wordpress website design

Are you ready for a new WordPress website Design?

Need a  fully functional wordpress website design with an integrated blog system and built in content Management System?

Then you need a website designed on the wordpress platform. WordPress blogs are powerful online marketing tools that help establish you as an expert in your industry. The capabilities of using WordPress as a website are endless. We understand the vast amount of design potential that WordPress has on the impact of your company’s website and for this reason we recommend a WordPress designed site over any other. WordPress Design Shop has invested large amounts of time to ensure we stay up to date and competitive as one of the top WordPress design firms around.

We create 100% custom WordPress CMS sites and WordPress themes.

What is a CMS?

In computing, a content management system (CMS) is a document centric collaborative application for managing documents and other content. A CMS is often a web application and often it is used as a method of managing websites and web content. - Wikipedia

Why you need a WordPress website design as your CMS solution?

WordPress is extremely user friendly and teaching anyone how to use WordPress is an easy task. The user can edit their home page, blog posts or any other page with ease by just editing the text or elements in the back end of the program. What does this mean? It means that you will not have to pay someone to maintain or make changes for you which in the long run, will save you tons of money. One of the greatest things about having a WordPress site is the easy maintenance which will allow you to login via your website and make changes to any of the pages at any time.

WordPress website design can look just like a regular site?

YES! When you contract our wordpress website Design team to create a custom WordPress site, we design around your company’s requirements and make sure that your site is 100% original. Don’t forget to check out our WordPress Design portfolio for examples of all of our Unique WordPress Designs!.

Are there benefits to using a blog platform?

Every company should be accompanied with a blog design, blogging and social networking are the future of the web and every company should stay up to date with the changes in potential marketing on the internet. There are numerous reasons to have a blog designed, here are a few of what we think are the top reasons:

• The ability to post daily information about your product to your customers. Show clients any updated information about your company within seconds.
• Blogs are a search engine’s best friend because the content is fresh and constantly updated! It helps search engines to read more content to find your site easily.
• With the help of plugins many difficult tasks can be made much easier. If you have an idea for something you want on your website, odds are there’s a plugin that will do just what you’re looking for.
• It is the best way to make money using revenue ads.
• The ability to subscribe to RSS feeds and follow updates easily.
• Easily post many links on your site.
• Interact with visitors on your blog. They can submit comments on each post. It is a great way to get feedback!
• Practically NO coding knowledge is required.

WordPress can take your website design to the next level.

If you have a special need for your website, chances are all you need is a simple plugin. Plugins are designed specifically for WordPress and will only work on the WordPress platform. Plugins offer many different advantages that just aren’t available for regular websites. From photo gallery plugins, to SEO plugins, to Poll plugins, to wordpress plugins, the options are limitless. Ask us about potential plugins for your WordPress project.

WordPress website designs are search engine friendly.

WordPress right out of the box is extremely efficient for search engine optimization and with the addition of certain plugins can become even more powerful. We recommend the WPSEO plugin for every WordPress site we design, this plugin is amazing in how much it can help a website get picked up in search engines and also provides another plugin for site maps, which are extremely important for SEO purposes. WordPress also makes the use of meta tags, an important component in search engine optimization, extremely easy. WordPress has an uncomplicated URL structure, making it easy for search engine spiders to find and to “crawl” content. With WordPress and the knowledge and expertise of WordPress Design Shop, your site will command high rankings in search engines!

Please contact us today at 1 (424) 234-8528 so that we can discuss your wordpress design project, or you can fill out our easy online FREE WordPress website Design Quote Form.

How to put a wordpress comment form in your website Sidebar

Have you ever wondered how to put a comment form in your wordpress sidebar?

NO…. Well to be honest, we hadn’t really thought about that either! That is until we had a client with an interactive book site ask for one.

You would think with the way wordpress is built it would be easy do something as simple as putting a comment form in a sidebar. We searched high and low and found every kind of widget you could image to put a contact form, and every other kind of form in wordpress widgets and sidebars. Everything except for a comment form for a particular post.

We even searched forums and found other people looking for the same thing for years with no luck. Luckily we are business and technology strategiests so we always know there is a way!

