Just because you are no longer part of a larger company does not mean you don’t need co-workers. Being an independent business owner is the best way to create a working environment without the dreadful BOSS, but must not be an excuse to ‘go solo’ or ‘work for no-one’. If you feel this way, you might want to consider becoming an artist.

As a independent professional you are still participating in the economy, whether global or local. One observable fact concerning the world of ‘free professionals’ is the existence of creators and facilitators.

Due to the nature of our modern market it is not sufficient to create goods and services like cloths and holistic medical care: you must also study the needs of real people in your community, advertise and sell your products, keep the IRS friendly and acquire resources. Similarly, inside a large company there are several departments often including Sales, Marketing, Fincance and Production. You might think only of yourself as Production wanting to leave the burden of departments behind. Just take a second to imagine where you fit inside the ‘virtual company’ of a network you belong to: you might discover that you are actually a facilitator.

For example, Adal Design might be creating websites but this is only to facilitate other small businesses in reaching their target audience to sell products such as dog walking: a service that rarely serves to assist another company. In this sense, Adal Design serves as the eMarketing department (or part of it) for a large sphere of independently owned companies.

Remind them why they need you.

If your company helps others get business, you are most likely providing professional services. This means that you embody a certain department in the ‘virtual company’ of your network, and for your clients this embodiment is VERY REAL. By doing your job well, you are accomplishing the great task of enabling others to bring their share of work to the community. It remains your responsibility to remind them by tangible results why they must invest their income into your support.

Likewise, heads of corporate departments must constantly work to remind the board why they are essential to the big picture.

Remember why you’re doing it.

As the owner of Adal Design, I am proud of my professional service offer: building websites is not only a task that I can follow from start to end for a large variety of people and experiences; it also means that I get to help others like myself remain free from the corporate machine while bringing their very personal vision and efforts to the world I live in.

What makes me struggle to always increase my business and provide better service is the thought that I am making a difference in shaping the professional landscape of today.

So remember: providing professional services to small businesses is more than a trade, it’s a statement.

You wouldn’t overlook the neighborhood you chose for your business, and the same goes for your host. You will be entirely dependent on that host to process and make available your content in a fast and reliable fashion.

Knowing which hosts are best for you and how to transfer domains and upload/install websites via FTP is not learnt overnight. How will you react when a press release has your 200 daily visits sky-rocket to 200’000?

We will gladly be your host or hosting consultant, setting you up and taking care of the entire process.

Adal Design takes pride in providing qualified, personable service even years after the creation of a website.

Having a website is a start, but if you rely on it to draw business and maybe DO business, it will need some maintenance. If you wish, we will continuously work on helping you take your web-presence to the next level.

Once your website has a steady amount of daily visitors, Adal Design can use some of the most elaborate tools available to track, analyze and direct traffic to where you want it. Figuring out which changes in design have an impact on conversion rates is no guessing matter, and we take it quite seriously.

If you have a website, or are in the process of obtaining one, you want people to come see it. Attracting visitors can be a challenging task, especially if you don’t know where to begin.

Fortunately, SEO is almost a science.

Search engines were created to index, filter and serve users the most relevant pages on a silver platter. More than ever, people depend on these engines to send them exactly where they want to go, to find precisely what they are looking for.

Thus, the logarithms of Google, Yahoo!, Altavista, Bing, etc, attempt to rate as flawlessly as possible the content, quality, popularity and pertinence of every single website.

It’s no secret then that optimizing these aspects of your website is the way to go:

• Knowing which keywords to use and how to include them.
• Presenting content in a pleasing fashion.
• Choosing a purpose and staying true to it.
• Offering a large amount of pertinent content (blogging helps).
• Increasing the amount of inbound links to reflect popularity.

To be done properly, these optimizations require the intervention of an experienced professional who is knowledgeable about search engines.

Don’t be afraid of online advertising.

For a website that already fulfills the specifications of Search Engine Optimization and can live up to its advertised expectations, paid promotion can pay back. Purchasing detailed listings in popular, sector specific directories will increase traffic and popularity ratings. Also, companies like Google, Yahoo! And Bing will place your ‘sponsored link’ when appropriate, and only charge you when people click on your ad.

