With all of the recent changes to Facebook, including the timeline, it is a good idea to hire a professional to take care of your Facebook Page – that way, you can spend your time doing what you do best – building your business.

The easiest way to do this is to add the web professional as an ADMIN on your Facebook page. This is easier than giving someone your login (not to mention safer). Facebook has quite a few security features in place so that it’s very difficult for someone new to login to your page.

So, to add someone as an Admin to your Facebook page, there are basically TWO METHODS:

Method One: Add an existing FRIEND as Admin on your Facebook Page

1. The new Admin must be on your friend’s list. Be sure to get the web professional’s personal Facebook page and ‘friend’ them.
2. Go to your Facebook page and click on ADMIN PANEL.
   
3. Your Admin Panel will slide open. Click on MANAGE – EDIT PAGE
4. Click on MANAGE ADMINS on the left side navigation menu
5. You will see a list of your existing Admin(s) and a box to add another Admin. Start typing in the professional’s name and it should pop up. REMEMBER: The new Admin must be on your friends list to be added as an Admin to your page.
6. You may need to confirm the change by entering your Facebook password again.
7. Once you’ve added the new Admin, they will be able to make changes to your Facebook page.
8. If you want to remove that person as Admin, simply repeat the steps but click the X on the right side of the Admin list.

Method Two: Add a person who has LIKED your Facebook page as Admin

1. Go to your Facebook page and click on ADMIN PANEL.
2. Click on the SEE ALL in the LIKES section on your Admin Panel
3. A complete list of the people who have liked your page will open. On the right side of each name, you will see a button to ADD AS ADMIN

That’s all there is to it!

Questions? Just post them in the comments and I’ll get right back with you!

The post Facebook Fan Pages – Add an Admin appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

Why get a website? It’s very very important in business to make your customer feel comfortable with you; that’s how you get them to trust and then purchase from you. A website is an important part of the current trust relationship.

Why?

Build credibility

Having a website to send potential customers to, even if you don’t sell retail items on your site, but instead sell your services, builds credibility and makes your business seem professional and worthy of trust. Likewise, having domain-specific email builds trust, as well. Also, it makes it clear that your business intends to stick around.

Online brand

Think of your domain name and your website as your online storefront. It’s your virtual location and should be considered an extension of your brand – to mesh nicely with your other marketing materials.

Traffic

With a large percentage of potential customers searching online for products and/or services BEFORE making a purchase, an effectively built, relevant website is extremely important. Traffic from type in traffic, search engine results pages, referring websites or even from Pay Per Click marketing is an excellent way to help increase your reach.

Is this important? YES! Think of your domain name as your online calling card, your go-to location, your i-Home. It’s the place where potential customers will gather to check out what you have to offer. Some things to think about:

• Pick something people can remember.
• I can’t stress this enough. If someone remembers your domain name, they’re more likely to come back.
• If you can, pick your domain name based on your business name. That way, they’re tied together in the visitor’s mind.

If you can’t pick your domain name based on your business name, stick with something memorable. For example, if your business name is Big Tech Web Hosting and your first choice, www.BigTechWebHosting.com is taken, think about something that will both represent your business as well as stick in someone’s mind.

Maybe something like www.HostAtBigTech.com or www.GetBigTech.com. The point is to find something catchy that is both easy to remember and still represents your company.

• Short and sweet.

In other words, make it short and easy to spell because people are going to misspell it if they can.

Try for keywords, but ONLY if they directly relate to your business and it makes sense to have those keywords. For the most part, a domain that contains keywords is going to rank higher for THAT keyword than another domain name will.

Example: www.WEBSITE.com is going to rank higher for the keyword WEBSITE than www.DesignersDream.com simply because the keyword is in the domain name. USUALLY.

There are exceptions. And given the fact that getting a domain name with keywords is fast becoming almost impossible, it’s not a HAVE TO DO type of thing. If you can, do it; if not, don’t sweat it.

There’s the main points on buying a domain name. I’m rerunning this today because I think it’s still a pretty valid, helpful article…any other ideas when it comes to getting that domain name?

The post Choosing a Domain Name appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

My son wanted to see the movie so we went on his 18th birthday and it was completely the opposite of ‘SUCK!”. In fact I’m still quoting lines from the movie and the last time I did that, was with the Hangover (original, not second). There was a lot of smart references in the movie, too (I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it) and it was just overall, a really good movie.  The cameo by Johnny Depp was amazing too! (OOOPS, spoiler!)

So I got to thinking, like I do, about how I really let other people’s opinions play too big of a part in my day to day life. Sure, if a good friend or associate tells me something, I listen because I respect them and their opinions. But some random person who doesn’t know me? Why would I put a lot of my energy into that? But I do and I think a lot of others do, too.

If you troll through Facebook at almost any minute (second), you can see someone in a large, heated argument with someone else. Why? Why would anyone waste their precious time on Earth with that? I have no clue at all…and I’m working hard not to.

The post Surprise surprise…. 21 Jump Street rocks appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

People have emotional reactions to colors; that in turn, can make or break the visitor’s feelings about your website, your brand, your company and ultimately your entire business. Keep in mind that a lot of these reactions happen on the ‘gut’ level, meaning that people don’t even know they are having these reactions!

