Posts Tagged ‘blog’

For clients interested in a custom cms web design with a matching custom WordPress blog, you may want to review the Custom WordPress Theme Portfolio.

This flash gallery presentation features 10 unique and one-of-a-kind custom WordPress blog themes with graphics linked to actual blogs. The flash gallery is inserted here for reference, also.

Each example custom WordPress theme is an integrated custom blog with graphics and navigation to match the main cms content management system web design. Use your back button to return to this review of the WordPress theme portfolio. View the examples then email us from any page with questions.

This entire website underwent a makeover recently with a cms redesign and blog conversion. I decided to stay with a similar beige color scheme to keep things familiar. The main site for custom cms web design, the custom cms websites advice blog, and the website design mailbag podcast were all redesigned. The advice blog and podcast were both converted from Blogger to WordPress, as well.

While a fresh look for this site is considered every 2-3 years, the blog format for the advice blog and podcast needed more immediate attention. Blogger announced a few months ago that they would no longer support ftp publishing of new blog posts effective May 1, 2010 which left some site owners wondering what to do.

I created custom WordPress blogs for several clients in the past, and one advantage of WordPress over Blogger is the open source software package that runs the blog is on the owner’s server. The real concern was for future changes in Blogger that would force some blog owners to redesign (again), so my advice to clients was moving from Blogger to WordPress to retain complete control over publishing.

In addition, I expanded the custom search engine (CSE) from Google to all pages in the top right sidebar of the main site, blog, and podcast. This advanced function allows visitors to search over 500 pages of content with advice for custom cms web design and related services.

Does your business involve visiting your clients to perform a service, install a product, or perform repair work? Consider your digital camera for WordPress blog ideas. A camera may be the perfect tool for collecting content for your website. From personal experience, many of my clients for custom cms web design with matching blogs need to invest more time in making blog posts. That camera may help.

My advice for creating new WordPress blog content is taking photographs. Before and after shots of the benefits of your product or service will make a great sales tool on your blog. Show prospects what you’ve done for customers. If you have techs or a repair staff, arm them with digital cameras to collect content, too.

Perhaps your business is all service providing intangibles like consultations, so you wonder if using photos makes sense. Consider a photo to illustrate the benefits showing you and the client in a meeting, and perhaps use the graphic for a testimonial. You might consider having them take a photo of you giving a presentation.

Maybe none of this seems appropriate for your business. Instead of photos, carry a notepad or voice recorder and take notes with as little as a simple phrase to remind you of a benefit or success that helped a customer. Use the real situation and write about it to show potential clients what you’ve done for others.

Ask your clients. You may find your happy customer would love to have their story told on your site, and maybe volunteer to have their photo accompany the blog post or testimonial. Make it easier for them. Take your camera for a ride.

Finally, online success does depend on adding original quality content often, so a cms web design or matching WordPress blog allows you to do just that, and easily. Add photos or graphics to keep your site more interesting.

Most SEO experts will state that it is difficult or next to impossible to achieve top search results getting free blogs on Google page one. However, sites on free hosting can make page one, and I feel that based on current lower costs to get online that top level domains are practical and preferred for personal websites. The real question of the day is can free blogs achieve Google page one?

The answer is ‘yes’. View the screenshot below (shown smaller than actual size) taken earlier today based on a visitor to one of my blogs. The search returned 3.7 million results for the phrase: Maine brook fishing. My personal blog of childhood stories entitled Growin’ Up in Maine is shown listed at #1 on page one.

SEO or search engine optimization is about quality content that returns relevent results in Google and the other major search engines. Obviously, the free blog of Maine stories has the content, credibility, and trust to be awarded the top spot on Google page one.

Another surprise search result for that blog was being #1 for the search phrase: cement lawn ducks. Granted, that search returns paid results above my free blog, yet most SEO experts will agree that the real goal and evidence of success is about being first in natural organic results.

While free blogs can make Google page one, my advice is buying a top level www domain. The Growin’ Up in Maine blog was a blog layout design experiment early in 2007 that I planned on scrapping. As it turns out nostalgia for the 1950′s and 60′s made the blog surprisingly popular with baby boomers and it got a reprieve. I suppose next I should take MY advice and put the Maine Stories on a paid domain, too.

