Think about a book cover. What is on the cover of a best seller and what is that cover designed to do? I would argue that it’s main purpose is to entice people to read the book. It does this through the following ways:

• Displays a clear title and often a subtitle.
• Gives you a brief synopsis or snapshot of what the book is all about.
• Gives brief information about the author(s) often including a picture.
• Offers recommendations for the book by trusted sources.
• Displays the publisher’s information.
• Uses graphics, colors, and layout to tie the message all together.

The home page of your website should be no different from the details mentioned above. Your website is like a book you are trying to sell. You have vital services, information, or products inside that you believe people should take notice of. You are targeting specific people that you feel your services, information, or products are best suited for, and your ultimate goal is for them to be so captured by your home page that they stay to look inside.

So, take a look at the home page of your site, and ask yourself the following questions:

• Is my site purpose clearly displayed and understandable in the title?
• Am I offering a clear, concise snapshot of what my site is all about without being too vague or overwhelming people with too much information? (What’s it all about?)
• Do I have any information about or image of the owner/author if applicable that would lend credibility and a personal touch to the site? (What real people are a part of this?)
• Do I have any testimonials from satisfied customers or references from trusted sources to lend further credibility to my site? (Why should someone trust me?)
• Do I show snapshots of past success stories, influential clients, or recent images from my portfolio to demonstrate my experience and ability? (Why am I better than the competition?)
• Do the colors, images, and layout all work seamlessly together to clearly communicate my message in a professional and uncluttered way? (What emotions or thoughts are evoked when someone lands on my site?)
• Who created my logo,branding, and site design? (This may sound silly, but depending upon your business, people can be turned off by “do-it-yourself” or cheap and quick web building approach. It may cause people to think, “If you didn’t care enough to invest in your business why should I invest time or money in your product or service?”)

There are a few differences between a book cover and your website. People’s attention spans are generally much shorter on the web than browsing through books making it all the more important for you to be as concise and attention grabbing as possible. Your visitors will need to be able to “look inside” very quickly to find what they are searching for. An easy to use navigation system is a must. Finally, and most importantly, your website is amongst billions of others online not just on a bookshelf with several other books. You need to ensure that people can even find your site to begin with. Basic search engine optimization, well formed code, and lots of great content will be key for this.

© 2012, Sarah. All rights reserved.

Creating Your Page Template

Step One: Copy Your Index PHP page. We’ll use the index.php page as our base since we want to display recent posts. So, open your index.php page and add the following just above the top of the code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: splash-page
*/
?>

Now, save it as splash-page.php (or whatever else you want to call it. Just be sure that you have “-page” in the name and that it matches the template name you added to the file so that WordPress recognizes it as a page template.

Step Two: Make Your Edits. Now that you’ve got your new page saved (so you don’t have to worry about messing up your index php page), you can edit it as desired. Let’s go through some possible edits you would want to make.

Limiting the Amount of Posts that Appear
The most common edit is to simply limit the amount of posts that appear on this page. This is a simple query function that will need to be placed before the loop. If you are using an Artisteer generated theme it will look something like the following:

Before Edits

<?php
				if(have_posts()) {

					/* Start the Loop */

After Edits (just add one short line of code)

<?php
				if(have_posts()) {
				query_posts('showposts=3');

					/* Start the Loop */

Notice that I chose to show just three posts. You can change the number as desired. To see other query function references you can choose, check out the WordPress Codex for Query Posts You’ll see in the Examples there are ways to include or exclude categories, etc.

You can see a working example from a recent site I worked on at http://www.pettitteam.org. This front page also contains a banner area with widget space for a slider and event calendar plugin. This was achieved through the use of conditional code within the header.php file. Basically I just wrapped the conditional code of if it’s the front page, then display these sidebars. View my post on using conditional code.

Creating a Double Loop
On a recent project, I not only needed to limit the amount of posts that showed on the front page, but I also wanted to show the actual content from chosen front page. See the example here. This example contains a top widget area displayed only on the front page through the Widget Logic plugin a tabbed content area in the page itself using the WP-UI plugin, and then the five most recent blog posts just beneath. In order to do this, I needed to create a double loop.

First, I simply made the edit shown above to select the number of posts that I wanted to appear on the home page.

