running « Christopher Ross

Posts Tagged ‘running’

06
Jun
2009

Great Chefs Great Restaurant Web Theme

great chefs great restaurants wordpress theme Great Chefs Great Restaurant Web Theme image

Building a great website for your restaurant used to be really hard but one of the wonderful things about working with the great people at Great Chefs Television is that they want to make running your restaurant easier by helping to improve your image with this free website theme for WordPress.

How to use it

Step one download the free template and install it on your WordPress website, it’s really that easy! The theme features a rich, savory graphic from one of the hit TV show’s episodes but you can easily change it to anything you’d like by replacing the photo stored at /images/header.jpg.

Cool Footer

Along the bottom of this theme, I’ve coded a special loop which checks for the most recent five posts which feature a photo and it displays that photo as a link to your article or menu item.

Please feel free to download this theme for free or preview it here on thisismyurl.com.

Tags: download free, footer, Free Template, free website, great chefs, images, photo, Restaurant Web, running, Television, Tv Show, Web Building, Web Theme, Wonderful Things, Working People
Posted in Free Downloads, Web Design, WordPress Themes

01
May
2009

After I’ve launched a website, is it a lot of work?

14 Comments

Depending on the purpose of your website (What’s Your Revenue Model?) you should anticipate an investment of roughly 10% of the cost to develop the website each month in maintain it. Since small business owners often misvalue their time, let’s assume for this argument that your time is worth at least $20 per hour.

That means that in order for your website to succeed, if you spent $1000 to create your website (or 50 hours) you should be spending a minimum of five hours per month dedicated to your websites success.

Obviously this varies depending on the type of site that you’re running but I would say small business owners should plan to spend at least five hours a month on their website performing some fairly basic functions:

Reviewing website analytic reports to know who’s visiting them (and what people are doing on the site)
Adding fresh content as well as updating or removing old content
Promoting the website on other industry and related websites

In the case of websites which operate exclusively online (ie there is no retail or business to support), maintaining the website should be a full time job.

Tags: Analytic Reports, Business Plan, Business Support, full time job, Investment, Lot, Online Retail, Retail Business, revenue model, running, small business owners, Websites Success
Posted in Questions and Answers

26
Apr
2009

Is it possible to schedule videos on YouTube?

6 Comments

Well, the simple answer is no but … as well most things on the web, there’s a great work around (thanks to Donace over at the Nexus for pointing it out to me via Twitter).

Step One, upload your video but mark it private to ensure that it’s not live. This is always a good idea as it allows you to edit it online, change the title or keywords etc. before it’s live.

Step Two, mark it public on the proper day.

This isn’t nearly elegant as the built in timer in WordPress (How to schedule a post on WordPress) but it does have the advantage of allowing you to upload massive volumes of videos at the same time (I set mine to upload videos overnight) and I can release them on a schedule.

Scheduling a Reminder

Believe it or not, running a website or releasing videos is really hard work. Why? Mostly because it’s off in cyberspace and I forget to update the content! To get around this, one of the first tricks I used was to ask my wife to remind me but that got old very quickly so instead I started using iCal from Apple to remind me. If you’re on a PC you can use Outlook or if you’re looking for a free alternative, use the calendar built into Google’s Gmail!

The benefit of using something like Gmail is that the event may be shared with a group so if you’re not available somebody else on the team can do it for you.

Tags: apple, benefit, Calendar, Cyberspace, gmail, google, Keywords, massive volumes, Nexus, Reminder, running, Scheduling, Simple Answer, Timer, upload, Videos, Videos Hard, youtube
Posted in Questions and Answers, YouTube

20
Apr
2009

The best WordPress plugins, and why to use them.

