Warning of a PayPal phishing scam email that arrived in my inbox this morning.
Articles Archive
Dive Into WordPress Custom Post Types – Part 1
Custom post types and custom fields are powerful WordPress features that can initially seem intimidating. This is the first in a series of blog posts describing when, why, and how to use them.
How to Create an Effective Value Proposition
Ray Kinsella, in “Field of Dreams”, turned his cornfield into a baseball diamond, and people came. In real life, as business owners, we have to persuade people to come. We do this by establishing trust, being reliable, treating customers with respect, and offering quality goods and services at prices that are deemed valuable. And when it comes to our marketing efforts, we persuade people to take the first steps by presenting a value proposition that resonates with them — a value proposition that shows, most of all, that we understand who they are and where they want to be. This article offers a formula for building an effective value proposition that increases your chances of engaging with the members of your target audiences.
Why, When, and How to use sprintf and printf
This article is for php coders who are familiar with the sprintf (and printf) functions but who haven’t yet figured out why, when, and how they should use them. Until recently, I was one of them. Although I’ve been coding in php since 2001, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve […]
Eaton Academy Website
Eaton Academy is a leading independent private school in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. Its mission is to provide individualized “Education Solutions for Every Mind, Every Age”. With low student-to-teacher ratios; programs for kindergarteners to post-graduates; options for on-premises, distance, and virtual learning; and curricula ranging from life skills to college prep; Eaton stands apart as an educational institution that successfully serves a broad range of learners with varied needs and learning styles.
Eaton first hired me in 2007 to redesign their first-generation Website which had been managed by school staff. Eleven years later, we embarked upon a new redesign, to make the site mobile responsive and to better reflect the breadth and depth of the school’s offerings.
What Exactly is a Web Application, Anyway?
When I tell people my business is building and maintaining Web sites and Web applications and providing WordPress support services, I get interesting reactions.
Pretty much everyone knows what a Web site is.
Fellow WordPress developers/designers and WordPress Do-It-Yourselfers (people who build and manage their own WordPress Web sites) know what WordPress support means.
But many people don’t understand what I mean by “Web application“.
In this article, I attempt to explain.
Use Custom Fields to Hide Stale Posts
Custom fields in WordPress (meta-data) can be extremely handy for controlling how you display your blog posts. In this article, I describe how I used custom fields — together with modifying the WordPress loop for the site’s front page — to solve a not uncommon problem: When blog posts about events from the far past show up in the “Recent Posts” section of a site’s home page, visitors might react negatively. It’s a little like letting newspapers pile up in your driveway when you’re on vacation: people might think you’re lazy or not home. Deleting such posts isn’t the answer.
Offer Live Chat for Enhanced Customer Engagement and Sales
Live Chat is here to stay, and smart businesses everywhere and in every industry are using it to provide the immediate personal touch that their prospects and customers long for. In this blog post, I discuss the Live Chat software I’m currently using (Tawk.to) and offer some reasons you ought to consider going “Live Chat” as soon as possible.
Enhanced Media Library Pro Plugin for WordPress: First Look
While building a WordPress powered e-commerce website for a bridal shop that could have thousands of images to manage, I quickly realized we’d need a much better way to manage images than navigating through hundreds of Media Library screens — especially considering the very limited functionality of the native WordPress Media Library.
I considered several solutions before remembering that I had used the Enhanced Medial Library plugin (free version) on another client site. This is a first look at Enhanced Medial Library Pro (although I suppose it’s also a first look at the free version).
Spoiler alert: For a one-time payment of $25 for unlimited lifetime updates for unlimited sites, you might not have to read past this summary.
(But please do.)
Make Responsive Lightbox by dFactory Work with FooGallery
This is a repurposing of an earlier blog article, First Look at Foo Gallery. I wanted to make it easy for people to find this solutions for making FooGallery and Responsive Lightbox by dFactory work together.