This is the first of an occasional series of posts on how I publish and manage this Web site.

Last fall I bit the bullet. I decided to pay for help re-launching my Web site. I had managed enough client Web site launches to know that my tired old site wasn’t cutting it.

About 2 years ago I migrated from Squarespace to WordPress because I wanted a content management system that I could muck up spruce up with widgets and plug-ins and fun things. Squarespace is good for straightforward publishing, but WordPress is much more widget-friendly and the user community is larger by orders of magnitude, which mean lots of free advice and experimentation (just like Beaker).

The WP user interface is very clean. Some folks fear WordPress sites will look, well, WordPressy, like a template. That’s not always a bad thing.

In the hands of a good designer and Web developer, however, you can do amazing things with WordPress. I wouldn’t use it for large sites, but for small sites and microsites, it’s just the right combination of power and simplicity, blog or no blog.

See the advocacy microsite for PBS-NY that I launched last year using WordPress. The site’s been reduced to one page because the campaign is over, but it went up in a week and helped push 5,000 letters to the governor and state legislators.

Planning & Design

For my old WP site I used a simple off-the-shelf WordPress theme – they are as many as the stars. But it never reflected my personality. It was limited. It was plain. I need FLAVOR!

I drafted a simple site map and used Gliffy to create wireframes. Gliffy is OK, but I’ve since discovered a few other wireframe products that look promising. I’m still fiddling.

I am no designer. Fortunately, my friend Nadine Robbins is. She created this unique design. (And she’s is a passionate portrait artist. Please peek.)

She created two designs and this was the clear winner. We iterated a bit on the home page. I struggled with how much stuff to put on the home page. I love home page slideshows and needed to show off my social media activity and connections.

Right now I’m pulling in my Twitter feed, my Delicious bookmarks and my Delicious tagcloud.

You tell me, how’d we do?

I wanted big social media buttons, and the pack from Aquaticus fit the bill. The only button I needed that they didn’t have was the Slideshare button. I grabbed my Slideshare button straight from Slideshare and think that it does the trick.

I love my site. It’s me, and reflects what I do and where I am today as a consultant.

Development

Next came Joe, my coding hero. He’s a Web developer extraordinaire at DNL OmniMedia, a local firm that can handle Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, plus I’ve thrown Democracy in Action and MailChimp custom work at them. They are a certified Convio technology partner. They do excellent work.

photo credit: racheocity

Joe themed my site and installed a host of widgets and plugins that help run things. I’ll cover those in my next post.

One important lesson I learned from Joe is to be VERY specific in the wireframe. Less specific = cost overruns.

I’m glad I went this route. I got the site that I wanted and learned some new WordPress tricks in the process.