Archive for the ‘Website Development’ Category
Theme Showcase
John Wragg’s tailored themes based on the Atrtisteer theme generator software:
- Nature Walks Findhorn (for Sean Reed)
- Move to Live (for Jackie Adkins
- Johns Support Blog (this site)
Other generic sample WordPress themes
Blueprint Theme
Description: A simple WordPress theme based on the Blueprint CSS Framework.
Company Website 001
Description: Ideal for a company website. Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS.
DeepBlue
Description: DeepBlue is a free theme by Daily Blog Tips. Tags:blue color, right sidebar, three columns, fixed width
Fixed Blix
Description: Fixed or fluid width. Language localization support. View the Blix Gallery at the demo site. Read Me. Original theme by Sebastian Schmieg. Adapted by dancer.
Hybrid
Description: A user-friendly, search-engine optimized theme framework, featuring 18 custom page templates and multiple widget-ready areas, allowing you to create any type of site you want.
JW_johnsblog
Description: Artisteer-generated theme
JW_movetolive_6
Description: Artisteer-generated theme
JW_NatureWalks
Description: Artisteer-generated theme
SF-Blueprint-WP
Description: A simple WordPress theme based on the Blueprint CSS Framework.
Twenty Eleven
Description: The 2011 theme for WordPress is sophisticated, lightweight, and adaptable. Make it yours with a custom menu, header image, and background — then go further with available theme options for light or dark color scheme, custom link colors, and three layout choices. Twenty Eleven comes equipped with a Showcase page template that transforms your front page into a showcase to show off your best content, widget support galore (sidebar, three footer areas, and a Showcase page widget area), and a custom “Ephemera” widget to display your Aside, Link, Quote, or Status posts. Included are styles for print and for the admin editor, support for featured images (as custom header images on posts and pages and as large images on featured “sticky” posts), and special styles for six different post formats.
Twenty Ten
Description: The 2010 theme for WordPress is stylish, customizable, simple, and readable — make it yours with a custom menu, header image, and background. Twenty Ten supports six widgetized areas (two in the sidebar, four in the footer) and featured images (thumbnails for gallery posts and custom header images for posts and pages). It includes stylesheets for print and the admin Visual Editor, special styles for posts in the “Asides” and “Gallery” categories, and has an optional one-column page template that removes the sidebar.
Vigilance
Description: A lean and clean WordPress theme featuring standards and search friendly code. Theme Options Menu allows for serious customization. Designed and coded by Jestro.
WordPress Classic
Description: The original WordPress theme that graced versions 1.2.x and prior.
E-commerce
Benefits of E-commerce
Selling your own or somebody else’s products on the web can be a supplementary source of income if your main business is providing a personal service, say as a healer. It can also be a significant source of income itself.
The costs of finding and selling products to new customers can be much reduced, but there are payment transaction costs, IT system and support costs. Please contact us if you would like to discuss an appropriate business model, which should be done before any decisions on a website.
Recommended Solutions and Costs
The following recommendations and indicative costs are based on the analysis and review of E-commerce systems on John Wragg’s Main Website, which describes the options and potential solutions in more detail.
A few web pages or products
- A WordPress based web site, eg
- PayPal Website Payments Standard “Buy Now” buttons
Cost from £200, plus £40 per product, plus hosting and ongoing maintenance £100 pa.
5 – 12 Products
- A website using Joomla CMS, eg
- PayPal Website Payments Standard “Buy Now” buttons
Cost from £500, plus £25 per product, plus hosting and ongoing maintenance £100 pa.
Tens of Products
Website using:
- Joomla CMS
- PayPal Website Payments Standard “Buy Now” buttons
- Easy PayPal, for button management
- Simple Caddy shopping cart system
Cost from £750, plus £25 per product, plus hosting and ongoing maintenance £ tba pa.
Hundreds of Products
- Drupal
- PayPal Website Payments Standard “Buy Now” buttons
- e-Commerce
Cost from £850, plus £25 per product, plus hosting and ongoing maintenance £tba pa.
