dashboard. Last step is to make a form that allows you to collect the email addresses from the visitors and transfer them to Mailchimp or another marketing platform. To that purpose, you can watch this 8 minute video.
Your board game landing page is online.
Let’s have a look at the plugins that most probably you will need.
Elementor, drag&drop editor for web pages
This well known plugin allows you to create and modify blocks of the web page within a graphic user interface.
If you created your landing page by watching the video above then you have this plugin already installed. Even the free version lets you build a functional and good looking web presence.
MC4WP, registration form connected to Mailchimp
This plugin connects the web page to your Mailchimp account, where you will manage the email addresses after collection.
You have already this plugin installed if you sticked to the video above. Remember that if your landing page can be reached from EU countries, then the registration form must contain an UNchecked box for the subscribers to explicitly accept the use you make of their email addresses.
Really Simple SSL, SSL certificate in 5 minutes
This plugin makes your landing page safer and more credible.
SSL certificates enable encrypted transmission of data. Without it the website could be tagged as not safe and be penalized in the results of search engines.
Yoast SEO, SEO optimization
This plugin optimizes the structure of your website to facilitate the indexing carried out by search engines.
Do not expect to find your landing page on the first page of Google search by typing ‘board game’. Nevertheless, Yoast SEO forces you to keep in mind certain good practices, allows you to manage the thumbnails of shared links and assesses the readability ease of each of your pages.
WP-Optimize, caching and optimization
This plugin creates cached copies of your websites to shorten its load time.
The optimization of a website is a complex matter. WP-Optimize manages only the more superficial aspects of it. If you have a caching plugin active, remember to check whether the landing page is displayed correctly on a device different from yours. It is sometimes necessary to regenerate the cache through the dedicated command in the graphic interface of the optimization plugin.
Google Analytics for WordPress, connection to Google Analytics
This plugin allows you with few clicks to start collecting data about the visit sessions on your website by means of Google Analytics.
Even if the traffic is scarce, understanding how visitors reach and use your landing page is crucial to improve the user experience and sharpen the message you want to deliver.
Cookie Notice, pop-up on the use of cookies
This plugin generates a popup that informs the visitor on the use of cookies and starts the collection only after the user has accepted the related conditions.
If you collect data about the visit sessions and your landing page can be reached from EU countries then you must inform the visitor about the use of cookies. With Cookie Notice and following the instructions in this short video your website will be compliant with the EU regulations.
Disable “Big Image” Threshold, upload to the server images of any size
This plugin disables the threshold that prevents the upload to the WordPress gallery of heavy images.
Personally I had to disable this threshold, although very sensible, because of the conflicts it would create also with files of smaller size. If you do not experience this problem then you do not need this plugin. In general, it is good practice to upload images with a proper size with respect to the slot they are going to fill and in a file format optimized for the web (JPEG 2000, WebP).
Menu Icons, icons for the header menu
This plugin provides access to a range of icons including social media ones, which you can use in the menus of your website.
Weird enough, the option of connecting the social media accounts via icons in the main menu is not among the standard ones.
UpdraftPlus, backup tool
This plugin creates backup copies of your website and allows you to restore them if something goes wrong.
It is never too soon for a backup.
1 Bonus Plugin e 1 Note
If you want to create a multilingual landing page like ours, have a look at Polylang. In that case, you might also need the plugin that synchronizes Polylang with Elementor and the one that allows you to duplicate web pages in order to do the translation without starting again from scratch.
The blog section of this website has been built with Elementor Pro, which is a paid plugin. However, there are other ways of doing that by using free resources. I did not deal with it in this article, rather focusing on the minimal tools that will permit you to publish a fluid, safe and good looking board game landing page.
If you have more questions I cannot answer them as an expert, but I will try hard as a mathematician and game designer who is learning WordPress himself 🙂
Images by F. Tozak and J. Pond/Unsplash, die icon by Freepik/Flaticon