webdesign

Responsive Websites in WordPress

mobile-wordpress-siteI started out coding mobile websites by hand several years ago (before the first iPhone came out, actually), and that is still how I prefer to do it sometimes! However, I have given that technique up as old-fashioned now when it comes to WordPress sites

It’s just too tricky to do your own coding on that platform without having lots of obstacles. Perhaps someday a mobile- and tablet-friendly approach will be built-in, but for now my favorite way to make WordPress websites is with one of two plugins: WPTouch and WP Mobile Detector.

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New Site: 3rd Church DC

by Jay Frost

3rd-church-dc

New Website for DC Church

I’m pleased to add a new website to the family: Third Church of Christ, Scientist, Washington DC. They were already running WordPress, but using the default 2010 theme with lots of plugins, and the site was very far behind on updates. Additionally, the content had become quite a mish-mash after being assembled, I would guess, by several different people working on different projects over the past couple of years. (This is a common issue for small businesses and non-profits that don’t have a dedicated webmaster!)

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Link-Building Strategy for 2014

SEO Genius logoOne thing that took me a while to get used to in the SEO word is how fast things are always changing. Just when you’ve got everything figured out and are starting to rock it, the rules change and you have tackle some new approach!

Such is the challenge of technology’s rapid evolution, the rate of which many predict will continue to accelerate. Nevertheless, everything you learn along the way contributes to your your ability to keep up with further modifications and maturing of technology and it adaptation.

One core component of SEO strategy is link-building: increasing the number of domains that link to your website. The following article from SEO Genius poses the question What link building tactics should we follow in 2014 and why? to several SEO experts, whose compiled answers provide a good cross-section of different ways to approach this strategy this year.

 

My Favorite WordPress Plugins

WordPress is a great website-building platform, in part because it’s open source. This allows for a gigantic index of plugins created by freelance developers to increase functionality and customize various aspects of the WordPress package.

There are many plugins to sort through, and when I’m looking for one that does a specific thing I’ve found that I often need to install several different plugins and try them each out before settling on the best one.

Below is a list I’ve compiled of my favorite and most frequently-used plugins.

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Making 301 Redirects with Windows Hosting (on GoDaddy)

Most of the websites I make for people are on linux servers, but in an effort to expand my know-how I am now running a few simple pages on Windows. The fundamentals of XHTML and CSS are the same, but server-level things are way different. With linux, you have a .htaccess file that you can use for page redirects, url canonicalization, and much more I’m sure!

Back on Windows servers, you may have a web.config file if you’re the system admin and running a dedicated server. I, however, use shared hosting on GoDaddy, which means that there isn’t a huge IIS command center to log into.

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Bank of America “Number 1 Online Bank”

I was doing some online banking today at Bank of America (yes, I still have an account with them … for now). I saw a little announcement on the bottom left of the screen that said “Bank of America ranked #1 Online Bank.”

“Hmmmf,” I sniggered. I have experience with 3-4 online banking systems, and BOA is my least favorite in terms of ease-of-use and understanding-where-all-these-other-charges-are-coming-from. It has even been difficult to simply find out how much I owe and pay it. One of my old accounts is still listed in my payment center (even though I closed it over two years ago) and I can never remember which one is the active one.

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