BuzzFoto

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BuzzFoto originally sought out our WordPress support services because they had a serious problem. This heavily trafficked paparazzi blog was struggling with page load times in excess of 45 seconds and was loosing readership at an alarming rate.

Problem: BuzzFoto’s WordPress site was suffering from significant performance issues causing incredibly slow page load times, using a tremendous amount of server resources and causing a significant reduction in readership.

Solution: After an initial consultation we determined that their site’s theme had some significant programming issues which were contributing to their challenges.

We completely re-worked the theme from the ground up to resolve the issues. In the process we also updated their design with a cleaner, more modern look which accommodates more advertising space without infringing on content area.

After our work average page load times on the site were down below 0.5 seconds and their readership was again on the rise.

The good folks at BuzzFoto were so pleased with our initial work on the site that they’ve retained our services for additional work on their various web properties.

Be sure to check out more examples of our work.

MyHuntingandFishing.com

MyHuntingandFishing.com initially contacted us about about improving their web design for part of their site. We were able to seamlessly integrate the various social media elements of their site into one package using WordPress as the foundation.

Problem: The existing web site MyHuntingandFishing.com had a mix of WordPress and HTML pages along with pages served by KickApps, a modularized do-it-yourself social media platform. They needed a solution that was both easier for them to manage and offered a smoother user experience.

Solution: We started by completely overhauling their web site design to give it a more professional look.

Next we took a look at the pages of the site which had been hand coded in HTML and brought them into the WordPress installation resulting in web pages that are easier to update and have better Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Then we looked at the KickApps modules they were using and integrated as many of them as possible onto WordPress pages, adapting the KickApps styling to match the web site design. One big advantage of this approach is that the site owner is able to retain more of the advertising revenue from pages that aren’t served directly by KickApps.

Finally, on the modules that still needed to be served by KickApps, we ensured their page styling match the WordPress web site so that there is a seamless user experience as site members move back and forth between WordPress and KickApps.

Here is a before and after screen shot comparison of the site.

Be sure to check out more examples of our work.

Halo Models & Talent Group

When Halo Models & Talent Group opened their office in Savannah they needed a web site to match the same high quality of professionalism that they bring to the modeling and talent development industry.

Problem: Halo wanted a web site with the following characteristics:

• Visually appealing to a younger audience
• Simple for Halo staff to update content
• Ability to accommodate a variety of content - i.e. text, photos, and video
• Potential for site to grow as agency grows
• Strong performance in the search engines

Solution: We built their site using the WordPress open source platform.

Starting with Halo’s existing logo we developed an eye catching site that exceeded Halo’s requirements and has become a centerpiece to their marketing efforts.

Below is a screen shot of the final design. Click the image to see a larger version.

Be sure to check out more examples of our work.

Examples of our Work

Here at SuccessCREEations we develop creative web solutions for organizations to connect with broader audiences. Using predominately open source software, our solutions are designed to give our clients more control over their own content while staying true to their vision and needs.

We specialize in development of sites using WordPress in WordPress support. WordPress is an extremely powerful web publishing and content management platform and is highly adaptable to our client’s many unique needs.

Selected Clients

Here are a few of our selected clients which represent a cross section of the work we do here at SuccessCREEations. Click on the links to learn about the solutions we provided.

Image Formatting Issues on Upgrading to WordPress 2.6

Got a call yesterday from a buddy of mine who had just upgraded his blog to WordPress 2.6 and found he wasn’t able to get images to align in his new posts the way he did before. No matter what he did the images just displayed one way.

I knew right away what his problem was because I’d seen the same thing when I upgraded SuccessCREEations.

Adjusting to New Features

The culprit is the new image caption feature that was added in WordPress 2.6, which is something both me and my buddy who called are glad they added.

However, to make it possible for the captions display under images, WordPress has added an extra div around images. This extra div requries a style sheet adjustment for many WordPress themes.

Many theme designers style the post images either within a div for the specific post content area or within a paragraph so you might see something like this in your style sheet: Read more

WordPress Upgrades to Version 2.6

WordPress rolled out their update to version 2.6 the other day with some great new feature improvements. Here’s a quick rundown of the new features.

WordCount

Ever wonder how many words you have in your blog posts? I do. I’ve been a longtime user of the TD Word Count plugin. But now WordPress will tell you how many words are in your post right on the edit screen.

Revision Tracking

Now WordPress will track various revisions of a post. This feature will be especially handy for multi-author blogs. Not to mention those of us who occasionally delete big chunks of a post by mistake. Now we can restore an earlier save of the post and not loose all that work!

Photo Captions

This is a wonderful little feature. Now WordPress has the built in ability to add captions to your post images automatically like you see under the screen shot to the right. You might have to adjust your style sheet to display them the way you like though.

Press This

They’ve added a shortcut that you can drag to the toolbar of most web browsers so you can blog about things you see on the on the web with just one click. Click the “Press This” shortcut and a new browser window will open up with all sorts of goodies to make posting to your blog faster and easier.

WYSIWYG Image Control

They’ve integrated several of the most common image control features right into the WYSIWYG editor. That means you can have more control over how your images display without having to know all that HTML coding stuff.

Improved Gravatar Support

Now you can select from a variety of default avatars to display for folks without a Gravatar account. I went into my theme and manually changed my setting from the old WordPress default to the Gravatar logo. With version 2.6 you can make that change right from your WordPress dashboard.

