I’ve been looking for a more attractive, easier-to-navigate layout for my WordPress sites recently, and I found a couple interesting resources to share:
Magazine Theme – a unique layout for a WP site with a cutting edge style and directions for customization by the designer.
SEO Themes – nearly 50 websites that have been SEO’ed by Court of Internet Marketing School. Nice!
If you are building your first independently hosted blog for your real estate business and you have decided to go with WordPress, you have already made a great decision.
Now, there are some other items to consider:
My buddy and peer, Katie Baird, over on Loosely Speaking Blog tagged me in her blog yesterday with a meme on blogging tips.
The rules of this meme are that I star the five items I think most important, and then add my own tips at the end. And, of course, tag other bloggers. Here goes. (more…)
I haven’t tried these themes, but they were so pretty, I just had to share them with you.
If you are looking for an unusual theme for your WordPress site, I would like to offer the following group of one dark theme and two white ones.
When I first began looking for a way to represent WickedWordCraft.com, I really wanted a paper-look to match my quill.
Since that time, I’ve gone a bit more “high tech” with my look to appeal to my ideal clients (high tech real estate agents and brokers), but I’ve found a few excellent WordPress themes with an old-fashioned paper theme that I wanted to share this week.
Some are scrolls, some are smooth, some are scorched. All are beautiful. (more…)
WordPress is extremely user-friendly. If you have ever hand-coded or altered or edited any HTML, it’s a snap. If you haven’t — you really need the easy-to-use interface… like WP. And widgets improve the ease of use factor.
What’s a Widget?
Widgets are tiny programs, usually with specific functions that people add to their desktops or (in the case of WordPress) their websites.
What Do They Do That’s So Cool?
Widgets allow individuals to customize the look, feel and function of the chosen platform quickly, easily and (usually) without the need to touch a single line of code. Read this article about the general concept of widgets and how Coldwell Banker has a desktop version to show new listings in a tidy little package.
Do People Really Use These Things?
Comscore, a digital data tracking service, recently launched “Widget Matrix” to track widget saturation across the Internet. According to the report on widget popularity, the top ten most popular of these little snippet sized programs reached an audience of over 177 thousand unique visitors and in North America alone over 40% of all Internet users visited a website with a widget. The most popular type of widget? Photo-related (think randomized shots of your current listings with “click to view full description” capability).
How do I use them?
Widgets allow you “drag and drop” functionality in many cool features for your new WordPress site — and you can select those and install, activate and customize them yourself. It will give you the ability to be creative and to add new “stuff” without calling a webmaster.
It also gives you the ability to turn off, activate and move around your site’s content to your satisfaction. Once you get it the way you want it, a single click on the “save” button in the widget dashboard and it goes live!
How Do I Use Widgets on My WordPress Install?
First, select a pre-widgetized theme. If the theme you love doesn’t offer widget capability built-in, you can get it widgetized by a code-jockey or you can widgetize it yourself (which is what I did for mine).
Widget-Ready WordPress Themes
Download the WP Widget Ready Theme Pack (15 megs) of over 100 themes.
How to Use Widgets – a step by step guide for beginners
Widgetizing Your Own - http://automattic.com/code/widgets/themes/
Finding Cool Widgets
http://www.widgipedia.com/ - Widget supersite (but not for WP specifically)
Turning Plugins into Widgets – Here’s how!
Learn more about widgets:
How to keep widgets from slowing down your WordPress site
Real Estate Widgets:
http://www.thegoodblogs.com/wordpress_widget – the good blogs widget
http://patrick.bloggles.info/wpwidgets/ – several widgets offered here.
http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/wordpress-plugins/#links – I like quite a few of these widgets — like the aggregate RSS feed widget (I need this for my own blogs).
Good Storm Widget for Sales on your Blog – http://mecommerce.goodstorm.com/blogwidgets
I tripped across the following site recently and found it quite interesting:
A web-based program to design your own widget-ready WP Theme on the fly. You may want to give it a whirl!
There are a few things missing on this little baby…
Portrait option on playing movies and video content – when it’s in the little stand on my desk, I’d like to see Pink singing upright – even if that means I don’t get the benefit of the larger, amazing screen.
The ability to launch the little keyboard – so I can type where I like (even if the iPhone doesn’t recognize my ability to do so). Kind of like an Apple override button, assuming I know more about what I want than the phone does (can you tell this frustrates me?).
The ability to scroll in a form box on a website – so I can blog and fill out and edit forms on my iPhone. (more…)
*sniff* iPhone doesn’t play nicely with WordPress!
So much for my moblog aspirations… I can type in some text, but I can’t edit (the box doesn’t scroll down. Only the code version shows up — the what you see is what you get version called “visual” doesn’t toggle on the iPhone.)
I can’t edit much (since I can’t scroll down to get to the bottom — or even the middle — of my posts). How disappointing! I hope someone comes up with a work-around soon.
I notice this problem with all the online form-style entry pages I’ve tried so far.
Are you curious about WordPress as a publishing tool for your online success as a real estate professional? I was too. And I’ve been using WP on my own blog for some time now. I must say, I love it!
I’ve helped several clients switch over to WP. They love it. Currently I’m in the midst of the process to switch over a HUGE real estate resource site to WP for content management. Using WordPress as a real estate website has many benefits: (more…)
If you have a website, you need a custom 404 page.
Why?
People don’t like to feel stupid and they avoid situations that make them feel that way. They don’t like to be frustrated and ditto on the avoidance there. You don’t want YOUR site to be the cause of these feelings, do you? (more…)
Want to know the top browser, top online game, top web-based communication option — selected by Webware readers and web based application fans from all over? Check out the WebWare 100 Winners for 2007.
Many of these I use, or have used, but a few… under the topics of “entertainment” and “community” are begging for some of my “free time” — whatever THAT is!
It’s good to know that WordPress beat out Drupal, Blogger and TypePad in publishing/blogging and web content tools. *grin*
It’s been awhile since I’ve really “dug in” where SEO is concerned. Basically, I’ve been working under the assumption (a fairly good one, IMHO and in my humble experience online) that if you build good content, organize it well and use common sense when titling your articles, posts and web pages — that the readers will come.
For my own sites, and my client sites, it’s worked like a charm.
To be fair, I have spent a great deal of time studying SEO in the past and still try to keep abreast of any big changes. But mostly, I’ve determined that avoiding the “tricks” and the “blackhat” methods — and relying on offering a site of useful information and making it easy to find and access that information is the best long-term SEO approach. (I do keep an eye on well-crafted metas and always have an eye on local search.) (more…)
This is, hands down, my favorite holiday. Has been for years. But today, being away from home and having this HUGE conversion project underway for my blog has dampened my usual high St. Patrick’s Day spirit.
It’s going to take ages to get my new WordPress blog here on WickedBlog working exactly the way I need it to work. I’m verbose. I write alot. Usually, that doesn’t bother me. But, usually, I’m not in a position of checking over 500 posts for errors, for weirdnesses in funny characters that happen when you convert databases (like question marks inside black diamonds — what’s up with that!?!?)
I know this is going to be great when it’s complete — I already see indications of greatness around the edges — but for now I’m frustrated. It will pass, but for today… I’m just frustrated.
Today, I’ve been working away… on a new content management system for my blog. I’m running a tandem version of WickedBlog on a secure (can’t be spidered) production site. I must say, I’m enjoying the process. It’s also frustrating the be-jeepers out of me, but most new systems do.
I’m actually going to end up learning a little about CSS. Right now, my sheets don’t “cascade” yet — they kinda fumble around and fall alot. But, it’s still enjoyable.
My Discoveries on StumbleUpon