For owners who have a Blogger blog design hosted on their server instead of Blogspot or a Blogger custom domain, the Blogger FTP publishing service to post and upload content to your server via FTP will cease on May 1, 2010.

If you have a blog that uses the Blogger platform, you should have received an email from the Blogger Team within the last 30 days announcing the date and reasons. The time to implement an action plan for Blogger blogs published to your server is NOW.

Google owns Blogger and explained that the small fraction of Blogger users who do publish via FTP does not justify the cost to maintain ongoing security to allow publishing to servers outside Blogger’s control. If you own a Blogger blog design hosted on your server, and you plan to continue being an active blogger, you MUST take action.

You still have two months to implement because the original deadline of March 26th in the announcement email was extended to May 1st. Act now. Plan now. Implement well before the deadline to avoid the risk of losing content.

This does NOT affect blog owners with free hosting on Blogspot who have a blog address like yourblogname.blogspot.com, or Blogger designs if you have a custom Blogger domain redirected to their servers.

If I designed your Blogger platform blog then you ARE publishing via FTP to your server and MUST take action. Here are the options to consider for affected blog owners:

1. If you choose to take no action you permanently lose the ability to add posts to your blog.
2. The most practical solution may be a technical setup moving to a Blogger custom domain.
3. An alternate solution is moving from a Blogger design to WordPress at significant cost.

NOTE: Other options may exist. The 3 presented are based on my experience and customer base.

Option 1 may be practical for blog owners who have not posted to their blog in 12 months, or more. Your blog most likely has zero ranking and if you have truly abandoned your blog, you could remove it or let it just sit. Do nothing and existing posts will remain on your server unless you remove them.

Option 2 is the most practical and perhaps cost effective solution for blog owners who want to remain active in publishing blog posts. The technical steps to move from your server to a blogger custom domain means redirecting existing pages to point to the Blogger server, and then future posts will go there automatically.

I do not plan on offering this one-time fix as a service. Instead, the following resources may be referenced when choosing to use the custom Blogger domain option. This means you may hire someone or choose do-it-yourself.

Information: http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/
FAQs: http://blogger-ftp.blogspot.com/p/faqs.html
Tutorial: http://www.newsome.org/2010/01/how-to-move…

NOTE: I am NOT offering this Option 2 conversion as a service because of the learning curve, limited time to act, and my choice of Option 3 to convert from Blogger to WordPress. I did not do an in-depth review of the above resources, so it may be more difficult than expected depending on your experience and circumstances.

My choice is Option 3 for the blogs I own. The “engine” that drives a blog consists of 100′s of custom programmed files that make the blog work properly including publishing posts, filing posts by month, or archiving them, and more. For Blogger designs this “engine” or blog platform resides on the Blogger server outside the control of the site owner.

WordPress platform designs begin by uploading their software “engine” to your server, so the security control does not require extreme measures because the system is allowing access by you to your server, not a third party server.

To convert a Blogger blog to WordPress requires a new template design, export of blog content from Blogger, conversion of that content compatible to WordPress, installation of the WordPress “engine” software and template on your server, import of converted content into WordPress, and finally file redirects of archives, tags and labels to WordPress format archives, tags and categories.

The move to WordPress is the most time consuming and costly choice. While taking control is a key advantage of WordPress, maintaining control was really the problem at Blogger. They share enough of their software engine to publish only, so to protect the security of people interacting with their server they will no longer permit FTP access.

The Blogger decision to cease support for publishing to an owner’s server via FTP was unforeseen, and certainly out of my control. A blog is still the easiest way to “add original quality content often”. That phrase is the essence of how websites succeed, so I will continue to promote and encourage my customers to be active blogging.

If you have questions or need help understanding your blog or an action plan, email me soon. The deadline is approaching quickly.

The latest custom cms web design project just completed was a recruiting custom CMS and blog that went online earlier today for SynergyHire LLC of Atlanta, Georgia. The main site and matching blog allow the owner to add, edit, or delete content 24/7 without paying each time.

Here is a reduced size graphic screenshot of just one page:

Compare the main site to the matching Atlanta Recruiter custom WordPress theme used on their blog. As with all my designs, the custom integrated blog is a unique one-of-a-kind design for a consistent look moving between the main site and blog.

