Blog Villains

Web design is concerned with visual design, information design, and interaction design, in near equal parts. The latter two, in particular, can have significant ramifications for the design of the back end of a transactional system. Web design is something that is continually changing, but despite those changes you can create many a great website with a few simple rules. Of course, the rules that you work by may increase as you go or they may change a bit but this is a good starting place. Web design is an important visual aspect of this, but what good is a spinning logo if no one can find the information or product they are looking for?

Ecommerce website design is not book design, it is not poster design, it is not illustration, and the highest achievements of those disciplines are not what web design aims for. Although websites can be delivery systems for games and videos, and although those delivery systems can be lovely to look at, such sites are exemplars of game design and video storytelling, not of web design. Web design is not something you can do with a snap of your fingers. So, in order to create website even more quickly, have your ideas on paper and make sure they are something you will want to stick to, because changing your mind could make the process take longer, even when you are using website builder to create a website. Web design is not a science and each site is a new creation born of innovative thinking and strategic planning. We design custom websites only and start from a blank page with endless possibilities.

Ecommerce web design is an integral part of your business. What we do for you is not just set the shopping cart up but then, through our remote access software, provide ongoing training and update support. Ecommerce web design is not always easy and it helps to get web design packages to help you, but you have to choose the right packages or you could end up serious problems with your website. Just follow the tips above and think about the considerations given so that you can choose the best web design packages for your needs.

Shopping websites are very popular, and competition is intense among them. Companies must pay attention to usability since it will help them beat their competitors. Shopping online has eliminated the need to travel to make a purchase, wrestle with traffic and parking, jostle with the crowds, and worry about the hours of store openings and closures. And it never closes for business. There are many sites on the web where you can get a good e-commerce website quote.

If you’ve been wanting to create a membership web site so that you can offer your content or digital products to customers and require them to register and pay a one-time or recurring monthly fee to access the content or downloads, then Wordpress is one of the best and easiest ways to do it.

If you’re not familiar with Wordpress, then you can check it out at at www.wordpress.org.

This is what they say about Wordpress in the opening paragraph:

“WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.”

I find Wordpress to be invaluable to me in my internet business. It is free, easy to install and use, and extremely versatile.

There are hundreds and hundreds of free themes that you can install to make your web site look exactly as you want it to.

There are also many premium Wordpress themes that can be bought at very reasonable prices, and these premium themes can be had for most near any specialty niche or web web site type that you can think of.

Examples of premium themes can be seen at iTheme Premium Themes.

There are also hundreds and hundreds of plugins available for Wordpress, and these plugins can adapt Wordpress to do most near any job you can think of. Many plugins can be had for free, and some specialized plugins require that you purchase them, most times at very reasonable fees considering the job they can do for you.

The first task in creating a Wordpress based membership web site is to install Wordpress. It is easy to install Wordpress from your hosting account using Fantastico. You can also download and install Wordpress from the www.wordpress.org web site, and they provide detailed instructions on how to do it.

Next, after making all of the basic settings in Wordpress, you will need a plugin to manage the membership chores for you. I have used a plugin called Your Member and also a plugin called DAP to create my membership web sites. These are both plugins that you would need to purchase, and you can learn about the features of both by visiting the above web sites.

Both of these plugins include detailed instructions on installing them and setting them up on your web site, and that is beyond the scope of this article.After you purchase either plugin, it is a simple matter of downloading a zip file, unzipping it, and uploading it to your hosting server. Then you follow their instruction and tutorials on configuration and usage. YourMember also has a very active forum that is a good place to ask questions and get answers on any problems you may be having.

After you get everything set up and working, you begin adding content to your web site, and you can make the content available to anyone who visits your web site, or you can show only part of the content and require them to sign up and pay a one-time or recurring monthly fee to view the rest of the content. You can also require them to pay for access to your download files, either a one-time fee, or a recurring monthly fee.

Both plugins manage payments through Paypal, and after you get that set up, it is pretty much an automatic process.

The plugins manage registrations, payments, keeps records of recurring payments and members status for you, and it’s all done automatically.

You just keep providing more content to your web site, keep registering more members, and watch your business grow.

I also have a very detailed video tutorial on creating a membership web site using Wordpress with a free plugin, and you can view details on that at my TutorDaddy Video Tutorial web site at www.TutorDaddy.com.

Best Of Luck,

Lewis Poteet
www.TutorDaddy.com
www.TutorDaddyTraining.com

Wordpress Premium Themes - are they worth it?

Premium Wordpress Themes are starting to pop up all over the place. This means more choice for us (the consumer) but because of the large number of people offering Premium themes it is often hard to distinguish the good from the bad.

There have been a few changes recently though, one in particular is that Revolution has now gone open source, although you do have to pay for support. This is probably a smart on their part as more people will most likely try their themes out and realise they then need support. Hopefully this move will get rid of some of those people trying to make quick money by selling cheap and nasty generic themes which shouldn’t even be classified as Premium.

I’ve listed up a few of the best Premium themes that I’ve come across.

My favourite one at the moment is WP-VYBE.

1) WP-VYBE
No. of themes: 12
Pricing: $99 (single), $199 (multiple), $299 (developer). But there are cheaper themes from $49 up.
Type of themes: Magazine
Customization services: Possible through other developers.

Notes:Theme settings page in your Wordpress control pane, 2-column or 3-column layouts, 10 different color options, Gravatar integration, Optional banner ad integration, Optional built-in post thumbnails, Optional logo/header image integration via control panel, Built-in drop-down navigation for sub-categories and sub-pages, widgetized sidebars and alot more….

2) ARTHEMIA
No. of themes: 1 (but customization through admin panel is possible)
Pricing: $70 (1 site), $140 (5-site), $240 (developer’s pack)
Type of themes: online magazine, corporate, personal blog
Customization service: Nothing mentioned

Notes: Flexible theme admin panel, category colour assignment, auto-thumbnail old posts, banner and adsense management, show or hide headline spoilers, adsense friendly.

3) PRESS 75
No. of themes: 3
Pricing: $75 (single), $150 (mulit-site), $250 (developer’s license)
Type of theme: Video/TV themed
Customization service: None listed

Notes: Ability to post using videos from several sources including Blip, TV, Flickr, MetaCafe, MySpace, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo and YouTube. You can separate the blog from the video and there is an embed code allowing others to embed videos on their site.

4) WOO THEMES
No. of themes: 10
Pricing: $70 (single) , $150 (multiple) for each theme
Type of themes: Business, CMS, Magazine/News, Personal blog, Portfolio
Customization services: none advertised.

Notes: Theme options backend, custom write panels (to make the addition of custom fields easier), same base backend for all themes.

5) ZIDALGO
No. of themes: 2
Pricing: $75 (singl), $249 (developer’s license)
Type of themes: News/Magazine
Customization services: None advertised

Notes: Google adsense, Widget, plugin ready, custom category search, author pages, 100% Valid XHTML/CSS, cross-browser tested.

6) MIMBO PRO
No. of themes: 1
Pricing: $99 (single), $199 (developer’s license)
Type of theme: Magazine
Customization services: none advertised

Notes: Built in contact form, automatic cropping and resizing of images, printer friendly rendering, custom templates for search results, date archives, sitemap, contact, author archives and category archives

7) GABFIRE
No. of themes: 2
Pricing: $59 (single), $159 (multi), $259 (developer)
Type of theme: Magazine, News, Wordpress showcase Customization services: Yes. Fill in your budget, colours to be used, example sites and message.

Notes: Built in FlickR support, video spot, Ajax tabs, custom 404 error page, Gravatar support, drop down menu