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With the popularity of WordPress new ‘website designers’ are coming out of the woodwork. It’s true, the WordPress CMS framework is ideal for business websites as well as easy to work with in comparison to flash and html websites. That doesn’t mean that just anyone can create a well designed, professional website that is uniquely fit to your business.
The truth of the matter is that some of the so-called designers are totally reliant on pre-fabricated WordPress theme designs and plugins. Don’t get me wrong, part of the beauty of WordPress lies in plugins and themes, but there should be a lot more to building your business website than adding a custom header to a theme and installing a bunch of plugins.
The Mechanics
A good WordPress website designer is going to have skills that allow them to go beyond themes and templates. They will understand the theme they use as well as its capabilities and know how to use them to get the look and functions you need. A really good designer should also know how to use CSS, HTML and PHP coding to do things like position elements uniquely and add functionality. And a great WordPress designer is also going to understand the possibility of conflicts when it comes to plugins and know how to troubleshoot, find the cause of conflicts and repair a ‘broken’ website.
It’s a rare occurrence when reading an article about a city budget makes me sad, but it happened just a few moments ago. The article discussed how the City of Hickory, NC proposed offering early retirement to 84 of their employees. Reading the details of what would be offered in exchange for taking the early retirement deal didn’t really strike me as a wonderful option for those 84 people., especially in the current economy. But that wasn’t what made me sad, it was the following quote:
Wood admitted that Hickory would lose a lot of experience if the eligible employees opt to retire and that their younger replacements would make less money. But, he said, the city could use the payroll savings.
How tragic is it that the City of Hickory is willing to sell out their experienced workers, workers who probably have created relationships with the people they serve, in exchange for saving money. And that made me wonder, “Could some of those people provide the same high quality, experienced services virtually and still save the city money?” It’s a hard one to call not knowing just what positions these workers are in. Some positions do require in office personnel, but it’s possible that some don’t.
So how would a city government or any other type of business determine how they could adopt virtual services to save money?
Those of you that have been reading here for awhile know that I’m a believer in building your business website on the WordPress framework (and strongly recommend the Headway theme). But articles like this one that I read this morning always prompt people to ask, “Is WordPress Safe…is it Secure?” My answer ? Yes, absolutely. …
Consider this scenario: You need 500 specially decorated cupcakes for an extremely important event you’re hosting at the end of the month. You do a search for local bakers and find two that list custom decorated cupcakes as something that they offer. You jot down the addresses and head out to check them out. You…
I pride myself on internet security. I can spot a phishing e-mail in a flash, know how to build and use strong passwords and have security on my network that makes my ISP techs proud. So how in the heck did I manage to have $284.22 stolen from my PayPal account? That’s what I asked…
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me…. If you’re anywhere near my age you probably remember hearing the saying above. The problem is, it’s not true. Words can hurt you. And they can hurt your business too. Let’s say you’ve been contacted by a potential client. They point out…
Sometimes life has a way of taking you to task. As the owner of Clerical Advantage, I tend to put in long hours, often working through holidays and weekends. Even on the occasions when I travel I generally try to keep a somewhat normal work schedule. That was my intention when I planned my holiday…
I think we’d all agree, free is good. When you’re a small business, especially when you’re first starting out, the mind is boggled by the abundance of free stuff on the internet . In fact, it can be a big help for strapped for cash entrepreneurs. Services like Dropbox and Skype can be budget savers…