With increased exposure, some of the visitors who enjoy your site will post links to it on their sites, forums and blogs, and soon enough organic searches will list your website in the top results.

We can help you reach the top,
and track success along the way.

Behind every color, column, button or image there is code. Whether this code is hand-written, software generated or adapted from something else, it must be flawless.

Adal Design takes pride in writing code that is:

• Appropriate for the specifications
• Optimized at every level
• Free of mistakes and highly browser-compatible
• Standards-compliant
• Simple to read and modify, thus scalable
• Geared towards Search Engine Optimization

The quality of your website’s code can be a foundation for sustainable growth, but if disregarded, a liability in everything you wish to accomplish.
Do it once. Do it right!

What types of code, and for what?

To illustrate the nature and function of different coding languages, let’s compare a fully functional website to a human body…

• HTML [spoiler]This is the most basic language of the web, and the most important. HTML ‘tags’ are placed around bits of content (sometimes empty spaces) to group them and give them ‘IDs’ and ‘classes’. A set of simple rules must be carefully respected for the “grammar” to be correct, and using the correct tag for each piece of content is essential for SEO.[/spoiler]
  In the human body, HTML tags would be used to group matter into cells and give them a name.
• CSS [spoiler]This more recent language was created to serve a double purpose. Developers use CSS to ‘call’ an HTML tag (or group of tags), then customize its appearance and properties with simple lines of code called ‘rules’. These can range from color to size and positioning. The first purpose of CSS is thus to give developers the same freedom as graphic designers in the creation of their web pages. The second purpose, yet no less important, is part of a global effort to separate content from layout in order to slowly shift towards the ‘semantic web’.[/spoiler]
  In the human body, CSS code would be used to organize the HTML cells into functional and well defined organs.
• JavaScript [spoiler]Not to be confused with Java, JS is an object-oriented type of code that is supported by the vast majority of browsers and employed in most websites today. Unlike Flash that is used to create a tile of hyper-animated content to be placed on a website’s page; JavaScript can be used to animate and manipulate any element of a page, including something that is not written there. JS can be used in more ways than can be listed here, but overall it can be employed to what CSS is incapable of by offering more freedom for layout, animation and content manipulation.[/spoiler]
  In the human body, JavaScript would be used to give the body mobility and even complex reflexes.
• Php [spoiler]Of the many server side languages, php is perhaps the most widespread. Created, used and documented by an open-source community, it has many appealing advantages. It is free and ready to be used on most hosting servers. It is extremely well documented, has been improved by custom libraries like phpCake and evolves relatively fast. Created by developers, for developers, php is behind many frameworks such as Joomla and WordPress. Php can be used to perform just about any server-side processes, the most basic being deciding which client side code to send to a user requesting a page.[/spoiler]
  In the human body, php would clearly be the brain’s ability to play with ideas, make decisions and adapt to situations.
• SQL [spoiler]Intelligence without memory is pointless. This is why php-powered websites are almost systematically coupled with an open-source database technology: MySQL. SQL is the limited-vocabulary language used to read and write on a MySQL database.[/spoiler]
  In the human body, SQL is a specific set of rules to access and use long term memory.
• XML [spoiler]The fairly recent success of XML lies precisely… in its popularity. Being adopted by an ever-increasing amount of web-applications and software, XML has become the universal exchange markup language it was intended to be.[/spoiler]
  If our human lived in the USA, XML would be English: the language he uses to communicate with everyone else.

Whatever the project, whichever the language:

In everything we touch, we leave a trail of well-developed code.

Like a building with hallways and rooms, a website is a virtual space made of links and pages, some of which contain ‘machinery’. And like a factory, it is built to produce.

Three key aspects of the construction must be particularly well thought for the ‘factory’ to produce:

• the architectural structure
• the space layout or ‘interior design’
• the ergonomics of various control panels and widgets

Every website is built for a reason.

