You have everything you need, right?

• Photoshop (or Gimp), check.
• Sources for stock images, check.
• Design elements such as Photoshop brushes and vectors, check.
• WordPress itself, check.

That’s everything, right? Well, maybe not completely. There are a few things that freelance WordPress designers need but never think about until situations crop up, and these problems usually surface over and over again before they are finally dealt with consistently. Here are some of those issues, with suggested ways to handle them.

Problem #1: Client Training and Support

Teaching clients how to use their new WordPress-based site and supporting them every time they have a question about WordPress is at best a time-suck, and at worst, an excruciating grind. Many designers are not prepared for the customer service side of things, and may not have the best “bedside manner” when dealing with client training.

Consider the following scenario. You’ve given your client a once-over of the WordPress dashboard, yet every other day, you get a call from the client that goes something like this.

“Joe, I don’t remember how to stick a picture of my dog on the right side of the stuff I want to say today. How do I do that again?”

You say something like like:

“Nick, remember what I showed you a couple of days ago? How you click on the toolbar icon to upload an image, and …

If you only have one client, that level of support might not be a big issue, but if you have several clients – or hope to find time to market yourself and obtain more – you need to minimize that kind of interaction as much as possible, while still giving your clients everything they need to succeed with their new site. Some questions are ones that only you can answer, but in most situations, many of the questions could be better handled by written or visual documentation. If you have the time and patience, you could create documentation and videos that answer all the most common questions that might arise. Of course, that kind of documentation takes a lot of time (and some talent), and would have to be revised every time WordPress makes major changes, which happens pretty frequently. The better option is to make use of what someone else has already done, especially if it is high quality and always updated to reflect the current WordPress version.

Of course, you could use my Beginner’s Guide to Blogging with WordPress, but that’s only the tip of the training iceberg, so you’ll probably want to use something more comprehensive. You should check out the WordPress User Manual Plugin because it covers pretty much everything needed to train your clients. It has over 35 high quality video tutorials that teach your clients how to use the site you developed for them using WordPress. It is installed just like a normal WordPress plugin, and once installed, the plugin creates a “Manual” menu item in the WordPress dashboard that lets your clients get their questions answered without having to contact you.

It will answer all those questions such as “How do I upload pictures?”, How do I add a page to my site?”, and “What do all those toolbar buttons do?” In addition to the videos, the plugin also includes a Word and PDF manual with screenshots.

One thing that is really cool is that you can brand the plugin and manuals with your own logo, as though you created it yourself. In addition, you can even add your own videos to the plugin! This makes it ideal for those projects that you created custom functionality for, that needs a little more explanation than the average WordPress user needs.

Of course, the plugin videos and manual get updated with each new stable release of WordPress, so you know your clients will always have instructions that match the current version of WordPress. That saves a ton of time and headache because WordPress changes the way the back end works pretty frequently.

Probably the best feature: You get a developer’s license, which lets you install the plugin on as many of your client sites as you want.

Most new freelance designers will never think about how much time and effort is involved in after-design training and support. After the third or fourth client that knows nothing about using WordPress, though, the advantage of something like this becomes blindingly obvious.

Problem #2 – Proposals, Contracts, Forms, Checklists, etc.

A new freelancer quickly realizes that he or she needs to find some sample forms to handle the business side of projects. Contracts, proposals, disclosure agreements, invoices, etc. all become a necessity, and no one generally has those things just lying around when they are just starting out. Finding free ones on the web is a major source of frustration, and while some freebies can be found – eventually – in the end, it’s a lot easier to just pony up a few bucks for a nice set of templates.

There are probably tons of web design business documents available for purchase. A quick search will let you find whatever you’re looking for. I like this particular web design document pack because it’s a set of ready-made templates that enable you to just fill in the blanks and be done with it, but I’m sure there are plenty of other choices available as well. I happen to like the types of documents included in this one, though, so I’ll list them here, and you can compare to others you find, and determine which is best for your situation.

Work Request Order Form – Defines and clarifies each ADDITIONAL task requested of you outside of the original agreement. This lets you handle scope creep in a way that’s fair.

Credit Card Authorization – Lets your client give you the credit card info needed to purchase items on her behalf such as domain name registrations, hosting, etc.

