Site redesign and addition of full E-commerce for Roy Humphreys Wood Turning, Mohill, Co. Leitrim.

Live May 2012 – www.RoyHumphreysWoodTurner.ie

ROY HUMPHREYS WOOD TURNER

This is probably gonna sound like a bitter web designer’s rant who might have lost some business to the new kid on the block but sue me. I might actually have made some money as a result of this scheme!

The ‘Getting Irish Business Online’ scheme has got my goat up ever since it appeared a couple of years ago. It’s a Google, Blacknight Hosting, An Post!?, Enterprise Board joint effort whereby businesses can get themselves a free website with free address and hosting (for the first year only!) and avoid the alleged cost and hassle involved in getting a website the old fashioned way.

In the news today, I seen that 10,000  Irish businesses have now availed of the scheme and got their free website. So what’s wrong with a scheme that makes it easier for businesses to market themselves in the middle of a recession?

I’m sure intentions were good but the big problem for me is that this is the kind of scheme that should have existed maybe 10 years ago when the barriers to having a professional website were much higher than they are now. These days, it’s very affordable for a business to hire someone to build a proper internet presence that will look and perform a lot better than the “30 min” free 1 page template offering being given under the getting business online scheme. I think internet users these days expect a professional website from the companies they might hire,  not a site that looks every inch a free handout! It’s like getting a fancy new business card and sticking a Yahoo email address on it. Potential customers will see the free site template and arguably guess that the business in question isn’t doing well enough to have more than a free site. And if they’re not doing well enough, maybe they’re useless?

Recently I’ve had a number of clients come to me looking to upgrade the site they got under this scheme and I’ve yet to see one perform well in search engines.

And just to prove I’m not bitter, I’m willing to upgrade any sites that are currently on this scheme, looking miserable and under-performing to a proper, content managed, SEO’d site running WordPress. All I’ll charge is the hosting fee as the free hosting Blacknight give out under the scheme is not useful enough to install a proper site on.

Leon

Getting Irish Business Online V’s A Proper Website

Ok, you can probably do this easy with a plugin but I’ve over 50 active plugins on this site and it feels like an awful lot sometimes and can it affect the perforamce of my site. You can accomplish a lot of the tasks plugins achieve by using manual code in your template files and it gives you a bit more control over styling, position etc.. Among the easiest things to code into templates are Social Sharing buttons to allow people to share your posts on the big gun Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and now Google+.

I’ll cut to the chase and give you the simple code below. All of these go into the “single.php” file most of the time at a position of your choosing either above or below the content:

Facebook Like Button

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?app_id=142128822547792&amp;href=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&amp;send=false&amp;layout=button_count&amp;width=95&amp;show_faces=false&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=dark&amp;font&amp;height=21" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:95px; height:21px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Get your own Facebook app id from within your own account and plug it in above instead of mine. You can edit some of the parameters above too like width, height, colours, etc..

Tweet Button

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" data-count="horizontal" data-via="reverbstudios">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Put your own Twitter username in the ‘data-via’ parameter instead of mine.

Linkedin Share Button

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.linkedin.com/in.js"></script><script type="in/share" data-url="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" data-counter="right"></script>

Google+1 Button

<g:plusone size="standard" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"></g:plusone>

And put this in your theme’s ‘footer.php’ file just above the closing </body> tag:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js"></script>

Pinterest ‘Pin it’ Button

<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=<?php the_permalink(); ?>&media=<?php $thumb = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id($post->ID), 'thumbnail' ); echo $thumb['0']; ?>&description=<?php the_title(); ?>" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>

And put this in your theme’s ‘footer.php’ file just above the closing </body> tag:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js"></script>

This Pinterest button code takes a post’s featured image to pin.

If you wrap the above codes in divs, you can style/position them quite easily. You can see how the buttons look and perform at the top of this post!

Happy Sharing.

Leon

Add Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ & Pinterest Buttons to WordPress

This was the question asked of me at the Leitrim Business Network ‘IT expert Q & A’ this week. I’d like to expand on my answer here.

It’s a valid and pretty common question and to be honest, not one I knew how to answer when people first started asking me. After all, you can probably reach a hell of a lot more people on the likes of Facebook, Linkedin & Twitter than your own freshly made website.

