While many themes have their own built in menu features, combining those with the custom menu feature in WordPress makes it much easier to create the menu that you want for your site.

The WordPress menu features allow for simple drag and drop placement of menu & sub-menu items, as well as customize what the menu item label and title attributes will be. I like to use my theme’s menu styling options for background color or images, rollover colors, menu height, etc., but then use the menu features that are available within WordPress for placement and customization of individual menu items. Whether you’re using a page menu, a category menu, or both, this combination will provide you with ...

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – Using the Custom Menu Feature in WordPress

I recently discovered something about LinkedIn. While I’m not super active in that community, I do make regular posts there as part of my social media networking program, and I’m in a couple of different groups for designers. There’s been much written about the various social media sites, in particular Facebook, and what these sites do with our information that we provide very willingly. While most of us are aware of how to make sure our Facebook settings are protecting our privacy, I never even gave LinkedIn a second thought. Until now.

By default, LinkedIn has provided a way for others to use your photo and information from LinkedIn in their advertising promotions. Unless we know about this and take steps to not ...

...Continue reading LinkedIn’s Social Advertising – Are they using your information?

The following is a guest post by Terry Ford.

Professional video editing software can be extremely expensive. But if you don’t have hundreds of dollars to spare, you’re not out of luck. Whether you want to edit video for a hobby, personal video blogging, home movies, or professional-quality films, there are quite a few great programs available for free on the web. They often perform the same functions as costly paid software, and they work just as well. If you’re looking for a way to edit your videos without spending money, here are some of the best free video editing software programs available.

If you’re an experienced video editor, this program is well-suited for you. It has a ...

...Continue reading Best Free Video Editing Software Programs

With the improvements to WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System), many people are now using WordPress for their website, not just their blog. By default however, WordPress will make your posts page the “Home” page, instead of a static page. If your website is more than just a blog, you will undoubtedly want to make your home page static, instead of a listing of all your recent blog posts.

This is easier than ever and doesn’t require any coding knowledge whatsoever.

If you haven’t already created the page that is to become your Home page, in your Dashboard menu go to Pages > Add New and create and publish your page as you would any other page.

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – How to Create a Static Home Page in WordPress

The following is a guest post by Randall Davidson.

Creative Commons License photo credit: javcon117

Thanks to computers, image editing has become easier than ever. With the right tools, you can edit your photos just like the pros. Today, many free editing tools are available online. The following are six free online image editing tools and why they’re great:

...Continue reading 6 Free Online Image Editing Tools and Why They’re Great

**Note: this post assumes you are using the latest version of WordPress, 3.3.1. If you’d like to upgrade WordPress and you’re not sure how to do that, please read How to Update WordPress.

Most of the time, WordPress users can get by without using any HTML code. Every now and again, however, we want to add something to our website to enhance the user’s experience and this will require embedding small snippets of HTML code. Whether it’s embedding a YouTube video, a Google Calendar, or form, it’s helpful to be able to insert this code in our pages to provide those extra features to our readers.

While theoretically, you ...

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – Raw HTML Snippets Plugin

Saturday was branding day. Most of the branding has been done already, these calves were saved to invite some friends over to play….well work, too, but mostly play.

Brandings are the social events of the season in many cases, and when you get friends together to rope and brand, it’s usually a pretty fun time…..especially when the weather cooperates.  We’re having a bit of a dry spell in this part of California, with no measurable rain since November 20th. While this is great for a branding, it’s not so great for the ranching and farming world, since water makes the world go ’round. So, while we were happy we didn’t have to drag calves through the mud, we’re still doing secret rain dances to encourage winter to finally come and make the hillsides green again ...

...Continue reading Nothing Better Than a January Branding in the California Sunshine

Textures play a huge role in designing everything from websites to print advertisements. I use them constantly, and have even developed my own collection with some of the photographs I have taken over time.

Now I’m making some of them available to you for free!

Enjoy, and I’d love to see what you do with them!

...Continue reading Leather, Wood & Granite High Resolution Textures

Every now and again, WordPress will come out with updates to their platform and you will need to update your version of WordPress so that you will be able to use all the new features that are included with the new version.

This is very easy to do, and just requires a few minutes of your time, and it is well worth it. WordPress always provides great new usability features to make things easier, with each of their updates. The last 2 have been great!

As of this post date, the most recent version of WordPress is 3.3.1, so if you are using a different version, follow the instructions below to update.

If you haven’t yet updated, when ...

...Continue reading WordPress Wednesday – How to Update WordPress

For a recent final exam in school (for those of you who didn’t know, I’m almost done with my AA degree in Graphic Design), I had to redesign a website. The criteria was that this website be live and in need of a redesign. That’s it. I looked around for suitable sites, and ran across one that I just really wanted to tackle. The only problem was, it was a local organization, and I had concerns about potentially offending someone. The website I chose is for the Springville Chamber of Commerce. Springville is a local mountain community and I think it is a great little town. I have a couple of clients there and I ride in the drill team for the rodeo every spring, so this redesign is intended to only point out a ...

...Continue reading My School Website Redesign Project