It’s been Hectic here in Durham… Hectic, but good

I’m excited that work has been busy. I love what I do and I’ve had the privilege of finishing off and launching 3 websites in one week. All of which I’m thrilled by how they turned out.

http://activedgefit.com/ is a fitness center in Durham, just off 15-501. Bryan Diaz is a fantastic business man and runs a tight ship. I think so highly of him and his business, that I’m going to be sending my wife for some physical therapy.

http://www.sarahstacke.com/ is a local Durham photographer. This was my first photography site I’ve ever done (officially), and it is unlike any other site I’ve worked on. Sidescrolling pages presented many unique challenges that I loved figuring out.

http://paintconc.com/ is a professional painting service based in Cary and Raleigh NC. Dawn at Paint Co spent far too much money with another web design company and was frustrated by their uninspiring design and lack of responsiveness. We had this site designed, and up and running in under a month.

Posted in Durham, Raleigh | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Customizing a WordPress Theme

WordPress is an amazing tool. It allows you to choose from thousands of themes, both free and premium. If you’re not too picky, you’ll find a theme that is perfect for you and your business. What is not easy about WordPress, is doing a custom theme. If you have a design that you made in photoshop, it’s not an easy thing to make WordPress play nice with it. So you have two choices.

  1. Spend 6 months learning the ins and outs of the wordpress system, learning CSS, html, javascript and php. If you know those things, it should be a piece of make.
  2. Or you can Contact me and I’ll help you get a quote for what you need.

I can take pretty much any psd and make it into a custom wordpress theme. Prices vary, but you’re looking at anywhere from $500 – $1000 (as of December, 2011). If I see your design, and talk with you on the phone, I can give you a firm price. And I’ll get it done in record time.

Posted in Custom Wordpress Theme, Wordpress | Leave a comment

New Favorite WordPress Plugin, “Post Content Shortcodes”

I was showing a client her new site. She was loving it. Everything was going very smoothly. I showed her how to update pages, create pages, edit the menu – she was in love. Everything was going splendidly. I was happy, and more importantly, my client was happy. Then came a bombshell.

“I need my site to say the same thing on a lot of different pages, and I don’t want to have to edit 6 pages that say the same thing. where do I edit that content?”

My heart sank. In my head I was thinking “I have no idea… and I told you at the beginning that wordpress doesn’t do that.” But I maintained my composure and told her I would look into it – knowing full well that this would take hours and hours of research on how to do something that I’ve never done before. She said she needed to be able to edit a page in one place and have it change across multiple pages across her site. Not possible, at least that’s what I thought.

Little did I know, but there is a beautiful plugin called “Post Content Shortcodes“. Once installed, all you need to do is create a post or page with the content that you need repeated throughout the site. Then you paste a short piece of code wherever you want that content to show up.

So if you have your store hours in 25 different places througout your site (and it’s not in the header or footer), think about how annoying it would be to change them all. It would probably take you an hour just to change your hours of operation. With Post Content Shortcodes, it will take you 30 seconds to change it in 25 places. Brilliant. I’ll definitely be using this again.

Posted in Wordpress, Wordpress Plugin | Leave a comment

How to Update a Page in WordPress

Go to your login page: http://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin
You should come to a page that has this login screen:

login

Enter your username and password.

Click on pages Pages in the left hand column.

Pages

You will be taken to a listing of all the pages in the website. You may need to page through to find the one you are looking for. When you find the page you want to update, click on it. From here you can do most everything you need to do. Use the formatting tools to change the size of the font and to make other changes, just like using microsoft word.

To Make a Link, Highlight the text you want to make a link. Click on the link button at the top (it looks like a chain link). A box will pop up. If you are linking to an external page, enter the address in the URL box. If you are linking to another page on the website, select that page from the list. Press Add Link.

When you are ready to publish, you’ll want to find the Publish box on the top right side of your page. Choose the Update button.

Edits

It’s as easy as that.

Still having problems? Give me a call and I can help you out. 919-724-4417.

Or if you’re having larger problems: request a quote

 

Posted in Client Help, Wordpress | Tagged | Leave a comment

Photography

Photography, DurhamIt’s just a hobby for now, so don’t judge me too harshly. I’ve posted a new photography page here: http://pennerwebdesign.com/my-work/photography/ .

I just wanted a place to showcase my work. I’ve used flickr, and that works okay, but since I’m already paying for this hosting service, I might as well put it to good use and start uploading some pics. I’ll be posting my new photos here as I take them. But that depends entirely on what I’m doing and where I am.

For me, photography is mostly a trial and error experiment. I’m the type of person who loves to figure stuff out, stuff that some people don’t have the patience for. And in that way, photography fascinates me. Like website coding, photography provides an immediate benefit, but you have to work at it and try to understand it to get the right shot.

