All listings are free for any Gold Coast business and you can promote your Business Services. Some of the features included with your listing are:

• Free backlink
• Business description
• Contact details
• Google Map

We are planning major updates to our directory in the coming months so to help build our reputation we are keeping directory listings free.

Check it out and submit your business – Gold Coast Online Business Directory

The post Gold Coast Online Business Directory appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

Remove user Admin

When you first setup a WordPress site the default username is set to admin. If someone is trying to guess your WordPress login, the username admin will be the first one they try. So its a good idea to use something other than admin

Create strong Passwords

For any login site you should be creating strong passwords and WordPress login is no different. Every few months you should also be changing this password, especially if you use it more than once on the web.

Remove install file

This is a common missed step and it only takes a few seconds to change. Simply just delete the wp-admin/install.php file after installing WordPress for further security.

Secure wp-config

The wp-config files contains important information, such as MySQL details, database details and debugging, so its important to keep this file secure. One way of doing this is to always generate unique authentication keys for each WordPress installation wp-config file. You can find them here WordPress Security keys

Backup!

Probably the worst thing that can happen to your site is losing all your WordPress data, that’s why a solid backup process is extremely important. A good process for backups is to have a weekly backup of your WordPress database and a monthly backup of your Full site including database and files. Also, try not to rely on your Webhost for a backup file as they don’t always keep them updated or stored, you will probably find this in their terms and conditions.

If your a developer and need a premium plugin, BackupBuddy is one of the best out there.

Thanks for reading!

The post 5 tips for securing your WordPress website appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

Why is WordPress so good for SEO?

Clean permalink structure

With a WordPress site the . However, by default WordPress sets your permalinks to an ugly structure that looks something like this yourdomain.com/?p=123, this is terrible for SEO because Google has no idea what that number means and it has no information of the page content.

To change this go to Permalinks under the Settings menu in WordPress and select Post name. If you can’t access the settings menu, then ask your developer to change your permalinks.

Fresh content

If you have a WordPress site then you have a blog, its that easy. The SEO benefits of blogging are great because with a WordPress blog most articles will reach the first page in a google search with the right title and keywords.

Useful SEO Plugins

Google Sitemap

Having a Google Sitemap is important for maintaining your sites ranking so if you blog or add pages daily then a sitemap will help your SEO. To maintain your site’s rankings I would suggest installing a Google Sitemap plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/. With this plugin you can choose the index your pages daily, weekly or monthly.

All in One SEO pack

Another excellent SEO plugin would be All in one SEO pack http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/.

Once you install this plugin you can play around with the settings depending on your site. The best settings to use are:

• Make sure Canonical URLs are checked
• Check Rewrite Titles check box
• Do not use any META keyword tags
• Use “noindex” for archives and tag archives
• Uncheck Autogenerate Descriptions
• Do not add keywords on each page/post

SEO Friendly Images

If you are photographer or you just have a large amount of photos then going through each one and adding descriptions is going to be a pain.

Install the SEO Friendly Images plugin and it will help you out SEO Friendly Images.

There you have it a few helpful tips for your WordPress SEO.

The post How to improve your WordPress SEO appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

• Create a new page called “Blog” with the default template
• Under settings in the WordPress Main menu select the reading section
• Under “front page displays” select “A static page”
• In the posts page dropdown choose the blog page you created
• Finally, head to appearance > menus and add blog to the main menu, then save menu

*This is based on how most WordPress sites are built

This is just one of the many reasons why WordPress is so client friendly!

The post How to easily setup a blog in WordPress appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

What is a heatmap?

A Heatmap is an easy way to understand what users do on your site. It’s a visual representation showing you where users click and what they do.

Why do you need heatmap testing?

• Heatmap reports let you see what’s hot and what’s not, so you can make changes that increase conversion
• Even tools like Google Analytics can’t provide you this information
• You’ll see your first results within a couple of hours, even if you have low traffic

Credits – http://www.crazyegg.com

What you need

You only need a WordPress website to get started!

