How I do Website Design in 2022

I maintain more than 20 websites right now. Included here is the foundation I use to set up websites even though the individual sites differ greatly in look and layout.

The Internet is a living being and is growing exponentially from one day to the next. With that growth, everything that supports the internet from Google to your own personal website has to adapt. I use these articles as my own personal notepad. Here today I am going to put down all the new concepts I have noticed over the past year and what I am using to develop the best websites.

Website Trends 2022

One of the biggest changes in the past few years on the Internet is mobile websites. Now more than half of our website shopping site visitors or using a mobile phone. If you are not fast and easy to read then you will not survive on the 2022 internet. BUT that being said you can take it too far. I have been to so many of my designer competitor’s websites and found they have opted from having actual content to using BIG words and lots of large graphics. You could put their entire website into one paragraph of what I am writing. My thinking is yes shoppers are using mobile phones. BUT my biggest target is the CEO sitting in an office looking for a very good website designer. The percentage of my target customers using mobile is a lot less than the average shopping website.

Another horrible trend I have seen is retro and hand-drawn graphic art. Yes, people on average are bored with the old style of professionalism and it might be good for some audiences. It is at best going to be a fad for some time. Nothing can replace a well-structured professional website to capture professionals.

Designing The Business Website In WordPress

OK let us dive into what I do. I am going to assume for this article you already have a domain and hosting account and are ready to or already installed WordPress. I realized that fast was important this past year. It is not only important to your customers but search engines now use that as part of their algorithms for placement. I spent months testing various WordPress themes for functionality and speed. I finally settled on NEVE. With the NEVE business package, I get unlimited websites. It is one of the fastest themes available. But more than that it is not limited to many of the fast themes I tested. With the NEVE you get all the interactives of hover effects, slide and zoom, and much more. It is configured to work very well with other web builder platforms like elementor and woo-commerce.

How To Setup The Business Website

This is what I do for new websites and for upgrades step by step.

Install WordPress

Install WordPress from Cpanel. Check that all is done and delete extra themes after you install the Neve theme. Go to the new WordPress website and start the setup routine. First, you should increase the memory limit for WordPress.

Edit your wp-config.php file

Add this to the top, before the line that says, “Happy Blogging”:

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');

Install Themes

Neve

neve-child-master – make the active theme

The child master I have set up contains the basics. This would be the place to add any personal touches to the theme so it is not overwritten during updates.

• functions.php
• style.css
• screenshot.png
• header.php which I add to maintain my analytics code.

Plugins

Delete all pre-install updates you do not use.

Install these plugins:

• Neve Pro Addon
• All-in-One WP Migration
• All-in-One WP Migration Unlimited Extension
• Better Search Replace
• Broken Link Checker
• Max Mega Menu
• Yoast
• Yoast Duplicate Post
• WordPress Fastest Cache
• JetPack – deactivate and reactivate to connect to your WordPress account.
• JetPack Booster
• Akismet
• If I need eCommerce:
• WooCommerce
• WooCommerce PayPal Payments
• Woo Align Buttons

Enable these in this order to work together:

• Enable Jetpack
• Enable JetPack Boost
• Enable Akismet

Go setting Jetpack Boost and enable Optimize CSS Loading.

Install Neve Option Plugins
Page Builder Blocks by Otter, and Cloud Templates & Patterns

WordPress Fastest Cache Settings

It is best when making site changes you temporarily disable this to see your updates in real time.

Now for the most part you are ready to start filling in the goodies and making adjustments to the theme.

• The first thing I do is go to my file manager and modify the header file of the theme to add code for Google Analytics and Google AdSense if I plan to run ads.
• Next, I go to appearance/customize. With the customizer, I adjust the footer to show at least the copyright symbol with my website name.
• Change the header that will be on all pages to display the menu and your site identity.

After this, you are ready to start creating pages for the website. This is the basics of how to design a professional business website in WordPress.

NEVE Animations and Interactives

Since I have been using NEVE it has not been easy to find the extras. They have an animation option in the menu bar of every page. But the extras you have to experiment with. Here is a list I find very useful. Some of the best come from the Otter plugin we added.

• Cover – gives you the ability of full-page spread for images or sections.
• Section – this is like columns but gives you much more control of the layout.
• Flip Card – part of the otter collection creates a hover effect by flipping the image content to a text back.

I also found an extra by searching by Flip Card and it gave me the option to install more effects. Go to block type + Browse All and search for hover. You will get a list of several blocks that can be added. This one Hover Effects by Blocksera is very useful.

HOVER EFFECT – HINGE UP

Check back later as I want this page to be my own reference and plan to add a lot more material to it.

Business Website Design Settings

Knowledge Graph and Scema.org

This data is shown as metadata on your site. It is intended to appear in Google’s Knowledge Graph. You can be either an organization or a person.

Go to Yoast SEO > Search Appearance
Here you want to set the website to the organization, add a logo and company name

Ipower Webmail Using Roundcube

Forwarding Messages Using Roundcube

How to set up email forwarding: Log in to webmail using your email login and password. Choose Settings from the top menu bar. Click on the Filters tab. If you don’t have any pre-existing filters, click on the + at the bottom left corner of the page. In the New filter window on the right side of the screen, choose a name for your filter. Under Filter Rules, select all messages. Under Filter Actions, in the left drop-down list, select  Redirect message to. Type in the email address that you would like to forward your email to. Click Save. How to set up email forwarding and keep a local copy on the server: Log in to webmail using your email login and password. Choose Settings from the top menu bar. Click on the Filters tab. If you don’t have any pre-existing filters, click on the + at the bottom left corner of the page. In the New filter window on the right side of the screen, choose a name for your filter. Under Filter Rules, select all messages. Under Filter Actions, in the left drop-down list, select Copy message to. In the drop-down menu on the right, select Inbox. Click on the + plus sign to add another action. Under Filter Rules, select all messages. Under Filter Actions, in the left drop-down list, select  Redirect message to. Type in the email address that you would like to forward your email to. Click Save.