First of all I downloaded and installed the Boilerplate theme. In lamens terms this consists of a clean (blank) theme, something I can build on. It means things will look very sparse until I do some designing and building. This theme is a combination of the Starkers theme and HTML5 Boilerplate.

There were also a few extra WordPress post-install steps that I made sure I did, this post – The Ultimate Guide to Setting up WordPress after an Install has proven to be very handy over the years and most of it is still applicable to WordPress 3.2.1.

(WordPress is a CMS which I can use to edit my pages and blog posts separately from the design, makes things a lot easier. Its also plays nice with search engines)

Here are the plugins I have started off with (I am sure more will follow):

• Akismet
• FeedBurner FeedSmith
• Google Analytics for WordPress
• No Self Pings
• WordPress SEO
• WP-DB-Backup

My name (as you may or may not know is Ed Henderson) and I have owned edhenderson.com for over 12 years now. This website has gone through many guises over the years, personal, work, Blog, holidays, videos and even cats. It has lain dormant (or untouched) for the last 7 years. The last update was to announce the birth of my first son Jack (21 November 2004). He turned 7 last month. Embarrassing I know, but like the old cobbler’s children have no shoes phenomena, my website has often been neglected.

Now I am a little bit older, a wee bit more experienced, had my finger in quite a few different pies, I wanted to take back my domain from the Internet wasteland and put it to some good.

I build websites for a living and I have found that while trying to find work, I am often asked for a Portfolio, examples of my work, something which I don’t have in one sensible place. Sometimes I am asked for design examples, sometimes development examples. I have also done a bit of speaking, writing & consultancy so its time to showcase my best asset. Me.

I intend to write about my new website, how I put it together, how I design it, build it, test it and look after it. Hopefully this may help someone else in a similar situation, someone who might be stuck and serve as a useful record of what happened and why. I won’t get everything right first time but thats part of the fun?

At the moment, the only thing this website consists of is a vanilla install of WordPress 3.2.1 and is hosted by Simplehelix. The rough plan is to configure WordPress, get some plugins installed, then:

1. throw some content in
2. design
3. build
4. test
5. repeat till I am happy

You can email me on ed@edhenderson.com or follow me on Twitter over at @edhenderson. Speak soon.