Here’s an example of how the Slidedeck content slider wordpress plugin can be used to present product images on a client site:

Glamyards Jewellery

The post Slidedeck for Client Sites – Glamyard appeared first on Dragons Net Solutions.

In our view, Canvas is one of the most powerful and adaptable themes out there, and you don’t even have to worry about using any CSS code – which can be extremely confusing!  When getting started with the Canvas (Woo Theme), it can be a little daunting because you know there is so much you can do but where to start?

Here’s a few simple things we can suggest that will help you go through the theme quickly and easily.

Once you’ve installed the theme and set up all of the important plugins that you’ll need (I’ll advise on this in the next post) then you’re ready to start the fun stuff.. designing!

Firstly, on the left column of your WordPress dashboard you should see a ‘Canvas’ button.  This should bring up a bunch of options such as General Settings, Styling & Layout, Magazine Template etc.

Go through each button and subheading and fill out what you know.  Here are some of the important ones:

General Settings - Quick start is very useful if you already have a logo and favicon in mind.  (A Favicon is a the tiny 16px by 16px logo that shows up in the URL bar right next to your website name.)

Styling & Layout, here you can choose exactly how your website with look!

Go to General Styling to choose your website colours including background colour/image, text, link and hover colours.  Tip: Sometimes it helps to research other similar sites to yours to get some inspiration.

General Layout will give you examples of how you can situate your website with columns, sidebars and footers.  (All depending on what kind of content you have to display.)

Top Navigation / Primary Navigation refer to both menu bars, one above your header and one just below.  Here you can choose colours, font styles and borders.

Header, here you can either upload a background image or pre-designed title header OR you can make your own within the theme.  First make sure you have your desired title typed in under General Settings, Site Title.  Then simply choose colours, fonts, size and borders.  If you’re wondering what padding is, it is extremely useful!  Use padding to move the title as far left, right or centered as you wish.

Widgets is a great one to design as this will be what your sidebars will look like.

Footers are effectively widgets that will show up at the bottom of your page.  It’s always a good idea to make these subtly stand out from the rest of the page so they are noticeable but not distracting.

REMEMBER: once you’ve finished with all these designs, you won’t have to come back and do it again, however you can see just how easy it is to tweak any design faults that are niggling at you!  We hope this has helped you boost your creativity with the Canvas Theme.

DRAGON’S TIP !

Unless you have specific colours, logo and design look for your company, all of this can prove to be a trial and error method.  Our advice is to try lots of things by adjusting different settings and seeing what looks best.  Have fun with it and eventually you’ll find something that looks perfect!

The post Tips for getting started with the Canvas theme appeared first on Dragons Net Solutions.

Which Hosting Company Should You Use

When you build your website,
there is NOTHING more important
than your hosting company.

There are SO many hosting companies out there and yes, you would THINK that they all offer pretty much the same thing,but they DON’T!

You should always choose one of the mainstream companies who are going to be around for years to come rather than one of the new ones that come and go.

Some hosting companies have a non-standard control panel and they don’t always offer the standard tools one would expect when you are developing a website. A MUST HAVE function that your hosting company MUST offer is a standard control panel, or ‘ CPanel ’ as they are commonly know in the industry. I won’t go into details about CPanel here but to cut a long story short, it takes a lot longer to do some basic tasks with a NON standard control panel.

We have used the same hosting company for years and we thoroughly recommend HOSTGATOR.

Hostgator is a US based company, probably one of the biggest and most reliable out there.

Their support is exceptional and their site ‘downtime’ is virtually non existent.

( It’s sometimes thought that if you are in the UK you would want to use a UK based hosting company rather than one in the US, however, we like the reliability and support we get from Hostgator and don’t feel there any  SEO benefits of using a UK based host company over a US one.

For most of our clients we recommend their ‘Baby Plan’ which has everything you need for a small business including the MOST important functions on Cpanel, the web standard internal control Panel which includes Fantastico, a one step WordPress installation process.

When we are asked to quote for designing a WordPress site for a client, are estimates are always slightly higher when a clients hosting account does NOT include CPanel with Fantastico as the whole WordPress set up takes that much longer.

( When you go through the purchase process, don’t bother signing up for SiteLock  or gobi site builder at this stage )

Hostgator Hosting Baby Plan

Includes

• Cpanel WITH Fantastico
• Unlimited eMail accounts
• Web Mail
• Unlimited Disk Space
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• Unlimited Domains Allowed
• Unlimited Add on Domains

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