All Posts, Blog, WordPress
Ever come across a website that you really like? Sure we all do from time to time. Since over 27% of websites on the web are using WordPress, and with the tons and tons of available plugins out there, you’re going to come across some functionality that you would like to add t your own website.
I came across a nice little browser add-on called SpyBar.
The browser add-on as you can see shows you a list of the plugins and theme being used as well as a hotlink for you to Google the items and get more information about them.
The cost of this add-on is $12.95. And with this you’ll have a new tool for your web creating arsenal. Be sure to let us know in the comments below how you intent on using this or ways that this can help.
All Posts, Automotive, Photography
Last weekend I went out with a few of my friends to the Ritz Carlton for the annual Festival of Speed car show. If you’re not familiar with it, think high-end expensive cars all over the back yard of a hotel. Sprinkle in some concepts, classic Chevrolet’s and Fords, and a few bikes and a few tall models and you’ve got a pretty interesting afternoon. Take a look at some of the shots below and see for yourself.
All Posts, Free Stuff, Graphic Design, Photography
Tis the season to be thankful. So below are some free resources from us and our affiliates of free Thanksgiving graphics and images. Enjoy!
Happy Thanksgiving Day Vector
by Vecteezy.com
Thanksgiving Day Background Vector illustration
by FreeVectors.me
Thanksgiving greeting card PSD
by GraphicsFuel.com
All Posts, Web Development, WordPress
Over the past few months we’ve been experiencing some issues with our current hosting company. Before I start throwing them under the bus, let me first say that we’ve used them for almost 10 years and didn’t start having issues until this year. What were those problems you ask? Let me explain.
Server Processes
Something I will admit that I really didn’t know much about. I’m not a server guy, and no one in our agency is either so this server technology really wasn’t a topic for our meetings. Well with some hosting companies they actually have a limit to how many processes can be running on a server at any given time. Our partner company 1and1 didn’t inform us of this until a solid month of random site performance issues. Our HTML sites were fine, but our WordPress sites where the ones creating these processes that at times would halt their server. In most cases it could have been from adding plugins, new pages, new posts, updating theme settings, etc. It really was random and no thanks to the language barrier of 1and1’s off-shore customer support that (by procedure) blames you first unless you request that they look at their system for errors.
Memory Usage
Here at Design Theory, we manage many websites. Since end of last year just about all of our new sites coming online have been in WordPress. WordPress runs on MySQL, and thus a new database is needed for each site. Each of those databases have an amount of memory usage depending on how much content the site has. So having upwards of 70+ databases and you’ve got a perfect storm just waiting to flood the server your sites are on. The amount of memory the hosting company allotted for your websites is limited. Each company may offer a different amount but it isn’t much when you’re on the economy hosting companies like 1and1, GoDaddy, Blue Host, and others. I suggest you either give them a call or do an extensive search through the fine print to find out what yours is.
Price
I can’t stress enough how you get what you pay for. For those of you that pay for your own hosting for your one main site, for now you may be safe. But isn’t the idea of a business website that it will continue to grow? Aren’t we doing things to boost traffic to our sites to promote our products and services? Well if you’re doing it right you should notice an increasing number of visits each week and month. At some point you’ll need to make the decision to move away from the economy hosting options to either higher cost VPS (Virtual Private Servers) or to a hosting company that specializes in WordPress – Like Media Temple. (shameless plug)
Performance
If you’ve had your WordPress up for a good few months, you may start to notice things running a bit slower than it did when you first set things up. You’ve added a ton of great content, images, pages, posts, plugins, etc. Nothing wrong with that if you’re creating value for your visitors. Until it takes them more than a few extra seconds to pull up your site and pages. The decrease in performance could be due to your site or other sites on the same server (unbeknownst to you). A better hosting plan or company will have optimized servers that don’t:
- Throttle your bandwidth
- Force a site shut down (Error 403)
- Service Temporarily Unavailable error
WordPress Security & Automatic Updates
There are are some hosting companies that actually offer automatic updates to WordPress while also taking preventative measures to keep their infrastructure secure from malware and attacks. If you think about it, it actually benefits those hosting companies a bit more than you as their customer; mainly because they can assure version control and scheduled updates for off-peak times. Some even vet the updates prior to making them live to all of their hosted WordPress sites.
