Thursday, January 29th, 2009
I will attempt to explain how to convert an existing site into WordPress. I wrote previously about converting a client’s site from old school tables to a CSS based WordPress theme at http://www.flowerart.biz. I think this should work for Frontpage based sites as well as DreamWeaver or any other site that is reasonably coded, that is, if you “saved as HTML” from MS Word, you’re on your own.
A lot of people are looking for this information, so I figure I should expand on it and tell you exactly what I did and how you can convert any existing web site into a WordPress themed site too.
How To Convert An Existing Site To WordPress
The concept of a theme is that it will be the framework, the common template, that all of your content will be displayed inside of. Normally, you will use the same look and feel, the same template, on all of your pages. This usually contains the header, the sidebars, the footer, and the content goes in the middle and changes from page to page. We’ll want to take the existing HTML files and slice them up into WordPress theme files, with a dynamic place in the middle to put all of the content.
Text Edit
Did I mention that you need a text editor to make WordPress theme files? MS Word will not work. You MUST be able edit the files and save them as “text” files. They can not be formatted in any way. On Windows, look for WordPad. On a Mac, look for TextEdit. Do not make them RTF, or Rich Text Format. Just save the files as simple old text.
Quick shout out for BBEdit on a Mac. The ultimate text editor and if you’re going to be doing this, worth every penny. It does not suck. Says so right on the box.
Set Up Dev
Before we get any farther, you’ll need a development installation of WordPress that you can play with and break. It can’t share the database with an existing installation, or the theme you pick here will be the theme that the existing site will get at the same time.
If you do not have an installation of WordPress yet, install it and we’ll just play with it until we’re happy with the new theme. No one is looking. No one cares. Feel free to break it all you want.
If you do have an existing installation, you need to make another installation. It’s easy, but pay attention. You will have the existing site in your top level. You’ll probably have a “wordpress” folder with all of the files in it, in that top level. Make a copy, or upload a new copy, of WordPress right next to that folder. Name the new folder “dev”. You will now have the existing Worpress in “wordpress” and the new one right next to it, named “dev”.
Take the existing wp-config.php file and download it to your hard drive, where you can edit it. Open it up and look for the line that says ” $table_prefix = ‘wp_’; “. That “wp_” is the prefix for all of the tables in the database that WordPress uses. We don’t want to create a new database. We want to create new tables inside the existing database. We leave everything else in this file alone, but we change the “wp_” to “dev_”. Our new installation will see that and go create a new set of tables, all with names beginning with “dev_”.
Upload that wp-config.php file and upload it to our new “dev” installation. It should be next to all of the other “wp-”folders, at the top level.
Now, we’ll let WordPress do it’s thing. This is where the WordPress is so much better than any other Content Management System out there. We’ll finish the installation using your web browser.
Go to the home page of the new “dev” WordPress installation. If you have a previous installation, type in that URL, followed by /dev/, which is the folder that we put the dev WordPress. If this is a new installation, then you can go to the new home page. You should be looking at a new installation page that says “welcome”. You need to fill in the Name of the new site and your email address.
Click on the Install WordPress button. Wait for a really long time while WordPress goes out and updates the database and installs all of the information that it needs. This might take up 10 seconds on a slow day.
You will be looking at a Success! page. The user name is “admin” and the password is some totally obscure random string. Log into the new site and look around. You now have a development site that we can install themes on and break if we want to.
Lift and Separate
We want to go back to looking at the existing site that you want to convert. We want to lift the HTML from it and separate it into WordPress theme files.
The basic task is to separate out the “theme” elements from the “content” elements. If you have a stack of HTML files on your server and you’re not sure how they all work, download them and look at them in a text editor.
You need to have some background in HTML to know what you are looking at. You’re going to have to read the HTML and figure out what it is doing. You’ll see a lot of stuff at the top, in the <head> section. The next should be the header area, all the stuff at the top. Somewhere down after that, will be what looks like content, the actual writing.
Your task, and this is the hardest part, is to figure out exactly where the “top” stuff stops and the “content” stuff starts. It could be a table cell. It could be a <div> tag. You need to find that point.
In the simplest form, there’s a bunch of HTML, then there’s content, then there’s a bunch more HTML. The goal is to slice that HTML into files named “header.php”, “sidebar.php”, “footer.php”, and most importantly, “index.php”. There could be others, but we’ll talk about that later.
