Have a plan

Let’s take a look a few key points when hiring a web designer, first you need to establish what it is that a web designer is going to do for you. Before you even approach a web designer, know what you want. It’s far too easy for web designers to accidently overwhelm you with technical jargon and deliver something that might not meet your needs.

Understand their role

A web designer is a tool much like a hammer, you can build a great house with them but you can’t depend on them to be everything, all the time just like you can’t expect an architect to be a great plumber. What most people think of as web design falls into several special categories:

• Web designers, the people who control the look and code static HTML for browsers to read
• Web developers, who program website dynamic code for ’smart’ websites
• Web marketers, who promote your website and create social media links
• Web architects, the people who plan complex websites
• Web content developers, people who write and edit text for your website

Freelance web designers are often great at one thing, sometimes two but rarely three or more. If you’re unsure if the web designer you’re talking to can complete all the tasks required, hire additional help.

Shop Smart

If you’re the type of person who wants (or needs) to succeed online, shop smart and shop around. Once you have a comprehensive plan for what you (the business owner) wants, talk to at least three web designers and get equally comprehensive quotes from each. Remember, you’re in control of your own website and need to feel educated and properly equipped to make the best choice possible.

If all else fails, ask me for an opinion I offer comprehensive consulting services designed to help business owners make better website decisions and build better websites.

To stop yourself from being counted as a visitor, all you need to do is add a simple piece of code to your websites header.php file that will read:

[source lang="php"]<?php
if (is_user_logged_in() == 1) {
if (wp_get_current_user()->ID == 1) {
setcookie("analyticsexcludeme", "analyticsexcludeme", time()+3600);
}
};
?>[/source]

Make sure the code is placed above the Google Analytics code (which I always like to place in the footer of my websites anyways). Once this code is placed in your header file, your website is updated but you’re not finished yet!

The code is only the first part, it’s what tells Google that you’d like to be excluded but now we need to actually exclude you.

Log into your Analytics account and click Analytics Settings.

Next, open the Filter manager (very bottom right corner).

Finally, add a new Filter with the settings:

This will tell Google to exclude all visitors who have the cookie “analyticsexcludeme” in their web browser, the same cookie we set earlier in the header code section of this tutorial.

The theme features a rich, three column layout for the homepage and a large single column for content within the website. I’ve purposely left formating to a minimum on this theme to allow web designers to rapidly introduce their own creative elements to the theme and make changes.

You can preview the theme live here on thisismyurl.com or download and enjoy the theme free of charge on your own website.

Building links to your hotel’s website is a critical step in promoting your online business, especially if you are a company such as a hotel who depends upon people from outside your community for business.

Read More

To block an advertisement, you simply need to place the destination URL (where the ad is linked to) into the Competitive Ad Filter dialog box and within a few hours, Google AdSense will stop serving ads to that domain. Pretty easy right? Well there is one problem … how do you know where the ad is linking to?

Finding the desination URL of an AdSense Ad

First off, do not click your own ads. 

Wait … let me repeat that again … do not click the ads. If you click ads on your own website, you’ll earn money from the program and violate your Terms of Service. Google will figure it out (they’re pretty clever) so just don’t do it.

Instead, you’re going to have to do a little bit of detective work but it’s super easy.

1. View the source code of your webpage. To do this, right click or look under the View or Edit menus for an option
2. Search for the phrase googlesyndication.com/pagead/adclick which is how every Google ad looks.
3. After you’ve found the correct ad, look in the code and you’ll see a value titled &adurl= along with a domain name address. For example &adurl=http://www.thisismyurl.com so the domain name that you’d like to stop serving ads for is www.thisismyurl.com.

Now that you know the domain you’d like to cancel ads for, simply visit the Competitive Ad Filter  and add the link.

Usage

To use the Easy Technorati Tags for WordPress plugin, simply download and install onto your WordPress website. You can then add it to your theme by inserting the code <?php echo timu_technorati_tags() ;?> to your blog theme files or to a sidebar widget.

Output

The tag generates a comma separated list of tags complete with Technorati links. I choose to return it as a value rather than write it directly so that if you’d like to make changes or process the results, you can do it easy.

You can download the plugin directly from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Don’t forget to rate the plugin if you’ve enjoyed it.

How You Can Help

I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.

Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.

