WordPress Theme for Real Estate
June 23, 2010
WordPress and real estate are a match made in heaven especially when you start with a WordPress theme made especially for Real Estate like the AgentPress theme from StudioPress.
View the new goodGround Real Estate website…
Multiple Categories
You can write property listings (blog posts) under as many different categories and sub categories as you like. They all fit seamlessly into the website’s navigation and can then be searched or viewed by category, sub-category or keyword. Adding the Multiple category selection widget means many categories can be searched at once. Eg. Price, Location, No. Bedrooms etc. The Agent Press theme lets you show an image and content summary for each category. Click on photo below right.
Easy Photo Uploading
Upload multiple photos to a property listing all at once and click ‘Insert Gallery’ button to add them to the post. Sizes are setup in your administration so resizing is automatic and you get a professional looking gallery on each listing in minutes. With one click you select a main photo to represent each listing and this appears on your homepage and category pages. Click on photo right.
View gallery in action here… [Read more]
Expanding Text for FAQ Pages
May 28, 2010
Frequently Asked Questions pages are difficult to handle well. They tend to be long which means readers have to scroll a lot (not good web practice). As readers are usually looking for the answer to only 1 or 2 questions, ideally you should have just the questions displayed where they can easily be seen without too much mouse work.
The Expanding Text Plugin from DagonDesign lets you hide the answer until someone clicks on the question. Once you click on a question, the answer text appears underneath, click the question again and it disappears. Your page looks clean and organised, your answers are easy to find and you don’t have to think about creating new pages for each answer and linking each one.
View this plugin in action at www.orbisflash.com
Create Expanding Text
- Download the Expanding Text Plugin
- Rename the file with .php on the end instead of .txt
- Using ftp, upload the file to your plugins folder
- Activate the plugin
- Click on the html tab (top, right of your post’s content box)
- Use the following code around each question you want to expand
Click on the questions below to see the plugin in action.
Other Uses for this Plugin
This plugin would also work well for pages listing distributors or branches by region, staff directory pages, product pages, testimonial pages, basically any page with a lot of information grouped with headings and summaries. Let me know how you’re using this plugin to improve your website.
Create WordPress Posts from Flickr
April 29, 2010
Linking your Flickr account to your WordPress blog means you can turn any Flickr image into a blog post without even leaving Flickr. Just create a photo category on your website and make it the default category, add your blog to Flickr, then click on the ‘Blog This‘ button above any of your images to create a new post.
You can also add your Twitter account for tweets directly from Flickr. If you take lots of photos but aren’t much into writing blog posts, this could be the perfect way to keep your blog fresh and up to date. It is also a great way to bring your readers attention to your images.
Step #1 – Create a Photo Category
- Login to your WordPress website/blog
- Create a new post category for photo posts
- Go to Settings/Writing and select this category as the dafault post category
- Further down the page, tick the XML-RPC remote publishing
- Save Settings
Flexible Homepage Layouts with Genesis
April 10, 2010
With most WordPress themes, the homepage layout is usually the least flexible part of the design process. In many cases unless you use ftp and know some css and php, you wont be able to customise (yes, this is how we spell customise in NZ!) the layout homepage at all.
Widgets are the Answer!
The new Genesis theme framework from StudioPress has widgetised not only the sidebar but also the entire homepage and even the right hand side of the header. This means that you create your homepage layout by dragging a combination of different widgets into the various homepage sections in the Presentation section of your website admin. For example, if the theme’s homepage layout is split into top left, top right and bottom, you just drag widgets into each of these areas.
Not Just Any Widgets
It gets even better. StudioPress has created a series of special widgets which make customisation even easier and quicker. Here’s quick run down…
- Featured Page Widget – Select one of your pages from the dropdown, choose to show with an image, align the image, decide how much text to show
- Featured Post Widget - Select one of your categories from the dropdown, select number of posts to show, choose to show with an image, align the image, decide how much text to show
- User Profile Widget - choose an author from the dropdown, choose whether to show avatar, link to bio or add custom text
- Twitter Updates Widget – Add your twitter name, select number of tweets to show [Read more]
Change Your Website for a Promotion
April 3, 2010
These days, there’s a whole generation of people (including myself) who visit a website to find products and services or just to check things out before they ever visit a shop or purchase a product.
If you’re spending time and money on catalogues, sale flyers and print advertising, don’t forget to add promotions, sales, events and new products to your website too. Adding graphics or changing colours on your homepage, header or sidebars wont take you or your web designer long. Make sure you write a post too for search engines.
Promotions on Your Website
Here’s a screenshot of what we changed on the Evergreen Garden Centre website to promote their annual plant sale. Visit www.egn.co.nz for a live demo (until end of March).