What’s To Come
For a lot of those sites staying on economy $10/mo hosting run the risk of these types of errors above in the very near future. For the amount of websites currently online, 20% of them are WordPress sites according to w3techs. Looking at the chart below, you can see that in a year there’s been substantial growth. Imagine what percentage of site will be on WP by the end of next year and beyond if it keeps growing like this.
I actually had a client just recently had their website taken down for what the hosting company (Blue Host) said that she had used up too much of their server. Are hosting companies preparing for the increased stress on their servers? You have to wonder right? To most you’re just an account number that is being billed regardless of the level of service. There probably are hundreds of site owners that can may not even notice if their website goes down for a few hours or days. But for those of you that have frequent traffic to your site for your great content and resources, and those of you that are working to be the authority figure on your industry, you really can’t afford to have your website go down for something that could be easily avoided sans frivolous predetermined hosting restrictions.
As always your thoughts and point of views are appreciated. Lets continue the conversation below in the comments.
Image Credit: 2heads_Advertising (via RGB Stock)
All Posts, Blog
This morning at the Florida Blogger Conference, the opening speaker was the Senior Vice President of the Orlando Magic. While I’ve never met him before, his name was familiar. His keynote was really inspiring and transparent to some personal struggles in his life that people normally don’t share. While I wont dive into that, believe me when I say that I have a great respect for him, where he’s been, and his aspirations for where he is going.
He provided his 10 Step Foundational Building Blocks to making your dreams come true. (Unofficial Title). Check them out below:
- Think the right kind of thoughts (what you think about all day will eventually become a reality in your life)
- Say the right kind of words (The words that we speak also have a way of becoming reality)
- Be specific in-goal setting (You need short, mid, and long-range goals) They need to be written down, reviewed often, revised often, and deadlines set.
- You are responsible
- Seek out the right kind of friends
- Take your hurts, pain, setbacks and disappointments and turn them into strengths. It’s through the tough times that great advancements are made.
- Go the second mile. Do twice of what is expected of you. (What else… can I do, contribute, offer)
- Never give up. (read about the life of Walt Disney. Went bankrupt 12+ times) #sticktoitivity – a word created by Walt meaning simply to never give up.
- Character counts. Honesty, integrity, humility, courage
- Live your life by the faith phenomenon
Bonus: Practice these everyday!
So after reading all of these are you ready to print them out and post them on your cubicle wall or bathroom mirror? I think the key to this actually working is practicing these steps every day. Want to hear more about Pat, check out his book Leadership Excellence. You can see his other books on Amazon here as well.
All Posts, Blog, Content & Copywriting, How to, WordPress
We’ve talked a lot about people making a shift from micro-blogging to real blogging of the past few years. For us here at Design Theory I think it’s an awesome shift in acknowledgement in a fantastic medium. The main reason why this is great is because we now have so much great content online about almost any thing you can think of. From a business prospective, blogging is continuing to place smaller businesses ahead of their bigger competitors because of their rich content being read and shared by many.
That’s all fine and dandy, but what about all the other “more importing” things you are trying to keep a focus on in your business? What I’d like to do is sympathize with you because I feel your pain. You want to be out there, you want more people to know about your products and services, but to take the time to write something special about them every once in a while is just not in you schedule.
Well let me first explain that blogging is a great free way to advertise about your business. Not to say that all your posts need to be just about your business, they do need to be informative and offer ways to solve problems for people in your industry. But while you’re explaining the how to’s, instructions, and shortcuts, your readers are engaged and that’s the best time to offer them to seek your products and services that do just what they’re looking for.
The use of social media helps to push your posts out to areas and people who you normally wouldn’t have direct access to. I shouldn’t have to explain more on this as by now you should understand how this can snowball from a post to a tweet, to a comment, to a share, to a forum, to Google search, and more.
So time right, that’s usually the biggest issue. I’m here to offer you a free Blog Editorial Calendar. An editorial calendar is basically a really easy way to control the content being published from your website. If you sometimes get ideas on things you want to write but don’t have time to write them, jot them down on this calendar and when time comes for you to write you’ll be able to pick up where you’re initial thought started. Fill out the form below to get your free custom copy of our editorial calendar that you can easily edit in Microsoft Excel to use for your own media.
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