How to put a wordpress comment form in your sidebar and have it work and link to the post you are on.

1. The first thing you need to do is install this plug-in in your wordpress site.

WP PHP widget –You can install the plug-in from your wordpress dashboard or you can ftp it up from your site.  Download WP PHP Widget Here.

2. Second you need to go to your page sidebar under appearance then widgets and add The php widget to your page or post widget area.

3. Past in the following code to add the comment form to your wordpress sidebar php widget and then click save

<?php echo $post->ID; ?>
<?php comment_form( $args, $post_id ); ?>

4. Now if you don’t want to have the text below the wordpress comment sidebar widget to show you need to goto appearance then editor in the wordpress dashboard then find on your right the functions.php file and add the following code to the bottom of it.

/**
* Remove the text – ‘You may use these <abbr title=”HyperText Markup
* Language”>HTML</abbr> tags …’
* from below the comment entry box.
*/

add_filter(‘comment_form_defaults’, ‘remove_comment_styling_prompt’);

function remove_comment_styling_prompt($defaults) {
$defaults['comment_notes_after'] = ”;
return $defaults;
}

It was that easy to add a simple wordpress sidebar post comment form to your client website.

If you are ready to have an easy to manage wordpress website contact wordpress design shop today.

Our Favorite WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast

Are you ready to do seo for your next wordpress project?

Here at wordpress design shop we get emails often that ask, “what is the best way to setup wordpress for seo?” Our answer is really simple and confuses most people, Know who you are serving and install the yoast SEO plugin. In the old days many of us web developers would have 5, 6, 7 different plug-ins to do SEO for our client websites, but after the penguin update we pretty much only use one.

Is yoast seo the right wordpress plug-in for me?

Yoast WordPress SEO Features:

WordPress Design Rates – How Much Do WordPress Services Cost?

Here at wordpress design shop we get lots of calls just wondering what typical wordpress design rates are. We thought it sounded like a fair question so we looked around the internet to see what people are actually charging for different wordpress design services. Remember here at wordpress design shop we charge $99 dollars and hour with a minimum 30 minute charge for our one off wordpress services. We have found that charging for services this way helps us work faster and gets you the best overall price. We also suggest you bundle changes to get the best number of wordpress modifications for the cheapest rate. You will notice from the rates below that it can get really expensive if you pick wordpress design services individually.

1. Complete Custom WordPress Website Rate

Complete wordpress design rate packages were probably the one WordPress Design Rate that was all over the place. At large design houses the price ranged from $5000 to $30,000+ dollars. It included custom design, graphics, 2 revisions, and all files in a Photoshop or illustrator format. That did not include any marketing, concept, or copywriting. Here at wordpress design shop our complete custom packages start at around $1500 and go up to an average $2200.00 and then $12-15,000 if you need Marketing Concept, Validation, Copy Writing Help, etc.

General pricing for wordpress site design around the web.

*Pricing is not from overseas folks that for for less than a dollar an hour.

*please note that these wordpress design rates are from what we have found searching around the internet and from our own experience. They are not necessarily the rate that you will receive when you find a wordpress service provider. We will add more wordpress design rates as we come across them on the internet. Our number one recommendation to most people that are wanting wordpress help is to call the company you are wanting to work with and discuss what wordpress service you need and always ask if that is the best price you can do.

Need a wordpress design rate for your next project?

Keys to Hiring the Right WordPress Developer For Your Project

Hiring the right wordpress developer is the key to your business success!

WordPress is an easy to use platform. In fact, this is the main reason for its popularity amongst bloggers and more recently small business owners. It can be easily customized according to your needs and many of its enhanced features and functionalities are often just a click away.

However, did you ever stop to think that customizing your website can be a daunting and time consuming process? And with so many wordpress developers, too many in fact, it can be downright frustrating to choose the best one for your project.

That’s where an experienced WordPress developer steps in.

Hiring the right developer is key to achieving the best website to suit your business and business needs. But how do you know which one is right for you?