Confidentiality Disclosure Agreement – Gives your client the reassurance needed that the information they give you will not be disclosed to the competition.

Web Design Proposal – The document most requested and most difficult to deal with… It lets you present a proposal to a prospective client showing the project overview, recommendations, benefits, functional specs, technical specs, information architecture, etc. and details the project with regard to both cost and timeframe expectations.

Lite Proposal – Same as above but a lighter version that’s great for smaller projects.

Web Development Contract – Once you land the client thanks to a great proposal, you need a contract that covers code ownership, payment terms and conditions, change requests, scope creep, expenses, liability, cancellations, etc.

Technical Specifications – This is a good place to log all that important information such as site usernames and passwords, domain and hosting account information, etc.

Invoice – This invoice template includes your business details, accepted payment methods, payment terms, due date, itemized list of work accomplished and hours billed, and total of outstanding and paid items.

Project Handover Form – When the project is complete, and it is time to “hand over the site to client”, this document allows the client to sign off on the completion, take ownership of and responsibility for the new design, and gives you proof that you’ve satisfied the project requirements, in case anything is disputed in the future.

Problem #3 – Tracking The Time Spent on Projects

Just like you can find tons of contract documents online, you can also find tons of time tracking apps online as well. No matter what you use, you should use something other than the clock in your taskbar to keep track of the time you spend on client sites, especially if you charge by the hour. I like the free Paymo Time Tracker that lets you create tasks, start/stop time spent on a task, mark tasks when completed, and send out invoices based on the time spent. As I mentioned, it’s free for most freelancer’s needs, and it includes options that allow you to download a Windows or Mac desktop timer widget, use a browser-based web timer, or even use a mobile app timer. It also lets you connect the invoicing to your PayPal account so your clients can just click a Pay via Paypal button on the invoice that will take them right to Paypal to pay, and after paying, the invoice will automatically be marked as paid in Paymo.

Those are three problems most new freelance WordPress designers encounter, that they never considered having to deal with before they started their freelance career. If you’ve been wishing you had a way to train your clients, track your time, or handle the paperwork involved, one of these three tips might solve your problem.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: freelance, resources, web designers, WordPress, WordPress Designer
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

I’m Luvvin’ It!!!

Let me tell you why you should be thrilled that I’m using CommentLuv Premium. I’m using this brilliant WordPress plugin so I can help YOU shine, and I hope you’ll soon see just how it can make your blog shine too.

You see, if you’ve known me at all over the last few years, you know my motto is, “You’ll never shine if you don’t glow”. I won’t get into the details right now of why that’s my motto, but I’ll tell you this. My goal over the years has been, and is still, to help you shine.

CommentLuv Premium helps me do that.

Comment Luv Premium gives me tons of control and lots of customization options that enable me to offer you the opportunity to showcase your content. The reason I’ve always been crazy about CommentLuv was that it gave everyone the opportunity to share their content with others in a meaningful way.

When people see the title of one of your posts next to your name when you comment, they see a fuller you. They no longer just see a name. They get a feel for who you are, and they can learn more about you by hovering over your CommentLuv card. Even better, they are very likely to click your link and head on over to your site to read your post.

I know what you’re thinking. CommentLuv did that anyway, so what’s the big deal about the Premium version? There’s tons of “big dealness” about it, but I’ll let you discover most of that yourself. I want to focus on one feature that makes it kick … well you know what I’m about to say.

Social Enticement

Social enticement. Let me repeat that. Roll it around your tongue for a moment. Social enticement.

When you use CommentLuv Premium, you can choose to give extra goodies to those people who give your post some social luv’in. What’s that all about?

If you choose, you can give all commenters the ability to display a post from a list of their last 10 posts. You can also give all commenters dofollow links. Or…

Or… you can give them all a choice of just ONE – their last post with the OPTION of letting them choose from their last 10 posts if they tweet, like, or plusone your post, as is shown in the screenshot below.

Think about that for a moment. You aren’t penalizing anyone. Everyone gets a little CommentLuv goodness. But those people who choose to give your post some extra social love, will get in return, some extra CommentLuv functionality.

Who wins?

• They win.
• You win.
• Everybody wins.