12 Comments

What Plugins Are the Best WordPress Websites Running? but this week I wanted to take a quick look at what plugins I think are the best for WordPress websites and how a new blogger can make the most of the blogging platform.

photo credit: ryancboren

First off, there are some standards that everybody who runs a blog should be running as we’re not going to waste too much time looking at those. They are:

Akismet which provides exceptional protection against comment spammers through a shared reporting server.
No More Frames is a simple JavaScript plugin which forces your website to pop out of advertisers frames, this ensures that it’s your website (not others) who are earning revenue from your content.
Search & Replace adds functionality to the WordPress admin tool, allowing you to do a bulk search and replace for words or phrases. This is very handy when moving a website or just correcting an error on your website.
WordPress.com Stats offers a statistics tracking package but be careful. You should also download WordPress.com Stats Smiley Remover to ensure the creepy happy face goes away.
WordPress Database Backup emails a copy of your database to you nightly, very handy.
Google XML Sitemaps improves Google’s understanding of your website.

Here are some other, great plugins that a lot of people over look.

Comment Relish sends a short thank you note to people after they’ve posted a comment to your blog. My friend Chris fixed up a couple problems with the original publisher (Comment Relish Free WordPress Plugin) and made it truly brilliant.
LinkLove this little plugin works by adding a nofollow tag to outbound links until people post a few times. This helps protect your PageRank value.
Theme Switcher Reloaded is a cool plugin which allows you to host multiple themes on your website. This lets admins test new themes on their live websites without disrupting the existing look.
What Would Seth Godin Do one of the best plugins on the planet. This little baby adds a small welcome message for the first few visits.
WP Super Cache converts your website from a dynamic to a static site which is then cached for visitors to view. Sounds pretty technical but what is it really? It’s a way to ensure thousands of visit’s doesn’t crash WordPress.
WP Auto Tagger this is a new plugin for me but one that I’m in love with. It queries remote servers to determine the best tags for your post.
Simple Image Grabber WordPress Plugin is a nifty tool for pulling the first image out of your post and displaying it beside your excerpts, wonderful for homepage and portfolio searches.
Login LockDown tracks and protects your WordPress website admin (see also: How to Secure Your WordPress Website)
Show Top Commentators displays a list of the top commentators on your website, encouraging people to leave comments and increase your exposure.

Tags: Advertisers, Akismet, amp, Best Wordpress Plugins, blogger, Couple Problems, Database Backup, friend chris, google, Happy Face, Javascript Plugin, People, photo credit, phrases, Plugin Works, relish, running, seth godin, sitemaps, Spammers, statistics, wordpress plugin
Posted in WordPress Help

03
Apr
2009

I don’t get Twitter.

28 Comments

This morning there was an article by Erick Schonfeld called Biz Stone Plays It Cool On Colbert and I have to admit, I feel a little foolish professing this on a technology blog but I don’t really ‘get’ Twitter.

I think my problem ‘getting’ Twitter is that to me it’s a bunch of noise distracting me from my daily objectives. I already have an Instant Message client running as well as Skype, Facebook, an iPhone, iChat and my office phones. Not including my email, RSS subscriptions and usernet group updates … I guess in truth I just don’t understand the need for another source of chatter.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s got to be a purpose to it … I just don’t get it. I don’t think I’m alone either.

Biz Stone (Twitter) was on The Colbert Report last night and even he seemed unable to truly explain what the purpose of the popular social networking tool is. Jeremy Lichtman Lichtman has a point where he states there’s a high ‘noise to signal’ ratio, so maybe my issue with Twitter is the same issue I had as a kid when my uncle tried to get me to listen to the old Ham radio … maybe Twitter users are the modern, Internet version of dorky middle aged men talking to each other in closets?

Tags: Biz Stone, blog, Closets, Colbert Report, Facebook, Group Updates, guess, Ham Radio, Ichat, Instant Message, Internet Version, iphone, Lichtman, Message Client, Networking Tool, Plays, running, skype, social networking, Subscriptions, technology, Truth, twitter
Posted in Blog Posts

06
Feb
2009

Fredericton Meals on Wheels

5 Comments

First off, I want to thank everybody who took part in my Christmas promotion to help local organizations by donating your links to thisismyurl.com, there was a wonderful response to the promotion and because of all the kindness you showed me the local Fredericton chapter of the Meals on Wheels program has benefited with a new website.

The website is powered by WordPress which gives the staff at the organization the ability to quickly update content, it features the hugely successful theme iNove with a few minor changes and small army of plugins designed to optimize the experience for non technical staff.