What I do

• Install the heatmap plugin
• Analyse your heatmap after the 3 weeks is over
• Suggest design changes with you

Fill out this form to get started:

The post Free Heatmap testing for WordPress websites appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

Newsletter Popups

A newsletter popup that displays before the user has even read your content isn’t ideal and will not increase conversion. If users want to subscribe to your newsletter they don’t need to see this popup on every page. A better way of showcasing your signup form is to put it above the fold of your website.

Overcrowed with ads

Users want to read your content with minimal distractions so having ads crowded all over your site is not going to please them. Instead you should include ads where users can see them but don’t distract from your content.

Difficult navigation

A general rule for website navigation is too not have content hidden behind three links otherwise users will give up on finding what they were searching for. Two good ways of avoiding this problem is too have either a sub menu of links in the main navigation and breadcrumbs that show which page the user is on.

Splash pages

Visitors have already decided to visit your website so why do they need to click another link to enter your site? Unless your running a promotion a splash page will annoy visitors and will leave your site before even checking your homepage.

Slow loading website

Most users are in a rush or have little patience for a slow loading page. Generally a page that takes over 5 seconds to load will not encourage users to sit around and wait.

If you are running on WordPress you can install these plugins to improve overall website speed:

W3 Total Cache – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/

WP Smush.it – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-smushit/

I’d also suggest only installing plugins that are absolutely necessary as plugin can slow your site down.

Thanks for reading!

The post How to annoy your website visitors appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

When you work with a freelancer you are almost always communicating one on one with them throughout the project. As a result, this cuts out a lot of miscommuncation on the project scope and goals.

Availability

Most freelancers are available outside of normal business hours via email, phone or skype. Obviously it depends on how they like to communicate with you so always ask your freelancer how they like to be contacted.

Competitive rates

Using a freelancer is generally cheaper than an agency because they don’t have as many expenses and resources to account for. However, that doesn’t mean that the quality of work is compromised as I explain in the next section low quality work will reflect on a freelancer’s reputation.

Care factor

The success of a freelance business depends heavily on reputation. Therefore, a good freelancer will always complete the job as well as possible which sometimes makes it a better bet than a company that subcontracts the work to third parties. Also referals are a great way of gaining repeat business so a freelancer must leave a good impression on their clients

Lasting relationships

Clients are the lifeblood of any freelance business and how a freelancer deals with clients reflects on their brand. Therefore, building a strong relationship between a freelancer and clients is beneficial to both.

What do you like about working with freelancers?

Leave a comment below about your experiences with freelancers

The post Five reasons to hire a freelance web designer appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

Firstly, we will be coding this widget in a theme with a seperate file linking to your functions file. So create a new php file called, “opening-widget” and in your functions file add:

[code lang="js"]include("functions/opening-widget.php");[/code]

Register widget

In this section we register our widget with WordPress and add the functions to widgets_init.

[code lang="js"]
// Register widget
function load_opening() {
register_widget( 'Opening_Widget' );
}

// Add the function to widgets_init
add_action( 'widgets_init', 'load_opening' );
[/code]

Setup widget

Next we setup the widget’s description and control settings. We also create the widget to display in the WordPress widgets section.

[code lang="js"]
class opening_widget extends WP_Widget {

/* Widget setup */
function Opening_Widget() {

// Widget settings
$widget_ops = array('classname' => 'opening_widget','description' => __('A widget that displays your opening hours!', 'textdomain'));

// Widget control settings
$control_ops = array('width' => 300,'height' => 350, 'id_base' => 'opening_widget');

// Create widget
$this->WP_Widget( 'opening_widget', __('Custom Opening Hours Widget', 'textdomain'), $widget_ops, $control_ops );

}

[/code]

Display widget

In this section we create new instances for each day so they are saved for outputing them onto the page. Then simply adding a ul list to print out what value each day has from the input areas in the widget settings.