Slice off the top stuff and put it in the “header.php” file. Figure out where the side bar stuff might come and copy it into that. You don’t really need a sidebar file if you don’t want to have one or you might want a couple, using sidebar-right.php and sidebar-left.php. You’ll have to go through your code and look at the layout of the page.
Take the bottom stuff and put it in the footer.php. You saw that coming, didn’t you?
You’re left with the content. You need to create an “index.php” file. At the top, you want to have the tag <?php get_header(); ?>. At the bottom, you want to have the <?php get_footer(); ?> tag. You can put your sidebars in where you want them, before or after the content, for left or right.
In the middle of the index page, you want to put in the magic PHP tags that display the content. Open up the default theme index.php file and look at it. Copy everything starting at the <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> tag down to the <?php endif; ?> tag. You’ll get a bunch of “class=entry” and “php_content()” tags.
Save all of these files into a new theme folder. You’re doing all of this on your hard drive. Name the new theme whatever you want. “MyNewTheme” sounds great. Copy the style sheet from the default theme into your new theme folder. If you already have a style sheet from your original site, use that instead.
Open the .css style sheet file. You want to have the new name so that it shows up in the Appearance page in WordPress. At the top of the file, you need to have at least “/* Theme Name: MyNewTheme */”. The slash and asterisk means that it’s “commented out” so that it doesn’t interfere with the style sheet. Don’t use the quotes, just the slashes and asterisks. Look at the default theme style sheet or the codex for more info. This is minimum.
Upload and Look
Upload your theme folder to the “wp-content” themes folder, next to the default and classic themes. Go to your Themes page in WordPress admin and see if your theme is there. If it is, select it and activate it. Hold your breathe and “View Site”.
Did it work? Did it break? If you have horrible text that displays PHP error messages, read what they say and try to figure out where the error is. It’s probably a missing closing tag or a missing semi-colon. I hate those.
Did it display something, but it’s all out of whack? You need to play with the style sheets and the theme files to get it to display correctly.
Fix it
The simplest situation here is that you copied the code straight out of the original files and plopped it in here and it all works.
The issues could be style sheets, missing code, or badly written HTML. The more you change from original, the more you need to know what you are doing.
Pages
After you get it working and looking right, you want to create new pages for each page in the new site. Just create them and put some gibberish for now. You just want a place holder. Make sure that the menu points to the right places. Menus will be the next issue.
Existing Pages
If you have pages that you just don’t want to convert, you can put them into the Worpdress top folder, so that they act like normal pages. In my example, all of the portfolio pages are still hard coded PHP files. http://www.flowerart.biz/portfolio/ I needed to make sure the menus work, but those are hard coded pages. They are not visible in WordPress, but they are visible to the user. Read “Put A WordPress Menu In An External Page” to see how I made the menus dynamic on a hard coded page.
Menus
If you want to have dynamic menus, where pages are added to the menu when you create the pages, then you need to read through the codex about menu tags and their attributes. It’s possible to cut out the hard coded HTML menu that you had and replace it with a dynamic one. See where to cut out the old one and replace it with the new tags.
Different Templates
If you have different templates for different pages, you need to know what the differences are. If you need to create a new template for each page, you can do that. Go into each old HTML file, cut out the “contents” and replace it per the directions above. Now, create a new file that will act like that specific page’s index.php file. I like to name them all starting with “template_”, so you might have template_aboutus.php.
These new template pages need to have all of the tags of the others, header() and footer() and that stuff. It’s possible to have a template page that is entirely custom HTML and not even use the content() tags. You won’t be able to edit it, but it’ll show up on the site and be managed like other pages.
Each one of these new template pages needs to have the commented out lines at the top of the file that has the name in this format: “/* Template Name: About Us */”, again, without the quotes.
Upload this new file to the theme folder, next to the index.php file. Go back to the page that needs to use this template. On the right, there’s a “Template” drop down menu that should now list all of the template files that contain that “Template Name:” line in them. Select the one you want to use for that page and update.
Go look at it. You will have to customize and fix each template to make sure it works with the pages that you want.
Final Touches
You will have to go through each page and make sure that the menus work and that they look right. You can use the default theme as a guide. You can look up specific problems in the codex or the forums or you can ask me.
From here on out, it will be stylesheets and php tags to get it to look and work right. If you have a specific problem, let me know in the comments below and we can walk through it.
