Content Gallery and WordPress 2.7
December 11, 2008 by Bill Robbins
As many of you have noticed, WordPress released version 2.7 last night. I’ve been running a beta version on my portfolio site for the last few weeks and I must say it works better in almost every respect than the previous generation.
The only problem I had was with the Featured Content Gallery that I use on this site. It was not compatible with version 2.7. The plugin was unable to save settings and as a result it would not function with the new version. Jason Schuller, the plugins author said he would have a revised version out in time for 2.7’s release and he has delivered.
If you are using my Northridge or my Cross Gate themes, then download the update to the plugin here. I will be updating all of my themes to take advantage of all the features in 2.7 in the near future.
I hope you enjoy WordPress 2.7 and if you are ever in need of help, please don’t hesitate to ask.
My New Portfolio Site
December 4, 2008 by Bill Robbins
I am pleased to announce the opening of my new freelance portfolio site. My plan is to have Organized Themes be for free WordPress themes and website tips for churches. But my main portfolio site is where you can see my work and more importantly, hire me to do some work for you. Check it out at BillRobbinsDesign.com and tell me what you think.
Content Gallery Plugin and WordPress 2.7
November 20, 2008 by Bill Robbins
One of my favorite plugins that is used on Organizedthemes.com and the Northridge Church and Crossgate Church themes is not compatible with the next version of WordPress. I am running a few mock up sites for my clients with WordPress 2.7 Beta 3 when I noticed that I could not get the Featured Content Gallery to save any settings. I checked and Jason Schuller, the plugins author, and said he is aware of the problem and will have a fix available in the next version of the plugin. He also said that there will be lots of new features that everyone will be pleased with.
The bottom line is, if you are depending on this plugin as I am, don’t upgrade to WordPress 2.7 when it becomes available until the Featured Content Gallery plugin is fixed.
This plugin has now been fixed. You can find out more and download it here.
Mountain View Church
November 20, 2008 by Bill Robbins
I finally have a release of my Mountain View Church theme to give you guys. Happily I have had a good bit of custom work lately, so my free theme work has been pushed back a bit. As always, if you want something more quickly, you can hire me and I’ll be sure to get it to you much more quickly.
This theme is being released as a beta version. There is still some work that I would like to do to it, but it is usable out of the box as is. I have put in these features to get you started.
- Unique design
- Announcement ticker at the bottom of home page
- Podcast page to list your podcasts
- Search, 404, archive, home, and page templates included
A few notes about the design. I have not included a fix for the Internet Explorer 6 transparency bug. From my point of view IE 6 is 7 years old, and there are several free alternatives that people can use (including two newer versions of Internet Explorer) so I’m not going to add support for it right now. The site will still be functional on IE 6, but it will not look as good. You can add support for IE 6 if you don’t mind getting into the code of the site a bit yourself, or you can hire me to customize this theme for you and I’ll add it in for you. Just contact me and we’ll set out to make what you’ve been wanting.
You can see a demo of Mountain View Church here.
If have any suggestions on how I can improve this theme for the future, please leave me a comment and I’ll try to incorporate them into the final release.
Keeping Track of Visitors
November 18, 2008 by Bill Robbins
Once your website is up and running, you will no doubt be curious about how many people are visiting and what they are interested in and what they are not. So how do you find this out? As is often the case, there are several WordPress plugins out there that can help you learn all kinds of information about your visitors. We can all celebrate that all of these services are free. Let’s see what stats tools are out there for you to use.
1. WordPress.com Stats. This plugin is made by Automatic the company behind WordPress. It requires you to create a free account at WordPress.com and get an API key which you will find under your user profile. (This is the same key you use for Akismet comment spam if you use that service). Once you’ve downloaded the plugin here and installed it, it will begin collecting information on all visitors who are not logged in. That is a consideration if you plan on having people who are a part of your community sign into accounts on your site when they visit. You will not have a record of their visits, what they read, how long the stayed, or how many pages they saw during their visit.
The WordPress.com Stats plugin provides basic information about visitors to your site. It adds a small stats panel to your dashboard that looks like this.
Click Here to See a Larger Picture of the WordPress Stats Dashboard
It also adds a link to your admin called “Blog Stats” where you can get into more detail about visitors, search terms, trends and so forth.
2. Google Analytics. The amount of free services that Google offers is truly staggering. I use analytics on Organized Themes because I find the details it provides quite helpful. One of the interesting features is the mapping of your site’s visitors.
Click the Image to See a Larger Picture
You can see where your visitors are coming from, actually from anywhere on the planet. It breaks visits down by country and then into state and/or city. When I started this site, I never dreamed that churches beyond the US, much less beyond the English speaking world, would have an interest in my site and themes, but people have visited from over 50 countries. To be honest, that just blows me away.
I also use Google Adwords for advertising and analytics connects into my adwords dashboard providing me with even more information. It’s easy to see how many of my visitors are there because of an add that I placed versus finding this site by more traditional means. Google also provides suggestions on how to improve your site so that you get a better rank in search listings. Since Google is the king of search engines, we all want to take their advise on how to improve rankings in their system.
