If you are looking to be standards compliant in your Facebook and Twitter icon usage, be sure to review Facebook’s and Twitter’s usage guidelines. The icons below aim to maintain the integrity of the official icons, while presenting them in an organized manner. And I think their quite nice. How about you?

Download the zip file with PSD, 600, 300 and 220 pixel sizes in both jpg and transparent png formats. Free for your personal, or commercial use. Just don’t sell ‘em or anything! What more could you ask for?

Download Now

So, I made my very first official plugin. And by official, I mean that it works and you can have it too. No support offered at this time, features will be added as I can and then we’ll go for a real release on WordPress.org. Until then, congrats on finding it.

Directions:

• Install by dropping AuthorPosts Widget folder into wp-content/plugins.
• Activate by visiting the plugins page.
• Visit the Widgets page and drag and drop.

The marketplace for paid WordPress plugins has exploded over the past few years as well, leaving some developers wondering which plugins are worth paying for and which free ones are worth the risk integrating into your websites. Gravity Forms was the first plugin I paid for and the first I integrate into every project.

Why? What set it apart from other contact form options at first was the ability to store form entries in your database and not leave delivery of information up to the smtp gods (who sometimes get very angry, especially over at godaddy). The other reason was the ajax powered user interface for easily building new forms. This was ideal for my clients who shouldn’t have to learn a bit of code to work with a website I deliver.

Well that was a long intro… on to the story.

The release of Gravity forms 1.5 has upped the ante for creative uses for this valuable plugin. Below are just a few ways I’m using this plugin. I’m sure there are way more better uses out there I haven’t thought of, but I wanted to provide some ideas for people to see the possibilities of what they can do with WordPress (free) and one paid plugin.

Gravity Forms as a Custom Evite

With the new release you can utilize the email notification feature to produce and email created by and sent by your website visitors. Think of it as a custom evite. This is accomplished by a user defined email address in the from AND to fields. Then, you can produce html for a custom email layout and you have your very own invitation engine. WARNING! You also have a wide open spam engine if you don’t control access to the page. You’ve been warned.

Gravity Forms as a Flexible Donation Portal for Non-Profits

With the new pricing fields and the PayPal add on (available to developer license holders), you can easily accept donations for your non-profit. Yes, you can also sell items, but many of my clients need a more flexible method of gathering data with PayPal donations without setting up a shopping cart. I also use the gravity forms feature (available in previous releases) to pre-populate fields for information such as account numbers which the user is unlikely to have or remember to enter correctly.

Just add the field name and value in the url when linking to the page with your form like so:

http://www.websitename.org/donate/?fieldname=fieldvalue

Gravity Forms as a Registration Module

The hardest thing for some of my clients has been the collection of payment and data in the same process. This is usually a registration process which can be easily handled by Gravity Forms with the above mentioned PayPal integration. Due to the advanced data collection fields with Gravity Forms, I can now provide much richer, easy to maintain registration modules for businesses and non-profits.

They are also offering a user registration add on specifically for registering user with your wordpress website. This is great for pay-for-content or organizational membership models.

Gravity Forms as a Portal for User Generated Content

User-generated content make the web go round…and Gravity Forms has offered post fields for the automatic creation of post within WordPress in previous versions. With version 1.5, better category control and post field options have been implemented to offer better control over your user submitted content.

There are other plugins out there to enhance the functionality of Gravity Forms like the Gravity Forms Directory & Addons plugin which can turn a WordPress website and Gravity Forms into an business listing SEO powerhouse.

Check out Gravity Forms or read details on the latest release or contact us to see how FourTen can rock a WP/Gravity Forms enabled site for you!

Update 7-6-11: More fancy tricks with Gravity forms

Integrate Gravity Forms with Salesforce Web2Lead Code

Props to seobywebmechanix.com for their article detailing the process of making your gravity form send data to Salesforce, offering one more power function to this awesome plugin.

Clear Default Fields on Click

Thanks to Kevin at Gravity Forms for detailing a solution to making your default form fields clear on click. You just need to add some javascript to your head and customize your css to hide labels, etc.

In my case, I developed a custom admin bar for my templates which is overlaid by the new WordPress admin bar. To disable the admin bar, simply visit your user profile in the WordPress admin area under Users/My Profile. Uncheck the boxes next to Show Admin Bar.

