Now, with the help of a new plugin I found out last week, I am able to add a picture slider to themes created with Artisteer.  This is what the finished website looks like:

Click here for a Live Demo

Do you like it?  This is how I did it.

What you need:

• Artisteer – I am using version 3.1.0
• Easing slider plugin for WordPress – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easing-slider/
• A “Company Logo” image 900 x 150 pixels to be used as the header picture.  Note: Logo has to fit on the top 110 pixels because the menu will cover the bottom 41 pixels
• At least 3 pictures for the slider, 900 x 225 pixels each

We start by creating a theme with Artisteer (If you want to skip the next few steps, Click Here to download a copy of the Artisteer Theme and files already configured):

1. Open Artisteer, and select  a new WordPress Theme.
2. Go to the “Colors & Fonts” tab, click on “Color Themes” and select “Silver Stream” (under Bluish).
3. Go to the “Layout” tab:

• Click on “Design Layout” and go down to “Menu Inside Header”, select the fourth one to the right. This is the one with the menu at the bottom of the header picture.
• Click on “Sheet Width” and select 900 pixels.
• Click on “Columns” and select two columns, with the sidebar to the right.
• Click on “Column Width” and select 225 pixels (this will be the width for the sidebar).

4. Go to the “Background” tab:

• Click on “Fill Color” and click on White.
• Click on “Texture or Image” and select “No Texture”.
• Click on “Light Effect” and select “No Glare”.

5. Go to the “Sheet” tab:

• Click on “Border” and select “No Border”.
• Click on Shadow” and select “No Shadow”.

6. Go to the “Header” tab:

• Click on “Height” and select 150 pixels.
• Click on “Fill Color” and select White.
• Click on “Background Image” and upload the “Company Logo” picture you created before.
• Remove the Headline and Slogan Text.

7. Go to the “Menu” tab:

• Click on “Length” and select “Page Width”.
• Click on “Menu Styles” and select the eight design from the left column.
• Click on “Styling”, then click on “Align” and select right Justified.

8. Go to the “Footer” tab:

• Click on “Length and Position”, select “Page Width”.
• Click on “Fill” and select the darker blue at the bottom-left side.

9. Once you have finished with the design, save it and export the files for WordPress.

Next, we need to create a template for the homepage of our theme. This template will have the picture slider on it.

Go to the theme directory created by Artisteer, an copy the file “page.php” to “page-homeslider.php”. Edit the file “page-homeslider.php” (you can use notepad for editing), and replace the first line:

<?php get_header(); ?>

With these lines:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Homepage Slider
*/
?>
<?php get_header(); ?>
<br /><br /><?php if (function_exists('easing_slider')){ easing_slider(); }; ?>

Save the file. Copy the theme folder to your WordPress installation, and activate the theme.

Copy the Easing Slider plugin to your WordPress installation, and activate it.

Once the plugin is activated, you will see a new tab on the left side labeled “Easing Slider”. Click on it.

The first page is used to add the pictures for the slider.  Copy the pictures you want on your slider to a directory on your WordPress installation. For this example, let’s say you are using the following directory:

http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/images

If this is the case, then the path to the pictures would be something like this:

http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/images/image-1.jpg

Using this path, add the pictures to the slider.  For example, under “Image #1 Link:”, put the path for the first image on the field labeled “Image Path”. Do the same for all other pictures. Save your work.

Next, Click on the tab “Slider Settings”.  Set Slider “width” to 900 pixels, and Slider “height” to 225 pixels.  Save your work.

Now create a page to be used as your homepage.  On the right hand side, under “Template” select “Homepage Slider”. This is the file we just created (page-homeslider.php). After you finish with the page, Publish it.

To make this page the home page, click on “settings”, then on “Reading”. Click on “A static page (select below)”, and select the page you just created from the list. Save your changes.  This will make the page you just created your homepage.

That’s it. You should be able to look at your website and you will have a slider on your home page.  Some of the settings I have used are my own preferences, such as the size of the pictures on the slider, choice of colors, transitions, etc.  You can change these to anything you want.  Go ahead, experiment.

I hope this was helpful, leave me comments below and let me know what you think.

Once I have the theme installed and “tweaked”, I start looking for web graphics. Web graphics can be anything from pictures, Buy Now buttons, Bonus Boxes, etc. I have to say, I am not a graphics designer by any means, but I know enough Photoshop to be dangerous. The problem is that my knowledge and time are so limited, that I need to look for outside sources for my graphics.

