I seem to have a lot of trouble breaking things. Coding wise that is. Unfortunately I rarely remember the old rule about constantly backing up. Don’t get me wrong, I back up – a lot. On the other hand it’s always the one time you forget that darwin or some other horrible fate befalls my servers.

So here is my friendly reminder, back up your stuff.

Requires WordPress Version: 2.8.6 or higher
Compatible up to: 2.8.6
Last Updated: 2011-31-1Pedigree builder is a simple family tree generator plugin for Horse lovers using WordPress. Each horse must have their own post within (the category of your choice) defaults to the “Family” category. Inside your posts (at the bottom the page) you can specify horse data, birth dates, mother (dam), father (sire), etc. A complete family list can be displayed on any page with the {PEDIGREE} tag. Horses will automatically be detected and connected including siblings etc.

Purchase a copy below. Email me if you’d like to try a few of the newer beta versions or if you have any troubles with setup.

VISIT AGENCYCOUTURE.COM/PEDIGREE

This post is a response to: (http://develophorizons.com/2011_blog.php).

There are very few things you need to worry up-front about building a site, except if your style fits the designers’, the platform, and if they build your site up to web standards.

Many programmers will use a scare tactic to avoid building a site with a CMS because they do not believe in CMS platforms or don’t know how to use them properly.  The reality is, that a platform is only as good as it’s designer/developer. If you don’t employ someone who understands how to program, not using a CMS is like shooting yourself in the foot or throwing money away. It simply makes it so you have to permanently employ the person who builds your site. Ending whit

1. Your screwed.
2. Your stuck using a developer or relying on him/her forever to help you maintain and update your site.

The upside of WordPress is that the platform is very simple to maintain, you can make the design look ANY way you want, literally any design can fit into WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Express Engine. Unlike most CMS platforms, WordPress if open source and therefore free. Plus if you use social media to promote your brand, WordPress conveniently has many FREE plugins and social media tools  that fit hand in hand with WordPress and you can use RSS (really simple syndication) to feed those platforms. Oh, and not to mention yes, content is king of the web but Google loves WordPress. It’s clean, simple, and there are a dozen things you can do to automate some of your SEO (search engine optimization) initiatives that will be ever-so-important in the future, unless you have plans to marry a programmer/seo person and have them do your ongoing SEO. Regardless, you should have someone do your SEO, but your programmer needs to know the basics so that your SEO person doesn’t have to scrap it and start over.

It’s not that I don’t have reasoning behind what I was telling you. Building a site on any platform is not as constraining as some people would like you to believe. It’s helping YOU. The code is essentially all the same. The design, can still be the sky is the limit for you and the designer/developer.

Just because a website uses a CMS doesn’t mean that it has a cheap look or 90′s look. That all depends on the company behind the brand. Many corporations or wonderful sites are fully customized on platforms like Express Engine or WordPress. Cheesy graphics can be added to any site, even a hand coded html/php/css site that over-uses the use of drop-shadows and bright colors from the 80′s doesn’t have to be built using a CMS, that is purely the designer’s fault. Besides beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Clearly even non-CMS sites can use widgets, like disquis, to improve usability and management.

Content is king. Getting the word out about a brand and the content they are trying to share, that is a whole different ball-game. Using widgets like Facebook share can really help with that. Unless, you want to charge your client twice as much to hand code that, which would be a waste of your time and your client’s money.

Many of the sites that look like they where built 10 years ago, look that way because they where. Not because new designers built them. Cheap graphics (and bad designers) are to blame, not the platform.

I’ve been asked in on brainstorming sessions, to backup other consultants, and to bring my voice or opinions in on projects that I may or may not be fully executing. In many cases people just want to know they are heading in the right direction, sometimes it’s to just get a second opinion, in other cases it’s to feel out if they want to hire me or someone else for a big project. In any case I’m considered an adviser.

The unfortunate part of hiring more then one adviser is that they may have conflicting opinions, not that either opinion is wrong but for different reasons people choose separate paths for a project. Yes, sometimes one opinion is wrong, but not always.

In a recent case, I was asked to help with a web design project. Shortly after, the project was given to someone else because they would work for free (for referrals). The company or non-profit then asked me to stay on as an adviser, and from time to time would send me emails asking me to verify if I agreed with the other person. This is nothing new, it’s happened many times before and will continue. Unfortunately when I disagreed with the other consultant their was a backlash, perhaps stepping on toes, where someone from the company decided to cc: everyone and say that this person is doing the project therefore we should all support him, not differ in opinion from him.

Look. If ____ is going to craft _____s’ website, let HIM do it. He is a professional. What we have now is NOT professional or acceptable. I have met with several web designers over the last few months, and have heard from more than one of those designers that wordpress is meant as a BLOGGING application – NOT a web site application. So, unless we can do a better job than _____ (which none of us can), I suggest we shut up and arm _____ with the information he needs to do what he does best.

Needless to say, I responded by wishing them the best of luck with their project, and apologizing to my friend that I will no longer be able to advise them on this project. Drama is never worth it.  The moral to this story? If you ask someone to give you an opinion, don’t be pissed off when it’s different from what you’d hoped. And unless the adviser is rude to you or says something out of turn, don’t go off on them.

Ps. I am a web designer, WordPress can be used as a CMS, WordPress can be used as more then just a blogging platform, and you get what you pay for.

P.p.s Good luck with your hand coded html site, with no back end for your company to manage the site. This type of thing only pigeon holes people into maintaining relations with ____ types of company because then you are stuck NEEDING someone who knows code to add new pages, update the site, or upgrade. Like I said, you get what you pay for.