Posted in Wordpress |
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
SEO should be free.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. How much it costs will depend on how optimized you want it to be. Nothing in SEO costs any money, only time. You should learn what the techniques are and then you should do them your self.
SEO just wants to be free.
Don't pay for it.
A friend just told me recently “I have many people that do SEO for me already”. Really? He’s a friend, so I won’t tear him apart for that too much, but his site is found for the one thing that he’s interested in and it’s not found for his main products. I looked.
The first thing that you must do, MUST do, is to pick some keywords or phrases that you want to rank highly for. The best way to do this is to think about it from your users point of view. What problem are they trying to solve when they come to your site. Why should they be there? Wedding Flowers? Car Repair? Pizza? a TV Show? What are those words that they will type into Google to find you?
It’s good to get one main phrase that you was to own. That phrase will go everywhere on your site, so many times that’s annoying.
Now you need to pick 3-5 more phrases that you want to do well for. Maybe you won’t own these, but you still want traffic from them.
Remember, these phrases must be from the user’s point of view, not yours. You might think that you sell “water treatment systems”, but your users want to buy “water softeners”. You might think that you sell “hand made, one of a kind, jewelry”, but I’m looking for a “woman birthday gift”. You might think you sell “woman’s action wear”, but my wife’s looking for “woman sports clothes”.
Now that that has rolled around in your head for a while, you can write down the phrases that you want to rank well for and the one that you want to own.
Next, you can scatter those phrases around your site and ask for links from other sites. Make your title on every page contain that main phrase. Leave comments on other sites using those phrases. Do all of the other SEO stuff that you can find on the Internet and that I’ll talk about later.
SEO just wants to be free. Don’t pay for it.
Posted in SEO |
Monday, January 26th, 2009
WordPress is free.
I saw an article recently listing 10 free web site building tools. Most of them take a while to figure out. They won’t all let you do what you want to do. None were expandable to your own site if you ever wanted to take the next step, from “free” to “owning your own”.
The biggest cost is time.
It made me think about what the real costs of a web platform are. The biggest cost is time. How long does it take you to learn how to work it and make it do what you want it to do? How much is it going to frustrate you and make you figure out how to do something simple?
In my experience with WordPress, and I’m coming at this from a developer point of view, it’s much easier and intuitive to learn to use WordPress than with any other platform out there. When I build a site for a client using WordPress, it’s much easier to train them and get them up to speed on WordPress than other systems that I’ve tried.
Let’s look at the cost it would take to put a wordpress site on your own server and run it for a year. Domain name is $10. Don’t pay more than that for a domain name. Hosting packages can be had for less than $80 a year. Call the whole thing $100 for a year of hosting your own site.
If you use a good host, they would have an auto install version of WordPress. Click, click, bang. It’s set up. Play with a theme. Spend too much time looking on line for a theme. Download, install. Play with plug ins. Download, install. Write a few posts. Create a few pages. Change the layout a bit. Call it 8 hours total, from start to having your own blog on line, working, with your own theme and content. You have added the plug-ins that you wanted, the theme that you wanted, the layout, the content, the menu. All of it is exactly what you want.
The cost in time is really because you have TOO MANY options. If you can be satisfied with what comes out of the box, then a WordPress site can be set up in 20 minutes.
Compare that to another free host. Set up is quick and easy. Pick a theme. There are 20. Write a post. Change the layout? No. Can’t do that. Put the menu on the other side? No. Can’t do that. You want to post video? No. Can’t do that either. Podcast? Special functionality? Nope. None of that.
You’ve spent the same 8 hours trying to do stuff and not being able to that you would have on WordPress. It’s $100 cheaper and maybe that’s the difference for you. It doesn’t look quite like you want it to and it doesn’t have quite the right functionality. It’s harder to use and takes longer to post than WordPress. If it takes 3 minutes longer and you make 20 posts, that’s an hour. How many posts in a year?
This reminds me of the difference between Windows and a Mac. The Mac costs a bit more to start, but lasts twice a long, lets you work twice as fast, and makes it easier to do anything you want. Which is a better deal? How much is your time worth? How much money do you have?
It’s all up to you, but if you have $100 to spend on a web site for a year, spend it and build a WordPress site. You’ll thank me at the end of the year.
Posted in Wordpress |
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
I’ve been thinking about what I wrote about the Greenes. I think that it is possible and even probable, to make money clinging to your one, true, pure artistic vision.
But I’ve known a lot of starving artists. Some artists are just bad. Their vision is not worth making money. They need desk jobs instead.