Next, I added the following code, just above that code:

<?php
				if(have_posts()) {

					/* Start the Loop */
					while (have_posts()) {
						the_post();
						get_template_part('content', 'page');
						/* Display comments */
						if ( theme_get_option('theme_allow_comments')) {
							comments_template();
						}
					}

				} else {

					 theme_404_content();

				}
		    ?>
<?php rewind_posts(); ?>

You should have two complete loops in your page template now. The important element is the last line of code from the first loop that tells WordPress to “rewind the posts” and start over fresh. That way, it doesn’t get confused.

Removing Post Navigation
Since this page is not the actual blog page, it’s a good idea to remove the navigation links on the home page. All you need to do is delete the following from the code:

/* Display navigation to next/previous pages when applicable */
					if ( theme_get_option('theme_' . (theme_is_home() ? 'home_' : '') . 'top_posts_navigation' ) ) {
						theme_page_navigation();
					}

as well as this code:

/* Display navigation to next/previous pages when applicable */
					if (theme_get_option('theme_bottom_posts_navigation')) {
						 theme_page_navigation();
					}

				} else {

					 theme_404_content();

				}

Additional Post Styling
Do you want your posts to appear differently than they do on a regular archive’s page? You can create a different styling by creating and calling to a new post content format. This is the line of code that you will want to edit.

get_template_part('content', get_post_format());

If you simply want the posts to appear without the meta icons, you can choose to call to the page format rather than the post format (so simply change the word “post” above to “page” and you are all set). If you want to style things even more, simply create a new content.php file and name it something like content-splash.php. So, now the code above would look like this:

get_template_part('content-splash', get_post_format());

Note, there are already several different post types available to choose from such as content-aside, content-gallery, content-attachment, so look through these first before creating your own.

Adding Your New Template

When you are happy with your edits to your template, upload the template file to your site’s theme folder. Then, go to the page you’d like to use it on and underneath the “Publish” button you should see a dropdown menu where you can choose your template from. Simply choose your newly created template from the list, and hit “Update” to start using your new template.

© 2012, Sarah. All rights reserved.

There are tons of WordPress plugins available that range from poor to decent in their ability to integrate social networking into sites. I’ve tried numerous versions of these plugins myself, and have found a few solid ones that I’ve come to use on a regular basis such as Sexy Bookmarks (used on my site before I just made the switch to Social Toolbar Pro) as well as the LockerZ plugin, AddToAny. These, like all plugins have their limitations or irritations, though as mentioned above.

That’s when I found Social Toolbar Pro! I was excited to finally find a social networking sharing and bookmarking tool that is both intuitive as well as clean and professional. Simply put, Social Toolbar Pro just works! The performance is smooth and accurate, and the look is clean and uncluttered. Be sure to check out their live demo to see the customization in action.

Features

This is just a basic rundown of a few of the features I especially love.

• The ability to add linked bookmark icons for all social networks available (if you don’t see the one you want, you can even upload your own image and link.
• Automatic posting of your most recent tweet if desired.
• The ability to share individual pages, post, or home page through Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Pinterest.
• Simple and intuitive customization of colors, icons, and positioning so that it actually compliments your site rather than clashing with it.
• The bar can be positioned either at the top or bottom of the page so that it’s always visible yet not overwhelming and also includes the ability to minimize the bar so it’s out of the way if desired.
• The option to choose from letting viewers “like” your website, webpage, or Facebook Fan Page.
• Did I mention that it just works???

Limitations

Because this plugin is in regular development, I’m secure in knowing it will only improve. A couple of improvements I’d love to see down the pipeline are the following:

• The ability to have a vertical toolbar perhaps
• The ability to have icons beneath each post individually and/or in the toolbar, too.

Plugin Versions

Now, I do have to mention that you get what you pay for. They do have a free version of this plugin, but it does have some limitations on style, positioning, and a few sharing options. However, a single license is only $25 for the Pro-Version and well worth the expense in my opinion! They also have multi-site and developer licensing packages available. To find out more details, visit the Social Toolbar Pro Website.

Working Example

I recently purchase the pro version for a client’s site that I’m just working on setting up. You can see it by visiting The Passion Advocate. Please keep in mind this is a completely unfinished site, so we haven’t even integrated all of the networks at this time. however, you’ll be able to get a good idea of the way it looks and operates. I have hers set up to actually share individual pages and posts for a more accurate record of what content has the greatest reach.

I’ve just added the toolbar to my own site, and I’m excited to see what further developments this team continues to make!

© 2012, Sarah. All rights reserved.

Reflecting the Designer currently has an average page rank in Google of 5/10 and anyone will tell you that’s above average as far as page ranks go. I have a 6/10 page rank for the post category Artisteer Tips as well as several posts within that category.

