If you were to restart your main website(s) right now, what would you do differently? Hind sight is 20/20, as they say, so what glaring errors can you see? This question has been on my mind for a while, and a recent thread triggered this post.

For me, it’s probably the content management system (CMS). My oldest website started seven years ago, with the current CMS running for most of that time. Needless to say, it’s showing its age. Sure it’s been tweaked here and there, handling many re-designs, but the backend is not really that modern. It works, but it ain’t pretty.

The second main thing I would change is the promotion. When I started out, the site was just a hobby, leisurely adding content, and letting it coast for months on end without updates. The was some traffic, but I never cared enough to improve on it. That changed over time, and now traffic is decent and improving. For this, I have two suggestions if I were to restart now:

  • I got lucky that the name I picked turned out to be a good brand. Choose your domain name wisely, as if it becomes successful, you’re stuck with it forever. Re-branding is an expensive exercise!
  • Plan for success. Assume you will be successful, and figure out what you will need to be successful. A reporter once asked Bill Gates if he ever imagined Microsoft will turn out to be this big. Paraphrased, his reply was, "we always knew how to double our company size". Have a plan, execute it, and when you reach the milestones, create a new plan and carry on. What would you do to double your size right now?

So, What would you have done differently?