If you know a little about the world of web design, you’ve probably come across the terms designer and developer being bandied about regularly. They’re both involved with the design of a website, and while some of their tasks may overlap, for the most part, they have different responsibilities. If you’re looking for the difference between a designer and a developer, you need to first understand the components that go to building or designing a website. What you see when you land on a web page through its address and when you click on links to navigate within the site is the work of the designer; what you don’t see, yet what makes the web page work effectively is the work of the developer. The designer is responsible for what is known as the “front-end” of the website design while the developer takes charge of the “back-end” aspects. Designers focus on the visual and aesthetic aspect of web design and developers are responsible for the underlying code and the databases that run the design.

Designers decide what colors, fonts, images and other visual aspects to include in the design. They are responsible for the layout of pages and for ensuring that there are no jarring aspects on the site which take away from its aesthetic appeal. Designers must know HTML/XHTML instead of relying on graphic tools like Flash to build websites; these tools may generate great looking websites, but they increase load times and also prevent sites from being visible to search engines. Developers are responsible for developing and coding applications that make the smooth functioning of the website possible. They take care of server-related aspects and provide links between databases and the site. Developers must be skilled in and comfortable working with scripting languages like
ASP, .NET, PHP or similar others.

Not all sites require the services of a developer, especially those that are only presentational and which don’t require the capture and transfer of information in real time; only those that require intensive server-side queries and extensive communication with databases, like E-commerce, banking and other similar sites, use a full-time developer to create code, ensure that it runs optimally, and maintain it over a period of time.

Designers are able to play an all-in-one role for presentational sites that don’t require much interaction on the server side. They can use pre-written chunks of code written for specific purposes, like linking sites to the server for the simple tasks of signing up for newsletters and providing contact information, and for ensuring that the navigation of the site is smooth and easy.

As you can see from the explanation above, designers make the first impact on visitors with their visually appealing designs while developers make a lasting impact with the efficiency of the site and the seamlessness of navigating it.

This guest post is contributed by Bailey Digger, she writes on the topic of web design degree programs. She welcomes
your comments at her email id: baileydigger189(@)gmail(.)com.

Are you new online? Here are a few tips I put together for a potential client and larger ministry.

Perhaps you can use this information to get your own projects started.

Tools for your project & Strategy tips:

• Facebook – Make sure you use a business page. There are 4 types of accounts you can setup but make sure you choose the right one. A group will make it hard for anyone to join who has too many groups, business pages you can never cap out on. A profile is technically against Facebook rules and if you are caught with a business account as a personal profile they block your address. A community page is more like a wiki page and has less management tools and can’t be customized the way a business page can. See Facebook.com/AgencyCouture for an example of custom tabs. In the end the tabs could be customized with FBML (a type of code) to add your events, store, membership sign up and automate pulling in your blog. Use the side bar under the photo to enter contact information, other social networks and your site and a little tagline about the ministry. This NEEDS to be updates a min. of once a week and no more then 3 times a day. Too much you annoy people and too little they forget about you.
• Twitter – Choose wisely on your name, this can be changed but you want to make sure people remember it. Be sure to fill out the information in the profile completely, this will help you be found. Add your site address to it and on your background (image) add any other relevant information on contacting you or other social networks. You can automate pulling in you blog here, find other ministries, and connect with patrons. This is a great relationship tool, but beware of using it too much like a broadcast channel. People resent being talked “at” on Twitter rather then being talked with. Use tools like Tweet deck to find other users and manage lists and chatting.
• YouTube – technically YouTube boasts being the second largest search engine around, knowing that anyone would be a fool to be online and not utilize this as a free channel for connecting with people. Again, fill out your profile completely, and make sure you have a nice photo for the profile. You only get to choose your username once so choose wisely. Use a background to tell more of your story, but also make sure it matches your site and other social networks. This is a big part of branding. When you upload your videos, time of day is important. Think: will more people be online at 2 am or 10am? You’ll get a hang of when people watch your videos the most by watching analytics, in YouTube analytics are called insights. If you use a tool like TubeMogul you can get even more analytics and auto-upload your video to multiple sites saving you energy and time. Descriptions and titles are as important as anything in this process. Be sure to use keywords that describe your videos and descriptions that have keywords, links to your other social profiles, and links to your website. If one video is a follow up to another, make it a video reply. At the end of every video ask people to subscribe, it helps to remind them that they have not yet. At the beginning and end mention your site and use YouTube tools to add a link on your video to the site. Ask viewers to like your video, the more comments and likes the more popular your video is, the better it ranks on YouTube. You can use the embed tools to add your video to your site.
• Feedburner – is another great FREE tool that will allow you to auto send posts to followers via email, track readers, and promote the site.
• Mail chimp is another great newsletter tool, very affordable. Many people love constant contact but it costs 5 times as much.
• If you don’t have it already added, use google analytics on your site.
• Make sure all the pages of your site have a common template with a global navigation – meaning it looks the same on every page. This is important so you don’t confuse new comers and make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.
• Submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster tools. Add the sitemap as an auto xml to your site, you’ll need WordPress to do this.
• Build your site on WordPress. This should only take 8-10 hours to transfer the current template into WordPress. It will also make setting up new pages and a blog a hundred times easier. Make membership sign up part of your blog. You can bill people but you should also give them an option to pay online via Google Checkout and Paypal so you get money instantly. WordPress will also make it easy for multiple writers to contribute to your site and you can restrict access to certain parts of the site, like pages or publishing protocols.
• You can also let people subscribe to your Google events via your site (add your events to their Google account).