That’s the CommentLuv Premium feature I love the most. Yep, there’s plenty more to luv about CommentLuv Premium, but I’ll let you discover all those things on your own. Watch the video on the CommentLuv page to help you understand all the reasons it rocks.

Lots of reasons it rocks, but for me…social enticement is kick-badonkadonk! Yeah!

Get All The Info

Even if you decide not to get this plugin, I still recommend taking a look at all its features. Why? Because just knowing what is possible can spark some ideas in how you can be making your blog more enticing. So, go check it out and start thinking about how you could be enticing your users too. I bet it will be a light-bulb moment.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: comment luv, Social Media Marketing
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Take a look below at the four latest themes they’ve produced. I’ve personally used Chameleon on my most recent site, and I have to say that it looks fabulous! I’m really excited to be able to create stunning new sites so easily. The features I like the most are the color and background changer panel, and the shortcodes collection. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s look at them first.

And here is the color and background panel I mentioned earlier, that lets you easily and instantly try out different color schemes and background patterns.

I Mean, WOW

Those are some very nice looking themes, that can be easily customized so they don’t look like everyone else’s. And that’s just the latest 4! There’s tons more to choose from. Plus, the extra options and features that come with them are great. I mentioned earlier that their shortcodes were one of my favorite features. Here’s the kinds of things you can do with the shortcodes (which means literally clicking a button that’s added to the edit screen toolbar):

Make Buttons

Make Content Boxes

Make Tabbed Content

Make Image Sliders

Make columns of text WITHIN any post, but without having to use the same number of columns on every post.

Make Testimonial Boxes

There’s lots more shortcodes that make cool stuff too. I’ll let you browse through it all at your leisure. It’s just all really, really cool, in my opinion. This is awesomeness made simple.

Other Great Features

• Page templates that let you choose pre-made layouts for each page you create.
• Unlimited color schemes
• Dozens of great fonts
• SEO options
• And the Boutique theme supports third-party ecommerce plugins like wp ecommerce, shopp, eshop, cart66, and simple paypal shopping cart.

So, anyway, the bottom line is that Elegant Themes has really upped its quality over the years, and yet, the best feature of all is this:

The price is still only $39 to get access to ALL of the themes.

It’s not $39 each. That thirty-nine bucks lets you download and use every single theme they have available. And during the year, any new themes they make are yours to download too! For an entire year, you get access to every one of their themes, old and new. And of course, when the year is up, you can keep using the ones you’ve downloaded, you just can’t download any new ones without paying for a new subscription. But you don’t lose the ones you’ve already gotten.

If the themes were plain or ugly, $39 would be just a so-so deal, but the themes look great! They are very professional, and the options and features they include makes life as a blogger or website owner easy peasy. I’m really happy I wandered back over there when I started my new site.

Want a peek at my new site that uses the Chameleon theme?

Check out Elegant Themes again, if you haven’t lately, or never have. You might be amazed.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: themes
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

There are already some well-known theme clubs / packages, but those aren’t the ones I’m highlighting here. I’ve looked around to find six lesser known theme sites that have great package or club prices, with nice themes to go along with those nice prices.

General Facts About These Packages and Memberships

One major positive about each of these six deals: All the themes are GPL licensed, enabling you to use them as often as you wish on as many domains as you wish.

Be aware that if you purchase a membership with a monthly fee, then you’ll still be able to use all the themes you downloaded after you quit the membership, but you just won’t be able to download new themes (or get whatever extra goodies come with membership) after you quit. So, in all cases, package or membership, you get to continue using the themes you download for all time. That’s a deal!

Final note: I’ve only actually used one theme from the sites below on an active site, so I have pretty much no experience with the quality of the themes, or the support, etc. Be sure to read all the material on the site to know what you’re getting, what the terms are, etc.

Now on to the good stuff.

Simple Themes

$39 for 3 months access … check it out

Organized Themes

$75 for 14 current and all future themes (the $50 christmas sale is over) … check it out

UpThemes

$99 + $9/month for Club membership – at least 2 new themes per month promised … check it out

Obox

$125 + $15/month for Club membership … check it out

Theme Weaver

$50 one time fee … check it out

FlexiThemes

$19.95 1 month membership … check it out

29.95 3 months membership

39.95 6 months membership

49.95 year membership

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: club memberships, packages, themes, WordPress
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Show Content Based On Certain Conditions

Below are 3 plugins that allow you to show or hide content based upon certain conditions. Each is useful in different circumstances.

