So a few weeks ago I saw a similar job board here

I e-mailed the site and asked them how they did it. All they told me was that they were using a plug-in and some custom coding… I already new that!!! lol. So they weren’t giving up their secrets of how to create a free job board.

So my search began. After a couple weeks I was finally able to find a solution at some random site… which I forgot to document I found it here… but that’s o.k. I will still share my secrets with you… (Don’t download their files just instal TDO Mini Forms and then follow the directions.)

The solution required using TDO Mini Forms. This plugin allows you to set up a form that allows any member or non member to create a post depending on the settings you set of course. Once the post is created all you have to do is change the status to published and the post is live.

So my process went something like this.

• Install WordPress 3.0
• Instal TDO Mini Forms
• Modify 2010 (the wp theme) loop.php, functions.php and other tweaks
• Style it in CSS

I was up and running. Check it out here SportsTrainingJobs.com.

Capabilities:

• Non-Member Users can posts jobs.
• Jobs are seperated into categories
• Search function targets only job posts

1. It is easy to learn. WordPress is like learning to ride a bike, you can learn the basics and start off with training wheels and also learn how to do some cool tricks as you become more familiar with it’s capabilities. There is a wide spectrum when it comes to the capabilities of web users. Some people are afraid to touch a keyboard… some people are afraid to let others do things for them. WordPress is great for both! Because of it’s popularity there are a countless number of tutorials and resources that teach people how to use their WordPress blog / cms. If it is support you want, have no fear… there is plenty of it.

2. You can maintain it yourself. Have you ever wanted to make a lot of changes to your copy and you had to call your web guy… every other day. Well guess what? Not any more! you can maintain your own site with ease; not to mention you don’t have to pay the web guys for correcting your typos any more either, or to add a new page. WordPress empowers you to be more independent you can be as independent as you feel comfortable being with wordpress. You can upgrade, install plugins (enhancements for your website), and manage your content all on your own! WordPress has made this easier for you to do.

3. It’s Very Flexible. If you just want a blog, a website with a blog, or even a website without a blog… wordpress is a great choice. Also from a developing standpoint it is a lot more efficient and effective for achieving these goals. You can even incorporate some e-commerce features utilizing plugins that will help you sell your products. You can do just about anything you want.

4. Free plug-ins (enhancements) galore. There are thousands of 100% free plug-ins that allow you to do many things some of which are: easily displaying YouTube and videos, creating payment buttons for PayPal, a booking calendar, rotating testimonies in the sidebar, receive mail from forms filled out on your website, SEO ehancements, run polls, social networking tools / facebook / twitter… The list goes on and on. Best of all they are easy to integrate!
See all the WordPress plug-ins here

5. Its SEO Friendly. Who has a website that doesn’t want to get found? It is important for people to find your website! WordPress is extremely Search Engine Friendly there are a ton of features and plug-ins that you can utilize to help people find your website via the search engines. You can easily customize meta tags and title tags with out having to delve into the code. You can customize your urls / permalinks to include your key words. I worked for an SEO firm for a little while and we used wordpress for all of our sites. When I asked the owner why we used wordpress he said, “WordPress has always stomped the search engines… always has… always will”

WordPress is great I have been using it for over 2 years and it continues to get better! I encourage anyone interested in creating a website to use WordPress. If you are interested in a custom wordpress website please feel free to contact me.

I decided to remake my website yesterday and it took about all day after testing and debugging. I didn’t even have a concept I just changed the background and kept making changes until it look right. No planning, no compositions, just going with it. I really like the results and I feel it is more alive than my previous skin. I’m glad I stuck with my current layout because it took forever to code this site and I am really please how the make over went.

I don’t think this would qualify really as a redesign because I feel like you change the layout and recode a lot in a redesign. This is why I think it qualifies as a makeover because it is the same site/layout just with a different look.

Here is a how the previous site looked. I had a to dig around for a picture I should have just taken one before I started making changes but I guess I didn’t know I was going to do the redesign until about half way through lol.

(Click to Enlarge)

3. Ease of Use – It needs to be easy to use and to integrate into your website. (I have left websites because it looked sketchy on their e-commerce. Generally if your site stinks and so does your e-commerce solution I don’t buy from you plain and simple may sound mean but I can afford to take the risk.)

