Solutions by Heidi Offering technical solutions to users.

I started playing with Joomla, a content management system, and I am addicted.   I love learning new technology and this is so flexible and allows you to create a really nice looking site in a short while.  

I am currently working on redesigning DigiScrapInfo.   It originally was create piece-meal fashion.  At first we only need a blog and forum.  Then we needed this or that.  And it kind of just grew and grew.   Well, I am revisiting it and turning it into one cohesive site.  And enjoying the fun and challenge of it.    I am still working on graphics and filling in the content, but here’s a sneak peak…

I also helped a friend out and her site when live on June 1.   I helped behind the scenes to setup a Joomla website for her, (taught her Joomla management) and created this site for her.   DigitalScrappingStudio   Here’s a image of it:

Podclass’s blog is up and running. I am very happy how this blog turned out. Gary (owner of Podclass) was great to work with. We chose a theme and customized it. We turned it into something that matched his website but not so similar that it seemed like part of the website. I would classify it as Clean, Simple and Elegant.

This was my first Wordpress 2.5 blog that I did. I have to say that I really like the new admin interface behind the scenes. I think that letting the user know that there are new upgrades available is very nice. Although I have to say, I use Live Writer and once a blog is setup, I rarely go into the blog admin interface.

Have you looked at Podclass’s concept? “teach online classes, share information, collaborate, and learn from other experts” I just finished an online live class through another website and I am going to try out Podclass’s service for some mini-workshops that I want to do.

I also upgraded ConnieBensen.com to Wordpress 2.5 last week. I knew Connie was on vacation and wouldn’t be blogging for a few days so I took the opportunity to upgrade her blog. She had been asking for a few changes for a while. So during the upgrade, I made those changes as well. She also didn’t know her blog was the guinea pig for the upgrades. (But that’s was sister’s are for.)

During an upgrade its a great time to clean house. I went through all the plug-ins and determined if they were being used. Got the new updated plug-ins and found some new plug-ins. Unfortunately not all plug-ins have been updated for Wordpress 2.5 yet but I found different ones and some were determined to not be worthwhile. I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t have to do anything to the theme. That was nice. We’ll see if the other themes on the other blogs I need to update are 2.5 friendly.

I have been busy, busy, busy so I neglected my poor blog.

First, we have been working on our basement ourselves. That seems to take a lot of our spare time. But it gets me off my computer. (Well, except for when I shopping for items to buy for the basement.)

I have developed a class and am teaching at Jessica Sprague’s website. Read more here about it here:

• Click here to learn more about Getting Organized with ACDSee Photo Manager class

I have developed the class with a twist. The class receives a guide for each week, videos on the different topics and then at the end of the week, we all come to together in live video/audio presentation and I answer questions they may be encountering. In addition, I am answering questions all throughout the class via forum and email and students receive daily tips and updates.

In addition, I have been working at DigiScrapInfo and other digital scrapbooking sites answering ACDSee questions. In addition, I was trying out ACDSee Photo Editor Beta 2008 and doing a little scrapbooking. I got 2 of my children’s school books almost done and started scrapping a few pages of my 2007 year book.

I also am busy working on customizing Podclass’s blog.

Social Media Conversations

Working with Sean was great. Sean is busy and traveling a lot so the work on it was done over a period of time. We also had to roll domains to a new host and that added a new twist.

Sean is very happy with it so I am glad. Sean’s comments on his new blog: A new look and feel for this blog…

Oh everything and anything.

I am close to rolling out a new customer blog. I am not going to post the link yet though since we are working with rolling domains and the new domain isn’t setup yet. This was my first experience of rolling a domain and it went pretty smoothly (the rolling part) but making it the main domain was a little more bumpy. Oh well, sometimes a bumpy road keeps you on your toes. This customer was so unlike my sister (who wants it yesterday) so I have been working on it periodically for the last month.

Since I last checked in:

http://tyandmari.com/ has been up and running for a while! It looks great. Mari does a lot of widgets and stuff and I did cleanup on the theme and tweaked some things.

http://whyfacebook.com/ is another blog of Mari’s that I am working on. The majority of the work here was getting the theme she liked widgetized so far. We’ll see what else we customize.

What else is going on?

• I am answering dozens of questions coming through DigiScrapInfo and trying to maintain that site. Connie and I were just looking at the stats and are pretty amazed. Considering it is site that only has specialized information and sells nothing, we are seeing traffic of 250 people or so a day with a majority of them being new visitors.
• I am also exploring more opportunities with the ACDSee Photo Manager tool. Once those details are in place, I’ll share some of that. It’s something I have always wanted to do but have never chose to do it.
• And my husband and I are working on our basement. I have determined porcelain tile is one of the hardest materials you can build with. But I now have a whirlpool tub deck and backsplash completely tiled and grouted, all done by me! The tile floor is next but am waiting for bathroom walls to be put up.
• And last but most important, taking care of the kids. For a majority it is the routine, school, homework, run them to things, volunteer at school, etc.
• And a few days this last month, I even sat down and did a little bit of my hobby, digital scrapbooking.