Optional Content adds a button to the Visual Editor toolbar that allows you to select from a dropdown list of conditions.

Display content within an individual post or page based on the following conditions:

• Manual on/off setting
• Before, after, or between specific times (repeated daily)
• Before, after or between specific dates

Based on if the visitor is logged in

• Based on a specific user (by user id)
• Based on GET variables (variables passed on the URL in the form of http://www.example.com/about/?test=value where the variable is ‘test’)
• Based on POST variables (variables sent via forms)
• Based on REQUEST variables (either GET or POST variables)

One of many examples might be the need to display a coupon code within a post only if today’s date is between two particular dates, but have it automatically hide that content on all other dates.

Another example might be to show content (like an ad?) only to certain visitors based on whether or not they are logged in, or if they arrived via a particular site or form.

Conditional Shortcodes, like the Optional Content plugin, allows you to show or hide content based upon certain conditions, but the conditions revolve around the where the visitor is viewing the content on the site.

Is the visitor reading this content on the home page? Or is she reading it on a single post? Or maybe she’s looking at a category archive, or some other archive, like a monthly or yearly archive? You decide which content to display on this post, based on where the user is seeing the content, by using fairly easy-to-remember shortcodes around any portion of your content.

So, for example, if you want to only show a Download or Buy Now link if the user is viewing this post as a single post, but not if the user is reading this post on the home page or archive pages, you could use the following shortcode:

[is_single]
your link code goes here
[/is_single]

If you want different content to be displayed on the home page, etc., you could use this instead:

[is_single]
your link code goes here
[/not_single]
See full article to download.
[/is_single]

The full list of available shortcodes are:

• is_single – if showing a single post.
• is_singular – if showing a single post or page.
• is_home – if showing the blog home.
• is_front_page – if showing the front page of the site.
• is_sticky – if the current post or page is ‘sticky’.
• is_category – if showing a category-based archive.
• is_tag – if showing a tag-based archive.
• is_tax – if showing a tag- or category-based archive.
• is_author – if showing an author-based archive.
• is_archive – if showing any archive.
• is_year – if showing a yearly archive.
• is_month – if showing a monthly archive.
• is_day – if showing a daily archive.
• is_time – if showing an hourly or shorter archive.
• is_feed – if generating a feed.
• is_search – if showing search results.
• comments_open – if comments are open for the current post or page.

Widget Logic lets you show or hide sidebar widgets based on where the visitor is reading the content. This is similar to the Conditional Shortcodes plugin, however you are able to show or hide sidebar widgets rather than content within a post.

After installing this plugin, if you go to your Widgets area, and drag a widget into any sidebar, you’ll notice a new option that can be set for that widget. So let’s look at a couple of examples.

Example 1. You drag a widget to the sidebar but you only want it to appear if the visitor is currently on the home page. In the Widget Logic option for that widget, you’ll simply type into the form:

is_home()

Example 2. You drag a widget to the sidebar but you only want it to appear if the visitor is currently on a particular page of the site (let’s say the About page). In the Widget Logic option for that widget, you’ll type:

is_page(‘About’)

You can combine conditions, too. For example, maybe you only want to display the widget if it is a single post and the post is in the “Cheese” category. For that, you’d type:

is_single() && in_category(‘cheese’)

(Yes, two ampersands is the proper way to signify the word “and”).

Assign Expiration Dates To Some Posts

Post Expirator lets you set an expiration date for a post or page. Once the date has passed, the post will automatically either revert back to Draft status or get deleted completely (your choice).

This is great for posts that are only relevant for a short period of time, such as a post that announces an upcoming event. You could also use it for coupon code posts or anything that you only want displayed on your site until a specified date.

Use PHP Code In Widgets, Posts, And Pages

Samsarin PHP Widget allows you to include PHP code within a text widget.

Normal text widgets don’t let you include PHP code within them. This plugin gives you special text widgets (up to 25 per sidebar) that you can use. You can add PHP to the title of the widget as well as within the body of the widget.