My simple answer is that you should have BOTH your own website and a presence on all the major social networking sites. The bigger footprint you have online the better. The only valid reason I can think of for not having your own site is if you have absolutely no budget, but many people still don’t realise the cost of web design has come right down these days.

What I would try to avoid is that old problem of having people think that you’re a business that can only afford a free web presence. It’s like having a fancy business card and a big ugly hotmail or yahoo email address on it. Nothing spells success and professionalism than a nice modern website. It can be just as much a mark of quality as a marketing tool.

Here’s a  breakdown:

Facebook Pages & Twitter profiles are pretty basic

All that’s on anyone’s Facebook Business page (unless they spend serious money on having Facebook apps developed) is a small ‘About’ section, a news feed and maybe some photos. Same with Twitter. A small bio section then just a list of posts. Is that really the only business presence you want people to see!?

With your own site, you can lay it out how you like and have content presented more logically. I like to think of Facebook & Twitter as a teaser for your company, like a fish hook that you dangle in the stream of people. You give them the basics of your company and have them click through to your proper website where you present them with your full, properly branded business information.

Control

Facebook in particular are forever changing things around, whether it’s the size of banner images, logos or just the general rules on what you can and cannot do. With your own site you don’t have to be at their mercy, you control everything and always will.

The Future

Facebook wasn’t always popular and may not always be. What if you spend serious time and money cultivating followers and likers only for Mark Zuckerberg to get bored and sell the site to move onto something new? Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Conclusion

My blueprint for a modern online business precence is as follows:

• Create a profile on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and any other Social Networking site that may be particularly relevant for your business, ie – if you sell visual products, maybe a youTube account too to show them off properly,
• Make sure to properly fill out each site profile with your business info, service list, location and web address link,
• Build an audience by spending some time connecting to new people on each site. Most of them make this pretty easy by suggesting friends based on your email contacts or location,
• Build a standalone website with a modern web publishing system like WordPress,
• Concentrate most of your efforts on your own website by regularly writing relevant news content/blogs,
• Integrate your website with all your social networking sites to automatically send news posts through to them. Dlvr.it is good for this and FREE. This way you can be active on a pile of sites at once, from one location without really having to be on them.

Leon

Do I Still Need a Website?

It’s 2012 now but there’s still a lot of really crap websites out there that do no favours for their owners businesses. They don’t have to be particularly old to look out of date because fashions and technology come and go pretty quick online but there are some sites out there that obviously havn’t been changed for many years. Accommodation sites all seem poor for some reason for example!?

It’s great that you have a site but a poor one could do more damage than not having one at all. Internet users these days have come to expect a certain standard as more and more people go online.

Some problems I see more regularly than I’d expect:

• No content management systems,
• No RSS Feeds,
• No Latest News,
• No Conversion pages,
• No Social Media links/connections,
• Poor Imagery,
• Poor Logos and branding,
• No SEO,
• Ancient copyright years,
• No Analytics,
• Out of date contact details,
• Eye bending colours,
• Layouts broken in different browsers,
• No accessibility,
• Very basic shopping carts,
• Poor usability,
• Poor styling.

I’m willing to offer 30% off the cost of a rebuild.

Get in touch now to order.

PS – Your old site will be disposed of humanely.

Leon

Website Scrappage Scheme!

New website and business venture for an existing solicitor client, TenderChallenge.ie, Dublin.

Live May 2012 – www.TenderChallenge.ie

TENDER CHALLENGE

Brand new site for Carrick Town Centre Suites, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim.

Live April 2012 – www.CarrickTownCentreSuites.ie

CARRICK TOWN CENTRE SUITES

A website rebuild with wordpress and new design for my Jamestown neighbours Archway Products Ltd, Leitrim.

Live April 2012 – www.ArchwayProducts.com

ARCHWAY PRODUCTS

We all like to make a bit of ‘automated money’ right? I’ve been on this affiliate scheme with Tribulant, a South African web development company that specialises in commercial WordPress plugins. I used some of their plugins below both on my own sites and clients’ and was so impressed with them I wrote some reviews to spread the word. The reviews got a fair few hits and then Tribulant started this affiliate scheme in conjunction with Post Affiliate Pro so it made sense to try monetise my reviews:

WordPress Newsletter Plugin

WordPress Banner Ads Plugin

WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin

Out of all the affiliate schemes I’m currently running or have run in the past, none come near as much monthly income as I get through Tribulant. Their 15% commission is pretty generous and payouts are prompt with no minimum withdrawl amount unlike most other schemes.