Other features to consider are the custom logo, clean layout, and special page with 12 audio players to demo their innovative automated candidate phone screen service. Upon review of the initial custom cms web design launch the owner commented “I give you two thumbs up… you did a GREAT job on this Jim!”.

The custom cms website for Corky my puppy was upgraded by adding a custom WordPress blog theme to match the main site. Recent work on the site includes the redesign as well as a series of custom video productions for the Life with Corky website and his story of a shelter dog in text, photos, and video.

Here’s the YouTube version of the latest episode entitled Corky Goes to Doggy Jail, and you may watch all the Corky puppy videos on YouTube, too.

The background music used as the Corky theme song was purchased with royalty free rights from the Music Bakery. All photos and graphics were created by me as part of the custom cms website design. Stories are told in the first person as dicated by Corky, narrated by me, and suitable for all ages. Don’t call the crazy house just yet.

The purpose of having a dog website is to promote adoption of shelter pets worldwide. You can follow Corky the shelter dog tweets on Twitter, also.

This is urgent news. The official WordPress website warns users about older WordPress versions under attack. The most recently released version v2.84 is NOT affected by this security issue and virus attack. For anyone who prefers waiting before upgrading their WordPress blog, this is a wakeup call.

For my clients, your custom WordPress blog design was not affected if I designed and manage your blog. Your blog was upgraded when v2.84 was released, and before this most recent attack began.

If you have a personal blog hosted on WordPress.com, your blog was not affected. For other WordPress blog owners who have not upgraded to v2.84, follow the link above for full details from WordPress. In the future, my advice is to heed the warning of the nag screen in your admin section if informed you’re not running the latest version.

Running the latest version of WordPress is particularly important for fixing security vulnerabilities, as well as enhanced functions.

This tutorial provides advice for sorting posts when telling a story in WordPress. The default display of posts in WordPress is chronological with the most recent being first at the top of the page. For storytelling you may want your posts to display in a more logical order for the reader. There are options for bloggers telling a story in WordPress to have posts display with episodes in a series much like a book chapter by chapter.

The first tutorial method is a simple modification of the code in your template. To display posts in reverse chronological order (oldest first) modify the index.php file in the wp-content/themes/[your theme]/ folder. Look for the line of code and above that add this line of code to have posts display in reverse ascending order.

The next tutorial advice is a WordPress plugin to handle sorting. To allow multiple options for the sort order, you may want to search WordPress for sorting plugins. Some provide options from the backend admin so you can set options for a variety of query types by date, time, author, and more, and then within each of those you may sort results with a second option. For example, the main sort could be by author with those results further sorted by a second field like category or date.

Caution: After reviewing several my advice is checking plugin compatibility to your WordPress installation version before installing.

Finally, this third tutorial and option comes from a WordPress hosted blog of poetry written by my late Grandmother. My choice was to override the WordPress default maximum posts listed, which is 15, and have all 39 poem titles listed alphabetically in the sidebar. After all poem content was prepared and later published in one day in a random order, I created a custom html/text widget to replace the list of recent posts with the alphabetical list of all poems here.

The custom html WordPress widget concept works when the blog content is fixed like that one-time list of all poems, or in a story that gets posted as episodes and the last chapter is published. Just add new links to the sidebar widget as new episodes are posted until complete.

There are more WordPress sort plugins and tutorials, and certainly may be new ones by the time you view this post. The good news is there are options for controlling post chronological sorts when telling a story in WordPress.

A new page for Blogger custom blog design pricing has been revised to include a custom WordPress blog design price. In addition, the price page lists a new service for converting a Blogger template and moving to WordPress. Here is an excerpt from the new blog design price page linked above:

For owners of Blogger format blogs interested in converting a Blogger template and moving to a WordPress template and theme, we can provide optional services. For existing blog designs in Blogger to export from their format and import into a custom WordPress theme, our technique will capture all blog posts.

Visit this blog converted from Blogger to WordPress to see a live example custom WordPress theme and matching main website.

The custom WordPress blog design price page includes the optional service to export from Blogger to WordPress with details on the process involved to maintain all posts, labels, archives, and search engine friendly (SEF) file names.