So what does page rank actually mean?

In a nutshell, Google ranks the popularity of the pages and posts of websites on a scale from 0-10 based on keywords, inbound links, and visitors.

Most websites who have been around for a length of time and have solid content will have a page rank of 2-4 while only the really big sites such as Yahoo, CNN, etc are in the 7-9 page rank category with very, very few at number 10.

You can view a good explanation about page rank here. To check out your own page rank, visit this site. More telling and far more important then viewing your page rank, though is to see what key words or phrases will bring your site up on the front page of popular search engines. After all, that’s how people who want your services will find your site!

If you type in several words or phrases that you believe are key to your website but links to your site don’t appear on Google’s first page of search results, then you might need some help in the SEO department.

My Personal Experience

While I’ve been able to build modest traffic to this site as well as be in the top five of several search results, it’s taken a few years to do this using basic practices as well as some fortunate links from bigger sites. I know how to build traffic the slow and steady way over time, but I didn’t know how to get more quality traffic for specific searches quickly and those are exactly the results that are needed in today’s competitive market.

Because of this, I’ve partnered with an SEO expert who specializes in building backlinks in order to provide these services through Reflecting the Designer! We’ve worked together on just two website projects to date, and I’ve already been thrilled with the tremendous results!

The Proof is in the Pudding!

Both websites that my new specialist has worked on have done phenomenally well in a very short amount of time! One of the websites in particular was a site I designed for a Knoxville area accountant a couple of years ago, http://coodecpa.com. George Coode is a great accountant, but not so great in the tech department. After trying to get him to update his site through fresh content or social networking to no avail, I realized that I’d need to use other methods to get his services visible. He’s got tons of knowledge and expertise in his field, but it would take a lot of searching online before you would have been able to find him even just a month ago. The reason he has the website is to provide more customers to his accounting firm and not for his blogging skills, yet he was barely visible online.

Enter my new SEO specialist and that’s when good things started to happen!

He was able to get this none ranked site into the top five search results for some very big key phrases such as “experienced knoxville accountant” ranked number 1 and “best knoxville accountant” which is number 2 in Google!

Check them out for yourself! The key to these amazing and fast results was to build quality backlinks in an evened out manner. This is something out of my realm of design, and for this reason I’m thrilled to be partnering with someone who is both knowledgeable and proactive that I can completely depend on in this field.

Do You Need an SEO Expert in Your Corner?

If you are like me, you don’t have time to learn the science (and sometimes mysterious art) of good SEO, but you do need to get quality traffic driven to your website. If you are interested in SEO services, review the options we have to offer on the Services Page under the SEO tab. Contact us when you are ready to get started!

*Note: all sites designed by Reflecting the Designer including the examples given above are built for the WordPress platform using Artisteer. WordPress is the best platform for good SEO when making use of the blogging aspect, and Artisteer is a great software for creating custom WordPress themes.

© 2012, Sarah. All rights reserved.

Now that she has published books, Blogger is also a good solution for showcasing those books and making them available for sale online. Because she is operating at such low overhead, and because she is not doing a lot of business, using Blogger’s free hosting services and integrating PayPal Standard into the site (also free), she’s able to sell her books easily and inexpensively with little hassle.

Now that all four of her Children’s story book series is out, I’ve updated her site with a new look and incorporated PayPal so that all of the books can be purchased directly online. I also updated the look to make use of the beautiful hand drawn illustrations used throughout the book. If you have young children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews, you should definitely take a peek! I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Because I wanted to give the blog more of a website feel, I removed the blogger navbar, and also removed the date and author underneath the post titles. Blogger has made a lot of improvements in how they handle menus and pages, as well. The Store is located right on the top page of the site, and I’ve selected only one post to be displayed on the home page so that it appears to be an actual page rather than a post. To keep it front and center, I simply keep the date set to a future time.

So, is Blogger right for you? If you meet the following criteria, it might just be a good solution.

• You want to do just a personal or family blog.
• You want to do a little side business or freelance work but don’t have the money to pay for regular website hosting or services.
• You don’t need to worry about getting a lot of traffic to your site.
• You need a simple framework without a lot of frills.
• You don’t need to handle a lot of extra features on your site.
• You don’t need to create a membership site.
• You just need a blog and not a complete CMS.
• You are slightly technically challenged when it comes to the computer and internet and have no real desire to expand your capabilities in this area.