You can find out more about Google Analytics and how to install it here.
3. StatPress. This is a simple plugin that provides basic information about number of visitors, page views and more. What it offers is a glimpse of not only actual visitors, but search engine spiders and RSS feeds from your site. While I still recommend using Feedburner for your RSS feeds, you can get a quick indication of new subscribers and total number of subscribers.
Click Here to See a Large Picture
The information on spiders is useful because both analytics and WordPress Stats don’t provide it and it lets you know that search engines are checking the content on your site for updates. If they aren’t checking, then you probably aren’t going to be listed very highly. You can download StatPress here.
There are other options out there, but these three will get you started. I should note, that it will take some time for all of these systems to gather information, so don’t expect much in the way of useful information on day one. Give it a bit of time and watch as trends develop. Then you will be able to make more meaningful strategic decisions.
Organized Themes Turns 150
November 13, 2008 by Bill Robbins
Today we are pleased to announce that over 150 churches are now using our themes to run their church websites. This is really exciting to me since we have only been open two months. Downloads have picked up considerably lately and I can’t wait to see what the future holds. I am glad to be able to provide these themes for you to use free of charge.
As always if you need customization for your theme, I am here to help. Since I created these designs, it’s a simple and quick matter to take one of them and turn it into what you are looking for. Just click here to learn all about customization. If you want something completely custom, I can help you with that as well.
Thanks again for helping Organized Themes launch so successful. I here to serve you guys so don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Customization
November 8, 2008 by Bill Robbins
We offer customization for the WordPress themes we sell. Since we created them and understand how they work, we can quickly modify their colors and backgrounds to suit your church’s style. Just add customization to your cart below and we will contact you to discuss your ideas on what the site should look like. If you would like to talk to us about customizing your site, just add a comment below and we’ll get back in touch with you very quickly.
Take the Northridge Theme. On it’s own it is rather plain, but the framework is easy to alter into something totally different in feel. Here is one of the alternates that I created for the Northridge theme. You can see that the framework bears a lot of similarity to the original, but this concept would better suit a church seeking an edgier feel. If you are interested in this “Church on the Edge” concept, just fill in a comment and I’ll get in touch with you about turning this concept into your new website.
While customizing the theme, I can add not only style but extra functionality. Everything from Podcasting, online calendars, and newsletters can be added to your WordPress site. To be honest this can save you quite a bit of money. Take the newsletter. Constant Contact is a great company that I have used for church newsletters in the past. They charge $15 for most medium sized churches to use their service each month. In one year you would save $180 just in newsletter fees, more if your email list is larger.
After we finish customizing your site, we will set it up on your web server and make sure everything functions as it should. We’ll even import the content from your old site. At only $250 this is an incredible value.
If you are interested in having one of our themes customized, just fill out the form below and we’ll get in touch with you about your vision for your new site.
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Vineyard Community Church
November 6, 2008 by Bill Robbins
This site was created for the Vineyard Community Church in Tuscaloosa, AL. They have been WordPress users for years, but knew that their site need an update. As a general rule, it’s good to overhaul your site about every two years.
One of the main goals of their website was to feature a weekly podcast of their sermons. To help facilitate this, we have a dynamic listing of the most recent three podcast episodes on their front page. This list updates automatically by just adding a new episode in their control dashboard. If you can use email, you can handle WordPress.
The site also features dedicated areas to help people who are new to VCC learn about the church before they visit.
If you would my help in creating a website to fit your needs and goals, just fill out the contact form below and I’ll get in touch with you.
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Vineyard Learning Center
November 6, 2008 by Bill Robbins
This is a site that I created for the Vineyard Learning Center, a preschool in Birmingham, AL. Our goal with the site was to primarily serve as a place for prospective parents to learn about the services and pricing the Learning Center offers.
We choose to stay away from cheesy preschool graphics and instead go with black and white photos of children with a soft pastel color scheme.
This site is based on WordPress so all of the content is updatable by the end user independent of me which is quite nice for all of us. If you are interested in a site like this, just fill out the contact form below and I’ll be glad to assist you with whatever your needs are.
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Vineyard Family Services
November 5, 2008 by Bill Robbins
I have been excited to support Vineyard Family Services. This non-profit organization helps deadbeat dads learn how to be fathers. They have been so successful that now in Shelby County, Alabama they are the alternative sentencing for fathers behind on their child support. Basically they can choose to be part of Vineyard Family Services of jail. What is so amazing is that these men, most of whom did not have father figures of their own, are learning what it takes to be a dad. So when their director approached me about doing a site for them, I was quite excited to be able to help this organization that I believe in so much.
Vineyard Family Services had many goals in mind when we sat down to plan out their site. They wanted to be able to list their programs, inform the community of resources available to help, provide registration for events, collect donations, and thank their sponsors.
Obviously this is a site that will feature a great deal of content and will have to be editable by the staff. To facilitate this, I created their site to run on the WordPress content management system which has worked well for them. If you would like my assistance in creating a website that fits your needs and wants, just fill out the form below and I’ll be happy to contact you.