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: ‘Resources’
The Basics of Editing your New WordPress Site
November 6, 2009
Should you use subdomains or subdirectories?
April 8, 2009I receieved an interesting question from one of my photographer friends Gustavo Fernandez today. "Why do some folk have their address as blog.domain.com vs domain.com/blog? Is there a benefit?" I started to write back, but in doing a couple quick searches in the name of research, I found enough interesting information that I decided to write a post explaining it all. Subdomains vs Subdirectories photo credit: Tim DorrFirst, let's define what we are talking about: "blog.domain.com" is a subdomain while "domain.com/blog" is a subdirectory or a folder within a domain. A subdirectory is used as a folder within one domain to organize smaller pieces of content, like a category of several pages. For most people they will only ever need subdirectories. A subdomain creates more separation than just a folder, basically creating a stand alone site that could easily be it's own domain. However, you may want to piggyback on the main domain name.
Adding TinyMCE text editor to Project Pier
April 3, 2009I have recently started using the open source project management app called Project Pier to organize and coordinate my website projects. It is similar to some of the popular hosted services like Basecamp, No Kahuna, or GoPlan with a couple major exceptions - it is FREE and you install and run it on your own server. I will be adding an entire page to the site soon to show how I use Project Pier to upload and share files, send and receive messages and create task lists which can be shared and assigned to anyone working on a project. I might even create a demo project for anyone interested in seeing it in action. One of the things it was lacking was the ability to add links and other html to the messages. It used a simple text area and did not allow any formatting at all. In the past I
Batchbook blogs about me!
April 2, 2009So I have been using this web app called Batchbook CRM for almost two months now. They let you sort and tag all your contacts with a ton of great features that make keeping on top of your networking so much easier. I won't go into all the details of how it works here, but one of the things that was holding me back from completely loving it was that they don't let you send an email from directly within the app. They have 'mailto' links that open your email application. The problem for me is that I use gmail so I would have to go to a new window and just copy and paste addresses. It may not sound like a big deal, but it slowed things down enough that it was really making their whole system (slightly) less appealing. The other day I was messing around with Greasemonkey, an
The Spectrum and Spiral of Social Media
March 13, 2009photo credit: Robbie-73 Danny Brown has been a recent find of mine in the social media and PR world and a great addition to my reading. He is a PR consultant who writes some great articles with a very personal approach. Continuum or Spectrum? He recently had an interview with Tom Cunniff. The idea was The Continuum of Social Media. Being a physics geek, I had to check out anything with the word Continuum. The basic idea was that there is relationship between the size of the company (and the size of that company's needed audience) to the percentage of their media being social media vs. traditional paid advertising. Small companies or individuals could benefit from 99% social media and 1% (in some cases, like mine, 0%) paid media. Meanwhile large corporations selling to huge markets would be more like 99% paid advertising to 1% social media. In between there
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)
Using the Website Grader service from Hubspot
February 1, 2009In a post last week, PIFPhoto.com talked about Google's Keyword tool, one of the great free tools made available by Google for free to help analyze, enhance and promote your website. I left a comment mentioning a site called grader.com, which offers a number of great free tools to analyze your site's visibility to the search engines. It even offers suggestions for how to improve your site specifically. Lindsay at PIF, asked if I would be interested in writing a guest blogger article going into further detail on using the Website Grader. I was happy to take her up on the offer but the PIF site has undergone a redesign and now the post is no longer available. So I have recreated it below: There are three sections to the site: the 'Website Grader', the 'Twitter Grader' and the 'Press-Release Grader'. I have only used the website and Twitter sections, but
Blog Tips
January 11, 2009Eventually I will be sharing RSS feeds that I update when I find articles I think are useful. But for now, I'm just putting up some links from my shared Google Reader folders. Here is my feed of tips about Using, Designing and Promoting blogs.
Great WordPress Plugins
January 11, 2009I thought I would start off the Resource section with a quick nod to some of the developers who provied free plugins for wordpress. I start every new wordpress install with these plugins. All in One SEO Pack - Great options for manipulating meta data and search engne robots right from the admin panel. By Michael Torbert. the_excerpt Reloaded - Allows small excerpts to be displayed instead the whole content of posts. By Kaf Oseo. WP Post Thumbnail - One of my favorites. You have to see in action to appreciate it. It allows you to upload, crop and name up to three thumbnails for each post and then use those thumbnails when you display posts in different situations. I use it for the big featured image on my home page, & the smaller images when I list recent posts. By Stanley Yeoh.