Note that this plugin also comes with an important warning:

Warning: This widget provides great flexibility in customizing your sidebar. It achieves this by automatically evaluating any included PHP included in the title or the body of the widget. Care should be taken when including PHP code in the sidebar, as with anywhere else in the WordPress system.

Placing PHP code within your content has the potential to break things or make your site less secure (depending upon the PHP code you use). Only use this if you’re comfortable with PHP or you completely trust whoever gave you the PHP code to be included. Still, for those who need to be able to have fine control over widget content, this plugin is awesome.

Allow PHP in Posts and Pages is the same concept as the Samsarin PHP Widget above, except it allows you to use PHP code within your posts and pages, rather than within sidebar widgets.

This plugin lets you use a simple short code to wrap around your PHP code within your posts. Example:

Easy and powerful. Of course, just like the Samsarin PHP Widget, using PHP code within posts or pages might break things or make your site less secure, so again, only use PHP within your posts and pages if you are very comfortable with PHP, or you completely trust whoever supplied the code to you.

Each of the plugins I’ve mentioned allow you to get really flexible and powerful fine-grain control over your content. Not everyone needs this degree of control, but for those who do, these plugins can be “life-changing”. (Sure, “life-changing” is probably too dramatic, but for someone who has wished for this kind of content control, it likely “feels” life-changing to find these plugins).

There are other plugins out there that do very similar things, by the way. It’s not like these are the only ones available. Most likely, some of you use others that you might prefer, but these are the ones I’ve used and liked, so that’s why I mention them here. Feel free, however, to share your preferences for similar plugins in the comments.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

How many times have you seen the panicked tweets of people who’ve had their blogs hacked? Ever wondered what you should do if it happened to you? Today, I’m talking to an expert in dealing with hacked WordPress blogs, Michael VanDeMar. Listen, learn, and then be careful out there!

How He Knows

Donna: I know you have a popular blog post that describes how to completely clean your hacked WordPress installation. In fact, it’s even been linked to as a resource by WordPress themselves (twice) and by the well-known WordPress geek Lorelle VanFossen as well. My question is, how did you become so familiar with hacked WordPress blogs? How do you know how to clean one?

Michael: I went through a period a few years back where I was getting hacked every other month, and on multiple sites. Usually it was because I didn’t follow one of my bestest friend’s advice*, and would procrastinate on upgrading. As it is I learned by necessity how to quickly and effectively clean up a blog, and have used that knowledge to try and help others as well.

Protect Yourself

Donna: So, everyone agrees that the best way to prevent getting hacked is to keep WordPress upgraded to the latest version. What else should we all do in addition to that?

Michael: Up until the most recent versions of WordPress, every single version that was released wound up having relatively serious security holes in them. Now that WordPress itself seems to have plugged all of those, there are 2 main ways that a WordPress installation can get hacked:

1) Insecure hosting environment. Unfortunately this year some of the bigger names in hosting have had security issues, and almost always when they were discovered, it was WordPress that was attacked by the hackers, and in many cases unfairly blamed for the security holes. You should always investigate your host before buying a package, make sure that not only are they safe, but check out how they responded to problems in the past. Those that owned up to them and addressed the issue, instead of repeatedly issuing denials that anything was wrong, are probably the ones who take security more seriously.

2) A virus on a computer belonging to someone who has ftp access to the web server. Although this is more rare, it does happen. Certain FTP programs store their passwords in plain text, which means anyone who can read the files on the computer can see what those passwords are. If a person is using one of those programs, and their computer gets a virus, there are viruses that will read those passwords and ftp up malicious files to the host. The solution to this, aside from using strong virus protection (or switching from Windows to Linux), is to not store your passwords in your ftp program.

There are some plugins that can sometimes help catch certain types of hacks, and you yourself wrote a very handy script designed to check the last modified dates on files located on the server and alert you of any change, but unfortunately there are ways that hackers have found to get around most of those (although of course they still help in many situations).

What About DIY?

Donna: I know you often clean hacked WordPress blogs as a service. In what situations would someone need to hire you to clean their hacked blogs? Can’t they just do it themselves?