And this brings us to the Marketing Graphics Toolkit. The Marketing Graphics Toolkit is a set of 21 modules, each one containing a bundle of graphics elements, such as:

• Website headers
• Website templates
• Squeeze page templates
• 3-D book scripts (to create a 3-D version of a book)
• Website headlines
• Call to action buttons (buy now, add to cart, etc)
• Box shadows (for awesome special effects)
• Hand written fonts
• Hand drawn arrows
• Ribbons
• Button shapes
• And a lot more…

All the graphics come with the finished graphic, in addition to the source file in case you want to make changes. I think this is one of the things that makes this package so powerful. Most other packages contain only the finished graphics, so if you want to make any changes, forget about it!

One other thing, you don’t have to know or even own Photoshop if you need to edit these graphics. Most graphics on this package come in both Photoshop and Sumo Paint format. If you are not familiar with Sumo Paint (I wasn’t until I purchased this package), Sumo Paint (http://www.sumopaint.com/) is a 100% free web application that works just like Photoshop, so that you can modify graphics, pictures, etc. NOTE: There are a few graphics in the package that require Photoshop, but they are few and they are highlighted so you know who they are. Also, included in the package, there is a beginner’s video tutorial for Sumo Paint.

Here are some examples of the graphics that come with the package:

You have to agree, these are high quality graphics. I have spent A LOT of money purchasing graphics to put on my websites. Some are expensive, and nowhere near as nice as these. The designer, Max Rylski, has personally created all the graphics, making them original and not a re-hash of other graphics.

The second best thing about this package is the price. As of the publishing date of this article, the price is a one-time charge of $9.95. Yes, all of this for only 10 bucks! It almost seems like a typo, but that is the price I paid for them. It is definitely the best value around.

So, in closing, I cannot say enough good things about this package. As a matter of fact, I have already used these graphics on this website. Check out the Bonus Boxes on the front page. I personally think they look very good.

If you want to take a look at the complete offer, click on the picture below. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

I don’t know about you, but once you get good at WordPress, you use it for all your website and blog installations. I personally do several installations a month. One thing that I noticed was that, after a while, you tend to use the same plugins for all your installations. The problem with this is that you end up installing and configuring the same plugins over and over again. It can get very tedious.

Here is where WPTWIN saves the day. WPTWIN will not only copy your database, directories, files and plugins, it will also copy all the configuration settings for your site, including plugin configurations. This is an incredible time saver!

Let me explain in more detail. For example, you want to make a copy of a WordPress installation from a site located at www.abc1.com to a new site located at www.xyz2.com. This is what I used to do:

• Create a backup of the WordPress database at www.abc1.com.
• Copy the database backup to your local disk.
• Edit the database backup file, and replace the URL path from the old URL (www.abc1.com) to the new URL (www.xyz2.com).
• Install a fresh copy of WordPress at www.xyz2.com.
• Install all the plugins and create any necessary directories at www.xyz2.com (make sure the directory structures of both installations are the same).
• Copy any files, pictures, etc. to the new installation (www.xyz2.com)
• Use the edited backup database to restore the database at www.xyz2.com.
• Log into www.xyz2.com, activate and configure all the plugins and settings.

If everything went well, in about an hour, I would have a copy of www.abc1.com on www.xyz2.com. This is a lot of work, especially when you start doing several sites a month. In contrast, with WPTWIN this is all I do:

• Create a copy of the website at www.abc1.com using WPTWIN (WPTWIN creates a “backup” file).
• Install a fresh copy of WordPress on www.xyz2.com.
• Copy the WPTWIN “backup” file from the root directory of www.abc1.com to the root directory of www.xyz2.com.
• Deploy WPTWIN “backup” file on www.xyz2.com.

That’s all! In a few seconds I have an exact copy of my site!

Another great application for WPTWIN is to create a “generic template” for your WordPress installations. This template has all the plugins that I normally use, configured they way I want, including all the directories and files. This saves a lot of time every time I have to do a new installation. I just restore my WPTWIN “generic template” over a fresh WordPress installation and half the work is done!

One other use for WPTWIN is for making site backups. Make a copy of your site using WPTWIN, and save this copy as a backup file. I had the unfortunate experience of having one of my sites hacked. No problem, I deleted the hacked site, installed a fresh copy of WordPress, and used WPTWIN to restore the backup file I created previously. I was back in business in less than 1 minute.

