Most of the websites I have worked on over the last couple years have been built using WordPress, one of the best Content Management Systems available. It is extremely flexible and powerful, with great tools for Search Engine Optimization already built in. For a new user, however, it can be a little overwhelming once they log in for the first time. The WordPress backend is a little bit heavy and offers so many tools that it can be confusing for those new to the system. At first I was spending a lot of time on the phone talking clients through the same basic issues over and over. How do I add a new post? How do I create a new category? While these were new issues for them, I had to repeat myself over and over. So I put together a document that provides basic instructions for using WordPress and I have
Tagged with: ‘how to’
The Basics of Editing your New WordPress Site
November 6, 2009
Learn social marketing hands-on
July 15, 2009*****************THIS PROJECT IS NO LONGER ACTIVE ******************* I was brought on to 'Another Harvest Moon' in order to develop the website and build the social media component of the marketing campaign. This is an exciting opportunity for me to combine my interests in the film and web worlds. You can see the current website and trailer here: http://anotherharvestmoon.com/, although one of the first steps in the project is going to be a complete redesign of the site by Sauce Creative Group. Sauce will provide all the design elements and I will be programming the site using WordPress. This is a small indie film with a very small promotional budget but we are trying to create as much buzz as possible in order to help them get distribution. So we were looking for help with organizing and implementing an ambitious social media strategy. Please check out their sites: Official Webite: http://anotherharvestmoon.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/harvestmoonfilm Twitter: http://twitter.com/harvestmoonfilm Youtube: http://youtube.com/harvestmoonfilm
Finding a Hosting Service
February 11, 2009Whenever I am asked to start a new website, especially a Wordpress site, one of the most important questions to consider is the hosting service. There are a few good ones that I constantly recommend and many, many poor ones that I highly recommend you avoid. Unfortunately some clients have already signed up for a service on their own and that can lead to a lot of problems. Some Qualities to Look For: cPanel: This is a control panel system that you (or your designer) will use to setup email, control usernames and ftp access. The technical side of things is made MUCH easier with this. I won't work on a site without it. Fantastico or Simple Scripts: These are services that allow simple one-click access to many of the most popular web site scripts out there, like Wordpress, mailing lists, e-commerce plugins, etc. Most quality hosting services offer this. Unlimited (or essentially unlimited)
An Introduction to SEO
January 26, 2009The term SEO very simply stands for Search Engine Optimization. Yet most people seem to think it is some magic formula that will drive customers to their site. While the term SEO is still thrown around and still relevant, it is usually misunderstood and I often hear a lot of really outdated and sometimes downright wrong ideas about what SEO is - especially from potential clients. I can't tell you the number of times someone has asked me how much I charge to add keywords to their site and make them rank #1 on Google. I can tell you that my answer every time has been that it is not as easy as just adding keywords and anyone promising a number one ranking on Google is trying to scam you. Rather than get into the scam aspects here, I will just point out this article on 'Black Hat' vs 'White Hat'
Why SEO is Not Enough
January 26, 2009The biggest problem with all this craziness over SEO is that it gets confused with the real goal, which is simply to increase traffic to your site. If you could get meaningful traffic to your site without search engines, would SEO even matter? To take it to another level - think of this: increased traffic eventually leads to a better page ranking, so one of the ways to improve your sites SEO is to get traffic there. But isn't that why we want SEO? So where do we start? The Real Goal Let's start with our actual goal, which is not to rank #1 on Google, but to get more meaningful traffic to our site. Using SEO to rank higher in searches is merely one way of doing that. There are countless others. For example when I go to Geico.com, it is because I saw a TV commerical with a talking lizard,
Lighting Tips – Video for AFI Screennation
April 2, 2008