[code lang="js"]
/* Display Widget */
function widget( $args, $instance ) {
extract( $args );

// The variables from the Widget settings
$title = apply_filters('widget_title', $instance['title'] );

$mon = $instance['monday'];
$tues = $instance['tuesday'];
$wed = $instance['wednesday'];
$thurs = $instance['thursday'];
$fri = $instance['friday'];
$sat = $instance['saturday'];
$sun = $instance['sunday'];

// Before widget
echo $before_widget;

// Display the widget title if one was added by the user
if ( $title )
echo $before_title . $title . $after_title;

// Display Opening Hours widget
?>
<ul class="no-list-style">
<li><span class="day">Monday: </span><?php echo $mon ?></li>
<li><span class="day">Tuesday: </span><?php echo $tues ?></li>
<li><span class="day">Wednesday: </span><?php echo $wed ?></li>
<li><span class="day">Thursday: </span><?php echo $thurs ?></li>
<li><span class="day">Friday: </span><?php echo $fri ?></li>
<li><span class="day">Saturday: </span><?php echo $sat ?></li>
<li><span class="day">Sunday: </span><?php echo $sun ?></li>
</ul>
<?php

// After widget
echo $after_widget;

}

[/code]

Update widget

Updating the widget involves stripping any tags from the text inputs.

[code lang="js"]
/* Update Widget */
function update( $new_instance, $old_instance ) {

$instance = $old_instance;

// Strip tags to remove HTML
$instance['title'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['title'] );

$instance['monday'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['monday'] );

$instance['tuesday'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['tuesday'] );

$instance['wednesday'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['wednesday'] );

$instance['thursday'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['thursday'] );

$instance['friday'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['friday'] );

$instance['saturday'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['saturday'] );

$instance['sunday'] = strip_tags( $new_instance['sunday'] );

return $instance;
}
[/code]

Widget Settings

The widget settings section involves adding the input areas for each day of the week.

[code lang="js"]
/* Widget Settings */
function form( $instance ) {

$instance = wp_parse_args( (array) $instance, $defaults ); ?>

<!-- Widget Title -->
<p>
<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'title' ); ?>"><?php _e('Title:', 'textdomain') ?></label>

<input type="text" class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'title' ); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name( 'title' ); ?>" value="<?php echo $instance['title']; ?>" />
</p>

<!-- Monday -->
<p>
<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'monday' ); ?>"><?php _e('Monday:', 'textdomain') ?></label>

<input type="text" class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'monday' ); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name( 'monday' ); ?>" value="<?php echo $instance['monday']; ?>" />
</p>

<!-- Tuesday -->
<p>
<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'tuesday' ); ?>"><?php _e('Tuesday:', 'textdomain') ?></label>

<input type="text" class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'tuesday' ); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name( 'tuesday' ); ?>" value="<?php echo $instance['tuesday']; ?>" />
</p>

<!-- Wednesday -->
<p>
<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'wednesday' ); ?>"><?php _e('Wednesday:', 'textdomain') ?></label>

<input type="text" class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'wednesday' ); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name( 'wednesday' ); ?>" value="<?php echo $instance['wednesday']; ?>" />
</p>

<!-- Thursday -->
<p>
<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'thursday' ); ?>"><?php _e('Thursday:', 'textdomain') ?></label>

<input type="text" class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'thursday' ); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name( 'thursday' ); ?>" value="<?php echo $instance['thursday']; ?>" />
</p>

<!-- Friday -->
<p>
<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'friday' ); ?>"><?php _e('Friday:', 'textdomain') ?></label>

<input type="text" class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'friday' ); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name( 'friday' ); ?>" value="<?php echo $instance['friday']; ?>" />
</p>

<!-- Saturday -->
<p>
<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'saturday' ); ?>"><?php _e('Saturday:', 'textdomain') ?></label>

<input type="text" class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'saturday' ); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name( 'saturday' ); ?>" value="<?php echo $instance['saturday']; ?>" />
</p>

<!-- Sunday -->
<p>
<label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'sunday' ); ?>"><?php _e('Sunday:', 'textdomain') ?></label>

<input type="text" class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id( 'sunday' ); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name( 'sunday' ); ?>" value="<?php echo $instance['sunday']; ?>" />
</p>

<?php
}
}
?>
[/code]

I hope you enjoyed this post and found it useful for your next wordpress site!

