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If Time Wasn’t an Issue…

Army Arts & Crafts Contest deadline is June 30 090616
If time wasn’t an  issue this child theme probably would be complete now.  Maybe.  I could just use a few more hours in the day.  From a time management point of view I have seen some improvement though.

Good news is I will have two clients sites up and running this evening, so extra time should be flowing in now (hopefully).  What would you do with the extra time? I am going to fill it with some reading and cosmetic work to my site and the soon to be released child theme.

This brings me to a thought, what is the best practice after completing work for your clients? During the work with clients you learn new techniques, but you also want new business.   I think its important to sit down if time allows and review your previous path of work before you  move forward to a new client.  Set the new client search to a passive mode until your ready to rock again.  WordPress is growing and evolving every day, so giving yourself a chance to catch up, learn, and try things out is important to your clients and your business.

The new info you learn may create some time savings… Something I would enjoy.

Filed Under: Business, Innovation, Weekly Innovation, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , ,

WordPress Adventure… Challenging but Awesome

Tungsten ScreenshotCreating a theme is fun, extremely challenging the first time around, but fun.  I am learning something new about WordPress and the Genesis Framework every time I sit down to work with it.

I activated the theme on my site while I put some of the finishing touches on it.  Building on the local host can only go so far.  Since this is my first try, I would appreciate if you can take some time to try each page out and send me some feedback.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out.

Filed Under: Innovation, Journey, Studiopress, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Foundation

Part 1 of … for my “Transition to Clients” blog series.  As with any sport, hobby or activity, it always starts with the basics.  You can’t play baseball if you haven’t learned to catch and throw.  You can’t build a house without a solid foundation.

WordPress is the solid foundation to build on.  The possibilities are endless.

If you really want to take advantage it, you use the Genesis Framework by StudioPress.

Genesis Theme Settings Snapshot:

Genesis SEO Settings Snapshot:

From the two snapshots you can see the amount of options and flexibility of the Genesis Framework.  Add a custom child theme or a child theme from StudioPress and you have a premier website.  As you can see the “Basics” are simple and straight-forward.  Now what happens when you want to add and or edit pages on your new site? Part 2 coming soon.

Interested in learning more about Genesis? Do you want to utilize this powerful framework on your website? Lets talk.

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Filed Under: Innovation, Studiopress, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , ,

Collaboration

LinkedCollaboration – Something created by working jointly with another or others.

Without it I would find creating web design solutions difficult with an abundance of unnecessary, time consuming back and forth.  Please don’t misinterpret that sentence. Communication IS important but it needs to be constructive.  That is why I prefer to call it collaborate.   I want the link between the customer and myself to be two-way.  I always start off with a list of questions (see below).  The key is to know what direction you are heading, and what message you are trying to convey through your website.  This gets everyone on the same page and starts the important first steps of collaboration.

Heres some of the initial questions that are important to the creative process:

  • How do you describe your organization/business/client in one sentence?
  • What three words describe your organization/business/client?
  • What makes you unique? What makes your company/client stand out?
  • What is the primary purpose of the site? What’s the secondary purpose?
  • Is your primary focus on long‐term repeat visits or short‐term single visits?
  • If a visitor spends 2 minutes on your site, what three things (in order of priority) do you want them to know?

WordPress Website Designs

Next Level Innovation can design a WordPress website for you to mirror your current site, or, create an entirely new look for your business.  Once the site is designed to your liking,  we can offer you a short lesson on how to take control of your new website.  Of course, we are always here for your support and to make any modifications you need help with, but we are also more than happy to empower you with the knowledge and capability needed to be the master of your own domain (literally!).

If you are interested in learning more about WordPress website designs, send us an email and we’d be happy to talk to you some more.

In the mean time, check out our gallery of web site designs online at http://www.nextlevelinnovation.com/portfolio/

Filed Under: Business, Innovation, WordPress Design Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Adding Content Pages to WordPress Websites

As a small business owner, one thing you can count on is that everything will always be changing.  As your business grows, you need a website that can showcase your growth. Whether it be with new products or exciting new services, you need to keep your website as up-to-date as the business itself.

One of the many advantages of a WordPress website is that you can easily add new pages to your site.  It’s a simple 3 step process:

1) Log-in to your wordpress website

2) Select Pages–> add new page from your dashboard

3) Fill with content about your new product or service

Adding New Pages in WordPress

Now that I’ve just explained how easy it is to add new pages, I want to show you how simple working with WordPress is.

When you’re ready to log into your WordPress website, all you do is type in your web domain followed by /wp-admin.  Example: www.mywebsiteisgreat.com/wp-admin.  This brings you to a log in page where you simply enter in the user name and password that you have designated for your website.

When you do that, you’ll come to a page that looks like this:

wordpress websites nj

This is your main dashboard. On the left are much of your command items.  Notice on the left hand side there is a menu for ‘Pages’ under which you will find ‘add new’. This is how you add a new page to your website.  Once you add a new page, the next screen you will see is the actual blank page that you can now begin filling out.

nj wordpress web designer

From here you can enter the title of your new page and then type a description of your new product or service, and even upload photos. It’s that easy!

Now that you have a better understanding of how WordPress works, send us an email if you would like to talk more about the endless possibilities that exist when working with a WordPress website.  Remember, the idea of the WordPress website is to give you the freedom to manage your website and get updates done when you need them done. You also save a substantial amount of money by doing your own updates. Of course, we are always here to help you with larger website updates that require more knowledge of design and coding, but for the simpler things, you’ll find that it’s quick and cost effective to have the ability to do them on your own.