Websites must be created to fulfill specific functions; these can vary to a degree, but most are a result of the desire to:

• Inform or promote
• Sell or generate leads
• Enable  communication
• Preview and share data
• Access core functionalities of online software

The structure, layout and ergonomics must reflect and enable the goal of the website. Today, no one wants to read instructions on how to perform a task online, and finding content should be a breeze. A visitor who does not obtain some form of instant gratification will simply navigate away.

Being able to predict the growth of a website is a difficult task, but starting off with a clear structure will always provide a solid foundation for scalability. Establishing a clear plan will make both the initial development and any expansion smoother and less-time consuming.

There are known techniques for success.

One of the most efficient ways of assuring good usability is to employ conventions gracefully:

• Placing navigation and content where people expect to find them.
• Making links and important information stand out.
• Making obvious to the user where he is and what he can find there.
• Organizing everything into small, intuitive semantic subgroups.

Adal Design has a history of success in efficient organization and layout of website projects.

Giving your company, product or self an “image” is essential to successful marketing. Once that style is defined, staying true to it in all forms of media communication is essential. An image is worth a thousand words, but one that is learnt through subtle repetition can be worth millions.

Design:

Design is the art of using esthetics as a universal language to seamlessly convey a large amount of holistic messages.

The design of your website, business cards and other supports leaves implicit impressions about the various aspects of your identity:

• Sector of Industry
• Price Range
• Targeted Public
• Spirit and Angle
• Intentions and Concerns

If you have not already made these decisions concerning your company or product, the design of your first advertising media is a perfect moment to sit down, research and reflect.

If you already have a clear idea of the market and your angle of approach, then you understand the importance of appropriate design.

Unless you have budget or time constraints, it is a good idea to establish a graphic chart to serve as a guide for the creation of your web and print media.

For graphic charts and general design, there are an infinite number of factors to manipulate. Some questions are common to all projects and include:

• Colors and how they relate
• Fonts, text styling and header hierarchy
• Layout and spacing
• Common shapes
• Image types

Sometimes, an entire design must be extracted from a single idea. Other times from a speech, a conversation or an object. Ideally, extended market research and experience can replace a game of guess and trial with a calculated decision based on solid data. Perhaps you already have a clearly defined esthetic and need someone to create more material without any innovation.

Adal Design is up to the challenge.

We will gladly bring you website drafts, business cards, stationary and flyers. Adal Design prides itself on flexibility, as we strive to meet your needs and work within your budget range.

As the owner of this website, I would like to express my gratitude for the priceless help provided in Graphic Design by Katherine Kratzer and in Copy-Writing by Red Plume Marketing.

I would like to use this occasion to make a few announcements regarding Adal Design:

1. As one of the first visitors to this website, you are invited to attend a special presentation “Wow the world with WordPress” at Next Space on Tuesday the 24th. More details here.
2. If you mention code “WordPress FOREVER” in a quote request for a WordPress website before October 1st 2010, you qualify for two years of free hosting for any WordPress website you purchase in 2010.
3. As of August 24th 2010, Adal Design will donate 3% of all profit earned in WordPress development to the creators and contributors of WordPress.

That’s all folks, I’ll meet you on the contact page!

It has hit the fan!!! – - – - – - GoDadddy did it!

They did awesome marketing, and created an expense ladder in place of a user interface.

They trick so many, every day… So many of my innocent, well intended customers and friends buy their domain on GoDaddy. Then they sign into more expenses on long term commitments, creating a feeling of commitment and attachment.

It’s all based on a few simple strategies:

1. Hook with the the cheapest initial sale possible.
2. Make further purchases necessary but promising.
3. Rely on thrift and cognitive dissonance to create a dependency.

GoDaddy’s psychological war-fare comes at a nifty price for the Webmaster/Developer. They replaced the cPanel with a sales portal… OUCH

Nothing works on the first try, and finding the settings and applications requires clicking through all sorts of internal advertisement tunnels.

Bigger titties  – - – - – - – FatCow. Meuh

FatCow is certainly one BIG spiritual step up from GoDaddy’s sexual advertisement schemes. Their ‘Plesk‘ (slightly mispronounced Desk) is not the most popular but does the job. I enjoyed it very much before discovering the pleasures of the cPanel.

