My Eyes, My Eyes! Big Blog Sale!
So I got the all-clear that my eyes are healed, yay! For those who are a little late to this party, I recently suffered corneal abrasions on both my eyes that covered the majority of my corneas. They were chemically etched. Yikes is right! After 4 days completely blind, then another week of just ok vision I now have my vision back and eyes are healed. That is a lot to celebrate!
I’m passing on my excitement with a big blog sale! Its my opinion that business web sites can benefit immensely from blogs being incorporated. Any web site for that matter! To celebrate being back to designing and to also help raise funds to cover the cost of expenses related to my eye injury I’m having this sale.
When you purchase a web site design package and add a matching blog design to your order I will take %50 off that matching blog! I’ll design a theme to match the web design you ordered and install it to the associated WordPress blog on your new site! You’ll have a fresh new blog to chronicle all your excited about your fresh new web site.
How do you take advantage of this sale? Simply add your design package using the package picker (Get Started @ top) and check the “Add a Matching WP Blog Theme” option. After you add that to your cart you can use the coupon code: BLOGTASTIC at checkout to get your discount.
eCommerce site owners start here | Informational site owners start here
That’s it, its that easy! So check out the design packages and get your BLOGTASTIC savings on your matching WordPress blog theme.
Facebook Connect for WordPress
You may have noticed, or not, that there is a floaty box in the upper right corner of the Web Savvy Mama blog now. This is the status window for the Facebook Connect plugin I’m trying out on this blog. What is Facebook Connect? Its a plugin that you can add to your wordpress blog to allow your readers to login and comment using their Facebook profiles. Not only with they use the same login, but their avatar will be the one from their Facebook profile as well.
The good part is that if you use Facebook as a marketing tool and login as your business, it can be a great way to promote. It also keeps the various logins to a minimum and makes it easier for your readers to post.
The bad part is that, so far, I haven’t found a way to implement a nickname instead of displaying your full name as it does on Facebook. Crossing my fingers that they fix that in a future release.
Brave enough to post from your Facebook? Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Add a blog? Yes please!
Web Savvy Mama has been creating custom matching blogs for web designs for awhile now. I specialize in creating WordPress blogs that match the current website design.
Why is a blog so important for my website?
Blogs are an excellent way to bring readers and potential customers to your website! Its an easy way to keep your content fresh and up to date. Blogs are also a great way to highlight a product that may not normally get noticed or to announce an awesome sale you plan on having! Want an easy way for visitors to stay up to date on on your site’s activities? Add a blog. Want to share a find you found on the internet your customers may enjoy? Blog about it! Maybe you want to do a link swap with another person in your niche business area. A blog post is the perfect way to announce your affiliation or show your love of the other shop.
Above all, blogging on your website increases your textual content and gives a medium for you to post your desired keywords and link to your products. Search engines love blogs and when your blog is indexed, so is your website along with all those valuable keywords and content!
What blog platform should I choose?
Web Savvy Mama has a soft spot for WordPress. I love the flexibility, the integration and the enormous amount of plugins available. WordPress is also FREE and can be hosted right on your website with your domain.
How can Web Savvy Mama help?
I specialize in custom matching WordPress themes. If you have a website, chances are I can create a theme to match it. If you have a Web Savvy Mama designed theme even better, just tell me you want a blog theme added to your design package. Matching blogs from an existing design start at just $80! Feel free to contact WSM to get a quote for your blog project.
WordPress: Lets talk Plugins.
Plugins are one of the easiest things to include on your blog, but are very under used. Plugins can make your blogging experience a much more enjoyable one if you are dealing with issues like spam!
After searching plugins on my own and getting some feedback and information from Michelle at Waterswebblog, I found some plugins that I think every WordPress user should at least look over. First you need to know how to install a plugin. That’s the easy part! After downloading and unzipping you connect to your host via FTP and find your “plugin” folder. Then upload the applicable parts into the plugin folder. Each plugin comes with a readme text that will tell you exactly what parts to upload to your host. Then login to your WordPress admin and click Plugins and activate your plugin! Some plugins will have features that can be managed through the admin and others will need a simple code placed into the template, this varies per plugin and the information should be available in the readme file or on the website you downloaded it from.