Michael: Yes, many people can, and the guide I wrote was intended to be a DIY type of instruction manual for people to do just that. However, one of the main attractions of WordPress in the first place is that it allows people with almost no technical knowledge to be able to build and maintain their own websites. With one-click installation and built in upgrade functionality, you don’t even have to know how to FTP files to your server to be able to have a WordPress blog. Cleaning a blog (at least, cleaning one properly) involves actually going into the sql and looking inside the php files themselves. For many people that is unfamiliar territory that they would rather leave to a professional. Plus, getting hacked is scary. Some people who might even have some basic web development knowledge feel better having someone who is more familiar with the ins and outs of dehacking a website handle the job.

Back Door Access

Donna: Ok, I’ve actually been asked this question a few times, so I thought I’d let you answer it here. If I do get hacked, can’t I just upgrade my blog and everything will be ok?

Michael: Unfortunately in most cases that will not help the situation. When hackers get into a WordPress installation they usually modify more than just the core WordPress files, which is the only thing that gets overwritten when someone performs an upgrade. Theme files and plugins will get extra code injected into them, whole new pages that act as back doors to the site will get added, and the database will have malicious code inserted into it. The only sure fire way to make sure that everything is good is to start with a blank slate, and rebuild the files, retaining and carefully scanning only those files that cannot be gotten from fresh, clean sources.

Do The Happy Dance

Donna: Do you do a little dance when satisfied clients tweet how great you are?

Michael: Yes.

It’s Not Your Momma’s Cleaning Service

Donna: Tell us about your hacked blog cleaning service and how someone should get in touch with you if they need to hire you.

Michael: If someone does have issues with cleaning their blog, or has hired someone else to do it but still keeps getting hacked, I am available for hire to do cleanups. When I do perform cleanups myself, in most cases they are complete wipe and reinstalls, as I suggest doing in my guide, retaining only those elements that can’t be replaced with fresh downloads (the uploads folder, customizations to a theme, and the database). For all of the elements of a hacked site that I do retain, I carefully scan them by hand and then put the blog back together in it’s original condition. There are many, many places that hackers can hide malicious code in your installation, and none of the automated or scripted solutions out there will find them all. When I scan by hand, I don’t just look for specific lines of code, I look for broad matching patterns in all of the places where back doors and virus droppers can be hidden. I have written some tools to help me with this, so I can be both thorough and relatively quick at the same time, but I still need to visually examine the results to be able to determine what is malicious versus what is simply suspicious.

I actually finally added a contact form on my blog. If anyone is interested in my services, the contact form on my blog is the best way to get in touch with me.

Care To Share?

Donna: Is there anything else you want to share with us? About WordPress hacked blogs or the meaning of life, even?

Michael: I can’t think of anything for this one.

Disclaimer

Donna: Disclaimer: Michael is my best buddy, so yeah, that may make me favor him, but what it really means is that I know his work. I’ve seen firsthand, many times over, how he painstakingly makes sure he misses nothing. He spends much more time being careful to ensure that every single detail is handled than anyone I’ve ever met. So if I tend to favor his work, it’s not just because he’s my best buddy – it’s because I know my best buddy’s work so well. That, I believe, is the best kind of endorsement.

* “bestest friend” = me. Why does my advice go unheeded so often, and for so long? Don’t answer that!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: hacked, WordPress
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Get $25 off! This month’s (January, 2012) coupon code is: JANSALE

ShopperPress

ShopperPress is a fully featured shopping cart theme for WordPress, suitable for selling all types of products, services, and digital downloads online. Includes 20+ store designs, new video tutorials, unlimited installations, lifetime free support and upgrades.

Coupon Code: JANSALE

DirectoryPress

DirectoryPress turns a WordPress blog into a powerful online directory website with lots of features, import tools and built in payment gateways. Recently updated, and includes 20+ directory themes, unlimited installations, lifetime free support and upgrades.

Coupon Code: JANSALE

Classifieds Theme

Classifieds Theme is a powerful, secure, SEO friendly classifieds theme for WordPress with lots of professional features and extra classified website designs. Recently updated, with new designs! Includes 20+ extra classifieds designs, unlimited installations, lifetime free support and upgrades.

Coupon Code: JANSALE

CouponPress

CouponPress turns any WordPress blog into a professional coupon code or voucher code website with lots of coupon site features, in minutes! Recently updated, and includes 20+ coupon website designs, unlimited installations, lifetime free support and upgrades.