Please Contact Us to arrange a free initial consultation with no obligation.
Article Website Content
Adding one or more articles related to the theme and keywords of a website can add interest for site visitors, build up your reputation and help with the search engines.
There are several possible approaches:
1) Write your own. This is best, and then you can make them available to others for free provided they include a link back to your site.
Article publishing agencies that are reputable and effective (with a Google Page Rank of 5 or 6) include:
2) A variant is to hire a writer on the web to write unique content for you. This can be done from $10 an article and you could then edit the result to suit.
3) Use somebody else’s article, with permission (possibly via one of the above agencies). But you will not get the credit, and Google does not like multiple copies of the same content on different sites. Not recommended.
4) Syndicate content from another site’s RSS feed, as described on my web page at http://www.johnwr.co.uk/htmlsite/consult/rsscontent.php
Hopefully this content feed will be updated regularly by the author, which helps on balance with Google.
It is still duplicate content, but should be OK if it is at the bottom of the page, as in:
http://www.johnwr.co.uk/htmlsite/consult/rsscontent.php#ITtoolbox,
http://www.johnwr.co.uk/htmlsite/consult/johnsblog.php
or a complete imported article such as:
http://www.johnwr.co.uk/htmlsite/marketing/webmktg.htm
For further information pease see my website pages:
Regards
PS
The optimum length of a web page or article is said to be around 450 words, as opposed to this blog which 239 words.
PPS
Any article on yor site should have consistent Meta Tag Title, Description and keywords.
SEO Optimisation
For success your website needs qualified traffic, site visitors who will take your desired action. And a large part in generating traffic is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
I recently went by coach to Manchester to spend time with my grown up children, and took with me the 746 page book “Search Engine Optimization for Dummies”, by Bruce Clay and Susan Esparza, experts in the field.
The book is highly recommended, though it is a bit repetitive. I have got up to Page 449, Most of it I “knew”, and it is good to have a reminder and to take it to a deeper level.
I have always done the basics, but doing everything they recommend would double the cost of a website and its ongoing support.
There are some simple measures that you can do “for free”, such as:
1) Know your site audience, objectives and desired outcomes
2) Know the target keywords for each page, and ensure that no two pages have the same title.
3) Make sure the keywords, Titles, Description, Meta Tags and H1 Headers on a page all agree,
4) Create a “Google Profile” for yourself
5) Create a “Google Local” entry for your business
6) Link to and from YouTube, and other social networking sites.
7) Solicit inbound links from quality related websites (not the so called link farms)
There is lots more – see my www.johnwr.co.uk for a fuller treatment, and I could put together a possible package as a service if there is demand for that?
One test is to see who your top competitors are on Google for your chosen keywords and your name, and see what they are doing. Are you willing and able to match them?
[A website can still be valuable as an adjunct to other marketing brochures etc even if it does not rank well.]
Regards
Artisteer Template Generator
I am now using the Artisteer template generator for most sites. You can generate a wide range of graphical looks, and it works equally for WordPress, Joomla and Drupal (if you get the commercial version).
Demo Sites include:
Johns Support Blog (This site).
WordPress Evaluation
I am using this site to evaluate the applicability of WordPress for a relatively staic site of a few pages and an interactive blog.
Pages can be used for static content, tied into a menu via a suitable Theme. And you can set a Home page via Admin | Reading Settings.
WordPress Theme Shortlist
There are suppposed to be thousands of WordPress Themes avaialable, but just try and find a suitable one!
My shortlist is:
Artisteer theme generator, also works with Joomla and Drupal
Vigilance – seems OK but would need CSS tweaking
Blix – OK, but see attached Post
Discarded
BluePrint – not updated since 2007
SF BluePrint
Company Website
Cubismo – 2007!
Hybrid
Popular
Salmon – 2007
Deep Blue
Blix WordPress Theme?
The Blix WordPress Theme looks good, but it is not possible to show the Sidebar on Pages such as Home, About, Content…
This might be OK for most Pages, but I would need a sidebar on the static Home Page as an essential part of the navigation.