I recently mentioned to my readers on  Facebook that I was thinking about doing a series of blog posts reviewing or critiquing various websites, with the idea of offering tips and helpful information about how these sites could be improved, from my point of view.

Right away, a couple of brave souls came forth and offered up their websites for me to take a peek at. And I say brave, because no one really wants to hear negative things about anything that they had a ...

...Continue reading Website Review – Innovative Images

Today’s post is by Guest Author Jeanette Chasworth, an interior designer and expert on color from Los Angeles. Check out her great offer at the bottom of this post!

There are so many decisions when putting together a website, it can almost seem overwhelming. There are so many pieces and parts and finding the right person to put them all together can be a chore.

While many of these pieces and parts seem to be knee deep in computer speak, one of the simplest questions you may get asked when putting together a website may be “What color ...

...Continue reading Do You Know What Effect Color Has on Your Website Visitor?

One of the more challenging tasks in WordPress is adding, formatting & styling tables. Typically page layout and formatting is done with div content blocks these days, but sometimes tables are necessary for formatting tabular data and charts. By default, there is not an easy way to do this with WordPress, unless you know how to hand code tables and this can often be confusing because so many opening and closing HTML tags are necessary.

The best way that I’ve discovered to add and format tables in WordPress, is to use the plugin WP-Table Reloaded. Install ...

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – Adding & Styling Tables in WordPress

Yes, it’s true.

I’m a graphic designer that has never been able to finish her own logo. That’s like a car mechanic who drives the oldest, junkiest, worst-running vehicle in the neighborhood.

Over the years, I’ve struggled with different looks, colors, themes, etc. I spent forever trying to brand myself and figure out what direction I was going to go in, until spring of 2011 when I was smart enough to hire a marketing coach, Chris Makell. She helped me figure out who I was first, and then who my target client was. Prior ...

...Continue reading The Quest for My Own Logo

WordPress templates allow us to put content in our sidebars that will display on every page, so that this information can remain front and center for our visitors. This is pretty handy, as any good marketer knows that repetition is key, so we want our visitors to have multiple opportunities to opt in to our list, or purchase our product.

In some cases, however, we might want to display various content on numerous different pages, and some themes only provide us with one or maybe two sidebars, so if you want a different sidebar on each page, this could prove ...

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – Using the Display Widgets Plugin to Customize your Sidebar Content

Last Monday, April 2nd, was my first day of full-time freelance work, and I was very productive…….just not at design work.

In fact, I didn’t even sit down at my computer until about 2 in the afternoon.

Any guesses as to what I was doing?

Yup………moving cattle.

Of course, this is one of the many perks of working for yourself in the manner I do, is you get to make your own schedule. You’re not punching anyone else’s clock but your own. And the beauty of working from home on a computer is that, if I need to, I can ...

...Continue reading Wanna Guess How I Spent My First Day of Freelancing?

One of the great things about WordPress is the ability it gives us to connect with our audience and provide them the information they want with a few simple clicks. People want the information they need quickly and easily and the less time they have to spend looking for it, the more they will like it.

So, why not just send it right to their email box instead of making them wade through your site to find it? A simple way to do this is by utilizing RSS feeds; once people are subscribed, they will receive all your posts right ...

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – How to Set Up A Feedburner Feed on Your Site

Ask any web or graphic design professional and they’ll tell you that the software of choice for graphics and photo editing is Adobe products. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator have been the standard for many, many years, but despite that, there are still a few things that are lacking in Adobe that Corel has figured out.

Years ago, when I was first starting out in designing, I simply could not afford Adobe products, and until I knew for sure that designing was what I wanted to do, I just couldn’t justify the investment. So I opted for what I then dubbed ...

...Continue reading Three Reasons I Sometimes Use CorelDraw Graphics Suite Instead of Adobe Creative Suite

A huge part of internet marketing is creating a landing page or home page on our website that will compel the visitor to follow our advice and act on the call to action they’re seeing on our page. Whether it’s purchasing a product, or signing up for a newsletter, we need to create a layout that makes sense to our visitors and provides them with the information they are looking for quickly and efficiently. Part of that layout includes a call to action.

Typically you will see this in the upper right corner of most web pages. If you are ...

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – Create a Static Post Footer With a Call to Action

If you’ve typed in an incorrect URL in any web browser, you’ll receive a 404 Error message telling you that you have requested a page that does not exist. It’s always a good idea to avoid this scenario, as people will most often just click away to another website. These can result from the user typing in an incorrect URL, or in WordPress, perhaps you’ve changed your permalink or page structure, resulting in a link no longer being valid.

While it may not seem obvious, 404 error pages can be damaging ...

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – Important Tips & Tricks for 404 Error Pages