Thanks again to everybody who helped out this year, I look forward to running the promotion again this year!

Tags: army, christmas, christmas promotion, kindness, meals on wheels, meals on wheels program, Minor Changes, Organization, Plugins, running, staff thanks, Technical Staff, WordPress
Posted in Web Design

03
Feb
2009

Mark Reese Photography

4 Comments

Since the new year I’ve been working with Mark Reese, a photographer based in Florida to build a new website portfolio for his work. Mark wanted his photo gallery to be easy to manage, fast for visitors and he wanted it to be something that he could maintain and manage himself.

I choose to use a very easy to use tool called WordPress as the content manager for his new website, it’s fast and easy to learn with a lot of great online documentation and a wonderfully supportive community. It also happens to be a tool that I know very well, so I felt comfortable offering it to Mark.

His photography website is designed to be used by photographers interested in displaying images, as opposed to running a photo business.

It’s an original, custom WordPress theme which doesn’t use any of the available gallery plugins to ensure compatibility. The website has a rich SEO base for organic online marketing, easy to use navigation and a very clean design used to highlight his pieces. As with most of my sites, it’s hosted with BlueHost.

What do you think? Do you know any photographers that you’d recommend me to? Are there other great photography websites built in WordPress you’d like to share?

Tags: compatibility, content manager, great photography, images, Lot, mark reese, Marketing Advice, New Year, Online Documentation, Online Marketing, photo business, photo gallery, photographer, photographers, photography web, Photography Website, Photography Websites, Plugins, Portfolio, running, Supportive Community, Website Portfolio, WordPress
Posted in Web Design

28
Jan
2009

WordPress PHPINFO() Plugin

18 Comments

It’s important for a non technical administrator to be able to diagnose server related problems in WordPress but also rapidly retrieve feedback regarding their web server. This simple plugin adds an option to an adminstrator’s Tools menu which displays standard phpinfo() feedback details to the user.

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.

Tags: adminstrator, blog, Bulldozer, charities, code lt, Directory Support, Displays, feedback details, Few Moments, fly, Lot, Own Website, php phpinfo, php script, Php Website, Plugin Directory, profits, running, Support Forums, technical administrator, technical support, upload, Upload Php, Upload Script, web server, WordPress
Posted in Free Downloads, WordPress Plugins

30
Oct
2008

Book Review: Content Rich by Jon Wuebben

3 Comments

Recently I won a copy of Content Rich by Jon Wuebben from Andy Beal’s website the Marketing Pilgrim. First off, let me say a huge thank you to Andy for running the contest and that I received the book yesterday. In fact, I didn’t put it down and finished reading it this morning. Now my dog eared, sticky noted copy of this great book is going to sit on my book shelf for a few days while I absorb the contents and then I’ll reread it paying extra attention to my own comments I wrote the first time through.

In his book, Jon covers a lot of ground with an emphasis on ensuring content is unique, interesting and above all focuses on the reader. Think of it as user-centric writing for the new age. He also talks about how to use blogs to sell your product and reminds us that recommendations are a powerful sales generator:

“Blogs are really great for another big reason: consumers end up buying from your compnay not because of you so much, but because of what other consumers are saying about your product or service, in the blog. ”

Buy Online: Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web

There are a couple other strong reviews for the book at the KISS Business and Business and Blogging that I recommend taking a look at.

Tags: andy beal, blog, blogging, book, Book Covers, Book Shelf, Business Advice, content, Few Days, Giveaways, Kiss, Marketing Advice, New Age, Online Content, Online Writing, Pilgrim, Reason Consumers, running, Sit, Website Marketing, Writing Your Way
Posted in Reviews

25
Sep
2008

Business Card for Rodonic Corporation

No Comments

When I was running our little design group in Ottawa, we needed a technology image that would easily communicate our high tech nature.

This full color business card was designed to have rounded corners and be printed on a thick, 14pt stock.

Tags: color business card, design group, graphic design, Nature Card, ottawa, Portfolio, rounded corners, running, Stock, stock business
Posted in Print