The post How to create a simple Business Hours widget appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

Resources: social icons

Step 1 – Photoshop

Open Photoshop (or whichever program you use) and create a new file with the dimensions of 84×16.

Now add in your social media icons with a margin-right of 1px.

Now save the image as a png24 with the following settings:

Step 2 – HTML

Open Dreamweaver (or text editor) and create a new basic html document.

Now add the following code (in a body tag of course):

[sourcecode language="plain"]
<div id="wrapper">

<ul id="social">
<li id="fb"><a href="#" title=""></a></li>
<li id="twit"><a href="#" title=""></a></li>
<li id="rss"><a href="#" title=""></a></li>
<li id="yt"><a href="#" title=""></a></li>
<li id="flickr"><a href="#" title=""></a></li>
</ul>

</div>
[/sourcecode]

We give the list item a unique ID that corresponts to the icon you want to display. So our first icon will be facebook as defined by the id.

Step 3 – CSS

Add the following css code to the head of your document (don’t forget your style tag).

[css]
body {background:#FFF;}
#wrapper {margin:100px auto; width:960px; }

#social a {display:block;width:16px; height:16px;}
#social li {float:left;margin-right:6px;list-style:none;}

#fb, #twit, #rss, #yt, #flickr { background: url(icons.png) no-repeat; width:16px; height:16px;opacity:0.7;}
#fb {background-position:0 0; }
#twit {background-position:-17px 0; }
#rss {background-position:-34px 0; }
#yt {background-position:-51px 0;}
#flickr {background-position:-68px 0;}

#fb:hover, #twit:hover, #rss:hover, #yt:hover, #flickr:hover {opacity:1;}
[/css]

The Background position css property basically sets the position of the background image. So for example the twitter icon on the x axis is -17px from the start of the background image. While all the icons are 0px on the y axis.

This screenshot should help you understand how background positioning works:

You can read more about background positioning at W3schools.

Step 4 – Conclusion

If you view your page in a web browser you should now have some awesome social media CSS sprites!

Hopefully you now have the knowledge to use this technique for other web elements that can be sprited such as images and icons.

The post How to create social media CSS sprites appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.

Functions.php

Open your functions php file and insert the following code anywhere in your file:

[code lang="js"]
<!--?php -->/*******************************
LIMIT CHARACTERS

example:

<!--?php content('20'); ?-->
********************************/

function content($num) {
$theContent = get_the_content();
$output = preg_replace('/]+./','', $theContent);
$output = preg_replace( '/<blockquote>.*</blockquote>/', '', $output );
$output = preg_replace( '|[(.+?)](.+?[/\1])?|s', '', $output );
$limit = $num+1;
$content = explode(' ', $output, $limit);
array_pop($content);
$content = implode(" ",$content)."...";
echo $content;
}
[/code]

All this code is basically doing is grabbing the content from the page, replacing any weird characters and finally setting the limit of characters to show from the about page content.
 

Page ID

To find out the page id of the about page, go to permalinks in your wordpress dashboard menu and change the permalink structure to default. Now open the about page in a browser and it should tell you the page id.
 

 

PHP code

Within the file you want the about page content to appear, add in the following code:

[code lang="js"]
<!--?php query_posts('page_id=47'); if (have_posts()) : ?-->
<!--?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?-->
<!--?php echo content('20'); endwhile; ?-->
<!--?php endif; ?-->
[/code]

Here we grab the page id of the about page and then we check if there is some content on the about page. The content(’20′) means that the text block will display 20 characters from the about page.

Conclusion

If all went well you now should have your about page content on your page!
I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial, don’t forget to leave a comment below or share this article with your friends.

The post Dynamically add about page content to a page in WordPress. appeared first on Gold Coast Web Design.