I cannot say enough good things about this program. I use it all the time, and it has been a life/time saver. I highly recommend this tool.

To find out more about WPTWIN, click on the banner below. Good Luck!

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After an extensive search on the Internet, we found a solution, so I decided to share it with you. The problem has to do with the editor in WordPress. When you save your work, most editors parse the code and sometimes “add” stuff to the code (why? – I do not know). The problem is that they will add stuff to the View Cart button code and this will cause the error. A way to get around this is to create a “custom field” in WordPress so that the editor will not “muck” with the PayPal code. This is how you do it:

Step 1 – Get the custom-fields-shortcode plugin. Install and activate it.

Step 2 – Now we need to create a custom field for the View Cart code. On the page/post that you want to include the View Cart button, go down towards the bottom of the screen and find the “Custom Fields” area.

Click on “Enter New”, and enter any name you want to call this field. For this exercise, we will call it PayPalViewCart. Next, go to the “Value” area and paste the code from PayPal. NOTE: The PayPal code must be in one contiguous line. You can do this by editing it using notepad. When you are done click on “Add Custom Field”.

Step 3 – Go back to the editor, and type the following code where you want the button to appear:

I hope this has helped, let me know if it worked for you.

Two things have happened since I wrote that post. First, the plugin used to create the Flash header – Flash Fader Revived – has been removed from WordPress, nowhere to be found. Second, starting with release 2.4, Artisteer has incorporated the Flash header capability into the software. What this means is that now you don’t have to “tweak” any files to add a Flash header to your theme. On the other hand, now you have to provide a Flash “movie” to be displayed in the header area.

To take care of the Flash movie, I have found a great simple program called Amara Slide Show Builder. With this program you only add the pictures you want, set the size, the transitions and let it create the Flash movie for you. You don’t have to know any Flash whatsoever.

To your WordPress success,

Ovidio.

Do not be scared of technology because it can be a valuable ally in implementing any local marketing plan. As for websites, you need not break the bank in order to create a customized and professional website for your business. You only need to hire the right professionals and then add some creative juices to your campaign.

Here are some guidelines to make your business website an effective local marketing tool:

1. When a potential customer uses a search engine to find a business, they will most often choose one from the first two pages that displays. Getting your business to be visible to your customer can often depend on your ranking on these search engines. Making information about your business and site readily available, and using keywords, can get you ranked higher on a search and, most importantly, seen.

2. You may already have an existing website but if it is not getting the desired traffic and exposure you need, then you may have to give it a new look. Most people believe that a nice-looking website with lots of graphics is enough to get the attention of their customers. However, you need to make your website SEO-friendly so it is easily crawled by the search engines. Even the color of your website and the font type and size used can make or break your Local marketing strategy.

3. Potential customers have certain expectations when searching for products and services. Your website should capture the essence of what your business offers. Classy, well presented sites that are user friendly will be more attractive to your customers and keep them coming back.

4. To avoid distracting your readers, avoid using graphics that take precedence over the written material. Focus your efforts on quality work and information that is interesting to the reader and which provides value. Nobody likes reading material that is lacking or leaves the reader asking empty questions. Again, the information is more important than your image.

5. To avoid having your site ignored all together, be sure not to use to many keywords. Search engines are particularly picky with how many keywords are mentioned in an article. Use the right amount of keywords for your site will greatly benefit your local marketing strategies.

There are many different SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques used by local marketing experts, but the most appropriate strategy will always produce the best results for your business. Ethical or “white hat” SEO strategies are highly recommended so that you don’t get penalized by Google and other search engines.

See more traffic, leads and sales from your local marketing and understand exactly how the search engines see your website by visiting Macro Marketing Solutions today for a free personalized website evaluation. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory.

Note: This is a third party post on my blog. I do not endorse nor do I receive any compensation from any links displayed on this post.

Step 1 – Create a template using Artisteer. After saving and exporting the template, go to the exported directory (the directory with the WordPress files generated by Artisteer).

Step 2 – Open the file “style.css” and search for the word “header”. You should find a block of code like this one:

This will give you the size of the header picture. For this example, the header picture is 874 by 225 pixels. Write these numbers down. Close the file.

Step 3 – Create at least two header pictures using your favorite image editor. Make sure the size matches the size in the “style.css” file. For this example the size is 874 by 225 pixels.