I've known a lot of starving artists
I guess the answer is in the balance between the two. You need to pay the rent. You should hang on to your vision.
It’s the balance between the practical and the aesthetic. That should be the balance that you use to design your web site with also. You should make it interesting and artistic. You should have a point of view and make your statement.
On the other side, it should load quickly. It should not distract from your goal. It should communicate effectively. It should make the sale.
Art and Money are two sides to the same coin. You need both. I was wrong to say that you only need the art. You need to accomplish your goals as well, no matter what it takes.
Otherwise, you will have the most beautiful site in the world and no one will ever know.
Posted in design |
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
The New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene
I visited “The New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene and Greene” at the Huntington Library today. It was a rainy day, but the exhibit closes in 2 days, so this was our last chance. The rain kept the riff raff out, so it was not crowded and it was a pleasant experience.
Greene and Greene
I love the houses designed by Greene and Greene. They are two brothers who built amazing houses between 1900 and 1920 or so. They are the epitome of the California Arts and Crafts movement and are most famous for the Gamble house in Pasadena.
The thing that struck me about what I saw today was how their ideas and ideals were forced upon their clients. They had the audacity to believe that they were artists and that their clients should appreciate that. Is the customer always right? Uummm…yeah, kind of.
When they were building the Pratt house in Ojai, the owner complained about missed schedules and cost overruns. Anyone who’s built a web site knows how that works. Their response was that even though they appreciated the frustration of the owner, what he was getting was not just house, but a work of art, which takes time and effort to complete properly and would be well worth it in the end. I’ve seen the house and it’s magnificent. I’m not sure Mr Pratt was satisfied.
During the depression, they still made magnificent houses, but not as many. They still charged the same high prices. They were creating art and it could not be achieved with shortcuts.
The balance between the business and the creative process was a delicate one. In their case, the business suffered in service to the art, finally being dissolved in 1922. What they achieved has stood the test of critics and time and is as amazing today as it was then. They created a whole new way of building houses, with a new attitude behind how life should be lived in these houses.
Is it worth it to sacrifice business for art? I don’t know. I need to pay the mortgage and eat, but beyond that, maybe art is the greater calling. Were they self indulgent, self centered, and egomaniacal? Maybe. So is Steve Jobs and I love my iPhone. He’s a billionaire.
As much as our users need to be considered in our web design, we, as the developers, the creators of the web site, need to instill our passion, our vision, our knowledge of how things SHOULD be into every web site. As much as I love SEO and WordPress and AdSense and marketing, our one true goal, our pure artistic vision, needs to be embodied in our web sites. Maybe there’s art in SEO. Maybe marketing is an art too.
Gamble House, Pasadena, CA
I think that as we lose the need for money, as we let that go and accept being poor, in the pursuit of artistic vision, in the pursuit of our passion, of what we love and know is the best, I think that then, and only then, does the money seem to come back in response. As we push it away and turn towards the artistic ideal, somehow, the money seems to be attracted back to that ideal. Maybe that’s a little too idealistic, too simplistic, I mean there’s always the lottery, but it does seem to be a tendency in life.
Don’t let the pursuit of money ruin your passion. Don’t let worry cloud your vision. Be who you are and the money will follow.
In 1943, in retirement, Charles Sumner Greene said “I did not always give them what they wanted, but always what they liked.
Posted in design |
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Quoting from The Role of Design in Modern Church Marketing [Design Principles]
Yet the recent image makeover of churches is unpalatable for some. In 2006, Pastor John MacArthur published a popular article (“Grunge Christianity?”) condemning modern churches that trade sanctity for “cultural relevancy.” MacArthur and his supporters disagree with so-called pragmatists who seek bigger, more worldly congregations. Nathan Smith (GodBit.com) counters, “we are naive if we try to take an isolationist approach. God wants a direct relationship with each person, so we—as facilitators of that calling—have to meet people through what they know, and if that is pop culture, then so be it.”
How many congregations identify with dark, gritty imagery?
So what about the multitude of recent church web sites designed around ragged, dark, asymmetrical elements—what does this communicate about the church? How many congregations identify with dark, gritty imagery?
Read the entire article at:
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/design-modern-church-marketing/
Posted in church |
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
I was walking a client through his Analytics stats yesterday, explaining what each page, each section meant. I asked him if he ever looked at these since we set them up. He looks at them as much as you do, which is never.
