I apologize to friends, family – and even a few of my detractors – for being absent for so long and for failing to update this website since last August. I’ve been busy. Very busy. To say that my bucket has been full over the past year would be, at the minimum, a gross understatement.
So I’ve decided to toss up a few short postings to try to bring everyone who cares up-to-date who reads this blog on what’s going on in my life. I always look forward to hearing from all of my friends and family, past and present, so email me at contact@johnhoyle.com and keep in touch.
Don’t forget to check in from time to time at JustOneOpinion.com, the opinion and news site that I edit along with my close friend, Dick Kelly. If you need a website, or want to refer someone to me to discuss having a WordPress based blog or website set up for them, please send them to Hoyle-Consulting.com, my business site. I really enjoy working with artists, photographers, and writers whenever they need a quality website to display their work.
Some of my website clients have contacted me and wondered when their new sites will be finished and ready for daily use. Others have been expecting upgrades or major modifications to their sites and wondered if I had forgotten about them.
I have not forgotten about you, have not left the country, and have not gone to my final reward.
The truth is that I have been waiting for a major new software program to be released that will not only improve their websites, but also give them a lot more freedom to publish on their own.
I am pleased to announce that on Thursday, December 11th, version 2.7 of the popular blogging software WordPress was officially released. I will be upgrading all of my sites and those of my clients over the next few weeks to this new version.
WordPress 2.7 is a significant upgrade that greatly improves the user interface and expands the possible uses for the software. It also lays the groundwork for WordPress to be used to expand the social networking.
Many additional improvements are planned for the next 12 to 36 months, but for now WordPress users can take advantage of Version 2.7’s new interface which makes blogging quite a bit easier.
When WordPress made its last major modification to the publishing interface in version 2.5, the user community reacted negatively, calling it a step backwards. Many of us felt that it was a major step forward and a vast improvement over earlier versions, yet in many ways it did not go far enough and could be very frustrating to use at time. Automattic, the publishers of WordPress moved quickly to resolve some of the issues by releasing Version 2.6 in the spring of 2008. With 2.7 almost everyone feels that the new interface is a vast improvement and makes blogging and CMS management a whole lot easier.
WordPress 2.7 has an amazing number of customization options. If you don’t like or don’t use some of the tools in the dashboard, rearrange them by drag-and-drop, resize them, or hide them.
Among the new features now available is the ability to create “sticky” posts, posts that you can program to remain on your homepage no matter when you originally published them. There are also some excellent comment moderation tools.
The latest version of the “Dashboard” is the biggest change. In the past the dashboard was mainly used to show the latest news involving WordPress – new themes, new plugins, version changes. Version 2.7 provides a modular dashboard that you can customize with a few clicks of your mouse.
Version 2.7 allows you to compose a post and reply to comments directly from the dashboard.
In the past upgrading WordPress was fairly complicated, as was changing themes or adding plugins. Rather than needing a webmaster to manually upgrade WordPress by accessing the server with FTP tools, site owners can simply click a button in the admin interface and WordPress will automatically download and install updates.
For website customers serviced and supported by my company, Hoyle Consulting Services (www.Hoyle-Consulting.com, www.SmallWebMaster.com, and www.ALowCostWebSite.com), the changeover to this newest version of WordPress will occur in stages over the next 30-60 days. There are some sites that I support that can be changed with a mere click of a button and nothing more will happen. Other sites are quite complex and have a lot of customization involved. I will go a little slower on more unique and custom sites so as not to disrupt service.
An old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” For some sites, I may leave well enough alone for a while until I make sure that I can quickly repair anything that might go wrong. Version 2.7 is that kind of an upgrade, like going from DOS to Windows, or Windows 98 to Windows XP.
If you are a new client who has been waiting for your site to be finished, please understand that the learning curve between WordPress 2.7 and previous versions was quite steep – and I simply did not want to have to train you twice. Trust me – 2.7 is much easier to learn in a shorter time. You will be writing your own blogs and articles within the first day or two – and it’s practically impossible to break your blog by accidentally doing something stupid. As the “King of Stupid Tricks” I know how easy it is to totally screw up a website, so when I say that screwing up your new blog will be almost impossible you can believe me.
I will be contacting each of you as your site comes online and will be happy to coach you online and over the phone until you get more comfortable using the new program. For those of you who have delegated to me most, if not all, of your website copywriting and physical changes, nothing will change – I will still meet the terms of our contract.
Be sure to tell your friends about your new website and invite them to contact me if they want one of their own. Even if new clients are not “friends and family,” my rates are absolutely rock bottom even as I try to provide the highest level of personal service possible.