WordPress Website Designs

Next Level Innovation can design a WordPress website for you to mirror your current site, or, create an entirely new look for your business.  Once the site is designed to your liking,  we can offer you a short lesson on how to take control of your new website.  Of course, we are always here for your support and to make any modifications you need help with, but we are also more than happy to empower you with the knowledge and capability needed to be the master of your own domain (literally!).

If you are interested in learning more about WordPress website designs, send us an email and we’d be happy to talk to you some more.

In the mean time, check out our gallery of web site designs online.

Filed Under: WordPress Design Tagged With: ,

WordPress Websites for Small Business

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One of the most empowering website tools for small business owners today is WordPress.  In its simplest form, WordPress is a platform or tool used to build websites.  What makes it different from most website design tools is that it was created to be extremely user friendly and easy to use by anyone—not just website designers.  Once your website is designed and created for you using the WordPress platform, it’s incredibly simple for business owners to take over.  A simple ½ hour tutorial is all that is needed for the basics of the site.  With this little bit of knowledge, business owners can add new pages on the fly, upload new content with photos to showcase a new product or service, change around the order of the pages in the navigation bar, and LOTS MORE!

Imagine the capabilities that could be at your fingertips and even more so, imagine the amount of money you’ll be saving when you won’t have to rely on your web designer to make any updates to your site.  If you now offer a new service, it’s simple to add a new page to your website highlighting that service, or even change around the copy on the home page to make room for the announcement.

For most with a basic understanding of Microsoft Word, WordPress is a snap to understand and use.  Most will never know the difference between a WordPress website and a website built using a different program such as DreamweaverÒ.

SEO Loves WordPress

Another outstanding advantage of WordPress websites is that are highly Search Engine Friendly.  You’ve heard the term ‘Search Engine Optimization’ or ‘SEO’ hundreds of times…it’s what helps your website show up in Search Engine results when someone types in keywords that relate to your business, or even the name of your business.  WordPress offers simple to use SEO tools so that your website can get found on the web.

Blog On

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several years, you know that blogging is a major component of any business’s online presence.  WordPress has its own blogging platform that can be built right into the website.  Like everything WordPress does, it’s easier then ever to write and publish your blogs.

Get Plugged In

Once you become familiar with the basics of WordPress, you can explore the thousands of plug-ins offered for your website.  These are free and can help you create even more dynamic website pages.  There are plug-ins for creating high-impact photo galleries, sharing your content across all Social Media sites, transforming your blog into an iPhone application, creating e-commerce sites and much, much more.  There are literally thousands! Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine.

WordPress Website Designs

Next Level Innovation can design a WordPress website for you to mirror your current site, or, create an entirely new look for your business.  Once the site is designed to your liking,  we can offer you a short lesson on how to take control of your new website.  Of course, we are always here for your support and to make any modifications you need help with, but we are also more than happy to empower you with the knowledge and capability needed to be the master of your own domain (literally!).

If you are interested in learning more about WordPress website designs, send us an email and we’d be happy to talk to you some more.

In the mean time, check out our gallery of web site designs online at http://www.nextlevelinnovation.com/portfolio/

Filed Under: Business, Innovation Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Getting to Where I Want to Be

Yogi Berra

“You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra

Where do I want Next Level Innovation to take me?  This question I was pondering on my ride home from work today.  I thought about it in past, present and future.  Quickly I realized the past was not as important since my knowledge and experience has come a long way since I first bought the domain.

That brings me to the present.  I know my skills and capabilities but the path to where I want to be is more difficult then I first imagined.  With a portfolio of (drum roll please) one website, it has proved to be more of a challenge getting number two.  Taking the next few steps in this “journey” is important but I need to know where I’m going and how I plan on getting there first.

How do I bridge the gap?

What are my next steps?

I’ll look more into this in part 2 of “Getting to Where I Want to Be”.

Filed Under: Innovation, Journey Tagged With: , , ,

What was NLI created with?

I thought it would be a good idea to discuss how I created my site.  Now there is thousands of themes out there for WordPress, so my decision was largely based of functionality.  In my search for the perfect content management based theme, I stumbled upon Studiopress.  Their themes had the functionality I was looking for, but what impressed me more was how clean and professional they looked.  For the Knotts Company site it was decided to use the Corporate Classic theme (Unfortunately my web design adventure started before the Genesis Framework).

Time to fast forward…

Studiopress since then has released the Genesis Framework.  The level of functionality increased exponentially and the simplicity of WordPress did not change.  The next step was picking a simple yet effective child theme to differentiate my site from others.  I decided to use the Agency Child theme.  The child theme is impressive right out of the box but I wanted to change it to suit my views and taste.   I’m going to continue to play around with the child theme and try some different tweaks but overall I’m happy with where I’m at.

For future sites I am going to make sure I can use one of the many different child themes.  The variety helps expand my potential CMS market.  A resource of this level is an excellent means of differeniating my clients from their competition.  I will be able to give them the innovative edge that they need.

If you want to look further into Studiopress’s Genesis Framework & Agency Child Theme (affiliate link), just click.

Filed Under: Business, Innovation, Studiopress Tagged With: , , ,