Their marketing remains somewhat aggressive. Clearly, they hire MANY professional bloggers to blog away about the awesomeness and convenience of FatCow, effectively drowning a lot of the complaints. Real posts concerning FatCow are actually quite hard to find. The truth is… FatCow kinda sucks too.

It’s GREAT if you do static HTML… ahem. It gets kinda slow with WordPress and I can only assume that other awesome applications would suffer a lot. So for those statics still out there… I know you are… Go FatCow and make sure to get your first year coupons! That’s right, FatCow is darn cheap for what it offers: unlimited everything (pretty much) and decent support. It is cheap. Just remember that.

$0 hosting! $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ dotEA$Y

Ok, yeah I’m exaggerating. They’re not all about the buckos. Or maybe they are. I don’t know.

I left DotEasy a long time ago, only using it for my very first websites because they would basically give you a domain and host your website starting at $15/yr approx.

It’s dirt cheap. It’s the dot made easy.

Can’t afford – to be cheap —————-> BlueHost

But it’s not EXPENSIVE.

Thanks to BlueHost I imported a domain from GoDaddy and imported two WordPress custom blogs in no time. What took long was getting on the phone with GoDaddy to inquire about installing WordPress on their server.

You might think that GoDaddy is easier for you because you’re not very technical. You might think it will end up cheaper, and that the money you save will somehow help you.

BlueHost only costs $7/month. That’s really not not that bad.

What do you get in exchange?

The entire world of FREE, AWESOME OPEN SOURCE APPLICATIONS installable with Simple Scripts!

BlueHost is a company with a high level of consciousness.

The only purchase-able items make sense:

• getting the one-for all plan (well managed, shared server)
• ADDING domains ($10/yr per extra domain)
• serious upgrades (dedicated IP, dedicated server)
• third party offers (often upgrades for services already provided for free)

These items are not shoved around at you… you have to WANT to find them.

The User Interface chosen by BlueHost is cPanel, a seriously built piece of software made to optimize the experience of ANY LEVEL person wanting to host a website.

The world would somehow feel more green if everyone went Blue.

WordPress pages lack categories & tags:

Posts are entered into a database and need search-oriented categorization systems in order to be found and displayed in a WordPress theme. They are placed in hierarchical categories and associated with tags.

Pages on the other hand are expected to be more solid in their structure. Categories and tags are not available in WordPress pages: the only way to organize them is in hierarchy of each other. A page may both BE the child of another (its parent) and HAVE other pages as children. That is all.

Page templates are great…

It is possible to create and assign as many different page templates to WordPress pages as you wish. This way you can have different pages display their content quite differently. So you can have as many page templates as you want, and you can assign a template to as many pages as you want. NOT BAD.

…but what about the header?

The whole point of having the header.php, page.php and footer.php seperate is that it replaces the need for templates. With database technology, we have moved away from generating large amounts of static HTML pages with common ‘template’ code, to dynamically assembling different building blocs, THEN loading unique content into thus generated HTML pages.

So what if I want the header’s appearance to change depending on which section of the website I am?

Conditional Tags are awesome…

Let’s take a look at how to play with identifying which page we are on. This way we can use wordpress-specific php conditional tags to control the code that is included in the page sent to the end user.

// using the php if statement, we can test the values of WordPress specific tags:

// to test if you are on the index page of your domain
// remember you can set a static page as your front page in settings>reading
if ( is_front_page() ) { ... }

// to test if you are on the WordPress index.php template page of your theme
if ( is_home() ) { ... }

// to test which page you are on by ID number, page_title or post_name (slug)
// we will assume we are always interested in page with postID: 6
// the postID of a page is the number at the end of its 'edit' URL in the CMS UI
//
if ( is_page('6') ) { ... }

// to test if you are on a page that is a child of page 6
if ( $post->post_parent == '6' ) { ... }

// to test if you are on page 6 OR one of it's DIRECT children
if ( is_page('6') || $post->post_parent == '6' ) { ... }

// to test if a specific page template is being used
if ( is_page_template('page6template.php') ) { ... }

// to test if the sidebar is being displayed
if ( is_active_sidebar() ) { ... }

// to test if comments are enabled. useful to distinguish blog from pages
if ( comments_open() ) { ... }

… but $post->post_parent only works for direct children!