Also, just like scents, color reactions aren’t the same in every single person, but when you’re dealing with the internet, first impressions (and other people’s first impressions) count a lot!

Let’s take a look at colors and what they ‘mean’:

White – purity, virginity, cleanliness, hope.

Gray - conservative, reliable, maybe a tad boring. Gray is a standard in business clothing.

Blue – calm, trustworthy. Blue is used very often in the financial and health care markets.

Red – anger, violence, lust. Red is a great color to attract attention but should be used sparingly.

Yellow - warm, happy. Has a relationship to eating (McDonald’s arches aren’t yellow for nothing).

Brown – earth, nature. Can also be seen as dirty or unclean.

Black – power. On the internet, black is too often used on pornographic sites, or other sites that are ‘dark’ in nature.

Orange - halloween. Works well and is often used with the soothing power of blue.

Pink – a pale cousin of red, most often associated with feminine pursuits.

Green - money and wealth.

Purple – creativity to a point. Too much becomes garish and dated.

Colors Online

All monitors will display colors differently. There are 216 web-safe colors. If exact colors are important, look into web-safe colors.

Things to consider with colors and website design

• Text – do not use colors or white text on black backgrounds; it’s extremely hard on the eye. Likewise, other light colors on dark backgrounds are very distracting. Unless there is a good reason not to, always stick to dark text on a light background.
• Consistency – colors should be used sparingly and in a consistent manner across a website. For example, if your navigation is black text on a creme background on the home page, it should be the same or a complimentary variation throughout the site. Discordant colors are jarring and leave the visitor feeling ‘unsettled’.
• Bright colors, such as red, yellow, orange, etc., should be used to make points and should not be the main ‘theme’ of a site.
• White is good – white space should ALWAYS be used as a design element. It helps line everything up to the eye, as well as giving the eye ‘resting’ points so that it can fully enjoy the colors in other locations

Bottom line: color is EXTREMELY important, both in attracting a visitor to your site, keeping them there, and making the sale.

What do you think? Do you have the same reactions to colors as I listed above or are your experiences different?  Do you ever use color to make a statement? I’d love to hear your comments.

The post Color in Website Design appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

That said, their customer support is always very helpful!

So, I had a website that needed to be built with Godaddy hosting while leaving the existing site (pointed at a different DNS) live. I wanted to be able to preview the domain as I built it on the server without switching the DNS.

Usually, this is easily done if you’re using hosting such as Bluehost. Godaddy – not so easy. After looking around online for a bit, I decided to call Godaddy and see if they could help. This is what I found:

Login to your Godaddy account and click on HOSTING on the left sidebar menu:

Next, you’ll see the hosting manager. Click on ‘manage account’:

This will open a new window with your hosting account summary. Towards the bottom, you’ll see Primary Domain DNS:

When you click ‘view’, a small box will appear. It will show your CURRENT nameservers, as well as the Preview DNS feature. If it is already activated, as it is in the case below, you can click on the link to see a preview of your site as you are building it. If it is NOT enabled, you can simply click ENABLE, which will allow this to happen. It does take a bit of time to be processed – not more than 24 hours.

When you click Preview My Site, you will see this:

Click on the link and a new window will open with the preview site. NOTE: if you’re building with WordPress, as I was, you can still login to the backend by using the preview DNS URL and adding /wp-login.php at the end. Works great!

The post Previewing a site with Godaddy hosting appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

From their blog:

WordPress.com is currently being targeted by a extremely large Distributed Denial of Service attack which is affecting connectivity in some cases. The size of the attack is multiple Gigabits per second and tens of millions of packets per second.

WordPress.com is responsible for about 10% of the sites online so this was a major issue; especially considering the VIPs it services (TED, CBS, CNN, more).

The post Denial of Service DDOS Attacks at WordPress appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

Forums are still used by a large number of people and there are a lot of ways you can integrate one into your WordPress site.

Well, really just 2 – add a plugin to your WordPress site or add a stand-alone product. Both have pros & cons; below I’m going to discuss some of the best options.

1. Mingle (plugin, contained within WP site) - The major pro for this is ease of use. There isn’t a lot of confusing extras on this forum. It’s relatively simple to use and simple to adminster. There are different add-ons you can bring in that can add some features to it, but if you want something with a lot of bells and whistles, this isn’t it.  There is an add-on to allow guest posting, although I haven’t tested it. Some design customization is possible, but it does not have 100% flexibility.

2. WP Forum (plugin, contained within WP site) – this forum has more features, but along with that, it is harder to install and administer.  Tight integration with WordPress makes this plugin easy to use and administer.  One thing to consider, is that while popular, WP-Forum hasn’t been updated since 2008 so there are security concerns as patches haven’t been released for known bugs.  For a completely new user, it can be a little confusion, but it has a lot more bells & whistles that you can bring into play. It supports different skins and admins have the option to turn guest posting on or off with optional Captcha. Some design customization is possible, but it does not have 100% flexibility.

