The secret of good design is to make things simple and easy. The design process starts with an idea and ends with the communication of that idea to a user or a customer. Blog posts are exactly the same – they communicate an idea to a user or a customer. Good blog post formatting aids this … [Read more...]
How To Install WordPress Locally Using MAMP
Any sort of WordPress development – testing themes and plugins, creating themes and plugins, etc. – can be done on your own computer. Why would you want to do this? You'll find the process much quicker and it'll stop you going crazy waiting for files to upload to the server. Getting … [Read more...]
Make a Copy “Dev” WordPress Site for Redesign
If you need to do a major redesign job on a WordPress site – either for a client or for yourself – it's best to copy the whole darn site and work on it in private. Once the site is copied and invisible to the rest of the world, you are free to go crazy on it. You can play around on the "dev" … [Read more...]
Featured Images in WordPress Widgets using Genesis
The most important blogging design improvement for the last few years has been use of the featured image or thumbnail image. This small rectangle of color provides the user with an visual teaser which they can click or tap in order to find out more or read a whole article. More and more … [Read more...]
Speed Up Your WordPress Blog
Even people like me who are old enough to remember the great sound of a dial-up modem (when I listen to that I still feel excited!) know that there is a need for speed on the internet. The above video on speeding up WordPress is part of a course I'm doing on Udemy about blogging, optimization, … [Read more...]
How To Start A Podcast With WordPress, Blubrry PowerPress and Libsyn
For the last few months now the blogosphere has been hot with the word "podcast". As podcasting is not as ubiquitous as video, small businesses can utilize this medium more effectively as there is less competition. If you want to start a podcast you could do no worse that to go to the podcasting … [Read more...]
SEO For A Small Web Design Business
Web design business owners may be required to do many things. Selling, accounting, marketing ... yes. Designing? Sometimes. But, master the dark arts of SEO? Surely not! You should, of course, be concentrating on providing the best services. That's a "given." But there is a reliable way of … [Read more...]
Split Test a Web Page using Google Analytics
Split testing or A/B testing just got a whole lot easier! The agony that was Google's Website Optimizer has been transformed into Google's Experiments and integrated into Google Analytics. http://youtu.be/RJCs71-TyeE Have a look at the video above to see how to split test a web page in … [Read more...]
Creating a WordPress Business Website with Agency from Studiopress
I'm constantly debating with my clients and the visitors here about the nature of a business website. Do you "set it and forget it" like some business-owners would like? Can you just build it in a few minutes like an easy-build website and watch the dollars roll in? Unfortunately not. I … [Read more...]
Why I’d Never Use “Easy-Build” Websites Like Intuit and 1&1
I got an email this week where I was asked how web designers can compete against the large "easy-build" website companies. Well, I don't think there's any competition. Web designers like me cater for a completely different market. The Halo Effect Psychologists have long known about the … [Read more...]
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