For theme developers, you can also disable the admin bar in the functions.php file by adding the following:

/* Disable the Admin Bar By Default */

add_filter( 'show_admin_bar', '__return_false' );

/* Remove the Admin Bar preference in user profile to remove temptation... */
remove_action( 'personal_options', '_admin_bar_preferences' );

And of course, there is always a plugin out there ready to do the work for you with the Disable Admin Bar plugin.

Happy upgrading!

Thanks to summerchilde in the support forum for a better code snippet.

What is WordPress Multisite?

WordPress is a content management system which allows you to manage your web content through a simple browser interface. It is made up of a set of files and MySql database. With that same set of files and same single database you are able to manage not just one domain, but unlimited domains, through one login. That means that you can use one hosting account, one template and one designer, to manage many more websites for much less time and money.

Why so many websites?

When Google overhauled their search algorithm last year, much more weight was given to root level urls with targeted keywords. That means that if you are looking for widget in new york, that newyorkwidgets.com will come up higher (in theory) than companyname.com/widgets/regions/newyork.

And the good news…domain names are cheap. So a company with a normal marketing budget can pick up 10, 20 300, 1000 domain names to target geographic areas or demographic markets based on search keywords.

So what’s the plan?

In order to position oneself for an effective Search Engine Marketing campaign using multiple domains, you only need identify your targeted keywords and demographic markets, purchase your domains, install WordPress in multisite mode, customize a template for use across multiple domains and create content. Don’t miss that content piece! We are assuming that you intend to sell something of VALUE on these websites rather than attempt to manipulate traffic for small change pay-per-click campaigns.

How do I get started?

Contact FourTen Creative today to learn more about a WordPress Multisite project today!

Facebook is a natural fit for real estate professional because of the capacity for cultivating relationships for lead generation. But agents have enough on their plate when it comes to keeping up with technology, so limiting the scope of our presentation was necessary to empower agents to jump in.

Here are the slides and some other goodies to get you started as well.

Find free Facebook icons to use on your website here.

Add these buttons to your site by uploading them to the web and noting the URL. Then make them into a link with code like this:

<a href="http://facebook.com/your-use-name-or-page-url"><img src="http://www.imageurl.com/imageurl.jpg"></a>

Clearly, the seminar was more valuable than the slides on their own, so if you’re looking for someone to come educate  group of professionals on the possibilities of social media, then get in touch!

For an introduction to the wordpress feed features, visit the Codex.

1. Ping It

There are many ‘updating services’ out there which can serve as opportunities for new site traffic if your blog posts are found to be interesting. By setting update services under Settings/Writing, WordPress will automatically ping these services every time you write a new post.

2. Tweet It

Not a prolific tweeter? Any WordPress website can populate a Twitter account by choosing the right tools. You can use a plugin like Twitter Tools to update your twitter status or utilize one of the many RSS to Twitter utilities out there like Twitterfeed.com.

3. Customize It

Have a blog category that you don’t want in your site feed? You can use edit the feed details and use WordPress’s  controls for exlcuding categories (http://yourdomain.com/feed?cat=-2) by identifying category id’s to leave out. You can choose to declare this customized feed in your header or move to our next step and burn this customized feed. (Or, remember, you can grab a feed for any single category by calling up http://yourdomain.com/categoryname/feed.)

4. Burn It

Many options become available to you by using Feedburner from Google. This feature-rich service makes it easier to all of the following and let someone else worry about the software. This is preferable because it doesn’t require your to run plugins on WordPress for advanced feed functionality.

5. Track It

Why not keep up to date on who is reading your blog without actually visiting it? Feedburner makes it easy to track subscribers to your feed. You can log into Feedburner to see your stats or I use a plugin to add it to my dashboard.

6. Email It

Enable email subscriptions through Feedburner and then use the link provided to allow your site visitors to receive email updates when you post a new blog article. This is a great alternative for those who haven’t quite grasped RSS and feed-readers. And what’s best about this is that you can track email addresses and even export a csv of subscribers from Feedburner to harvest those contacts.

7. Monetize It

If you’re able to build a loyal readership and strong feed subscriptions, it makes sense to monetize the feed in the same way you would monetize your blog, with Google AdSense. Feedburner also makes it easy to integrate AdSense into your burned feeds. You can also utilize a premium plugin like WishListMember or WP-Member to manage your feeds and site on a membership level (pay for content).

Need help getting a handle on your content distribution? Get in touch!

In all of these items, clarity and consistency are key.