So what if we want to test whether we are on a level-4 descendant of page ’6′? Indeed, placing pages as children of children of children is the only way WordPress allows us to organize large amounts of pages.

The WordPress codex website suggests we create a is_tree() function and place it in the functions.php template file of our theme:

function is_tree($pid) {      // $pid = The ID of the page we're looking for pages underneath
	global $post;         // load details about this page
	$anc = get_post_ancestors( $post->ID );
	foreach($anc as $ancestor) {
		if(is_page() && $ancestor == $pid) {
			return true;
		}
	}
	if(is_page()&&(is_page($pid)))
               return true;   // we're at the page or at a sub page
	else
               return false;  // we're elsewhere
};

Then you can use that function to test if you are on a specific page or any of its descendants.

// to test if you are on page '6' or any level descendant of page '6'
if( is_tree('6')) { ... }

Creating a $grandpa variable:

It can be practical to create a $grandpa variable that is loaded with the postID of the first ancestor page of the current page (the great-grandpa!).  This way you can test the value of that variable, or write it into HTML, CSS of JavaScript.

In his post on CSS Globe, Alen Glakalic gives a method to do precisely this. Paste this code in the <head> of your header.php template file:

if ($post->post_parent)	{
	$ancestors=get_post_ancestors($post->ID);
	$root=count($ancestors)-1;
	$grandpa = $ancestors[$root];
} else {
	$grandpa = $post->ID;
}

Now $grandpa is the numeric postID of the first ancestor of the page you are on, or the ID of the page you are on if it has no parents.

Real life applications:

OK, so now you know how to test whether you are on the home page, the blog index page, a particular page or one of it’s descendants. You can test if the sidebar is being displayed on this page or if a particular template is being used… You can even create a $grandpa variable and test its value or echo it where convenient.

Example 1: Load a CSS and jQuery file in header only for descendants of page 6

Let’s say you want to use colorbox (or lightbox equilivalents) but only in the portfolio section of your website. You only want to load scripts when necessary to avoid waste of bandwidth.

1. Create a “portfolio” page and set all children as ‘sub-pages’ in the WordPress CMS.
2. Find out the postID number associated with the “portfolio” page. We will assume it is 6.
3. Add the is_tree() function to your functions.php template page.
4. Type this code in your header:

<?php if( is_tree('6') ) { ?>
 <link rel="stylesheet" href="/path/to/your/script/styleSheet.css" type="text/css" />
 <script type="text/javascript" src="/path/to/your/sript/colorbox.js"></script>
<?php } ?>

Example 2: Assign classes to menu elements with jQuery and $grandpa

Say you have a website divided into three sections: About us, Products and Portfolio. The menu navigation has three big links to the sections and drop downs for their sub-pages. You want the big link of the section being visited to change style when someone is viewing one of its sub-pages in order to make it obvious to the user where he is.

I. Create the links and assign id tags based on the postID of the top hierarchy page they link to:

<ul id="menuNav">
  <li><a id="menu-item-2" href="/about-us">About us</a></li>
  <li><a id="menu-item-4" href="/products">Products</a></li>
  <li><a id="menu-item-6" href="/portfolio">Portfolio</a>
    <ul><li><a>...sub-page...</a></li>
        ... sub-pages ...
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

II. Give them style on your CSS sheet:

ul#menuNav li {
 float: left;
 list-style: none;
}
ul#menuNav li a {
 display: block;
 width: 100px;
 padding: 5px;
 text-align: center;
 color: white;
 font-weight: bold;
 text-decoration: none;
 border: 5px solid blue;
 background-color: green;
}
ul#menuNav li a:hover {
 border: 5px solid black;
 background-color: white;
 color: black;
}
ul#menuNav li a.active {
 border: 5px solid black;
 background-color: #ddd;
 color: black;
}

Note that the last rule refers to <a> with a class of “active”  that we have not assigned yet. This is precisely when the $grandpa variable comes in handy.

