Archive for July, 2009


WordPress theming

Filed Under: CMS (Content Mgmt Systems), Web Design, WordPress by Debbie — Leave a comment
July 30, 2009

Earlier this week due to a number of irritations with one particular project (it started off as a really bad week!), I decided to take the plunge and learn how to create a custom WordPress theme myself.

I’ve been integrating WordPress into other websites for quite a while so I did have some basic understanding of how it worked. I found this nice article in Smashing Magazine about WP theme development frameworks and read it all. I looked at a few of them and picked WP Framework because it looked like something I could handle, as a beginner.

A half hour into my workday Tuesday and I’d downloaded and installed WP Framework and made that my active theme. I found the actual migration of my HTML/CSS page elements into WP Framework was quite easy – the main issue was figuring out which of my elements needed to be renamed.

Basically with WP Framework, there’s a base.css file that contains a pretty minimal amount of CSS styling. There’s a screen.css file that’s blank and takes precedence over base.css – that’s where you can copy and paste your CSS styles from your HTML/CSS page. And then as I mentioned, you have to determine what styles of yours need to be renamed (or, which styles in the theme HTML need to be renamed). As long as you get all the styles in agreement, it works either way.

I had to create one additional template for the home page, which wasn’t the blog in this case. That gave me a little trouble because I hadn’t done that before, but when I figured out I just made a copy of the theme’s index.php file, made the changes I needed in the code and gave it a theme name in the commented section at the top, it began to make sense. I created a new header_custom.php file that would call a second stylesheet with adjustments for just that template, changed the header file call in my new version of index.php to that new header_custom.php. This did take a while to figure out but it does make sense to me now.

Then in the ‘home’ page’s editing window in WordPress I just selected this second template name for my page, and all was working fine.

It took me exactly 10 hours to build my first custom WordPress theme – there’s still a little CSS glitch at the bottom with the footer, but otherwise it’s done and I’m very happy with it.

I learned a really important and marketable new skill as a result of all the trouble I had with on this particular project – so it definitely turned out for the best.

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Useful links for web pros

Filed Under: Web Design by Debbie — Leave a comment
July 29, 2009

Just updated and cleaned out my Useful Links page. Not a lot of links, but good quality stuff.

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How to find clients who are after value, not cheapness

Filed Under: Clients by Debbie — Leave a comment
July 27, 2009

I don’t want clients that are entirely focused on the lowest price; I’m not the lowest-priced designer in my region and have no desire to be. I don’t cut corners for clients and I don’t want to work with clients who demand that I cut corners for them. That’s why I put a ‘what is your budget?’ question on my intake form, so I can weed out tire-kickers.

Sometimes they’re harder to recognize. These are the ones that want you to take care of the ‘little extras’ for them – all those things that will ‘just take a minute’ – but don’t think they need to pay for your time. I think that some clients are under the impression that a web designer simply snaps his or her fingers and all manner of problems are magically fixed. Voila!

If I turned the tables , maybe it would make more sense to them. If I’m working with a roofer, for example, I highly doubt that he would agree were I to ask him to go up and fix some shingles on my roof for free.

Perhaps it’s the economy, as my husband just pointed out as he’s reading over my shoulder. It certainly is happening more frequently recently.

I’m not sure what I can do to more carefully target clients who are focused on the value of what I provide and not on saving the most money, but I’m going to give it some careful thought in the next few weeks.

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Learning some valuable business lessons the hard way

Filed Under: Botheration, Business Nuts and Bolts by Debbie — Leave a comment
July 27, 2009

This has been a really bad week.

I’ve owned my web design studio for 4+ years and consider myself to be a pretty experienced and business-savvy entrepreneur. But so far this week (and it’s Monday night) I’ve learned:

  • To never ever ever ever ever EVER do even the smallest business task for the closest colleague without a signed contract. I never do this, and I feel so stupid for doing it two weeks ago.
  • Be horribly and overly explicit. If a project is going to take 15 minutes longer than originally discussed with a client, get a signed change order. I have one client who demands them, and maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
  • Just because you like a colleague or a potential client, it doesn’t mean they’ll be good to work for/with. Not at all. Sometimes it’s hard to tell until you get in there and are actually on a project for/with them.
  • That some people that are new to freelancing seem to have a level of business naivete that’s just scary. It’s critical to remember that if you’re a subcontractor, your primary contractor is the same as your CLIENT. Subs seem to be willing to do things to contractors that they would never due to a client, and that doesn’t make any sense to me.
  • That having peers to commiserate with is priceless. I wrote a recommendation on LinkedIn for one of them today.

Please, please let the rest of the week be better.

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Joomla or WordPress?

Filed Under: CMS (Content Mgmt Systems) by Debbie — Leave a comment
July 23, 2009

JoomlaShack, a template provider I recommend if you need a clean, well-built Joomla template, has a popular blog post about 5 reasons to choose Joomla over WordPress.

Now I’m a big fan of WordPress – I like to recommend it to clients because of it’s extremely easy to use admin side. Joomla is a lot harder for most clients to grasp, although it is definitely a lot more powerful too.

Whether I recommend Joomla or WordPress is totally driven by the nature and requirements of the project and the technical capabilities of the client. For a relatively simply site that needs a blog and is focused on static pages and some additional functionality, WordPress wins. It’s easy to theme, easy to use, has a lot of plugins for functionality and is in my opinion the best blogging platform. It’s also better for SEO.

On the other hand, if the site is large, needs a lot of interactive functionality, and/or has many content types to display and manage, I like Joomla. And you can always integrate a WordPress blog into a Joomla site.

One thing that some of the commentors mentioned that I’ll weigh in on too. WordPress’ support forums leave a lot to be desired; I’ve very, very rarely gotten a useful answer, or any answer at all for that matter, by posting a question on a WordPress forum. So I don’t bother with that anymore and for the most part haven’t needed to.

On the other hand, the official Joomla site’s community forums are pretty impressive, from the organization of the forums themselves to the quality of the answers. One of the reasons I’ll often choose one application over the other is the responsiveness of forum users and Joomla is one of the best I’ve ever used. Responders don’t automatically assume you’re a codehead nor do they generally talk down to those who announce they’re new. The forums are supportive, answers are generally quickly provided and there’s a lot of conversation between users of all levels.

So really, it’s a project by project decision. I could never recommend any one CMS for all projects; Joomla and WordPress both have their pluses and minuses and it really depends on the project and the client which one I’ll wind up using.

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