Enjoy them, and of course, if any of my clients need some help with pictures, I’d love to help them out.

Posted in Photography and Video | Leave a comment

Durham to Orlando, and Back

I recently took a week with my wife, and our friend, Mary, and drove down to Orlando Florida for a week of fun in the sun. I had great intentions of creating this amazing 10 minute vacation video. But then two things occurred to me.

  1. Nobody likes long vacation videos
  2. I don’t have the time to edit that much video (at least while I’m not being paid)

So I came up with this compromise using Apple’s iMovie.

Highlights (or lowlights depending on how you look at them) of the trip include Disney World, The Holy Land Experience, South of the Border, and hours and hours at the pool.

Posted in Photography and Video, Travel | Leave a comment

Tools of the Trade

I recently coerced my significant other into letting me purchase a DSLR camera. I bought a Canon T2i. Not exactly top of the line, but it does everything I need it to do. I’ve really enjoyed running around Durham, Raleigh, and some of my clients places such as Duke Memorial United Methodist Church taking photos and using them for the greater good. I’ve also been experimenting with the video capability. It shoots in 720p as well as 1080p. So naturally, I took a video of me cutting my hair.

The only problem with the video function of a DSLR is there really is no proper autofocus. The camera will autofocus if you want it to, but it’s so noisy and slow doing it, it’s better to just manually focus the shot… hence, the fact that most of this video is out of focus :)

Posted in My Life, Photography and Video | Leave a comment

New Years Resolution Achieved

Back on January 15th, I mentioned that getting my site on page one of Google for the search term “Durham web design” was one of my goals. I put a tonne of SEO work into the site in January and part of February. But at some point in February, the fruits of my labor began to work in my favor. Work has been very busy since then and I haven’t had a chance to update my site. Well, I checked a couple of weeks ago and realized that my site is on page one of Google for Durham web design. I’m pretty excited about it. Business has been picking up because of it, and it gives me a great example of what I can do for my clients.

So… it’s April, and I don’t have any more resolutions to achieve. I guess it’s been a good year. Business has been so good that I’ve been throwing around the idea of hiring somebody to help me out. It’s a tough decision. On one hand, my business is me. And if I introduce somebody else into the picture, it starts to become less me, and more out of my control. Also, I feel as if hiring somebody adds a lot of responsibility on my part. If I want my business to grow, this will be the next step. But I’m just not sure I’m ready for it. It might take a few months/years for me to warm up to it.

Posted in Durham Web Design, Google, My Life | Leave a comment

Keeping Up With Web Design Trends

It’s difficult to be a full service web design agency in this day in age. Design is one of those things that you have to constantly stay on top of. It changes all the time. If you don’t love it, you’ll fall into your old ways and do the same thing, over and over again.

When I talk to other web designers and see what they are working on, more often than not, I am horrified at the low quality of their work. How can you call your self a web designer and crank out websites that come out of the womb looking 15 years old. I know I’m not the Van Gogh of web designers, but I do try to keep abreast of trends in the industry. I try to set the bar high.

When designing a website I usually do a lot of research surfing around the web looking at what other top designers are doing. When I see their sites and how great they look, I aim for that. I know I can design something as good or better than the best in the industry. So that’s where I set the bar. I don’t look at their site and think to myself, I can’t do that, or that’s out of my league. But their is always a but.

Budget Restrictions Suck
I haven’t been in this industry long enough to command the attention of big time clients like some others. Often, I am highly restricted by the budget of my client. Web design is like any other job, you have to have the right tools for the job, and for design, other than a computer and photoshop, you need time. So if your client can’t afford to pay you for spending some quality time designing a site, they will get sub par results. It’s as simple as that. Sure, you can use a template, or go off somebody else’s work (which is unethical), but if you want an original site with high end design, the designer is going to have to spend some time on it.

Posted in Web Design | 1 Comment

My Current Favorite WordPress Plugin

The beautiful thing about WordPress is the plugins. And my current favourite is “Advanced Most Recent Posts Mod”. If you remember from my home page, at the very bottom is an area that displays my most recent post. Shown here ↓

This area is actually a widget (I created a fifth footer widget area that allowed me to do this).

WordPress already has a most recent posts widget, but it is very limited in it’s functionality. What advanced most recent posts mod allows you to do is specify EXACTLY what you want displayed. I am able to choose how many words you need, or even how many letters. The customization is fantastic. Take a look at the developers website for more info: http://kaileylampert.com/

What I am also excited about is the fact that this plugin allows me to put more text on my home page and have it automatically updated every time I write a new post. So, for example, if I write a post about WordPress and Raleigh and want those key words on the home page, this plugin allows me to do that. In this case, it will help with WordPress, not necessarily Raleigh

Posted in Raleigh, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugin | Leave a comment