Step 4 – Go back to the exported directory and make a copy of the “header.php” file. I like to do this as a precaution (make a backup). You may want to call this copy “header-OLD.php”. Edit the “header.php” file. Go to the bottom of the file, and look for a block of code similar to this one:

You will be replacing the line containing the “Header-jpeg” class definition (depending on your design, there might be other lines present) with the following LONG line (I had to break down the line so that it could fit on the screen):

Make sure you replace YOURDOMAINNAME with your domain name, and WWW with the width and HHH with the height of the header picture. For this example, we will use 874 for the width, and 225 for the height. To download a text file of this line, click here.

After you made the changes to the line, replace the “Header-jpeg” line. The file should look like this:

Step 4 – Download the template to your WordPress installation.

Step 5 – You need to download and install the Flash Fader Revived plug-in. This plug-in will allow you to add flash to your WordPress installation. We will be using it to add flash to our header picture.

Step 6 – After installing the Flash Fader Revived plug-in, click on “Settings”, then on “Flash Fader Revived”. NOTE: You need to set up the options on this plug-in BEFORE you upload your header pictures.

On the Flash Fader Revived screen, click on “Advance Display Settings”, and enter the correct width and height of the header picture. I also like to play with the “Image Display Time” – this defines how long the picture will be displayed before it changes. Personally, I like to set it to 4 seconds. Save your changes.

Next, you are ready to upload your header pictures. You need a minimum of 2, no maximum limit (that I know of).

After all these changes are done, you should see your header changing on your WordPress Website. Pretty cool!!!

I hope this has been helpful. To learn more secrets, click on the link Make a Website using WordPress.

I have created a video tutorial on how to create a custom background for Artisteer. This custom background can be used when creating a WordPress template to be used when creating a website.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

To learn more secrets, click on the link Make a Website using WordPress.

What are templates?

Templates are basically variations on the layout of your default theme. You use custom templates when you want a page to look different from the rest of the other pages on your website or blog. When building or creating a website, you need to think on the layout first. For example, when I created this website I needed the home page to be the whole width of the page, with no sidebars on either side.

For this example I have created a theme that has a left sidebar, an article center, and a right sidebar. This will be called the “Default Template”. Next, we are going to create three custom templates: one page with no sidebars (full width), one page with the left sidebar and the center article (no right sidebar), and one page with the center article and the right sidebar (no left sidebar). I will show you how to do this quick and easy.

Step 1 – Create Artisteer Theme (Default Template)

Go into Artisteer and create the following theme for my WordPress Website:

Step 2 – Create template files

As you can see, this theme has two sidebars (left and right) and an article center. What I want to do is create three different templates:

Sidebar Left with Center

Center Only

Center with Right Sidebar

After creating the theme you want, export it into a directory. Go to this directory and find the file “page.php”, and make three copies of it and call them:

page-sb1-center.php – sidebar left with center
page-center-php – center only
page-center-sb2.php – center with right sidebar

You can actually call them anything you want, I like to use descriptive names.

Step 3 – Research the definitions

Let’s take a look at the original page.php file:

I have highlighted the two lines we will be editing. The first line:

defines the left sidebar (sidebar 1) and the center content. The second highlighted line:

In this article I will share with you some of the techniques I use to set-up SEO when building a website with WordPress. I hope you find them helpful.

I. Domain Name

SEO starts with the domain name. Make sure your domain name contains keywords that you want to rank for in the search engines.

For example, if you create a website about dog training, make up a domain name such as DogTrainingForPuppies.com, or DogTrainingForPoodles.com, or DogTrainingSecrets.com. The trick is to use the word “Dog Training” at the front of the name, followed by some other words.

II. Page SEO

Every time you create a new page (or a post) on your website, make sure you do individual SEO for each page. For example, if the page has to do with dog barking, make sure you “sprinkle” the keyword around the page:

• The title of the page has “dog barking” somewhere in it
• The keyword “dog barking” appears in the first paragraph of the content/article
• The pictures on the page are named using “dog barking” as part of the name

III. SEO Plug-ins

There are two great plugins available for WordPress to handle SEO on your website. Make sure to download them before you create your website:

All-In-One SEO

After you install this plugin, click on “Settings”, then on “All in One SEO” to set-up the following fields:

Click on “Enable” to enable the plugin.

Home Title (Title Tag) – This is the title of your website Homepage (what shows on the top-left hand side of the browser). Make sure you use relevant keywords when creating your website title.

Home Description (Meta Description Tag) – This is a brief description of your website’s Homepage. This description is displayed by the search engines when displaying your website information. Make sure to include all relevant keywords.