Whilst the WordPress developer can take care of your WordPress customization woes, you still need own up to the ones you face when choosing the right developer for you. With all else in life, only you know what’s rights for you and you’re going to need to learn to trust your gut with this one. Of course, I won’t just end it here and leave you hanging with your gut.

The Following are some keys to consider when hiring the right wordpress developer for you.

• Hiring a WordPress Developer Key 1 – Portfolio

A WordPress developer’s portfolio is worth studying. Before hiring one, look at the past projects he’s undertaken. This will help you understand his level of skills and expertise. It also gives you a glimpse of his WordPress style and if it ties in well with yours. A developer’s style and level of expertise is reflected on his projects. Additionally, the number of projects he’s completed will translate to the level of knowledge, experience and efficiency you’ll get.

• Hiring a WordPress Developer Key 2 – Reputation

Hire a WordPress developer from a reputable company. You can rest assure that you’ll be receiving the best level of services at affordable rates in a short span of time when you deal with developers from credible companies. Besides, they have their good name to upkeep and your satisfaction matters to them.

• Hiring a WordPress Developer Key 3 – Services

Once you’ve found a reputable professional, go through what services they include. It is better to be clear rather to stay in confusion and risk misunderstanding in what particular services, charges and any extra charges for additional services the company entitles you to. Finding out how they operate is also key. How you’ll be communicating with each other, how often, if there is a fixed process that they follow, a timeline that they follow by and will there be more than one person involved in your WordPress development, are just some of the operational details you might want to know about.

• Hiring a WordPress Developer Key 4 – Cost

Cost is also an essential factor and will determine just how far you can go with the customization of your WordPress website. Most companies offer packages but we all know that no one person is the same nor have the same needs. So although you initially pay for a set price of a particular package, be aware of any additional charges that may occur when additional customization is done to further suit your needs.

• Hiring a WordPress Developer Key 5 – Contract

Having things written in black and white is also important these days. A contract not only protects you but also the company from related issues that may arise later on. Make sure you read your contract thoroughly and make adjustments where you’re not happy. By going through the terms and conditions you’ll find out, amongst other things, what your rights are over the content of the website. Ideally, you’ll want full rights over everything.

So there you go.

In a nutshell, when looking for the right WordPress developer for you, it’s key to consider their skill set, credibility, services offered, package cost and your rights.

One more thing, I haven’t mentioned but is worth including is support and training. The best WordPress developers will offer training and support in the maintenance and upkeep of your website to ensure that it will continue to perform at its best.

Hire the right wordpress developer and you’ll be on the road to success in no time!

WordPress Support – Get The WordPress Help You Need

Have you ever needed wordpress support?

Small business owners in a cash crunch typically want to convert to wordpress so they can save some money. While you can save some of the hardware, and development costs converting to wordpress it helps to know who to call in an emergency or to help you get off to a good start. Here at wordpress design shop we strive to be your go to partner when you need wordpress help?

Here are the typical things we can do to give you the wordpress support you need:

1. Installing the wordpress core, domain, and email setup:

For as little as $99.00 we can install wordpress, setup a base theme, and email address. When many people try to set this up themselves they will spend an average of $400.00 worth of time or more just doing the basics.

2. Custom wordpress theme development help.

We offer custom theme packages starting at $797.00. A typical agency will charge more than $5000.00 just for the first phase of a theme development project.

3. WordPress help and technical support.

If your site is down and you don’t know where to turn we can help. From update issues, broken applications, and theme issues we can help on many issues for only 30 minutes of time which translates to $50.00

Want to do some of the wordpress help and support on your own?

Here are some resources that can help you on your wordpress site.

• One great help is the WordPress forums
• The WordPress FAQ provides extensive answers to frequently asked questions.
• You can add the wordpress  Codex Searcher Plugin to your site. This will allow you to find answers to your questions in the WordPress Administration Panels.
• Carrington – A free WP CMS theme framework that includes two browser versions and a mobile version.
• WordPress help beginners guide – http://www.wpbeginner.com/
• WordPress Garage
• WordPress plug-ins directory WordPress › WordPress Plugins

Ready for wordpress help and to get your site up and running fast? – Contact wordpress design shop and get the wordpress support you need today!