That’s about it.

I think finding a wordpress theme that you like and want to use is an art. Obviously, you could start designing a wordpress theme from scratch but this takes time, money or software skill.

What I do is first find out what the user likes. Some general things they want to do with their blog. In my sister’s case, she wanted white, simple, with red enhancements. She liked 3 columns too. And she went looking for themes. In the first theme she picked, we found out that we weren’t allowed to customize the footer. Obviously this is the author’s choice and we ended up changing themes because we did want to customize the footer. So here are some suggestions:

1. I suggest to go blog hopping to see what catches your eye and write down a list of things you like. (kind of like blog shopping)
2. Then go narrow down the themes based on your list, (main color scheme, number of columns, etc.) As I am narrowing down choices, I pay attention to:
   1. Number of downloads of theme
   2. User comments on theme (a lot of unhappy people is a bad sign, author commenting or suggesting is a really good sign)
   3. What version of wordpress the theme works on.
3. Read the rules and limitations on the themes you narrowed down.
4. Verify the blog theme looks good in IE and Firefox before you start. A well written theme should work in both.
5. I do a quick browse through the code, looking to see if:
   1. is well written
   2. has comments (nice bonus)
6. Lastly, load the theme and start playing with it a little. This is the ultimate test. Don’t be afraid to change themes either. The first theme I picked for digiscrapinfo.com, I realized that we could do better, so I changed the theme.

Have you ever had one of those days where you hear electronic beeps and just don’t know where they come from. For the last month, it’s been crazy around our house.

At the beginning of this month, I kept waking up to a 5:00 am alarm that turned itself off after a few minutes. It wasn’t mine or my kids. It took me a week to figure out that it was my husbands time/temperate watch we took camping and he had left it our master bath. So that got turned off cause I am NOT happy being woke at 5:00 am.

Then another alarm started late in the evenings. I soon discovered that was the kid’s stop watch they use for timing reading/sports. That stopwatch has 2 buttons and I need to find the directions to get that turned off. At least it isn’t waking me up.

Sunday morning, I awoke to my son’s alarm and got up and turned it off. Only to hear another buzzing. I followed that sound and arrived in the kitchen. After searching for about 10 minutes, I gave up and tried to go back to sleep but by then my husband was up looking for the sound. After another 10 minutes we found a electronic meat thermometer buzzing because of low battery. So much for sleeping in on Sunday morning.

Now my old cell phone is chirping every 10 minutes because it is running out of power. That got turned off.

I am sure soon another electronic thing will start beeping at me soon.

Through Connie, I met Mari and am working on her blog. Mari and her husband have sold their home and now starting to travel across the country. And here is what Mari says about her blog: Mari is keeping a travelogue on this blog as we travel around the US and Canada. We’ll share the good stuff along with all the crap - no holds barred! It’ll be Ty and Mari unplugged.

Mari picked out 2 themes that she liked. She didn’t totally love either of them but they pointed out the elements she liked in both. I picked the one that seemed the easiest to add the elements that she liked in the other theme and were missing. So I have fixed the theme, modified some graphics, added a few features, helped Mari get some plug-ins going, and suggested more plug-ins that are valuable to running a wordpress blog.

The original theme: Blue Paradise 1.0

Mari’s blog:

I think Mari’s blog is coming together quite nicely.

This all started when I got the idea to start:

DigiScrapInfo

I created a Wordpress blog and phpbb forum. I customized the themes and had fun. About 1 month later, I realized what I really needed to do and overhauled both the blog and the forum to make it more functional. I learned about SEO’ing, subscribing to all those web 2.0 tools, and adding cool and new things to the blog. Over the past year, I have created a full website with a self-serve feel where the users can get information. And if the user can’t find it, we point them to it.

ACDSee’s Blog

I then helped getting ACDSee’s blog up and running and customized it with plug-ins and SEO’ed it. The theme & customizing of the theme was done by ACDSee’s graphic designer.

ConnieBensen

This is the latest blog that went live. (Okay, not including this one.) Connie started blogging within 24 hours of it being installed. I told her to wait but she wouldn’t listen. (Since when does an older sister listen to a younger sister?) I scrambled to get the theme customized, statistics in place, SEO’ed and also worked out some host delay problem within a week. There is still a few more tweaks to do but for the most part it is complete. Well, until dear sister goes and breaks it and I get a panic email or call.

Welcome!

After setting up Connie’s website, I have had some requests for doing work on other’s blogs. After setting up, customizing and maintain 3 blogs, I have learned a great deal and find the work easy. So what do I do? I go setup a 4th blog, this one. This blog will stay simple. Mainly, I will use this blog to help show my clientele what I have worked. But who knows. If you were to ask me a year ago, “Are you going to have a blog within a year?,” I would have said no. The internet is an ever changing place and we all need to adjust our thinking every once in a while.