As a business owner, I think it’s time for everybody in the city from tourism to retail and services to look at their own website and ask themselves some basic questions:

1. Has my website been updated in the last month?
2. Does my website reflect my business objectives?
3. Is my website meeting my marketing requirements?
4. Does my website link to other Fredericton businesses?
5. Am I proud of my website?

As I’ve written throughout my website, the purpose of a website is to market yourself and your business so if you’re not able to answer those five basic questions in a positive manner, perhaps it’s time to hire a local Fredericton web designer to help you build a better website?  Here are some great local, Fredericton web design firms you can call to help build a great website (in no particular order):

• Black Ink - www.blackink-design.com – (506) 454-6290
• Smartypants.com Inc. – www.smartypants.com – (506) 455-3108
• Mediacrossroads Web Media – www.mediacrossroads.com – (506) 450-9489D. 
• Creative Juices – www.thecreativejuices.ca – (506) 460-8347
• Red Cow Technologies, Inc. – www.redcow.ca – (506) 458-1290
• Firefly Design – www.fireflydesign.ca – (506) 459-4113
• Emerge Designs – www.emergedesigns.net – (506) 458-2692
• Nictech Designs inc. – www.nictechdesigns.com – (506) 451-9687
• Vagrant Web Services – www.vagrantweb.ca – (506) 455-9321
• Biggar Studio – www.biggarstudio.com – (506) 447-9144 

What to look for in a website designer

When you’re looking to hire a website designer, be sure to ask for a few basic things to ensure that the website project goes smoothly.

1. Ask for references, web designers are notoriously cranky … make sure you can work with the person you’ve hired.
2. Look at their previous projects, do you like the style and creative energy they’ve put into it? Chances are, your website look and feel similar in the end.
3. Do your research by seeing how well their clients appear in Google. For example, if you’re a local car dealership search Google for other dealerships the web designers built to see how it ranks.
4. Shop around and get quotes from at least three web design firms before making your selection to ensure that you’re getting the best value for your dollar.
5. Ask your design team if they really have the time, experience and expertise to build your website. Remember, your marketing project shouldn’t be a learning curve for them.

Get a second opinion, it’ll save you in the end

As a consultant, I often help non technical businesses make sense of their online marketing solutions. If you’re moving forward on a web marketing project why not give me a call and let me help you work with your web design team here in town? I offer small and medium sized businesses a fresh set of eyes to review web projects and help ensure your site meets international standards, meets deadlines and comes in under budget.

Why? 

The smiley face is actually being loaded through a series of JavaScript calls from a remote server, the graphic isn’t actually located on your website at all! It’s part of the WordPress.com Stats plugin and is designed to help track visitors to your website but … it’s kinda ugly and a pain in the ass so to get rid of it all you need to do is add some code to your header.php file. Specifically, open your style.css file and add the following CSS:

[source lang="css"]img#wpstats{display:none;}[/source]

If you’re absolutely petrified of opening and editing your CSS files directly you can either pay a WordPress expert to do it for you (that’s the choice that my wife always prefers) or you can download my simple plugin which can be uploaded to your website and activated, automatically adding the code to the proper place.

How to Install

1. Download the plugin
2. Log into your WordPress Admin (http://[yourwebsite]/wp-admin
3. Surf to Plugins -> Add New
4. Select the ZIP file and Install Now
5. Activate the Plugin

For those of you who would like to know more about the Smiley Face frustrustration, Ryan Imel wrote a great piece on it a while back and there’s also a great piece on My Digital Life.

How You Can Help

I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.

Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.

This a very simple script, designed to help the non technical user get immediate feedback about their blog.

It’s very easy to run a phpinfo() session without running a plugin and I can already hear a lot of people pointed out that this is a little like swatting a fly with a bulldozer but recently I’ve been working with a lot of charities and not-for-profits who lack in-house technical support and the simple process of running a phpinfo() query was daunting.

For those of you who want to run this as a page rather than a plugin, you can upload a php script to your website with the following code:

<?php phpinfo(); ?> 

Once you upload the code, simply access the page via the URL. On the other hand, if what I just typed made no sense what-so-ever … 

How You Can Help

I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.

Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.

People are amazing, they talk about wanting to drive more traffic to their website and increase their presence on Goggle but how many are really up for the challenge? How many people out there truly want to drive traffic to their website and build an online presence? Are you serious about increasing your own PageRank? Well now is the time to find out.