Coupon Code: JANSALE

RealtorPress

RealtorPress is a turn-key ready “out of the box” real estate website solution for both individual realtors and real estate companies. You simply install, select your template, add or import your real estate property and you’er ready to go.

Coupon Code: JANSALE

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: niche, themes, WordPress
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

WordPress is not only a great blogging tool, it is a great content management system. By using the countless free themes, plugins and widgets available, the possibilities of this software are limitless. I have seen WordPress used for everything from a simple blog to a restaurant’s online presence through to a realtor’s online portal. WordPress can be a simple and cost effective solution to getting your business website online fast.

So how do you take advantage of this great, free tool? With just a little time and careful thought, it can be a simple process. There are three essential steps to take. First, you need a domain name. Second, you need a hosting account and third, you need to install WordPress to said account. Lets break those three steps down a little, so you can get on your way to using WordPress today (and yes, it really is that simple!).

Registering a Domain Name

First you need a domain name. The domain is what you enter in your browser to find your website, ‘google.com’ for instance. To ensure your website appears in relevant search engine results, you need to take care over your choice of domain name. You will need a domain that accurately reflects your business and the services you offer. For example, if you were creating a domain name for a florist in New York City – nycflorist.com or newyorkcityflorists.com would both be excellent names to choose. Of course the perfect domain name may already be taken, and you may have to give the matter some careful thought. Most domain name registrars will offer a domain name lookup facility to help you check the available domains.

Find a Web Hosting Provider

With your perfect domain name secured, you now need to look for a reliable hosting provider. Web hosting, or simply hosting for short, is the service that powers your website and your email, it is the engine of the whole setup. It is common to purchase both hosting and a domain from one company, as most providers offer the two services in tandem. You should be looking for a hosting company that firstly supports WordPress. Most hosting companies will be more than happy to host WordPress. Also be sure to check out online reviews of the company. What are people saying about them right now? While a company may look perfect on the surface, dig around. There are plenty of online web hosting review sites, where actual customers rate their providers performance. Don’t be swayed by the bells and whistles of an organization’s marketing department!

Install WordPress

The third and final step is to install WordPress. ‘Installing’ WordPress refers to the act of uploading the WordPress files to your hosting account, and then configuring the setup. For technically adept users the process can be simple, but for novice or intermediate users, you may want your hosting company to install this for you. Such a service is usually available from hosting companies who specialize in WordPress hosting. Using an instant or auto installer from your hosting company, you should be able to have WordPress running on your website within a minute or two.

And from there? Well that is up to you! A myriad of free themes, plugins and widgets exist that you can use to customize the look and feel of your WordPress website. Hundreds if not thousands of free themes exist, which allow you to alter the appearance of your site in seconds, with hardly any technical experience necessary. Plugins and widgets are used to add additional functionality to your site like integrating your latest twitter comments to your site. And if you cannot find precisely what you want there is a thriving after market of designers and developers who will happily help you construct something unique. Using websites such as Elance, you can outsource such development work to developers across the globe, sometimes at rock bottom prices.

About Stuart Melling

Stuart Melling co-founded 34SP.com in October 2000. The firm has particular expertise in WordPress hosting. As business director Stuart is responsible for the development of new and existing hosting services; from pricing and marketing to the direction 34SP.com products take. A keen cook, Stuart spends his spare time perfecting and trying out new recipes at home.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: online presence, web hosting, WordPress
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

A quick explanation of CommentLuv: Basically, it’s a special comment feature that rewards people who comment here on the site with a link to their most recent blog post. The plugin grabs it automatically and does all the work without the commenter having to do anything special. The links are still nofollowed, so there’s no incentive for spammers, but hopefully commenters will get some real traffic from interested visitors to this site. Cool, huh?

Anyway, that’s not what this post is about. This one is about showing you how easy it is to give the commenter’s CommentLuv link some special CSS styling. I wanted to do this because I noticed that the post links didn’t stand out as much as I wanted them to. I wanted to put a little extra space between your comments and the actual CommentLuv latest post link, and I wanted to italicize it as well. So, I dug around in the source code for a second and realized that the plugin was using a class called “cluv”. That’s all I needed to know. Woot!