So I’m just spreading the word, no strings attached. It doesn’t matter if a ton of people sign up from here, it’s not competition for me.

So Sign up now, (it’s totally FREE) and link to some of Tribulant’s products and see how much you can make!

Leon

WordPress Commercial Plugin Affiliate System

I think some new definitions and thinking are in order for continued successful business branding via Social Networking sites these days. I reckon it’s time to go back to basics.

Dead to me are the people who post the same kinda boring business stuff in a never ending, automated looking stream. 52 ways to do this, 25 tips for doing that..it’s presumed we all have the time to read through a pile of shite like that when all we need is the one best way! A lot of people who post in this way are one way only, ie – they don’t converse or reply half the time or at all and to me they violate the very definition of “Social Networking”, ie – to BE SOCIABLE & INTERACT.

Perhaps larger, corporate companies can be expected to post in this way, after all it would be kinda hard for them to become ‘friendly’ with you and people probably wouldn’t expect it but for small companies and sole traders in particular, I think they should be selling themselves and creating valuable relationships far more than pushing their products.

So how do you sell yourself? Ever tried making a friend online or off? That’s all you need to do really. The kind of stuff that most people think is utter drivel on Facebook or Twitter, ie – what you had for dinner, pics of your pets, etc..is precisely the kind of stuff that people SHOULD be posting I think. There’s a more limited audience for your business stuff but the larger populace can all identify with food, pets, kids, current affairs, topical stuff etc so why not post about the average everyday stuff people do and think about? I bet you’ll get more interaction from more people.

Which is more interesting and likely to create interaction & connection?

I’ll use myself as a case study. From the start of my social media adventures I’ve always tried to be opinionated, funny, interesting, different. I didn’t have this grand plan at the start but I noticed as I went along that the allegedly mundane, non-business posts attracted much more feedback and commenting. For example, if I post up pictures of my kids being cute on Facebook you may ask, what the hell has that got to do with what I’m selling? Answer: Most people, have kids, like kids, were kids and can identify with you straight away, perhaps forming an opinion about you as being someone who loves their kids, wants to show them off, is sane enough to have kids, etc..oh and look, he’s a web designer. I’ll remember him when I need one.

Today, I think it’s all about standing out from the crowd and selling your personality, opinions and knowledge, interacting with people and only very subtly if at all, mentioning what you do the odd time. If you make yourself interesting enough, people will probe further to find out more about you and what you do so have that information handy in the background. I think people crave interaction and love to give their opinions. The success of Facebook is proof of that so tap into it, interact with people, get known, get liked and get business.

You’re more memorable when you’re liked, not just known.

Leon

Not Who You Know or Who Knows You but Who Likes You!?

New website for Tour company, Wild Mountain Heather, Dublin.

Featuring a full online booking system with Credit Card & Laser payments.

Awesome illustrations by Sinead Lawless.

Live April 2012 – www.WildMountainHeather.ie

WILD MOUNTAIN HEATHER TOUR

Website re-design for existing client, River Run pleasure cruiser, Athlone.

Live March 2012 – www.TheRiverRun.ie

THE RIVER RUN

Commercial design templates, as opposed to free ones or custom made designs, are an excellent way to get a professional and modern looking website up and running with minimum cost and time. Having previously used only free wordpress templates I found the quality a bit poor at times and some templates even had viruses embedded. Support was usually lacking too if you encountered problems.

With commercial themes costing from only about €25 up, I’ve found variety, quality, functionality and support excellent. Modern commercial themes usually come with 1 click install, easy to use options screens and dummy content install files so you can get up and running quickly, leaving only some small customisation work and content addition/organisation.

Having used a lot of commercial theme sites, I’ve settled on theses big, well known three:

ThemeForest

WooThemes

StudioPress

Have a look at their template demos above or some of my most recent web projects for design examples.

Get in touch with me if you’d like help implementing a new template for your WordPress site.

Leon

Commercial WordPress Themes

A website redesign for existing client Moon River pleasure cruiser, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim.