I’ll give every one of you a free link back on the footer of my website (that’s over 5,000 pages) to help you promote your own website, for free. There’s no catch, no tricks and no limitations. You want to build your website traffic and increase your exposure on the internet? It’s yours for free. All you need to do is compete with the other people reading this to earn one of ten top poster comment spots in the lower right hand corner of my blog.

Here’s how it works, every time somebody posts a comment on my website they not only get a link from the specific page on my blog that they’re commenting on but the website also begins counting the total number of posts they’ve made (and I’ve accepted). The top ten each day get listed in the footer of my website for the world (and more importantly Google) to see.

That means that ten people get  more than 5,500 FREE, high quality PR5 links directly from my website to their website for doing nothing more than commenting on my articles, correcting me when I’m wrong or pointing me to other awesome content on the web. Even if you’re not one of the top 10, you still get at least one or two PR5 links from my website to yours just for leaving the comment. 

So how do you know when to comment? Simple, subscribe to my RSS feed, Twitter me or get updates by Email.  Every time I post a new article, you’ll be told and if you can add something to the post, correct one of my many mistakes or point me to a great source for more details … you’ll get a free high quality PR5 link right back to your website.

It works by placing a small JavaScript in the header of your document.

=== Plugin Name ===

Contributors: christopherross
Plugin URI: http://www.thisismyurl.com/wordpress/plugins/no-more-frames
Tags: frames
Requires at least: 2.0.0
Tested up to: 2.7.0
Stable tag: 0.5.1

Many websites try to load your content into their own frame, to help sell ads on their sites. This simple plugin ensure your site is protect from this using a simple piece of code in your document header.

== Description ==

Many websites try to load your content into their own frame, to help sell ads on their sites. This simple plugin ensure your site is protect from this using a simple piece of code in your document header.

== Installation ==

To install the plugin, please upload the ourprogess folder to your plugins folder and active the plugin.

== Updates ==

Updates to the plugin will be posted here, to [thisismyurl](http://www.thisismyurl.com/plugins/no-more-frames)

== Donations ==

If you would like to donate to help support future development of this tool, please visit [thisismyurl](http://www.thisismyurl.com/)

How You Can Help

I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.

Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.

All Things Digital

By this time, I think all of you know that I’m an avid rabid fan of WordPress, the free open source content management software that powers not only my own website but also that of my travel and tourism design company, Getaway Graphics. In fact, these days I use WordPress to power just about everything from photographer’s websites to restaurants, universities, pubs and farm orientated sites.It’s not because it’s free (although that’s a great reason) it’s also because the tool has made life easier for my clients by providing an easy to upgrade, easy to use interface for routine monthly maintenance to complex marketing tools.

The Christian Science Monitor

WordPress as an Online Magazine Platform

Today I wanted to look at one of the cooler applications of the WordPress platform, online magazines. The blogging tool is a natural fit for online magazines (sometimes called eZine’s) since it’s built in method of creating new posts is similar to that used to create complex newspaper articles. Web sites such as the Christian Science Monitor make extensive use of the build in Search Engine Optimization, as well as automated URL optimization which changes boring web addresses into easy to read, SEO friendly strings.

Chick Speak

Separation of Design and Code

What seperates WordPress from other free open source tools such as Drupal or Mambo is it’s ability to be easily customized with little programing knowledge or experience and to keep those customizations outside the core code. Each website (or in this case magazine) uses a single theme to make itself look and act different but is infact still running virtually all the code of other WordPress websites.  Since all the files which make a website look unique are stored in a single directory, the core components can be updated without having to recode special features or functions.

Oddity Cinema

Stability of Code

Since the front end (what the consumer sees) is always stored in a unique template directory, the rest of the WordPress structure is common among millions of WP installations around the world. I believe this is the single strongest reason to utilize the platform since unlike traditional CMS solutions or custom tools, the WordPress website is being tested, fixed and upgraded routinely by millions of users around the world. There isn’t another CMS  tool in the world that can claim that.

Backend

Boys Life

Finally, the best reason to using WordPress to power a magazine website has to be the easy of use, training and consistency the platform gives to a company or organization. Once trained on using the WordPress system (which usually takes a few hours) users can easily update, publish and manage thousands of pages of content without having to use other tools such as FTP or Dreamweaver.