What traffic are you missing?
He didn’t connect the value of what these numbers and charts mean to how he can improve his site and make more money with it, as well as make it a better experience for his users.
As we drilled into the content part of it, I saw that no one, as in not one person, was looking through his portfolio pages. I realized that these pages have a smaller menu over to the side that people could easily miss.
Also, when I redesigned his site by bringing it into WordPress (of course), the top, main menu now has a different look and action than the original small portfolio menu. I used to just put a glow around the highlighted menu item and now I was doing the whole colored div background, which is much more apparent.
Now we have a menu that looks and functions differently and no one who ever clicks on them. HHHmmmm. What to do?
Next step, I put in the same style menu as the top, so they highlight the same. That should improve the click on those. We’ll be watching his stats to see what happens.
Read your Analytics pages today. What traffic are you missing?
Posted in statistics |
Monday, January 12th, 2009
I ran into an old friend recently. The usual questions were asked about what’s happened in the 20 years since we’ve seen each other. Yes, I do web sites.
They said they were about to update their web site. Their spouse had created it and they wanted to add some features and update the look. I suggested that they use WordPress. I sounded like the fan boy that I am.
They were pleasant, but said they already had hosting with GoDaddy and they would just use the web blog application that they provided as part of the hosting package. They had heard of WordPress and that it was good, but they would use what they had.
I continued on about how cool WordPress is. They were very nice, but had decided that they didn’t want to pay anything extra when they already had a blogging application included in their hosting package.
I checked it out on my own GoDaddy account. It sucked! It had a tenth of the functionality and the interface was horrible.
Did I mention that it's free?
I told them again that they should use WordPress. I told them that it is free. You can install it anywhere. It’s got features, and blah blah blah, and IT’S FREE!
Oh. That’s quite different. It’s free you say? You don’t have to buy it?
No! It’s FREE. You can download it, install it, pick a theme, put in some plug ins and have a complete, professional web site FOR FREE.
They said they would check it out. They thanked me profusely. Told me that I had motivated them to get going on their web site.
I have no idea if they will do anything on it at all, but I guess I was shocked that not everyone has the same understanding and knowledge and beliefs that I do. Silly me.
People seem to think that to get cool software, you have to spend money. If you don’t spend money, then you can have cool software. People can’t wrap their heads around the whole “open source” thing.
If you happen to not be aware, WordPress is free. There is no cost. You can download it and install it on any web server that’s running MySQL and Apache (which is almost every web server these days). You can control all aspects of it. You can build your own theme if you want. You can do anything with it.
Did I mention that it’s free?
Posted in Wordpress |
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
Half of all churches in America today do NOT have a web site. Half! What excuse is there for that? This article below is quoting a Duke University survey to make the point that the church has caught up with the times, that only a fifth of them had a web site in 1998. But the glass is not half full here. It’s half empty.
If you are involved with a church that does not have a web site, I can show you how to get one for free, using WordPress.com. All it takes is a little initiative on your part and you can have a web site. You don’t need a $300 site. You don’t need a $500 site. You can have a free web site for your church. Go to www.worpdress.com and follow the instructions.
Do it now. For the children.
Quoting from The Church In 2009 – KYPost.com
Close to half of the churches offer Web pages.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.kypost.com/content/middleblue3/story/The-Church-In-2009/o3oMerab5E2upfPeBvDqdg.cspx
Posted in church |
Sunday, January 4th, 2009
This is a great check list to run through while you review your existing web site. If you have any of these things, please remove them. I’m begging you. It’s for the sake of the children.
Quoting from 10 Reasons Why Your Church Website Needs Work | Web Site Design Blog
1. You have an over excessive use of animated clipart.
This may have been acceptable in the 90’s for personal home pages, but it should never be used on a church’s website.
If you want to really annoy your visitors, keep this feature because it works.
2. You play background music that cannot be turned off.
If you want to really annoy your visitors, keep this feature because it works.
3. Your site is in frames.
So you figured that you would make it easy for the navigation to be updated. Too bad you didn’t realize that search engines and some web browsers cannot properly view frames.
4. The last time you updated the site was two years ago.
It’s always good to know what events took place in the past, too bad we have no idea what’s going on in the present.
5. You utilize scrolling marquee text.
Sure it may look okay on CNN, but it looks horrible on a website.
6. You use numerous font types throughout the website.
A little Comic Sans here, a little Arial there and a few Wingdings here, it’s a masterpiece! Perhaps only to a child.