III. Use javascript and php echo together to make magic!

Using php to echo the $grandpa variable into a line of Jscript, we will be able to achieve our effect with minimal scripting:

//in the <head>...

<?php
if ($post->post_parent)    {
 $ancestors=get_post_ancestors($post->ID);
 $root=count($ancestors)-1;
 $parent = $ancestors[$root];
} else {
 $parent = $post->ID;
} ?>

<script type="text/javascript">$(document).ready(function(){
   $('a#menu-item-<?php echo $parent; ?> > a ').addClass('active');
});</script>

IV. Sit back and enjoy the effect!

Now, not only will the main links react to hover, they will also change style to indicate which section of the website you are in, or in other words, which of the 3 master pages is the first ancestor of the page you are currently viewing.

And Voila!

I hope you found this article useful to understand various techniques for using WordPress page hierarchy and properties to customize content and appearance.

Before I dive into the image-rich detailed description of the process, let’s take a few second to remember why and how we would do such a thing…

The internet has changed.

Just a few years ago, web developers were quite content creating static pages of information and posting them onto the web like tiles on a wall. With the blog-revolution began a series of innovations that enabled non-technical people to easily publish data on the internet. Sites like Wikipedia, YouTube and Blogger started offering a new way to look at the internet: rather than an accumulation of domains and sites, it became a collection of databases and ways to access them.

By now, in many ways thanks to open-source developers of projects such as WordPress, the frontiers between websites are falling apart. Content and styling, data and presentation: these entities are being defined, separated and re-invented.

Though I personally build websites that are made to attract, retain and remain in the bookmarks of internauts, the fact is that you are publishing on the web, you want to people to read and watch everything you post. You can expect everyone to constantly come back to your website to check if you have added anything new recently.

This is why RSS feeds were invented: by formatting your posts in a specific fashion made precisely for distribution, RSS feeds, automatically available on most blogging platforms, are the best way to send your posts flying everywhere.

Back to Linkedin feed display.

The process is extremely simple, even easier than on facebook in my opinion.

Step 1: Edit your profile.

Simple to understand: in order to add something to your profile (this is where the blog posts will display), you must edit it.

Step 2: Add an application.

Scroll down the profile-edit page till you see this:

In Linkedin, everything that is not a direct display of a Linkedin information field is called an “application”. These applications are made available to you for free and function surprisingly well.

Step 3: Choose the most appropriate application.

There are a certain number of applications to chose from, I will review three:

Blog Link:

The Blog Link application is extremely powerful. It basically searches your profile to find the link the RSS feed for your blog. For it to function well, you must make sure that you have already edited your profile to display a link for your blog.

The Blog Link application doesn’t stop there. With ambition to provide a large amount of ‘blog functionality’, it will ALSO search the profiles of your Linkedin contacts and fetch the feeds for any blogs THEY listed. It then creates a box with two tabs where you decide to display it (see step 4): “By Me” and “From My Contacts”.

If you are running a non-wordpress blog, this is really your only option, and it ALSO works with wordpress.

WordPress:

This application is much simpler and more straightforward. It does exactly what you expect it to and nothing else. You tell it what your feed URL is, and it displays it on your profile.

Pros: I personally like the fact that is it less intrusive, and find the display to be more attractive that Blog Link’s.
Cons: It only works with WordPress blogs.

Tweets:

This application does not display your blog posts, but your tweets instead, so if you’re a Twitter type… well Tweets too can be distributed via RSS!

Step 4: Choose where to display… and DO IT!

Well that pretty much sums it up. Once you’ve made this far there’s no hesitating!

Choose where you want this Feed to read by checking the little boxes and click the big blue button.

If you’re curious but afraid to do it… have no fear, you can always come back here the same way you did last time and un-check those boxes.

I hope you found this tutorial useful, feel free to leave your comments or ask questions.

Soon I will explain how to make a WordPress blog generate self-linking Tweets, so stay tuned.