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out The Adventures of Sammy the Skunk!

© 2012, Sarah. All rights reserved.

1.) Find a Hosting service that is widely known and has good reviews: These typically have the widest varieties of plans and can meet just about any hosting needs.

2.) Figure out what type of hosting you need for your situation:

• Security: Are you going to be putting or requiring sensitive information from users on your site such as a store or membership site? Find one that you can purchase an SSL certificate with and dedicated IP address. (and if they help you through the process)
• Applications: Does your host work well with WordPress?
• Green Hosting: Do you want to go Green on your hosting? (be careful on this one as many Green Hosts talk a good talk, but are horrible when it comes to the actual service. I’ve found Host Gator to be a good one, though.)
• Technical Support: Are you a techie who can do most items by yourself, or do you require more help. If so, look for a hosting provider with a good customer service reputation and lots of content in their help section.

3.) Remember that you get what you pay for: If hosting is free, you will most likely be tied down with limitations of a pre-built and managed site. This may be preferable to some, but others want more control. You can generally find good hosting for between $5-$10 per month.

4.) Think of your Visitors: When you’re ready to go live with your WordPress, find a service with unlimited webhosting to avoid caps on bandwidth. This will allow you to post as much content as you want as well as receive a large number of visitors.

5.) Purchase your Domain name and Hosting Plan together: This is just a convenience thing that will help you with automatic renewals. If it’s not possible, and you already have a domain somewhere else, find a host that makes it easy for you to transfer or forward current domains.

© 2012, Sarah. All rights reserved.

Ava, from My Skin Concierge, Ava wanted to make the transition over to WordPress and really ramp up her web presence. Now, this could have been done keeping the same permalinks from her old site (you can see a step-by-step on how to do that here) but she also wanted to take the opportunity to switch to a more SEO friendly domain name at the same time. Hence was born, Spa Travel Gal. While it’s a lot more work at the front end, I think she made a wise decision for the long term.

Here’s what I did (and am doing for Ava)

• Created a custom WordPress Theme and Layout for the new site.
• Imported the old Blogger content over to WordPress.
• Installed and configured necessary plugins for WordPress (WordPress SEO by Yoast, Widget Logic, Bad Behavior, WP-Spam Free, Contact Form 7, Sucuri Scanner, Share Buttons by Lockerz, Google Analyticator, Outbrain, Quick Cache, and Categories to Tags Convertor.)
• Added all of her sidebar items and ads from the previous site (this included cleaning them up, organizing items, and ensuring links were directed to the new site.)
• Updated her social networks and feed to reflect the changes.
• Working on consolidating Google Accounts.
• Forwarding Domain names to the new site.
• Embedding and optimizing images within posts of the new site.
• Cleaning up posts (Blogger leaves a lot of extra junk that doesn’t belong, and also internal links needed to be fixed.)
• Adding comments back in. (Unfortunately yet another downside of blogger. The importer got all of the comment authors into each post, but it did not get the actual content or links. A time consuming yet necesssary process.)
• The final step will be to redirect the links from the old site to the new one once all of the posts and comments are cleaned up. I plan to use the Blogger Blogspot to WordPress Redirection plugin as a tool for this.

I’ve been spending most of my time getting social networking fixed up. Facebook needed to have a new page created, Twitter could simply have the name changed so as to keep current followers, and the feed through feedburner just needed the source feed changed as well as the optimization (title, message, etc. displayed within the feed needed to reflect the new site.)

It’s a lot of work to make a switch like this, but the benefits of what WordPress brings to the table far outweigh the negatives of making the transfer. Let me know your thoughts on transferring and any tips you have found a long the way.

© 2012, Sarah. All rights reserved.




]]> http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2012/03/19/transferring-blogger-to-wordpress/feed/ 2 http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2012/03/19/transferring-blogger-to-wordpress/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ReflectingTheDesigner/~3/O6DLEK9QnDY/ http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/12/27/holiday-slideshow-contest/#comments Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:09:25 +0000 Sarah http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/?p=2412 ProShow Producer is an excellent slideshow software. It’s easy to use, and it has a ton of built in transitions and effects. There are definitely some quirks with it as with any software, but for putting together an easy and professional looking presentation, it’s definitely the software I’d recommend.