I started writing this article as a simple means of showing you what I consider to be five excellent WordPress magazine themes but found myself writing a short essay on the positive aspects of the tool. Part of me considered changing the title or even tossing out this piece (as often happens) but instead I’ve decided to keep it along with the five great WordPress magazine themes that I’ve used as feature content for the piece. I hope you’ve discovered something new about WP from me here and if not, I at least hope you’ve seen some great examples of WordPress websites.

The five examples above are:

1. http://allthingsd.com/
   
2. http://www.csmonitor.com/
3. http://chickspeak.com/
4. http://odditycinema.com/
5. http://boyslife.org/

This plugin automatically generates a copyright notice from the first post in your blog to the current year. The Auto Copyright notice plugin fetches the first and last year of posts from the database and displays the results as a copyright notice on your website.

This process allows blog owners to add content retroactively, knowing that the  website will automatically find the first date a post is published as well as the last published date or the current year (whichever is later).

To use the plugin, simply download it and add the code  <?php echo  autocopyright();?> to your website where you’d like the copyright notice to appear.

How You Can Help

I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory.

Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.

Features

The fund raising tool is a true WordPress plug-in, testing with WordPress 2.7 and fully functional. It features:

• W3C compliant Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• Dynamically updated text including target and current fund status
• Money formating options for use internationally
• Theme options, allowing designers to customize the look of the thermometer
• Call either the graphic or a formated number to display in text.

Admin Features

The new interface allows uses to set both the current amount (what has been raised) as well as the target amount (what you want to raise). The script automatically generates the ten steps in between and displays them for the user.

The plugin auto detects if the money_format() function is present and will use it automatically if found, otherwise it will display the currency using the number format function automatically.

How It Works

To display the current amount of money raised (in currently format) place the following code in your theme:

<?php echo show_ourprogress();?>

For a graphical version (by default the thermometer), include the following code:

<?php show_ourprogress_graphic();?>

Where to Get It

The plugin can be downloaded from the official WordPress repository: 

How You Can Help

I love developing plugins for WordPress and do my best to always keep them free but of course it take a lot of time and effort to build these plugins so if you’d like to say thanks, the best way is to take a few moments and write about the plugin on your own website, include a link to my website from your posts or download and rate the plugin on the official plugin directory. 

Support forums are now online! If you have any questions, please visit http://forums.thisismyurl.com.

The site has been designed to be less of a blog and more of a feature set of my skills etc. but I also wanted to keep the blog part of the site alive, so I added a custom index page in WordPress and separated the template for pages vs. posts to appear different. The other major addition is some custom coding in the pages file which displays custom links for the Contact page and the new Blog page which features a category breakdown as well as the tag cloud for my site.

The sidebar and the homepage share custom content, called from hidden data stored as pages in WordPress. There is of course still RSS feeds and all the usual goodies that come with WordPress, since the new design is just a skin overtop the engine.

For those of you who don’t already know, Google Web Master Tools is a great collection of free utilities provided by Google to help web masters understand their own website and how they’re being viewed around the web.

Thanks Tammy.

If we take a look at two highly successful websites, Apple.ca and Bell.ca (yes, I am Canadian) we can see what millions of dollars of market research has determined is good design.

Bell Canada had determined that using only a few colors will help them tie online branding into real world branding. The few colors they’ve used correspond to the colors they use in their print materials but it also simplifies the design, allowing us to focus on the content. They easily provide options for shopping, navigation and support with little confusion for the user. Simply put, users can not make the wrong choice because Bell has made it too easy for them to make the right choice.

There are a few proven, indisputable truths in marketing and Apple has used every one of them in their corporate website. First and foremost, only show people what they need to see. If they want to see more, they can click the carefully designed tabs but by default users should only seen content that will help them make the decision to purchase. Secondly, Apple has been sure to design an interface that’s so easy to use that anybody from a grade school kid to a grandparent could figure it out. That’s not an accident, so we should learn from it. Finally, the design is clean. People like clean, clear and professional.

If you own your own website and you’re disappointed in the volume of sales, take a look at your own website and then look at those two examples above. Really look. If you want to compete on the web, your site should be as easy to use and professional at the ones featured here.