Spam: Lets start with the most annoying experience related to blogging: SPAM. You post a new message and start getting umpteen comments all in reference to the newest drug craze or adult entertainment website. Puh-leaze, do I look like someone who would benefit from an “all natural male enhancement”? First thing on my list to conquer. A quick search at WordPress led me to this lengthy list of spam fighting plugins http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools. But which one will work for me? That’s when I IM’d Michelle (like us geek mommies have anything else to do at 11pm?) and asked her advice on a spam plugin. She led me to Spam Karma: http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/ Spam Karma was an easy plugin to install. No need to place code on my template,just upload and activate. There are settings for how strict you want to set your spam protection that you can mess around with on the admin. Spam Karma checks all my comments messages before it posts them and rates them on how spammy they are and assigns numbers to those characteristics. A URL in the comment may kick back a negative rating but not enough to “spank” it. (Spank is what it calls nipping the spam in the bud). Multiple URLs will red flag the comment and it gets spanked and placed in a managing area of your admin for you to view when you get time. It also rates based on linkback URL and how quick the comment it was made after the visitor logged onto your blog. Each day I get an email stating how many comments were flagged and how many were passed. At anytime I can manually go in and approve a comment that was flagged or vice versa. This turned out to be a very handy tool and saves me a bunch of time.
Technorati Tags: The next plugin I checked out was a Technorati Tags plugin. Have you ever visited the Technorati website? http://technorati.com/ You can find blog enteries based on tag words. Its a great way to find new blogs based on a few keywords. Technorati is also a great way to get your blog out there more! Being able to tag words in your enteries to appear in Technorati searches is a neat idea right? It’s not hard either! This plugin called Simple Tags is a easy to use plugin that lets you create tags in your entries: http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/ When you put install this plugin and tag words the keywords show up at the bottom of your entry as well and let your reader search Technorati for more blog entries with the same tags. To create keywords or “tags” you tag words with brackets as illustrated on the Simple Tags site I liked to above. Simple enough?
AdSense: How about earning some money from your blog? You’ve seen it elsewhere: AdSense. AdSense is a Google advertising system that lets you place little text or graphic ads on your website. When a person clicks on the ad you get money. An example can be seen here: http://momsfavoritestuff.com You have a few ways of adding Google AdSense code. You can add it to your template directly or you can add it using a plugin. The plugin method is easier to manage and change out the code. The plugin used on Mom’s Favorite Stuff blog is this one: http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/ After loading the plugin all you have to do is add a plugin php tag to your template where you want the adds to show up and the rest is manageable through the plugin manager in your admin. With this plugin you can also include adds directly in your posts. But remember, Google only allows 3 ad blocks per page so some will disappear if you add more than that.
There are endless plugins but I’m going to leave you at those 3 for now. Do you have a plugin you’d like to share? Post it in the comments and I will check it out!
Technorati Tags: Plugins, WordPress, SPAM, Technorati, Simple Tags, AdSense
WordPress Themes: Starting Your Custom Theme
Tutorial navigation:
Starting Your Custom Theme
Creating the Loop
Creating the Footer
Creating the Sidebar
Adding Comments
Finishing Your Custom Theme
Do you want to create a custom WordPress template? Don’t know where to start? I’ll attempt to de-code the WordPress layout in this series of tutorials to help you learn how to create your own unique layout. While doing these templates I’m assuming you already have WordPress installed on your own host and know the basics of how to upload. Learning how to create a template isn’t hard, but you’ll have an easier time if you already have a grasp of the basics of HTML and designing with CSS and divs. Before we go any further I will warn you that using FrontPage is not ideal and I can’t predict how this will work with Frontpage. If you want to use a editor stick to Dreamweaver or other comprable editor. Otherwise you can create all of the following in a basic text editor like notepad.
Need a recap on these basic skills?
View my FTP guide here: FTP Guide
View my HTML crash course here: HTML Guide
First things first, you need to know what files you’ll be working with. One template is compiled of several files, like puzzle pieces.
Technorati Tags: Custom Theme, WordPress template, WordPress
WordPress Themes: Creating the Footer
Tutorial navigation:
Starting Your Custom Theme
Creating the Loop
Creating the Footer
Creating the Sidebar
Adding Comments
Finishing Your Custom Theme
This is part of the WordPress Themes tutorial.
Now that your header is finished you’ll want to close your page with the footer. Open the footer.php file. The footer runs along the very bottom of your blog and holds any copyright information. You can be creative in this area too! Add a div and format it if you want to have it span the bottom or to give it a specific style. You can add another list of your pages here if you like, contact information or anything that you think fits your blog. After you have added any footer information you’d like to appear you need to close out any divs you opened at the beginning that were wrapping your page. (table and cell tags if that’s what you are using).
A couple tags you may want to include in your footer are:
<?php echo date("Y")." "; bloginfo(‘name’); ?>
The above tag puts in the name of your blog with the year in front of it. Good for automatically including your blog information in the copyright.
<?php wp_loginout(); ?>
The above tag is the login and log out feature. You can log in to make changes and your readers can login to leave comments.
Then add this tag followed by the body tag:
<?php do_action(‘wp_footer’); ?> </body>
Save your footer.php file and continue to WordPress Themes: Creating the Loop
Technorati Tags: Custom Theme, WordPress Theme, tutorial