How to Autoplay Vimeo Video in WordPress

Recently we had a client that wanted to embed autoplay vimeo video in wordpress. When we searched for the code to make the video work we found all kinds of directions on the internet followed by lots of forum posts saying; just do this and just do that. After which there were even more forum posts saying that none of the options work.

This left us scratching our heads and with no other choice but to go through the vimeo site and try to find answers to how an autoplay vimeo video can be inserted. After 15-20 minutes we came across a paragraph that explains the process in text only with no pictures and no how to video! Not the best directions for people who are visual, non-technical or not use to navigating around the vimeo website. So to help out anyone trying to do this very simple process in wordpress or on any other website we decided to write some very simple directions.

Here are step by step directions on how to autoplay vimeo video in wordpress

Embed a vimeo autoplay video in wordpress using the vimeo website.

1. Lets start by going to vimeo.com and selecting any old video to start.
2. Here is the video we used for the example. http://vimeo.com/41261299
3. Next when the page opens you will see a video on the page. On the right you will see a button that says share.
   
4. Click on the share button and you will then see the following page.
   
5. Next on the bottom of the video on the right you will see text that says customize embed options. You will want to click on this link which will bring up the following additional embed vimeo video options.
   
6. Now on the bottom right you will see the autoplay and looping options you are looking for. Just check the options you want and changes to the vimeo video embed code will be made in the top right box which will now look like this.

   <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/41261299?autoplay=1" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

7. Copy the code in the box and paste into your wordpress page using the html option and you are good to go.
8. You are now done.

If you want to Autoplay Vimeo Videos in WordPress that you already have on your site all you need to do is add the following after the url in the embed code.

<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/41261299?autoplay=1" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>

If you have any questions or are still confused about how to autoplay vimeo video in wordpress feel free to give us a call or email us using the wordpress design shop contact form.

What should a WordPress Product Site Theme Look and function Like?

When building a wordpress product site for your new venture you should keep the following rules in mind:

1. You should make sure your wordpress product site makes it easy for the customer to know what your product is and how it benefits them in as little as 4-6 Seconds.
2. Your wordpress product site and theme should have colors and text that are easy to read and do not distract from the product descriptions and benefits.
3. Your site navigation structure should make it easy for the consumer to move around the site and keep track of their activity.
4. Your wordpress product site should be SEO friendly and contain images, descriptions, and links all related to your product category and benefit.
5. You should keep as few steps as possible in the checkout process.
6. Have a FAQ on your site that explains any concerns that typically arise in your business
7. Have contact information readily available on your site, including directions to your physical store if you have one.
8. Have any coupons and deals easy to find on your site and navigation
9. Make sure that your wordpress product theme is easy to manage for you and your employees
10. Make a check list of all the features you want on your site and try to get as many features as possible in your initial wordpress site build.
11. Have Social Sharing systems for products and information like, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Linked IN, Etc.
12. Make sure that your shipping is straight forward and easy to manage, include FEDX and UPS if required.
13. Make sure that your wordpress product site and theme load fast
14. Optimize all images to reduce size

So you have all the rules down and want to know what a wordpress product site looks like.

Here are some wordpress product site examples.

So what systems are normally used when selling products in wordpress.

Ready to start the development of your first wordpress product site. Give us a call or email today.

WordPress Restaurant Theme Special

Announcing our WordPress Restaurant theme special.

Do you have a restaurant, bakery, store and need a new website with full ecommerce support?

WordPress Design Shop has taken the Gusteau wordpress them and modified it to work with the Jigoshop ecommerce system.

This is what you get with our WordPress Restaurant theme special.

WordPress Restaurant Theme

Gusteau is an original and unique theme for restaurants, pubs and bars, combines pure elegance with timeless design and superb technical qualities. Gusteau theme offers an excellent system for administration menu cards (food menu, drink menu) and photo galleries. The theme is highly optimized for search engines and has excellent SEO options like adding your own keywords and meta descriptions for each page, post or menu item.