Here is a video that will give you a feel for the new WordPress 2.7 and how you can use the dashboard features:
My final entry for today is about another new website that I am currently working on for Bend Cascadia Nursery, a Bend, Oregon wholesale nursery company. I stumbled across this client after looking at some computer “gigs” on Craigslist.org.
Once in a great while I’ll get the itch to go check the Craigslist ads just to see if I can find someone in trouble that could use my help. My intent this time was to see if a deserving small business might need someone to build a professional level website for them at a relatively low cost – or to help them figure out how to build one themselves.
After looking through Portland, Salem, and Corvallis classifieds, I finally found one posted from the Eugene. The ad basically stated that they needed a new website in a hurry and that their old webmaster had simply “bailed out” on them. I sent them an email and offered to help. As it turns out, I should be able to provide them with a very nice website for very little money. Hopefully I’ll get another happy long term customer.
This website is just now being set up. I will probably be the end of July before I actually turn it over to the client, but in the meantime I’ve setup a single-page “business card” website for them. I wanted to get something online so that Google and Yahoo could find them over the next couple of weeks. They also desperately needed a webpage to point their print ads to. I think the page I put together for them does both of those things and, I think, does it pretty well.
Bend Cascadia Nursery is located in beautiful Bend, Oregon. Located on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountain Range, Bend is known for its excellent climate and beautiful surroundings. My client actually lives some distance from Bend in the shadows of the “3 Sisters” mountain peaks.
To capture the feel and beauty of the area, I chose a header image with a northerly view of the 3 Sisters peaks in springtime. The green color scheme used on the site was the same as an earlier choice determined by the client and the now disappeared webmaster.
Even though the site is simple and only one page, I’ve set up a mini-gallery near the page footer that shows some of the heavy equipment that the client leases and sells. There are oversized thumbnails that go to full page photos of each piece. The site has a rather unusual feature – namely a “page slide” – allowing critical contact information – to remain locked on the screen at all times as the reader scrolls down the page. A simple, but very effective and useful effect.
As I mentioned, this page is only temporary (definitely beats “Page Under Construction”) just to give the client something to work with while I build the actual site. The new site will be based on a static version of WordPress. It will have a News or Update page where the client will post his latest sales and available heavy equipment.
I’ll add a post on this blog when this new website is tested and up and running.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’ve been keeping busy building and supporting some new websites. I’ve not done much in the way of active marketing for new business, but I have managed to keep a steady flow of small business owners inquiring about my services.
I think most are surprised at how inexpensively I can put together a new website for them. Most competing and so-called ”small business” web design companies want to quote “big business” pricing – but then provide cheezy websites that look like a high school student put them together. It’s too easy for them to simply create a site from one of thousands of existing page templates. Or they may use one of the many free or low-cost online web page makers intended for amateurs and then pass their efforts off as being “professionally designed.”
In other cases, some small business web designers will simply create one or two standard formats or designs and then sell them over and over again – just changing the background colors and maybe the header font to make them look a little different. That’s why you’ll see so many sites (especially for mortgage and real estate companies) that all look so much alike. They all look alike, and in many cases like one case (South Shore Financial), the web company sold the exact same website – text, graphics, headers – to several hundred clients. Fortunately that web design firm was forced out of business over a year ago.
I choose to take a different approach, and try to create a unique site for each of my clients whenever possible. I may borrow from and modify some existing designs that appeal to me, but my client gets a site that is unique to their company only.
Joe Poulton is a Vancouver, Washington photographer who found me through some Craigslist.org advertising I was using. Joe already had a site, but was not completely happy with it. The site completely failed to show off his artistic talents and used a lot of bells and whistles that fell out of favor around 1998. Quite frankly, it was a confused mess.
Joe decided to give me shot at putting together a professional looking website that would allow him to do his own updates and to upload his own photos into manageable galleries. I threw up a temporary web page after he registered a better version of his domain name through my ALowCostWebSite.com company site. I then built a completely new WordPress based site for him. Within a few days he was online and managing his own site.
Besides being a talented photographer and hiking enthusiast, Joe is a quick learner. Other than the usual updates and some very limited support from me, Joe has taken complete control of his website. He makes regular postings and has several galleries going. His photo subjects include mountain and forest scenery, cityscapes, local rock bands, and, of course, his friends.
I’ll be doing some minor design changes over the next few months and maybe try out a little different look and layout. His site is really expanding and could probably use a little larger format.
Joe was surprised and pleased that I could provide him with a new, quality website, along with hosting and support for a very low price. We’re both happy about that…