So, if you want to style your CommentLuv links, just go to Appearance / Editor and edit your blog’s stylesheet. Scroll down to the bottom and add the following line:

.cluv {margin-top:10px; font-style:italic;}

Save your edit, and that’s it! You’ve now added a little extra space between the comment and the link, and you’ve italicized it as well. Of course, feel free to style them any way you want. That’s just an example of what I did.

Let me know if you get any traffic from your CommentLuv links when you comment here. I really hope I can send some your way.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 33 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: commentluv, CSS
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

These people usually either create static HTML sites (difficult to manage), or they use a traditional CMS application. A CMS allows them to dynamically generate and manage “static” (or rarely-changing) content. They usually don’t consider using WordPress to create and manage these types of sites. Because WordPress has its roots as a blogging tool, it can easily be overlooked as excellent way to manage content of any sort. Don’t be fooled by its normal use as a blog-centric content manager. Content is content, and WordPress rocks as an easy way to manage content.

It only takes a few additional steps to rid WordPress of its blog-centric roots and use it as a “traditional” CMS. The key is to use Pages for most of the site (the “static” part) and Posts just for the blog subsection of the site. Here’s how to do that.

1. Install WordPress. Either follow the WordPress Installation Guide or use EasyWP WordPress Installer.
2. Set up pretty permalinks so your pages URLs will look like yoursite.com/blue-widgets/ instead of yoursite.com/?p=1234. I recommend using the Custom structure: /%postname%/. Most people will be able to make this happen with no extra effort, but some web hosts and servers require special instructions to enable pretty permalinks.
   
3. Create a new PAGE called Home. Add all the content that you wish to have on the home page. Publish.
   
4. Create a new PAGE called Blog or News or Articles or whatever you want to call the interior section you’ll use for dated posts. Do NOT add any content to this page. Leave it blank. Also: Do NOT choose a custom page template for this page. WordPress will understand (in the next step) that it should automatically use the standard blog, sorted-by-date listing of posts type of template.*
5. Go to Settings / Reading and set the page you created and called Home as the front page. Then set the page you created and called Blog or News as the posts page. more info…
   
6. Most WordPress themes make the assumption that comments on pages are undesirable, so the page template does not include the comments code. This is my preference as well, and I recommend that you not allow comments on pages (but of course, I believe comments on posts are usually essential). If that’s also your preference, and if your theme does not show a comments form on your pages, then you can skip this step.

   However, if your theme does include comments on pages, and you’d rather not mess with the code, you can turn off comments for pages completely, regardless of how the theme is coded. There’s no direct way to turn off comments just for all pages. If you uncheck “Allow people to post comments on the article” in the Settings / Discussion panel, you’ll be turning off comments on both Pages and Posts, which is usually not desirable. Instead, you can turn off comments one at a time for each page when you create or edit each one, but there’s a good chance you’ll forget to do that on one or more pages. I prefer to use a plugin to handle the problem with ease, so it can be just a “set it and forget it” type of action. To do that, I suggest useing the Use No Comments on Pages plugin to turn off comments on pages.

7. Ever since WordPress 3.0, its new menu system lets you drag and drop the items you want in your menus in whatever order you want them to appear in. It’s easy and smooth, but your theme has to support it. Old themes may not, so be sure to look for a theme that says it supports WordPress’ 3.0 menus.
8. That pretty much concludes the setup. Now all you have to do is add a new PAGE every time you want to create a new “static” page on the site, and add a new POST every time you want to create a new dated post in the Blog or News section.

* Themes often include a Home link in the header menu. If so, you may need to edit the header file (or whichever file contains the menu) to delete it, or you’ll end up with two Home links in your menu. First look for any link that has the anchor text (link text) of “Home”. It may look something like this:

<a href=”<?php echo get_option(‘home’); ?>/”>Home </a>”

When you find it, just delete it, and you’re done.

Note 1: If you want to read more information about the concept of Pages and Subpages vs. Posts, go here.

Note 2: Look for plugins to easily additional functionality, such as shopping carts.

Want me to install and configure WordPress for you? I offer WordPress installation services now.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | 44 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blog, CMS, content management systems, WordPress
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.