7. You built the site using Microsoft Word.
It was easy, just outline everything how you wanted it and then save as webpage. It doesn’t matter how different web browsers and different screen resolutions see the site, because it looks fabulous on your screen.
8. You used Java or Flash for your navigation.
Look at the pretty cool effect. It’s a shame that search engines have a hard time trying to crawl a site with that type of navigation.
9. You didn’t properly resize images before you added them on the site.
Why is that picture of the Pastor so blurry?
10. You have used the same website design for the past five years.
Why change it now? That old outdated look really defines our church.
Read the entire article at:
http://blog.collinsinternet.com/34/10-reasons-why-your-church-website-needs-work/
Posted in church |
Sunday, December 28th, 2008
I really appreciate comments. I really do. I love the interaction with people who use this site. Most of all, I love being right and crushing the opposition.
Network Solutions is waiting for you to search for an available domain name using their site.
I wrote a post titled
Network Solutions Sucks. I must admit that I have strong feelings about Network Solutions or NetSol, as it’s also called. I am deeply biased with a loathing that permeates my entire being.
With that as background, I got a comment or two from Jack Carlson, who, again, I really appreciate for commenting. He defended NetSol and I had to question if I was right about their practices or not. I know what happened to me and a client of mine. Maybe they saw the error of their ways and changed their practices. I needed to reevaluate.
I checked Wikipedia (and since it’s on the Internet, it must be right of course,) and they also had references that all seem to check out. I think this section below is probably true. It matches my experiences and my client’s. Please click through and read the whole thing.
What do you think? Have you ever had a good or a bad experience with NetSol? Please leave a comment and we’ll all battle it out in the never ending search for the truth.
Network Solutions – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Controversy over domain name front running
There is evidence that there are parties subscribing to this information which are buying some of these domains within milliseconds of them being de-registered.
On January 8, 2008 Domain Name Wire published a story alleging that Network Solutions practices domain name front running.[18] “If you try to register a domain at Network Solutions, but decide not to register it, you won’t be able to register it anywhere else,” the article says.[18] “Network Solutions registers the domain in its company name with the words ‘This Domain is available at NetworkSolutions.com’.”[18] Circle ID reported on January 8, 2008 that Jonathon Nevett, Vice President of Policy at Network Solutions and one of the seven members of the ICANN community who was consulted by the ICANN committee looking at domain tasting abuse,[19] had offered a response to the news story stating Network Solution’s policy.[20] The policy was “a security measure to protect our customers,” said Nevett.[20] “When a customer searches for an available domain name at our website, but decides not to purchase the name immediately after conducting the search,” Nevett added, “after the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve.”[20] Nevett said that if the domain was “not purchased within 4 days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration.”[18]
Posted in web host |
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
I have some experience with building and maintaining web sites for churches. Most of my professional life has been building them for large corporations, which is cool. It paid the bills. My heart is for church web sites though.
It just hurts to see what some of them look like out there. I am going to change the direction and focus of this site a little bit to point it more towards churches. Most of the advice and knowledge about small business web sites will apply to churches as well.
I’ll write a new version of the Web Site Starter Kit, this one will be for churches. You’ll learn how to build a site for FREE! Yes, this means that there will be no excuse at all, for not having a web site.
I am going to change the direction and focus more on churches.
My first church web site was in 1996. I had discovered the wonders of this new toy called The Web, so I registered the domain name for the church I was attending at the time. I had a web hosting business (I still do), so I built a simple site that had the basics; service times, a map, statement of faith, bios of the staff, etc.
I told the worship leader about it and he was excited. He “got it” back then.
I had a meeting to tell the church business manager about it. He told me to take it down immediately. The Internet was for child porn and software pirates, not churches. He was angry that I had even registered the domain name. Wooah… Dude. Slow down.
I left the meeting disheartened. Of course, being the obedient, submissive soul that I am, I left the site up and did what I knew was the best thing for the church anyway. Idiot.
There were more meetings and the business manager backed down. He began to see the benefit of the site. People were actually excited about it and word got back to him that it was “a good thing”.
The next step, after the “fear and loathing” step, was obviously the “control” step. They wanted to dictate to me exactly what should be on the site. They wanted everything approved before it went on the site. Again, I submitted by doing the best thing for the church. He never went to the site, so he never knew any better.
