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.
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.
Introducing Revolution Two
October 29, 2008 by Bill Robbins
As you may have noticed, I don’t charge a fee for my themes. Initially I had planned to do just that, but I changed my mind after Brian Gardner announced he would be offering a new set of themes under a GPL open source license. I learned about designing WordPress sites from Brian’s original Revolution themes, which incidentally, I had to pay quite a bit for.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that this was not keeping with the free, open source spirit of WordPress. This wonderful blog and content management system is offered free of charge, no strings attached to anyone who wants to use it. Not only that is regularly updated and improved. WordPress is not the only CMS of this type that is free, but the only ones that rival it’s quality are not free.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to offer my themes for free and only charge if people require my expertise in customizing a theme, for hosting or having something custom created. It keeps me in line with the broader community of WordPress and that is important for the continued growth and development of that community.
Go by and visit Revolution 2. If you like any of those themes, I’d be glad to help you with any customization or support you might need to use them or any of the themes I’ve created here.
iPhone WordPress Theme
October 23, 2008 by Bill Robbins
Anyone who is running a website these days needs to be aware that lots of people will be viewing your site from devices other than a desktop computer. Most people (myself included) that own an iPhone talk about how it changes your life. Once upon a time I took my laptop into the backyard to do a bit of work while my kids played. Now I usually just grab my iPhone and I can accomplish pretty much the same amount of work that way. People are using iPhones, iPod Touches, Blackberry’s, Windows Mobile and other devices to see our sites, so we need to ask ourselves “how do our sites look and function on these devices?”
I love the look of Flash, because it can do so many great animations and user interfaces, but it doesn’t work on the mobile browser on my iPhone. Most of the time this limitation doesn’t bother me–it’s often just filler. But lots of sites out there use flash for navigation. I’m leading the children’s ministry at a new church plant and we use a curriclulumn from a company called Kidmo. We are so pleased with the quality of their materials, but their site uses a lot of Flash, so I can’t use it on my phone.
To help all of us with WordPress based sites out, Dale and Duane from BraveNewCode.com have created a plugin for WordPress that uses a different theme when the site is viewed from a mobile browser. This theme has your site name at the top with a pulldown menu of your pages on the right. A search feature is also clearly marked at the top of the page. Then comes a list of your most recent posts. If you have an iPhone or a touch you can see an example of this by looking at my site.
One reason why mobile browsers are so important for churches is helping potential visitors out. If someone has a hard time finding your church and they have one of these devices they will likely use it for help. If they can’t use your site or find the information they need because of poor formatting, they might not visit.
It may seem obvious, but most of us don’t make websites that only we will look at. We make ones that we hope will benefit others in some way. This plugin is easy to use and helps people better access your content. What else do you need? So head over to BraveNewCode.com and download it today.
Why Good Communication is Necessary
October 16, 2008 by Bill Robbins
As some of you know, my family and I are helping to plant a new church in Birmingham, AL. We were preparing for a publicity blitz this coming Sunday afternoon and as part of that I had some door hangers printed up. I used a company that greatly emphasizes their 48 hour turn around time so that I could have the hangers by Friday afternoon with only 2 day air shipping. I placed the order on their website, uploaded the pdf’s with no trouble and went on my merry way. The site is well designed and functional so ordering was no problem.
Well the hangers did not ship on Wednesday as their 48 hour guarantee told me they would. So I opened a support ticket for some help. I promptly received a call saying they were closed on Monday and that delayed printing a day. As a result I would need to pay an additional $57 to receive the hangers on time.
The problem is no where on their front page, or any of their order pages did the site say they were closed on Monday, the day I ordered the door hangers. I went through their site and the only place it mentions it is on their contact page. In effect they won’t tell you when they are closed until you have a problem with something.
This brings up the importance of anticipation and good communication. We all need to anticipate what kind of information visitors to our websites will need and provide it to them in an upfront and clear way. Churches should provide clear links for people to find directions, service times and ideally at least a page dedicated to helping them understand what to expect when they come to your church.
My 48 Hour experience reiterates the need to think through our communication plan clearly from the point of view of a guest. Otherwise they may have a regrettable experience at your church that could have been prevented with a bit more forethought.
Write me a comment below with some good examples of church website communication and any bad ones you can think of.
Preview Mountain View Church Theme
October 16, 2008 by Bill Robbins
I’m are excited to give you a preview of our next theme release “Mountain View Church.” This theme has a modern appearance with dedicated “hanging buttons” to frequently used areas–podcasting, directions, service times, and a guest area. The picture on the right can be switched out. It would be a good place to have your church’s current message series.
The top features the main navigation for the site as well as a search box. Below the main images is an announcement fader that will run current announcements that can be clicked on.
This site is unique and hopefully will be of benefit to many churches out there. My plan is to offer it for free as soon as I have all the code worked out. Check back around the end of October to see if it is available for download.
As always we offer customization of our themes to make sure you get exactly what you are looking for. To learn more click here.
Thanks We Love WP
October 11, 2008 by Bill Robbins
I’d like give a big thank you to “We Love WP” for featuring our new “Organized Themes” site today. We have only been open a short time, so it’s great to get noticed and have some recognition. I’ve been following the sites featured by “We Love WP” for a while now to get inspiration and see what all is possible with WordPress. It’s humbling to be part of this great resource. Thanks again.