Live March 2012 – www.MoonRiver.ie

MOON RIVER

For the last few years I’ve been having an annoying issue with my WordPress sites on VPS hosting. I’ve gone through 3 different VPS/Cloud hosts and the problem remained.

The problem was basically to do with server stability and uptime. My sites were unresponsive and the server was going down intermittently. Server CPU usage was up and I seemed to be using way more space than seemed right for the files I’d uploaded.

The issue was compounded by the fact that I’m not that well up on VPS management and the hosting companies only support VPS issues for a fee! Recently, I had my current host LetsHost.ie tell me that I reached my Inode limit which is basically the number of individual files and folders you can have on a server. Neither of us could understand why the limit was reached as it meant I must have millions of files hosted which didn’t seem possible for the sites I was running. My actual disk space usage was only 50% too.

Turns out that a couple of wordpress plugins on one of my main sites, “Really Simple Captcha”, and Tribulant’s Newsletter plugin had conspired to create millions of individual files in the captcha “tmp” directory. I upgraded the newsletter plugin and deleted the tmp directory files (had to use SSH) and I gained back nearly 100% Inodes and 25% disk space and so far server stability has been fine.

More info on the problem can be found here.

VPS Instability Issues & Really Simple Captcha

Site redesign and upgrade for existing client P.A.N. Digital, Carrick-on-Shannon, Leitrim.

Live February 2012 – www.WeddingVideosIreland.ie

WEDDING VIDEOS IRELAND

New site for QA Services, admin and development services for Fetac centers.

Live December 2011 – www.QAServices.ie

QA SERVICES

I was asked by the Deputy Principle of Carrick-on-Shannon Community School to provide a hi-res digital version of their school crest for general use but specifically for a large sign outside the school. The original graphics were done back in 1994 and the designer was not contactable so all we had to go on was a jpeg of the embroidered crest from a school jumper!

I’ve done a few of these and quite enjoy them but this job had a little more detail than normal website logos. The process is normally the same each time, I import whatever low-res original I have into Photoshop and blow it up to the required size and proceed to trace out the detail using mostly the ‘Pen’ and ‘Selection’ tools. I fill each large Pen traced area with colour, using gradients if required. I create ‘Paths’ for the circular text and let the text follow that.

For details that can’t easily be traced with common shapes, ie – the fish, water, etc below, I use the ‘Free-form’ Pen tool and just trace by (steady!) hand then use the ‘Stroke Path’ option and some custom brush settings to get some nice line art effects.

Before and After below:

Logo Re-building and Tracing

A new look and upgrade for regular client Anne Hurrell in Drumkeerin.

Live November 2011 – www.WeddingChairCovers.ie

WEDDING CHAIR COVERS

Thanks to Barry Flood for pointing out to me that you can filter or block certain ads or types of ad from appearing on your website via Google AdSense. I never presumed you could and was too lazy to look through the settings in my AdSense account! The reason this came to light is that the ads on this blog were showing content that could be deemed competitive, ie – I seen ads for website building software and companies that could take business away from me! Bit silly eh..

Anyway, here’s how you block ads:

Login to your Google AdSense account at www.google.com/adsense and click on the “Allow & Block Ads” tab at the top. Yeh, it’s pretty obvious, not sure how I missed it!

On the left under “Blocking Options” you can block ads in several different ways:

• Advertiser URL’s – Input a list of web addresses you want to block.
• General Categories – Block topics such as Health, Travel, etc…don’t go mad here!
• Sensitive Categories – Similar to above but with topics such as Drugs, Religion, Sexual Health, etc..not illegal stuff but stuff that not everyone might find appropriate.
• Ad Networks – These are known ‘Google Certified’ ad networks. You’d need to do a fair bit of research to know which of these to block so I just left them alone.

How To Block Specific Google AdSense Ads

Website hosting transfer, general touch up and re brand to Glamping Ireland for Teapot Lane Luxury Camp, Leitrim.

Live November 2011 – www.GlampingIreland.ie

GLAMPING IRELAND

New website for Lough Rynn, Gatehouse Bed and Breakfast, Mohill, Co. Leitrim.

WordPress installed, configured and training provided. Client executed the design/template themselves.

