Day 001

Yesterday I began the build of what is to be JUSTVANLIFE, I’m using DBL Site Builder as the creation tool. In the past, I’ve used various themes and theme packs though in recent times I grew a liking to Elementor.

However, I’m already digging the feel of DBL it’s a lot less clunky and a bit more intuitive I found myself relying too much on the premade templates with Elementor as their code blocks and the manual building was a bit less intuitive whereas DBL is quite the opposite. It does contain templates like Elementor but I’m finding it much simpler to drag and drop code blocks and get them to actually do what I want!

Today’s goal will be to finish adding in my core pages and start to flesh out a content schedule. I’m definitely nowhere near a van build myself yet even with all the research I’ve done but I know there’s no way to proceed forward without first taking a step!

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I went for a super minimalist look at first, trying to keep things as simple and clean as I could I’ll probably have to replace the images at some point with paid stock photo images.

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I changed up the headline and added a sub-heading as well as threw in a second button after I started to think about what someone who ended up on the page was actually looking for most people will be coming to my website at first looking for tutorial content and the like however I did realize if I do advertising at some point there will be people who could use a push from a “start” button to direct them through a pipe flow on the website I manufacture.

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Finally, I crafted a basic logo in Canva and after making it changed the tone a bit, I removed the guides button from the front page as well I figured anyone going to the site’s homepage is probably a new user and those who aren’t probably already know where they are going next anyway and what’s the difference between one click on the front page and the menu?

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Next up was the page that the “start your journey” button leads to, here the goal was to provide a bit of a teaser into vanlife and try to pique the interest of the eventual user that finds their way onto this page.

I’ve done a lot of work on websites that have sales landing pages essentially selling courses and e-books so it was a nice change of pace to actually worry about value as opposed to how I can make someone buy something. I’ll probably come back to this page later when I’m a bit more familiar with DBL and touch it up!

Finally, I worked on the vanlife page it was here I fleshed out what I actually wanted from the website itself and let my creativity go to work. I eventually would like to see the website bring some money in so I added in an advert for the currently-non-existant e-book I plan to write for the website.

I’m averse to taking advantage of users as a writer I’ve worked on many cheap sales page websites and always felt they were pretty scummy I don’t believe in gating all of the content behind a paywall personally instead I’d like to package most of the content on the website in a much easier to read and follow along bundle. So if you don’t want to pay all the same info will still be loaded onto the website you’ll just have to do a bit of navigating to find it all!

Also having graphic design experience in my tool kit I took to Canva, my favorite tool for starting out designs. It’s a lot less packed with features than it’s counter-part photoshop/illustrator however the files can be exported as PDF prints that have layering built into them so you can easily put a design together that you can later rework in photoshop if you want to add more complexity to it.

In this case, however, the built-in tools that Canva provided were more than enough to meet my needs for the design bits. I built the images of the three-panel sections using the tool, I think 3 step processes are always nice despite the fact that each of those three steps will have dozens of tasks before you can move forward splitting things up akin to that of a play makes it easier for me to build a content schedule around each section and helps users who are looking for just information on blueprinting for example to more easily find what they need!

Overall I’m satisfied with the progress for day 000 and it’s time to continue my work!

-Cassius Fragomeni