4. Protection – What happens when there are faulty charges or orders, or somone rips you off… Will there be reimbursement etc? (check out how they handle these things)

5. Security – How does the e-commerce company claim to protect / encrypt transactions and your sensitive information. Can they prove it?

There are an array of things to look out for concerning safety with your’s and other’s money on the web. Recently I ordered a product and the company double charged me for it, I find out it is their e-commerce solution and it seems to be a pretty popular situation and they are a pretty popular e-commerce company both with big companies but also with complaints about charges that are questionable. (It’s called DigitalRiver.com if you were wondering). Working as a web designer I want to know who your e-commerce solution is and if they are reliable… because you CAN get charged now a-days for just typing your cc info before you push any buttons some companies start processing ASAP and seem to give you a way to stop in the process but really they have already determined to charge you even if you cancel.

My point being I have been receiving much business from an audience that I wasn’t necessarily targeting for an array of reasons. A main one being I didn’t feel like I could compete with the local businesses search engine wise, Google mainly, so I didn’t think anybody would be able to find me. Well they did find me but not the way I thought.

There are some freelance companies that I use to bid on projects through and people tend to search on those databases and then contact me directly and they live with in a 20 mile radius. There is a lot of local business. I am trying to make my site more findable to local companies in Marietta Georgia or in Metro Atlanta area so that I might get more local business seeing that I have been getting a lot of it lately.

One thing to take away would be. market locally, and globally… Remember David and Goliath, it’s not about your competition it’s who you trust.

5 things you can do today to make your site a little bit more findable
(You could probably knock this out in a day or two)
1. Write your content then go back through and make sure you included key words in the content and headings that you know people would search for that are relevant. (just sprinkle them through out don’t pour them on… you can get penalized)
2. Use Key words and relevant text in the ‘title’ tag of the page, in your meta data ‘key words’ and ‘description’, and in your markup your ‘title’ and ‘alt’ attributes.
3. Create a Google XML Sitemap and submit it to google through webmaster tools… and Verify your website while your at it.
4. Submit your site to Yellow pages type sites, directories
5. Submit your site to other search engines mainly yahoo and msn.

There are a lot more in depth things you could do but at least you now have your foot in the door and are more findable. ]]> http://www.tdesignonline.com/working-globaly/feed 0 http://www.tdesignonline.com/buddypress http://www.tdesignonline.com/buddypress#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:10:59 +0000 richard http://www.tdesignonline.com/?p=921

WordPress has come out with buddypress it’s basically facebook. I recently interviewed with a company that was interested in creating an application like this for their clients. I hope they pick this up instead of trying to create their own app. I’m excited because clients are always wanting to create facebook like solutions and now I can help them create those with buddypress.

In order to use buddypress you must first install a version of wordpress MU. This is not your regular wordpress and you will probably need to download it and upload it manually (it’s not in your fantastico deluxe for those of you who install through your host) Here is a link to the wordpress MU… and here is the link to buddypress… have fun!

I am installing it soon and going to give it a test run and hopefully will be able to start offering it to my clients.

Her site is based off of wordpress so all the content is stored in a database on her host. Well I was visiting the site just to take a peak at it some more and I saw in big black letters: “Data Base Error…”. I have seen it before and it wasn’t a big deal the host was just having a problem and later on during the day the site was able to connect to the database the content was viewable.

I thought I would take a look on her host and check out the databases and see if I could fix it just in case something accidentally got broken or just to get a better idea of why this was happening and maybe I could fix it quickly. Soon enough I spotted exactly why it was happening because there were no databases! The ones we had stored 20+ pages of content in were mysteriously gone. Whether she accidentally deleted them some how, the host crashed, or it got hacked (which is very unlikely) it was all gone.

So my message to any one using a content management system or any application that draws from a database. You need to back it up regulary whether it be daily, weekly, or monthly depending on how often it is updated. Updating wordpress only take several minute depending on how much content you have.

To back up your content in wordpress 2.6 – in the admin panel go to manage then export.
To back up your content in wordpress 2.7 – go to tools then export.