New Site Ready!

We’re super duper excited to (re)launch our site with a slick new design! Since our goal is to deliver great websites using, as much as possible, existing themes and functionality – how could we not do this for ourselves right? So we looked around and decided to go with this nice gorgeous theme by WordPress theme designer Kriesi.

We invite you to checkout our site and all the goodies that we have added. We’ve put together some really nice packages covering all kinds of functionality – we’ll be blogging about some of these soon.

4 Reasons to use WordPress

Lightbox and WordPress

One of the tricky issues with using one of the many Lightbox type of effect is that there is often a plugin conflict. For example, Shopp uses color box and FancyGallery uses Fancybox – the result is inconsistent and sometimes causes the image to load in both galleries. This is where the Cleaner Gallery plugin comes in.

Check out this post to learn how to set this up:

Creating WordPress Content

In this section I will walk you trough the basics of creating some content using a WordPress Page. Feel free to use a Post instead, the differences will be minor.

Click on the “Add New” entry under “Pages” in the admin sidebar menu. You will be presented with a form entitled “Add New Page”.

In the field at the very top, enter the title of your page. This will be both the menu entry as well as the title of the page.

The next box down, with all the buttons, is where the excitement happens. This is the visual editor that will let you create your page, insert images, make links etc..

Try not to directly paste text into the editor (such as from a Word document) as it will also imported undesirable formatting. Use the “Paste as Plain Text” or the “Paste from Word” options on the editor toolbar instead.

First things first… the editor has an advanced toolbar that we’ll want to turn on to get more formatting options. Click on the rightmost button on the toolbar to toggle the second row of buttons.

The use of most buttons should be straightforward. If you hover your mouse above each, you’ll get a brief summary of its use. The editor works like most text processors. Feel free to experiment. You can create and delete all the pages that you want. Please refer to this reference for an overview of each toolbar option.

Before you use any toolbar button, make sure that your cursor is inside the big text box, ready to write.

To preview your work without publishing the page (meaning without letting all your site visitors see the page), click on the “Preview” button near the right side. Once you are satisfied with it, click the “Publish” button. Your page should now appear on some menu on the public side of your site.

What pages do I need?

Ultimately you have to answer this for yourself but to get started, I would recommend a welcome page and an about page. Your business will greatly determine your needs of course. Additionally, a contact form is very useful and I’ll show you how to create one in the next section.

WordPress Editor Reference

Icon	Function	Description
	Add an Image	To insert an image, click on button and locate the desired image on your desktop. The acceptable formats are jpg, gif and png. Once it’s uploaded take note of the options presented. The ones that matter are the last 2: Alignment: If you want the image to break the text (a line, then the image, then another line of text) then select None. Once the image is inserted into your text, you can control the left to right positioning with the text alignment buttons on the toolbar (see below). If, instead, you’d like your paragraph text to wrap/flow around the image, then use one of the 3 other choices as desired. Size: WordPress can automatically resize your images. Pick the best size as desired. When you are ready, click on the “Insert into Post” button to insert your image.
	Add Video	This will allow you to upload a video and place a link in your page to the uploaded file for the visitor’s browser to handle. Since you are depending on your site visitors to have the correct software to view the video you should stick with popular formats such as mov, mpeg and avi. Note: This does not place an embedded video like YouTube does, just a link to one. To embed a video (meaning the movie will play inside of your site) please refer to the “Embedding a video in your page” section where I go over the process in detail.
	Add Audio	This will allow you to upload an audio file such as an mp3 and place a link to it on your page for visitors to click and play in their preferred music application such as iTunes.
	Add Media	This button is similar to the video and audio ones and is there for you to upload generic files such as PDF documents, MS Word files and so on. Once uploaded, clicking on the “Insert into Post” button will place a link on the page. The visitor’s browser will take care of handling the file once it is clicked on. Tip: If you intend to place documents for download on your site, sitck with PDF if you can as it is one of the most universal formats. MS Word is popular but usually a bad idea.
	Bold	Make text bold. Select the text with your mouse first.
	Italic	Italicize text. Select the text with your mouse first.
	Strikethrough	Place a strike on text. Select the text with your mouse first.
	Unordered (Bulleted) List	Create a bulleted list Start a new line, click the button to place the first bullet, type text, hit enter to create a new entry. When you are done, hit enter twice.
	Ordered (Numbered) List	Create a numbered list Start a new line, click the button to place the first number, type text, hit enter to create a new entry. When you are done, hit enter twice.
	Blockquote	This creates an indented paragraph. Many themes will style this in their own particular way. Preview your page to get a clear idea of that this looks like on your selected theme.
	Align Left	Align the current paragraph to the left.
	Align Center	Center the current paragraph.
	Align Right	Align the current paragraph to the right.
	Insert/Edit Link	Create a a hyperlink (a clickable link). Select the desired text (i.e. the visible text that will be clickable), then click this button and type the web address (i.e. http://timeshout.com).
	Unlink	Removes the link from a previously created hyperlink and turns it back into regular text.
	Insert More Tag	Splits the page into multiple ones by inserting a “read more…” link. Useful for long pages.
	Toggle Spellchecker	Turns the spellchecker on and off. Good idea.
	Toggle Fullscreen Mode	This option will launch the editor into full screen mode. This is very useful.
	Show/Hide Kitchen Sink	Toggle the second/advanced toolbar on the editor.
	Paragraph Styles	This drop down will let you select the format or style of the current paragraph. Note that what you see in the editor is only an approximation. The theme itself will determine what your headers, colors and font size will look like. Preview your draft for a clearer idea.
	Underline	Underline the text. Select the text with your mouse first. I strongly recommend never using this as people expect underlined text to be links.
	Align Full	Align the current paragraph using full justification.
	Select Text Color	Change the text color. Select the text with your mouse first. I recommend that you use this sparingly such as to highlight a word or two. Do not use this to change the colors of all your headings for example. The stylesheet of the theme should be modified if that is what you want (though this is a bit more advanced as this stage).
	Paste as Plain Text	Use this option to paste and clean text that you have copied from another source. This will strip all formatting and hidden code. You will have to reformat your text. Though this may take a little longer, I recommend this option as it will guarantee that your site’s pages stay consistent.
	Paste from Word	If you have some text written in MS Word, you can use this option to paste it inside of your page. It will attempt to clean unwanted hiddent code from the imported text while trying to preserve the format as best as possible. Feel free to experiment between this and the “Paste as Plain Text” option above.
	Insert/Edit Embedded Media	This button will let you embed external FLV (Flash Videos) and such from external sources such as YouTube.
	Remove Formatting	Removes formatting from the text such as bold, color, etc. Select the text with your mouse first.
	Insert/Edit Embedded Media	Use this option to embed a video inside of your page such as what YouTube has. You can use Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media, etc. You’ll first need to upload your video file using the “Add Video” option.
	Insert Custom Characters	Use this button to insert special characters such as copyright, currency and other symbols.
	Outdent	Removes possible indent from a paragraph of text.
	Indent	Indent the current paragraph.
	Undo	Undo the previous action(s).
	Redo	Redo the previously undone action(s).
	Help	Read the provided help documentation.