3. Simple:Press (plugin, contained within WP site) -  This plugin has a lot of features and is fully customizable and comes with a number of skins and icons.  This forum can be used to have permission specific groups of users as well as open forums and it does support guest posting.

4. Simple Machines Forum – This is a stand-alone forum that runs on an open source program (SMF) that is customizable for an advanced programmer. It has a user-friendly interface but it is still a relatively complex forum, meaning that for a new user, it will take some learning to get around, as well as administer. There is an extensive backend to control just about everything you’d want to control. Again, this is not a simple forum to understand, use or administer and would require medium to high technical skills to manage.

5. vBulletin – the best forum software out there, this is a stand-alone product that can do just about anything you would want a forum to do. The cost of a single license is $195 and if you want support, you need to pay $80/year. For the user, it’s complex, but it was for quite a while the most often used Forum software online, so if you’ve been to a forum before, it’s quite possible it was powered by vBulletin. That said, it is extremely complicated in the backend and will require a high degree of technical knowledge as well as some training to get around back there.

The forum software you choose all depends on what you want to do and what PRIMARY FEATURES you are looking for – ease of use, flexibility, bells & whistles.

The post Best Forums to Use with Your WordPress Site appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

I would love to say I wrote this handy bit of code myself but I did not. Much praise to for the skilled coder at brassblogs.

Now, the way to use this is to take the code listed below and add it to your functions file. Or, to make it easier, I’ve pasted the complete information into this text file.


< ? php

function inherit_template() {
if (is_category()) {
$catid = get_query_var('cat');
if ( file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . '/category-' . $catid . '.php') ) {
include( TEMPLATEPATH . '/category-' . $catid . '.php');
exit;
}

$cat = &get_category($catid);
$parent = $cat->category_parent;
while ($parent) {
$cat = &get_category($parent);
if ( file_exists(TEMPLATEPATH . '/category-' . $cat->cat_ID . '.php') ) {
include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/category-' . $cat->cat_ID . '.php');
exit;
}

$parent = $cat->category_parent;
}
}
}

add_action('template_redirect', 'inherit_template', 1);
?>


After you add that to your functions.php file, you simply need to make a template for EACH PARENT CATEGORY. The child categories will then use the template that their PARENT uses. YEA!

It’s very easy to make a category template. The simplest way is to take the existing archive.php file in your WordPress theme and save it as category-ID.php where the ID is the NUMBER of the category. You can check this by going into your wp-admin, clicking on the category and reading the complete URL for the ID= (it will be at the end of the string).

So, if your category is #1, you will make category-1.php. You can style this page in any way you want; you can change link colors, text colors or even make it look completely different from the rest of your WordPress blog – it’s completely up to you!

This will apply to all parent categories that you want to use a special template; simply find the category ID, create the page, name it category-XX.php (where XX is your category ID) and upload it to your theme folder. Or use the sample you can download here.

Again, credit goes to brassblogs.com! Thanks!

The post How to force child categories to use the PARENT category template in WordPress appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

A great code around is shown below, courtesy of to Kyle Eslick and found on wprecipes. I’ve used it on some sites and I find it works great. ONE NOTE: if you want less than 10 comments, simply change the code to a lesser number.

php
  global $wpdb;
  $sql = "SELECT DISTINCT ID, post_title, post_password,
comment_ID, comment_post_ID, comment_author,
comment_date_gmt,comment_approved,
comment_type,comment_author_url,
SUBSTRING(comment_content,1,30) AS com_excerpt
FROM
$wpdb->comments LEFT OUTER JOIN $wpdb->posts ON
 ($wpdb->comments.comment_post_ID = $wpdb->posts.ID)
 WHERE comment_approved = '1' AND comment_type = ''
AND post_password = ''
ORDER BY comment_date_gmt DESC LIMIT 10";

  $comments = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
  $output = $pre_HTML;
  $output .= "n

";
  foreach ($comments as $comment) {
    $output .= "n
	
".strip_tags($comment->comment_author) .":"
 . "ID)."#comment-" . $comment->comment_ID
. "" title="on ".$comment->post_title .
"">" . strip_tags($comment->com_excerpt)."

";
  }
  $output .= "n

";
  $output .= $post_HTML;
  echo $output;

The post Display recent comments on your WordPress blog appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.

It’s a pretty simple process.

1. Add a line of code to functions.php

add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');

2. Define the size of the thumbnails – you have a couple options. You can hard crop it, which is what I have done in the example below (add ‘true’ to the end of the dimensions), or you can resize the box. Box resizing shrinks an image without distortion until it fits inside the “box” you’ve specified with your dimensions.

set_post_thumbnail_size( 100, 100, true ); // 100 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall, hard crop mode

Together this will look like:

3. Add the code to your template

That’s it! Now when you login to your wp-admin panel scroll down – on the right side under ‘Categories’:

Click on ‘set thumbnail’ and you get this box:

Be sure to select ‘Use as thumbnail’ and then ‘save’. Then close the window with the X on top right.

Here’s an example of it used on one of my sites:

The post Adding thumbnail support to your WordPress theme appeared first on Custom Wordpress Theme Design.