We finally got some people in the main office trained to keep it updated. It began to really become a useful tool in the life of the church. They started to look for a higher end publishing platform and spend money on it. About this time, there was another political shift in the church, unrelated to the web site, and my lovely wife and I chose to leave and help start a new church.
The original site fell into the hands of the, well, we’ll call them ill-equipped to design and maintain a web site. They didn’t spend any money after all and the site follows all of the “10 Common Mistakes for Church Web Sites”. It’s horrible, last time I looked.
Based on that wonderful experience, and the others that followed, I’ll be giving my advice on how to create and maintain a web site for a church. I’ll try to not go on religious rants, whether they involve Calvinism or Microsoft.
Posted in church |
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
Everyone knows that the economy is in trouble. How should you react as a small business owner? How are you going to pay the rent next month? Which employee are you going to let go? How will you keep your current clients? Don’t panic.
The easiest and quickest budget item fora small business to cut back on is marketing. There’s no immediate affect felt, so you think it might be safe to cut, but nothing could be worse for your business. The Harvard Business Review said:
It is well documented that brands that increase (marketing) during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.
The best time to take advantage of your place in the market is in an economic downturn. Because other people are quick to cut marketing, you will have the perfect opportunity to reach even more prospective customers. In a downturn, aggressive PR and Communications strategy is the solution.
Building or updating your web site is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to reach those prospective customers. Now is the time to put some time into reviewing your web site. Does it say everything it needs to say about your small business? Can you add features that allow more customer involvement or at least feedback? Maybe it’s time to have a professional review your site and give you suggestions on how it can be improved.
Now is the time to spend more on advertising, not less.
Posted in marketing |
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
My wife went through the draft with her pen and marked it all up. Anything that she didn’t understand is being rewritten. Some of my organization wasn’t clear, so I’m making that a little clearer. We want to make Web Site Starter Kit the best it can be, which means clear, concise communication.
They haven’t quite released WordPress 2.7 yet, so I’m still rocking the RC1 version of it. They say they will release the final version tomorrow. A few more screenshots today and it should be good to go.
Web Site Starter Kit should be released by the end of the week.
Posted in web site build |
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
This is one of those questions that will get a complicated technical formula from the web development engineers, but it’s really not that hard.
If you have to ask, then you don’t need very much.
Don't be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming *unlimited* at you.
If you are just starting out, you probably won’t have much traffic. Sorry, but it’s true. You can calculate the page files sizes and multiply by the page views you get a day or a month, but you won’t be able to do that without knowing how many people hit your site. If you have no history, then you can’t calculate, but it won’t be very much at all for a while.
Start out with the cheapest, least amount of space and bandwidth. Don’t be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming “unlimited” at you. Don’t upgrade until you have to.
You will be surprised by just how little bandwidth you really need. If the average page is 100k, which is not unreasonable, then 100,000 pages a month is one gig. That’s over 3,000 page views a day. Do you have that many? If you have 10,000 views a day, then you’ll want 3 or 4 gig. I think “unlimited” bandwidth would probably cover that.
I really, really mean that you shouldn’t get more than you really need and you probably don’t need as much as you think you do. Really. Don’t do it.
Much more important is the reliability of the company. Do they answer emails quickly? Put in a support ticket and see how long it takes them to answer. Ask the sales people technical questions about redundancy and latency. See how long it takes to answer and does the answer make sense to you. Just tell them that you were told to ask about “redundancy and latency” and please explain what that means. If you are happy with the answer, then great. If you have no idea what this technical jargon they give you means or it takes them 3 days to answer you, then move along and find another web host company.
Posted in web host |
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
Don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions. Use any other registrar. Not only do they charge you 4 times what most other registrars charge, moving your domain name to another registrar is almost impossible.
We had a client who had a name registered at Network Solutions. I showed them the difference in cost and customer support, so they wanted to move to GoDaddy.
La Brea tar Pits, Where You Get Sucked In And Never Get Out
First, they needed to submit a request. Then the request had to be approved. You have to actually call them to have the transfer approved. In this call, they try very hard to get you to stay. This isn’t a technical call or a call to protect you from someone stealing your name, it’s a sales call, a hard ball sales call.
When they finally do approve your request, it’s 5 days later, after multiple emails and a sales call.
Customer service is another issue, but this one is more subjective. They generally are not helpful and it takes twice as long to get things figured out with their support.
Bottom line, no matter what, don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions.
Posted in web site build |
