Ready Made Logos and Templates
Ready made logos and templates are here again! I’m cleaning out my computer files and adding more ready made logos and templates for purchase. All ready made images are one of a kind and only sold to one customer.
These come with high resolution images and may include custom coloring to match your website or color scheme. Need more customizing? Ask for a quote!
More to come as I finish digging cleaning out my archive of files! Spring cleaning, the digital version!
Check out all the pre-mades here.
Autism Awareness Month
Just like I do every April I rant about Autism acceptance and neurodiversity. This year I’ll spare you a new rant and give you the link to a new Cafe Press store with some neurodiversity clothing for yourself and your kiddo! Quirky Kids. Why am I linking to this? Yours truly designed the logo and set up the store. I just thought it would be a fun idea!
Miss my rant? Check out last year’s Autism Awareness post on the WSM blog.
I talked about the book by John Robinson called Look Me in the Eye and posted the top misconceptions about Neurodiversity.
Zagg iPad Products Review
I’ve had my iPad since September and use it daily. First of all, I have a nasty habit of scratching screens on my iPhones so I knew right away that I had to protect my iPad. I opted for the Zagg screen protector to be installed by the BestBuy staff. First of all, this 10 minute installation took an hour and they went through several screen protectors while trying to get it on right. When I left I was only half satisfied with their claim that the bubbles would be gone within a few hours. 24 hours later they were still there and I was dying to try out my new gadget! Painfully, I waited. I took my iPad to another BestBuy and had them inspect it to get their opinion on the installation. Right away they agreed that it was not put on properly and replaced it for me. This time it was a much quicker installation that went much smoother with great results. I now only have one tiny problem area that I can mostly ignore. Really, my issues here are with the BestBuy staff and not Zagg… but if they had such a hard time installing it when they do it every day I can only assume that the average consumer may struggle as well. How well does it work? Awesomely! I have yet to get a scratch and even with my kids constant marring of the surface it still looks great and has held up. The feel is more rubbery than the iPad screen naked is, but after a week you don’t even notice it anymore.
I tried many cases and found most of them bulky. I then decided I really wanted to be able to type with a keyboard instead of the on screen touch pad. For awhile I hauled around my extra wireless Apple keyboard but soon found it just impractical. The wireless is bulky and I was afraid I was going to pluck keys off when I stuck it in my purse or backpack. Since I use this item every day I wanted to find a great solution.
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Understanding Your Design
During the mockup phase you’ll receive a full size rendition of your web site design. When we discuss your layout it’ll help if you understand the parts of your design that we are focusing on and I’m hoping this blog article will help.
When creating a web site its ideal to have the same look and navigation throughout the site. Changing the look or navigation on each page can confuse your customer and make them more likely to leave your site to shop somewhere else. The only exceptions are catalog pages that may utilize categories to help make browsing easier, as long as the customer can still access the rest of your site too! Preferably you want to be able to get to anywhere on your site in 2 clicks or less and direct access is even better. The more accessible your products are, the more likely the customer will spend time browsing your site and finding an item they want to purchase. If your customer has to click “catalog” and select the “category” they want each time they want to look for another item, they will quickly become frustrated and shop elsewhere.
Web designs, especially those on cart systems, are built and coded in a template system. This means one or two files run the entire site. The content is the area within the template that changes depending on the page that the visitor is looking at. Generally I wont design for content because that will change on every page, instead I design for the over all look of the site. If you do have pages that need alternative navigation or design that requires another template to be made and not included in my design packages. Please ensure to specify that you require more than one look, or template before your project begins so that you are not surprised with the additional design fees associated with them.
Below are a couple web site examples that may help you understand the parts of the web layout and template.
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Just Ordered a WSM Web Design, Now What?
So you’ve taken the leap and decided to have Web Savvy Mama design you an awesome new site! Great! Now what?
1. First of all, I’ll email you to confirm your purchase and ask you any pre-design questions that we may not have covered. If you filled out a Quote Request form prior to purchase we’ve probably already discussed everything, if not then this is what I’ll have you fill out to get started.
2. The next step for me is to start working on your full scale graphic mockup. All design projects take a projected 6-8 weeks, as noted in the design contract. Some may get done quicker, some will use the entire time. This is a commonly asked question so I’m throwing it in here. The mockup process is usually the longest stage. This is the time I use to look over your ideas, suggestions and review sites you have indicated you like so that I can get a feel for what layout and style will best suit your site. Once I have an idea (which usually hits me at 2am as an “Ah ha!” moment) of how it should look I start to draw and create a full scale visual to present to you. This can take anywhere from 1-2 weeks, like I said, this is the longest part of the process.
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No Admin, WordPress Stripped my Priveldges. Oh No!
Today I went to login to my WordPress admin and suddenly I had no capabilities. I couldn’t access pages or posts or see anything besides what normal subscribers could see. In a panic I logged out and logged back in thinking I screwed something up. Nope, still broke. Scratching my head I wondered how this could have happened? No clue, must have been a database hiccup or other random error that aligned things perfectly to strip my privileges and halt me in my posting tracks. But how do I fix it? I scoured the web trying to figure out how to word my issue correctly. Finally, I found an obscure reference for adding a admin user via database. “Ah ha! That should have the information I need!”
So should this ever happen to you, here is how you fix it:
(pre-step: if you aren’t comfortable editing databases.. BACK IT UP! Make sure to save it in case you make a mistake)
1. Login to your Cpanel or hosting admin panel. Find the area that says phpMyAdmin and login there. This will give you access to the database that holds your WordPress installation.
2. Select your database from the list of databases (if you have more than one.)
3. On the left hand side click “wp_users” , find the username you want to restore to admin access and note the ID #
4. On the left hand side click “wp_usermeta”
5. This next step you’ll have to look at two columns to make sure you have the right entry. Find where the user_id column shows the ID for the user you want as admin AND also has the meta-Key column displaying “wp_capabilities”
6. Click the little pencil icon on the entry you identified above in order to edit it.
7. In the space for meta_value paste this in: a:1:{s:13:”administrator”;b:1;}
the above makes all the difference, you know this was your issue if it said a:1:{s:13:”subscriber”;b:1;}
8. Click “Go”, your database should now be updated with the correct admin permissions and you can login with your full access restored.
I hope this will help someone else avoid the frustrations that I had trying to figure this out.