Found a great site today that explains how to build your own WordPress template. It’s also good for referencing which PHP pages are being utilized on different parts of your WordPress site: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/building-custom-wordpress-theme/
Archive for the 'Websmitten' category
Finally indexed!
Yay! Finally, after all these weeks, ImpactsAlaska.com is indexed! Apparently, it really does just take 6 to 8 weeks for Googlebot to come back around and re-index you. Posting at http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters was definitely the key to finding out what was going on. I actually got a real, live Google employee answering one of my posts. That really did lift the curtain on the wizard. It was good to clean up the site and make it more search engine friendly, but the biggest key was just removing the privacy setting on WordPress and waiting from December 8-ish all the way until January 29th.
There it is, finally listed in Google. Isn't it beautiful?
New Contest at Orbs of Happiness
Another art show/contest has been launched from Orbs of Happiness. We designed a postcard-type flyer this time:
Here’s what the front looks like. This was done in photoshop with a photo of my daughter Eliza playing with watercolors. We put more details on the back. More info at http://www.orbsofhappiness.org
WordPress Templates
Wow, more and more folks are creating wonderful WordPress Templates – that are easy to customize, too! We just re-did the look of St. Andrews Lutheran website and it only took 2 hours to get it looking like we wanted. It was already a WordPress site – all we had to do was upload the design we found, go into the Appearance features and set several options, and upload our own graphics. WordPress just keeps getting easier and easier.
Our old design was based on an earlier template I had found, too. But here’s the difference – I had to do all the customizations through the CSS and PHP files myself. That’s no problem for me, but whenever you mess with code, you have to maintain it. So, better, more customizable templates save my clients money.
Take a look at the updated site: www.standrewswichita.org. Our primary motivation for change was the previous menu was down the left hand side and had quickly grown out of control. It was difficult to find what you were looking for and difficult to keep updated. The new design has a drop down menu across the top. It looks cleaner and now it’s easy to see what’s there. Yay!
Bounce Rate
I’m still working on ImpactsAlaska.com to get that Google listing back. Found a great video from Google about how to interpret the ‘bounce rate’ of a site. Basically, the bounce rate is the rate at which people come to your site and leave immediately, for whatever reason. A typical site’s bounce rate ranges from 40%-60%. Here’s the google video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppgfjo6IIf4.
Woo-hoo! My Flash app on the front page of APU
Alaska Pacific University went live with their new website and my flash accordion file is on their front page! Very cool. Sundog Media designed it but needed a flash contractor (me) to create it for them – check it out at http://www.alaskapacific.edu!
Making money with your blog
I’ve had some folks ask me how on earth people make money with their blogs. I haven’t actually had an interest in doing this, but I did find a set of articles on it from someone who is successfully doing it. The articles aren’t exactly easy to find, which is why I’m linking them all here. They are from Money Saving Mom.
And just for good measure, a post on how to avoiding work-at-home scams: http://www.moneysavingmom.com/money_saving_mom/2008/11/guest-post-avoiding-work-at-home-scams.html.
Websmitten Google Business Listing
The Google Business Listing change was almost immediate as well. Here it is – http://tinyurl.com/websmitten-google-listing.
And here is Christie’s new listing: http://www.google.com/search?q=impacts+alaska. At least for right now it is the top listing when you search for impacts alaska. To go directly to her listing, you can use the following link: http://tinyurl.com/impactsalaska-google-listing.
Edit a listing on Google Maps
Another thing I’ve learned with Christie’s site is how to edit your Google maps listing. In her case, the wrong address was displayed. She wanted to know how to correct that. After a bit of online sleuthing, I found that question had been answered on Google Help. To add a new listing or correct a current listing, you’ll need to login to the Google Business Center. If you don’t have an account there, you can create one. You enter your information and must validate it by receiving a phone call to your business phone (you can also get a postcard, but I’m not sure how long that takes). Phone verification is almost instant and completely automated. You enter the PIN number they give you on the screen. Then, it tells you your listing will be posted/edited in 1 business day. I went ahead and did my own listing today to see how it all works. If I find the listing tomorrow, I’ll post it here.
How long will it take to re-index on Google?
So, no listing yet for impactsalaska.com yet. From the Google Discussion group I’m hearing that it “could be tomorrow or it could be next month… it’s based on factors none of us are privy to…” Argh. The maddening thing here is not being sure that we’ve hit every problem. I really think we have, but I’ll just have to keep checking daily to see if we’ve made any progress.