• Full localization support (contains .po/.mo files)
• Unlimited colors via color picker for your WordPress Restaurant Theme
• Custom background image uploader
• SEO optimized (custom meta keyword and meta description for each page, post or menu item)
• Unique menu cards system
• Photo galleries
• AJAX Reservation form with real time validation (also as widget)
• AJAX Contact form with real time validation
• WordPress 3.0+ Ready (Menus & Featured Images)
• GPanel 2.2 (Intuitive simple theme options)
• Page Templates (Reservation, Contact, Full Width)
• 11 Widget areas for your WordPress Restaurant Theme
• 8 Custom widgets (About box, Contact box, Featured box, Recent news, Opening hours, Reservation form, Testimonial, Tweets)
• Well organised Homepage PSD File (layered)
• Extensive documentation

WordPress Restaurant Shopping Cart

• Easy to Manage Shopping Cart System
• Multiple Payment Gateways
• Real Time Shipping Options
• Easy Tax Manager
• Coupons
• Re-Orders
• WordPress Restaurant theme product categories
• and more

WordPress Restaurant Theme Setup

• WordPress Design Shop Installs wordpress
• Sets up base navigation
• Sets up plug-ins
• Sets up base store
• and trains you on how to use everything.

If you have always wanted a wordpress restaurant theme system but were un able to find a site that works or a shopping cart that is easy to use contact wordpress design shop today and find out about our wordpress restaurant theme special.

WordPress Business Websites Save You Money

Are wordpress business websites right for your small business? In short..the answer is YES and here is why.

Top 5 Reasons to use wordpress when building Business Websites

WordPress Business Websites – Why it is right for you!

• WordPress is easy to manage – Many content management systems used for small businesses and large alike require many people to manage. When I worked in Fortune 500 we had at least 5 people dedicated in some way to our customer facing company website. At the average price of $100,000 dollars a person that is $500,000 dollars a year dedicated in some way or another to management the site. A typical wordpress site for a business runs about 1,000 dollars to 10,000 if there are a lot of custom graphics involved, and maybe some social features.  Hosting for the site also requires no special hardware, network setup, or security features to work. The content of the entire site can be managed by 1 virtual assistant. That is a savings of over $498,000 a year!

• WordPress Business Websites are easy to redesign. – As many of you know deciding on a company design for your website can take a long time. In many large businesses the design may be complete for a year and then a new CEO comes in wants to change the site again. In a typical website (non wordpress) CMS for businesses something as simple as changing the site layout can cost $100,000 dollars or more and cause major programming issues as well. WordPress uses a simple theming system that makes it easy to setup a totally new design for usually less than a $1000 dollars. And even better your in house designers that maybe do your product graphics etc. can be taught in a couple of hours how to create a new design that can easily be converted to wordpress and installed over your existing content.

• WordPress Business Websites are easy to extend. – Have you ever worked on your business website and thought, “man it would be great if we had this feature” only to hear it costs to much money, will take too much time, or is not compatible with our CMS. With wordpress all of the systems are easily extending with plug-ins. If you want a social network, there is a plug-in for that. If you want a gallery, there is a plug-in for that. Want a shopping system, there are plug-ins for that as well. There are millions of developers and business creating extensions to make your web presence sing. Best of all, they all work with your existing site, content, and features. There are many extensions that are free and even more at a low cost.

• Constant Updates – WordPress is one of the most updated platforms on the internet. I can’t count the number of times I have installed a super expensive system in some company and a few months later the system is out of date. Then to add insult to injury the software company that wrote the software doesn’t plan an update for a year or more. A year or more are! With wordpress there are over 800 million users on the internet so there are updates all the time. Even better the code is so simple to work with that a decent php developer can make updates and enhancement for you. No more waiting for that billion dollar development company to update their stuff.

• The Core is free for your business wordpress website. – What free? Yes, the core systems for wordpress and even the social components called buddypress are free. No more paying thousands and thousands of dollars year after year to just use the base features of your cms system. If you can’t find what you need in the core you only pay a few hundred dollars for plug-ins etc.

If you are ready to take your business website to the next level contact wordpress design shop for a free consultation.

WordPress Business Websites that reduce the cost of representing your business to the world.