CodeRazor.com^™

The Image you give

Posted by CodeRazor on 05/03/11

Head Shot

This is the first chance you get to introduce yourself to a potential client. Your site should include a professional head-shot This head shot can and should be used on all of your websites, social media accounts and correspondence. Head shots should be done by a professional photographer. Make sure the photographer knows what the photo will be used for, and also that you have license to republish the photo. Photo rights belong to the photographer; they will either grant or sell you permission to publish the photo.

Secondary Photos

In letting potential clients get to know you, its often a good idea to have less formal photos of yourself in your environment. These photos should be relevant to the content and not portray the you in an unprofessional light. Bad ideas are photos that contain alcohol, or portray obsessive behavior. A good example is: Posting a photo of your pet alone is a bad idea, a photo of you with your pet is ok, but you may post only one, otherwise people think you will smell like your pet.

Logos and other misc images

The primary logo should be clean and easy to read and must follow any franchise rules.

Other logos. Badges and icons.

This is a place where people often get off track. Even though awards, citations and badges are important, they are not typically something that the visitor is looking for, so you want to balance how you inform the visitor that you are a professional and still get your main message out.

Posted 09.07.2011

The new version of CodeRazor.com has gone through several distinct build cycles so far.

1. Design and build rough site.
2. Move any elements that display on all pages to a single siteContent.php document.
3. Create a basic set of posts inside the pages to test with.
4. Move the posts to a single pageContent.php document.
5. Move the elements that represent the template structure to siteTemplate.php.
6. Add settings to each page to provide page level customization of things like the meta information. There is a matching set of settings in the siteContent.php that provides information that is used on all pages.
7. Move the templates that create the internal page sections to a pageTemplate.php document.
8. Clean up my php/html/css code, and make sure everything is moved to HTML5.
9. Build a few more site and page level templates to play with.
10. Build a program to build store and edit the posts in a database.
11. Build a blog program and add a blog page.
12. Add a gallery page to show my artwork and photography.

Note: At the moment the content displayed in the main area of a page is added to containers in that page then added to the siteTemplate.php page. So the site is running off one default template, but the internal page structures are inside the individual page files.

Adding All in One SEO Pack to your WP Site

Posted 07.15.2011

This is just a quick how-to for a buddy of mine...

• After you login to your wordpress admin, click the plug-ins button...
• At the top of the plug-ins page, click the "Add New" button, this will take you to the "Install Plug-ins" page.
• The default tab at the top will be "search", and that's what you want.
• In the search box, look for "All in One SEO Pack". This will return a list of results, find the one that is exactly "All in One SEO Pack" (there are a bunch with similar names) and click "Install Now".
• After the plug-in is installed, make sure that it is Activated.
• Go back to the plug-ins page and find "All in One SEO Pack" in the list... In the description area you will see something like "Options configuration panel | Upgrade to Pro Version | Donate | Support | Amazon Wish list"... Click the "Options configuration panel" link.
• There are 2 things you must do on this page.
  1. Scroll down to where you see "Plug-in Status" and choose "Enabled".
  2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the "Update Options" button.
• The rest of the fields in the form are optional... I leave most of them at their default.

As far as installation goes, that's it...

Now you will have a bunch of new fields below your edit box when you are creating new pages or posts... Take some time to fill out these fields, "All in One SEO Pack" is a great plug-in, but it works better and better based on the amount of info that you supply to it.

Focusing your message

Posted 04.28.2011

The message

People often have trouble figuring out what the message of their page is, so they end up with 4 or more main concepts all yelling for attention. Each concept keeps getting amped up so that it can compete with its siblings. Soon, all of the messages are lost to the visitor because the site or page lacks one coherent message.

Rules of thumb...

If the eye flows to the main message of the page and stays there till you have at least skimmed through, you are in good shape. If you have any trouble finding the main message then you need to re-evaluate your page. Are other elements on the page overpowering the message? Is the message not strong enough?

First look to see if you can, or need, to tone down the other elements on the page. The next step is to give the message some room. White space is a great way to add focus to an element. Your eye is naturally drawn to an object in an open space.