Home Keywords (Meta Keywords Tag) – This is a list of all the relevant keywords for the website, separated by commas.

Next, remove “| %blog_title%” from the next 6 “title format” fields. After all the changes are completed, click on “Update Options” at the bottom of the page.

When adding a new page, make sure you fill in the following fields in the All in One SEO Pack section:

Title (Title Tag) – This is the title of your new webpage (what shows on the top-left hand side of the browser). Make sure you use relevant keywords.

Description (Meta Description Tag) – This is a brief description of your new webpage. This description is displayed by the search engines when displaying your website. Make sure to include all relevant keywords.

Keywords (Meta Keywords Tag) – This is a list of all the relevant keywords for the new webpage, separated by commas. Remember, these keywords are related to the theme of this page in particular. For example, if the page is about dog barking, make sure to include dog barking related keywords.

Ultimate Noindex Nofollow

There are certain webpages and links that you do not want the search engines to index. Pages such as Contact Us, Sitemap, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, etc; you want to exclude from being indexed. To do this, you need to add a “nofollow” and “noindex” tags to those links.

Install the Ultimate Noindex Nofollow plugin. Click on “Settings”, then on “Ultimate Noindex”.

On the “noindex” box, type the Page ID of the pages you want to add the “noindex” tag. To find the Page ID, click on “Pages”, then move the cursor over the page you want add. Look at the bottom left of your screen, and you will see the Page ID

The last number is the Page ID (in this example, it would be 3).

Next, click on all the “Add noindex” boxes in this section.

I recommend also adding the “nofollow” tag to the same pages as before. To do this, go to the “nofollow” section and add the page slugs of the pages you want to add. To find the page slug, click on “Pages”, then click on “Edit”. For each of the pages you want to include go to the top of the page and look at the Permalink path. Copy the last part of the pat, this is your slug. For example, let’s say you are editing the page Contact Us. The slug for this page will be “contact-us”. Do this for each one of the pages you want to include, and copy the slug on the “nofollow” box.

Next, click on the boxes for Nofollow archive links, register link and login link. When all the changes are done, click on “Update Options”.

NOTE: If your WordPress Theme has footers, you need to add the “noindex” and “nofollow” tags manually, if necessary. This is very easy. Click on “Appearance”, then on “Footer”.

For example, let’s say you have a link for “Contact Us”, it should look something like this:

Change it by adding the code in red:

Make the same changes to all the other links as appropriate.

IV. Permalinks

Permalinks define how the path on the pages of your site will be structured. In order to have a more “website-like” pathnames (for example: www.domainname.com/pagename), we need to set a custom permalink setting.

Click on “Settings” drop down menu and select “Permalinks”. Click on “Custom Structure” and type the following setting: /%postname%/

Click on “Save Changes”.

V. Pictures

If you are going to use pictures in your page, make sure you do not call them P1.jpg, P2.jpg, etc. Use related keywords to name the pictures. For example, you are adding pictures to a page dealing with dog barking. Call the pictures something like dog-barking-poodle.jpg, or dog-barking-muzzle.jpg, etc.

The easiest and most SEO friendly way to store your pictures is by creating a directory in the root directory of your website (this is the directory in which WordPress is installed), and call it something like “dog-training-images”. Then set WordPress to store your images there. This will make the structure of your site look more like a website than a blog.

After creating the directory on your root directory, click on “Settings”, then “Miscellaneous.” Replace the pathname under “Store uploads in this folder” with the name of the directory you created (for example: dog-training-images/), and uncheck “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders”. Click on “Save Changes”. From now on, when you upload a picture it will be saved in an SEO friendly directory.

VI. Backlinks and Anchor Text

Backlinks are very important for getting your site indexed quickly. Backlinks are links from other external websites/blogs/articles back to your site.

For example, let’s say you are publishing an article, and at the end you put the following sentence:

For more information on Dog Training your puppy, click here.

In this example, you are setting “click here” as the link back to your website. The words you use for your link are what’s called “Anchor Text”. The anchor text will become the “title” for that link. In this example, the search engine will index the link under the title “click here”. This is not good. What you want to do is include your keywords as part of the anchor text. For example, let’s re-write the previous sentence:

For more information, check Dog Training for Puppies for tips and ideas…

In this case the link (Anchor Text) is “Dog Training for Puppies”, which will give you a more powerful backlink.

I hope these tips and ideas have been helpful. To learn more secrets, click on the link Make a Website using WordPress.