#1 Organization name - As obvious as this sounds, some organizations haven’t nailed down how they want to be referred to when it comes to a name. Does your name state what you do? Does it beg an explanation? Is it too long and convoluted? Are you better served by using an acronym? Does your usage of acronyms create more confusion? Make sure everyone on your team uses the same name in conversation and writing whenever possible and practical.

#2 Vision statement - What do you hope to accomplish through this business, church, sports team, etc.? This can be a lofty goal which serves to provide direction to your members internally and inspire or attract others externally.

#3 Mission statement - What is your organization going to do? Some confuse the mission and vision of an organization due to an overemphasis either vision or operations. The key difference is that the mission should contain a statement regarding how you will go about accomplishing the goals in the vision statement.

#4 Core values – The above items generally come about after reflection upon the core values, competencies or offerings of an organization. What you identify here may relate to a service you offer, a product you sell or an intrinsic value you hope to pass on through your organization’s operations. It is helpful to distill three or four values out of the breadth of your operations. Once you establish these values, they serve to inform both the vision and mission statements (so you might start here!).

#5 Motto – Last and definitely not least on this list is the organization’s motto or slogan. Whereas the above materials (items 2-4) may only be used internally, the motto will likely appear right after your organization name in all public communications and marketing materials. Some rules for the motto: Keep it short, it should clarify your name, it should describe your services, it should provoke a response, and it should be consistent with the items above.

Consistency and clarity are most important in forming all of these pieces that serve to identify your organization. I emphasize this because before you engage in marketing, you should have a solid identity. Otherwise things get turned around and it is tempting to let a good name, motto, logo, or gimmick lead your operations. When that happens, your brand and your organizational identity are likely to be compromised or damaged.

After successfully documenting the above items, it should be easier to engage in any web design projects, logo design, advertising or building of the organization through public communication.

If you need help with any of the above items, feel free to get in touch!

That is no news to many, but I still get people wanting to know whether it’s worth moving from their existing html/php website managed by their existing web person. My totally impartial response is, ‘heck yes!’ So I offer you 6 reasons to migrate your existing website to WordPress with a custom template.

#1 Lower your costs

The typical WordPress capable hosting package with a shared hosting provider like Bluehost.com will run you $4-$8 per month now. What are you currently paying? Just a couple years back $30/month was pretty standard and I routinely find small companies running small websites paying in excess of $100/month for hosting and ‘services’ from their host. With WordPress, many hosting providers know exactly what you need and offer excellent support if something goes wonky on you.

#2 Remove the middle-man

I realize I’m always sabotaging my business by pointing this out, but with WordPress, you don’t need to pay a ‘webmaster’ to make updates and enhancements to your website. Be the master of your own domain quite literally and you’ll likely save hundreds if not thousands of dollars each year. Learning WordPress is easy and made even easier by the proliferation of training materials online and in bookstores.

#3 Unleash your content

One of the basic features of WordPress is the blog capability. What you need to know about blog content with WordPress is that it provides a way to serialize content for distribution via RSS. What the what you say? Every blog post can be made available for re-publishing through automatic and user-controlled methods like Facebook, Twitter, (a million different bookmarking services), feed readers, email distribution methods, etc. If you are a business person, you’ll appreciate that this greatly improves your reach to new audiences with very little investment or effort.

#4 Search engines love it!

Whether you use plugins, built in template options or just WordPress’ stock permalinks options, your website will become more friendly to search engines without the multi-thousand dollar investment in an SEO professional (geez, I know how to kill my business…). WordPress allows you to control url’s, heading tags, page titles and (with plugins) meta keywords and descriptions. This makes your site more likely to be found by people performing related searches.

By the way, I blogged on SEO for WordPress here. Have a read!

#5 WordPress got social skillz

Have you seen some of the rockin plugins for Facebook and Twitter interaction lately? If not, you’re missing an opportunity to foster the development of a social community around your brand, service, or website/blog. Stronger social connection result in greater brand loyalty. If you’re  in the market to seamlessly integrate social media outlets with your website, WordPress makes it easy.

#6 The cool kids are doing it

WordPress.org reports over 3 million people have upgraded to WordPress 3.0. And think of all the people who haven’t upgraded yet! WordPress is used by such companies as Pepsi, People Magazine, UPS, Nikon, VW, Best Buy, Ford… If it’s good enough for Fortune 500 companies, I think you’ll be ok too!

So, if I’ve convinced you, why not request to migrate your site today? FourTen Creative can replicate the design of your existing site with a custom wordpress template.

For more information about how you can leverage the latest technology in WordPress 3.0, get in touch!