And Much More

There’s a ton of other things included in this update from being able to select multiple check boxes via shift-click to a bubble to let you know when you have plugins that are out of date. They also fixed nearly 200 bugs with this release along with numerous security enhancements.

And Early Too!

Not only did they make all these improvements but they got version 2.6 ready for release nearly a month ahead of schedule! Great job for the WordPress development team.

If you’d like to check out what some of those changes look like here’s a short video they prepared to show you. Check it out.

UPDATE: For some reason I can’t seem to get the video embed to play from here. If you want to check out the video head on over to the Upgrade Announcement over on the WordPress development blog.

Older Versions of WordPress Hacked

WordPress blogs are starting to get hacked in greater numbers lately. The problem is getting serious enough that the WordPress podcast recently addressed out of date WordPress blogs being hacked.

Even my good friend Mark Goodyear went to log into his blog and discovered that GoodWordEditing was hacked. In his case he couldn’t even log into the blog’s dashboard anymore.

Old WordPress Versions Vulnerable to Hacking

In Mark’s case, as is the case in the overwhelming majority (if not all) of cases, not keeping his WordPress installation current exposed his blog to hackers. In Mark’s case the hackers were going after his passwords.

The trend seems to be the hackers gain access via out of date blogs and insert some password snagging software. Then when the blogger realizes there’s a problem and finally get around to upgrading their WordPress the hackers can come back at their leisure and do whatever they want with the blog. If the blog owner doesn’t change his passwords, that is.

Mark changed his. All of them.

Fortunately for Mark I was able to recover his blog, find and remove the malicious code that the hackers added to his blog. We got him up and running normally over the weekend. He’s now secure and good to go.

Bad to Worse

If left unchecked hackers can put code on your site that will create problems for you with the search engines. As an example Skinny Moose Media has a blog called Main Outdoors Today that will show us what can happen.

If you Google “Maine Outdoors Today” you will get the results shown over on the right here.

Right underneath the page title in the listing is a notice that says “This site may harm your computer.”

If you happen to be a gutsy type and clicked through the listing anyway, recklessly unconcerned of the potential dangers to your computer, Google would direct you to the a page that looks like the image below. Read more

Brand New Design

If you are a feed subscriber you might not know. But we’ve just launched the redesigned SuccessCREEations, Inc. website. There are still some bugs to work out yet and now I’m in the same boat that my clients often find themselves, a new website just begging to be filled with content.

Upgrading WordPress

The first thing I did was to bring the back end up to date with the latest version of WordPress. SuccessCREEations, Inc. had long been in that classic situation where, “the cobbler’s kids got no shoes.” There was so much work to do for clients and their sites that our own site was, ahem, a few versions back.

I gotta say that the completely redesigned WordPress 2.5 dashboard is very nice to work with. It is different, for sure, and takes a bit of getting used to.

But it took far less time to adjust than I expected, especially considering that I’ve been using WordPress for going on three years now. In fact, after spending less than a day with the new version I went back to the old version and was already forgetting where things were in the old menus.

The new dashboard design is that much better.

Screen Shots

The most obvious change is of course the new look. For you feed readers, here’s a screen shot of the new design.
I had developed the new SuccessCREEations, Inc. logo a while back with the idea of using it as a starting point for a new look to the site. I pulled the gold in the compass rose points and the blue/purple from the logo and used those colors as the starting point. Read more

WordPress Advanced ToolBar

One of the advantages of using WordPress as a publishing platform is that the WordPress folks are constantly adding new and better features. It can be a challenge to keep up sometimes.

This is especially true if we’ve come up with a way to do something that has since been made simpler in more recent versions.

For example I have a friend who has been blogging even longer than I have and never really got into using a widgetized sidebar. That’s certainly not a problem. You can do just fine programming your sidebar by hand. If you are into that sort of thing, that is.

I found I have one of those habits too. One of the first things I usually do when I’m working with a WordPress blog or web site is go in and turn off the visual editor. The WordPress visual editor used to cause formatting challenges for me so I got used to working in raw HTML.

Well the visual editor has come a long way since I first started using WordPress. With version 2.3 they’ve added a whole slew of new toolbar functionality so the visual editor can do things that formerly had to be coded in HTML by hand. Read more

Errors Upgrading WordPress - Troubleshooting Tips

Not everyone follows instructions. When upgrading your WordPress site not following the upgrade instructions can cause some really unpleasant things to happen and give some scary error messages.

Maybe you messed things up through ignorance. Or if you’re like me you might just try doing it wrong just to see what happens.

If you’re in a panic and feeling like the guy to the left here because your upgrade seems to be messing things up, don’t fear. Most problems can be overcome.

And the good new is hopefully you won’t even loose much of your data!

Provided we do things right, that is.

Putting it Off

I have an old much neglected personal blog that I’ve been hesitating to upgrade. There have been several new versions of WordPress out since I’d last upgraded it. I knew the theme I was using was not compatible with the latest version along with an unknown number of the way too many plugins I was running on the site.

Top that off with the fact that I was using the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin and was unsure how the conversion would work out now that WordPress has native tagging built in and I’d been really procrastinating.

Yesterday I had at it. Finally. Read more

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