Archive for the “WordPress Development” Category

A lot of the work WebCommons has taken on in 2009 has had to do with working on company/organization websites developed with WordPress.  One of these sites was even a complete conversion from an existing static site (a basic site with several pages of information) to a dynamic site using WordPress where it became a site with lots of built-in programmed features, such as a blog, contact form, events calendar, etc.

When talking to customers of websites, they frequently express how they desire the power to do most of their own content updating, without having to pay for a web developer like me to do it.  That’s indeed a very fair request.  Why pay a developer to type up your paragraphs of marketing material and other content that appears on your site?  Being frugal in this tough economy is definitely the way to go!

WordPress makes it possible for you to really own your website, with the ability to make most updates as you please.

WebCommons is especially skilled with working with WordPress sites, and possesses the skills to convert your old static website into something dynamic, using WordPress, usually for a very affordable price.

Even if you already own a WordPress-based site, WebCommons is very good at extending the power of your site, by locating and adding plugins — what WordPress calls its program extensions.  Of course, many power users can already do this, but can they also deal with programming conflicts or bugs in these plugins, and can they converse with plugin developers in the fixing of these issues?  WebCommons can!  WebCommons can even fix many of these bugs in cases where the plugin developer refuses to do so or has gone AWOL.  WebCommons can even develop a custom plugin for you when there isn’t one available that serves your purposes!

WebCommons is also adept at visually enhancing themes and fixing the many theme issues that can crop up, such as elements displaying strangely in particular browsers.  I recently had a customer who had a WordPress-based site that looked pretty good in Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari, but looked really whacked in Internet Explorer.  IE comprises a huge share of visitors to websites, so this was potentially reducing traffic (and thus, business) for this company.  WebCommons to the rescue!

To see a couple examples where WebCommons has made a good number of visual adjustments to WordPress themes, check out these websites:  Stephen A. Harmon Photography and KaZoing! Party & Play.

If you would like your static site converted to WordPress, or if you would like advice and/or an estimate on how to make your existing WordPress site look and work better, give us a ring or an e-mail.

Little Loomhouse - New Website Design

I apologize for not posting very much in this blog so far, but I guess I’m the kind of web programmer who would rather do than blog about it.     But that’s no excuse of course.  So here goes…

Recently I completed a site makeover for the Little Loomhouse in Louisville.  Check out the new WebCommons page where I show what the website looked like before I did my magic, and what the website has been transformed into — a dramatically improved website, both visually and functionally (and the client wholeheartedly agrees!).

Like I say on the page… If your business or non-profit organization has an informational website that needs to come alive with programmed features and the easy ability for you to make changes to it, or even just receive a visual makeover, contact WebCommons — Get a quality result that everyone raves about, for a very reasonable price.

As part of the ongoing WebCommons site merger, I developed a new contact form.   I realize that this kind of development naturally doesn’t create a lot of excitement, but I think a lot of the power of the WordPress platform shines through with this example.

A contact form is one of those common things that a web programmer shouldn’t want to re-invent, so I went plugin shopping at the WordPress site and found a straightforward, well-ranked, WordPress 2.7-compatible plugin called Contact Form 7.   I was especially charmed that it had easy-to-setup CAPTCHA and Akismet support (great for stopping spammers!), and upon my initial testing of it, I was pleasantly surprised at how robust and straightforward the admin-side contact form management was.

Read the rest of this entry »

You may have noticed that this blog/site has been undergoing some structural changes, and you would be correct.

What’s going on is fairly straightforward — I am simply moving most of my content from my old WebCommons site as well as my resume into this WordPress-based blog, and scrapping the rest.   I am doing this for three reasons:

1. I wanted to streamline my updating of the content, and have it all be in essentially one place.   Now, considerably less programming or otherwise awkward intervention will be involved in adding/updating most content from now going forward.   The only exception will be when I want to add specially programmed content.
2. I wanted to learn more about how WordPress can be used as a content management system, including how plugins can be configured or altered, or templates created, to deliver special content features.   WordPress is increasingly looking like a very important platform for website development, and obvious for a web programmer like myself, I need to know it from top to bottom.
3. I wanted a demonstration project I can show potential clients what can be done with their (sometimes very static) existing websites and how much more powerful their sites can become, while not requiring as much attention from hired web programmers (and the expenses associated with that).   Imagine your company website that its owner or administrator (normally a non-programmer) can make most of the content updates to!

Of course, I’m not quite finished, so don’t judge, yet.     But if you’re interested, you get to watch three separate sites merge into one, and I will post about what I’m actually doing.