Photodex (the maker of ProShow) sporadically feature slideshow contests so that people can show what they’ve done with the ProShow software. The most recent was a Holiday Slideshow contest that actually just ended today. I threw a quick video together in the few hours before the deadline for a chance at $200 and free upgrades for life. Not sure that my speedy work and lack of pictures will win anything, but it was fun to do and provided a good memory for my family. If I would have had more time, I would have done more editing to some of the photos and worked out some of the effects a little more (as well as gotten some better pictures to replace a few of the current ones with.) But, that’s life, and there’s always next year.

This is how the final product turned out.


As a note: If you ever enter a contest like this, make sure to post your video to YouTube rather than Facebook as the resolution is much better. I learned that the hard way this year.

© 2011, Sarah. All rights reserved.




]]> http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/12/27/holiday-slideshow-contest/feed/ 0 http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/12/27/holiday-slideshow-contest/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ReflectingTheDesigner/~3/_myxQVCh1bs/ http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/11/30/using-stock-photography/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:55:38 +0000 Sarah http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/?p=2404

As a designer, there are times when it’s best to create all of your own graphic elements, and there are times when it’s wisest to use and edit stock images. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, after all. However, not only is it against copyright to simply grab images from the web, but it’s also unnecessary. There are some great royalty free image sources that you don’t have to pay for such as Microsoft Clip Art. However, they are fairly limited in their selection, and the images are usually only for web resolution and not suitable for printing.

So where do I turn when I’m working on a project that needs a very, very specific look? I go to iStock to find just the right elements I’m looking for, even if it’s just a subtle pattern or background element that helps me to capture the exact message and feeling I want to convey. For example, the scroll work on this site as well as the pattern in the green banner are both highly edited stock images purchased from iStock. Even if I don’t end up purchasing an item, I like to just browse through the images and design for inspiration.

I’ve also used iStock fairly exclusively for audio files to use presentations. They have a tremendous selection of both sound effects, jingles, and themes that are great for use in commercials or presentations.

Not only does iStock provide a massive selection of vector graphics, photography, video, and audio files; but they also have very competitive pricing. They work on a credit system, and you can either buy credits individually or go with a plan if you know you are going to be needing to use a lot of files. I usually purchase a large quantity of credits at a time so I can get a discounted price.

Of course, if you are a designer or photographer, you can also submit your own work to be posted on the site and earn money from your talent! They are fairly strict in their guidelines, though (and thankfully so). They also have a wonderful referral program that allows you to earn credits when someone you refer purchases credit through iStock. So, if you haven’t done so already, check out iStock by clicking on the image above!

© 2011, Sarah. All rights reserved.




]]> http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/11/30/using-stock-photography/feed/ 0 http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/11/30/using-stock-photography/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ReflectingTheDesigner/~3/Ynz8zhPOx3Q/ http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/11/02/publish-posts-to-social-networks-automatically/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 02:53:09 +0000 Sarah http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/?p=2394 If you are still manually adding your posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Hellotxt, or Statusnet, it’s time to check out TwitterFeed! Twitter feed allows you to automatically pull as many feeds as you like to be published to all of the above mentioned social networks every time new content is added through those feeds. This is a great option for busy people who don’t have time to be posting to their social networks continually but who need fresh active content on those networks. If you got here through one of my social networks (i.e. facebook or twitter), then you are using TwitterFeed in action.


TwitterFeed is not a plugin and does not add anymore weight to your site at all. It couldn’t be more simple to use either. Here’s all you need to do.

1. Register an account with TwitterFeed. (It’s free and just uses an email address, name, and password.)
2. Choose a feed you want to use. (I pulled my feeds from my feedburner account.)
3. Choose the services you want your feed to be sent to. (You’ll need to authenticate these individually the first time, but it takes just a few seconds to do.)
4. Choose a campaign name as well as optional tags for your chosen service.

That’s all there is to it! You can repeat these steps with as many feeds as you would like to incorporate, and you can also use different social network accounts depending upon the feed. With Facebook, you also have the option of choosing from either pages or your personal profile. I also love the fact that TwitterFeed incorporates bit.ly (the popular link shortener) so that your links are nice and tidy.

It takes a little bit for everything to go through the first time, but once the feeds are successfully grabbed by these networks, they will start posting them within 30 minutes from the time new content is added through your feeds.

Leave a comment if you use and love TwitterFeed or if you are using a different solution for automatically posting blog content to your social networks!

© 2011, Sarah. All rights reserved.




]]> http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/11/02/publish-posts-to-social-networks-automatically/feed/ 3 http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/11/02/publish-posts-to-social-networks-automatically/