Live November 2011 – www.LoughRynnGatehouseBandB.ie

LOUGH RYNN GATEHOUSE B & B

Problem:

My Car key fob casing (Toyota Rav4) was cracking at the blade and about to die and the local Toyota dealer wanted to charge around €250 for a totally new key and transponder. I said it was just the casing that was broke and could they just replace that and he said no! Same story with the other dealers I tried.

Here’s my broken key with some bits of failed fixes including Sugru and Tape!:

Solution:

I reckoned there must be cheap replacement casings for sale somewhere so off I went to good ole eBay. eBay seller Goodtrade.Purple was selling this replacement casing and after a bit of careful reading and matching of Blade sizes, I bought a couple. Both my main key and replacement casings were cracked. They come in the below form with a blank blade that needs cutting:

I gingerly approached the local key cutting shop and asked if they could cut the new blank blade against my existing one and after a bit of head scratching they said they’d give it a go. I thought maybe they wouldn’t be able to get the fob into their machine because you can’t separate the blade from the casing but it cut fine. Next, I removed the Transponder unit from my old key and put it in the new case and screwed it back together.

The new key and replacement both worked perfectly with the car!

Total cost of replacement:

Casing,  Blade & Postage from the UK – €6.95
Key Cut – €5

SAVINGS: €238.05!!

Here’s my new key:

Leon

How To Replace Your Car Key Fob Cheaply

A nice, new and fresh design for Goodseed PR music promoters which better shows off their services and acts.

Live October 2011 – www.GoodSeedPR.com

GOODSEED PR

I notice a lot of my newly built client’s wordpress sites seem to be attracting a lot of comment spam quickly, even though they might not be blogging regularly. It’s not uncommon to see hundreds or even thousands of unapproved comments listed within months of going live. One site has only been up a few weeks and already attracted nearly 8,000 spam comments.

Trying to delete or process these comments in bulk is not supported very well in current wordpress versions as you can only show a max of 999 comments on a page so it leaves you going through pages and pages of unapproved comments. Until wordpress provides a simple “Delete all unapproved comments” or similar button, here’s a quick way of processing more than 999 comments at once.

It requires hosting and database/phpMyAdmin access so it’s not for the faint hearted but it only takes a couple of minutes. Backup your database first, then run one of these SQL commands:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = "spam";

Or

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = "0";

Or

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_type = "spam";

And you’re done.

It might be wise to install a spam filter to avoid these comment build ups in the first place. Akismet or SI Captcha for WordPress are good.

Leon

Bulk Delete WordPress Comment Spam

A new redesign for Bruno’s Italian restaurant, Co. Roscommon.

Live October 2011 - www.BrunosRestaurant.ie

BRUNO’S ITALIA RESTAURANT

Everyone’s got an opinion or definition as to what cloud computing is all about and why it might be beneficial so here’s mine.

First of all the standard definition:

“Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet).” – Wikipedia

And in English:

“Rather than access software on your computer, you access it through a website.” – Leon

Why Cloud Compute? The Benefits:

• Cheaper or FREE,
• More secure,
• Easy access via any internet enabled device,
• Data backed up automatically,
• Syncing between devices,
• Flexibility,
• More Scalable.

Cloud Computing??

I write this on a day when it was announced that massively popular Social Networking site Twitter will be setting up an international base in Ireland. There had been murmurings that it might happen from months back but there was stiff competition from a number of other cities including London but Dublin has won out in the end probably because of it’s low corporation tax rate and possibly because of the existing presence of a number of very high profile companies here.

Ireland pretty much has a clean sweep of the top IT companies in the world now including Facebook, Google, Paypal, eBay, Linkedin, Microsoft, Intel, Yahoo, Zynga, IBM, Apple and HP – an incredible list and surely one that puts us firmly on the international business map.

Here’s hoping the government will now throw everything it has at IT support in Ireland from Education to Broadband infrastructure and guarantee we lose the twee image of Ireland and replace it with one of innovation, modernity, hi-tech and progression, leading us out of recession and showing the world how it’s done.

Ole, ole, ole..

Leon

Ireland IT Capital of the World with Twitter Move?

New website for my friend Michael to promote his life affirming Monthly Challenges escapades!

Live September 2011 – www.MonthlyChallenges.com

MONTHLY CHALLENGES

New site for Gillespie School of Motoring, Co. Leitrim.

Live September 2011 – www.DrivingLessonsLeitrim.ie

DRIVING LESSONS LEITRIM