Web Versions of Your Graphics
By getting web versions of your promotional graphics when you get your print graphics done you will save heaps of time and money. Ask your graphic designer, web designer or printer for the following:
- PDF versions of all catalogues and flyers (these can be viewed in Acrobat)
- A 72dpi screenshot of all catalogues and flyers (include on your blog post or homepage as a teaser and link to downloadable file)
- A square graphic for your sidebar (72dpi, either 125 pixels x 125 pixels or 250 pixels x 250 pixels depending on the size of your sidebar)
- A banner graphic for your header (72dpi, approx 400 pixels x 100 pixels depending on the space on your website header not taken up by your logo) [Read more]
Screenshots + Notes = Blog Visuals
February 11, 2010
Jing is a really easy way to capture an image on your computer screen and write your own notes and visual cues on it. Add coloured boxes, text and arrows to explain or enhance your screenshot, then email it, tweet it, post to Flickr or on your website.
A blog adds personality to your website content, Jing adds personality to the images you post.
Ways to Use Screencasts
Use Jing for Instructions -You will see from the screenshot below that it is a great way for me to show you an aspect of WordPress,then explain visually how to use it. This took me 3 minutes to create and save. You can also view here – http://www.screencast.com/users/CreativeWebIdeas/folders/Jing/media/74c805d0-8eb0-4027-8924-2a3093abae31 on screencast.com.
- Add notes to a design project (multiple users can add to same file)
- Show customers how to use your software
- Share a snapshot of a document
- Add comments to your holiday photos
- Turn your blog photos into cartoon-style images
- Comment on employees/contributors/syudents work
- Post visuals of things you like on Twitter & Facebook [Read more]
Manage Rotating Banners & Graphics
December 3, 2009
The Ad Minister Plugin for WordPress allows you to easily add, manage and track banner ads, square ads, text ads and skyscrapers to any section of your website. Add as many ad graphics as you like to each location and they will display in rotation (a different ad every time your readers visit a new page).
Not Just Advertising…
Not only is this plugin perfect for sponsorship advertising and affiliate banners, it is also great for displaying a variety of promotional graphics and text of your own. I have used it to display screenshots of websites I have designed in my sidebar. These change each time a new page loads so keep the site fresh and show my readers a better selection of images.
Download the Ad Minister Plugin…
Click on any post on www.ebossnow.co.nz to see the above screenshot in action.
How to Add Rotating Banners to WordPress
- Download the Ad Minister Plugin…
- Activate the plugin.
- Define the positions you would like your ads to appear in by pasting a line of code into the appropriate php file (after posts – index.php, next to logo – header.php, in sidebar – sidebar.php). Download the sample code. Make sure you change the position description each time to something unique.
- Go to the Ad Minister page under Tools [Read more]
WordPress Planning Checklist
October 16, 2009
If you are planning a new website using WordPress, here are some things to think about before you start. Planning or at least considering these will make the entire process easier and will ensure that you make the most of all of WordPress’ features and functionality. Plus, your website will be fabulous!
Design and Layout
Header - Logo and tagline, include ad banner or call to action
Sidebars
- 1 or 2, left or right, same on pages/posts/homepage or different
- What should be in them (recent posts, author box, social media links, twitter updates, newsletter signup, photo slideshow, YouTube video clip, graphics linking to other sections of your website)
Homepage – What should be on there (excerpts of certain categories, intro to business, featured content gallery)
Footer – What should be there (contact info, login button, copyright note)
Navigation
- 1 bar or 2, categories in a navigation bar
- What pages will you want in the navigation bar (what order, parent pages or child pages)
- Do you want a blog page with all categories or categories in the sidebar
- Do you want an Archive Page (grouped by categories, month, per post) [Read more]
Top Plugins for Large WordPress Sites
August 31, 2009
The new East Tamaki Healthcare website has 92 pages (and that’s not counting the news posts). There are a number of plugins and functions which can help manage WordPress sites like this one with a large amount of content and ensure that website visitors can always find what they are looking for. [Read more]
Plugin: List Posts on Pages
July 13, 2009
This fantastic plugin gives you yet another way to get your target audiences to the blog posts they are interested in quicker. On a standard WordPress blog, you have several ways of displaying your posts but all of these options keep your posts very separate from your pages.
The List Category Posts Plugin opens up a whole new set of layout options on a WordPress site combining static web pages and blog posts. It allows you to present your posts in a much more personal way rather than trying to appeal to everyone at once. Following are some ideas and examples of how to use the plugin to improve your WordPress blog.
Create Custom Pages for Each Target Audience
Using this plugin, create a new page for each blog category. Include a description at the top of what the posts in that category are about, who will benefit from reading them and a call to action. Eg. ‘Join our mailing list to receive future posts direct to your inbox’. You could also include a photo if appropriate and even a couple of downloadable files which compliment the category. Then insert the code to list posts in that category and you are away. (instructions below)
NOTE: If you have a lot of different categories, you may want these pages to be child pages appearing in a drop down under the parent category called “Blog” or similar. [Read more]
