Q:  How do you represent a range of services that encompasses an entire holistic spectrum – and then add an eCommerce section to showcase a considerable entrepreneurial talent?

A:  Don’t Panic!

By harnessing a slick Slider mechanism, we were able to allow a swift visual appreciation of the range of services offered by Barb. The next issue was images; these had to be chosen carefully to present the type of service – and their color and texture required framing and color matching with an appropriate background.

As Barbara Ellen was already a gifted copywriter, the addition of targeted content was not an issue. Daylight Websites concentrated on the addition of required SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so that the Search Engines could effectively begin indexing her new website.

We linked the site to her Facebook and encouraged Barb to consider linkage to all other popular social media environments. These will be added before the store is launched – yes, the Store …

The perceived ‘clash’ between the eCommerce initiative and a more spiritual range of services was handled in two ways:

• visually
• architecturally

We intentionally delayed the Store launch to allow a separate website personality to be prepared. Barbara Ellen gets two sites for the price of one!

Although that sounds generous in business terms, a website duplication is a relatively minor event in WordPress. In this case the benefit of having the planned store placed slightly away from the peaceful tranquility of other Barbara Ellen activities is a sound strategy.

Barbara Ellen Enterprises is a Full-Service Daylight Websites client – designed for people who simply want the comfort of knowing they are being looked after.

Do your website plans require some strategical thinking?  It truly is part of what we try to do here at Daylight Websites. After all, your success is very closely associated with our own!

Contact us for a free evaluation and consult.

Another Daylight Websites design

We are having fun with a new client here in Maryland. Easton-based Ad Strategies specializes in organizing and promoting trade shows – in particular, Boat and Car Shows.

Daylight Websites were commissioned to build a new-look web site for an upcoming boat show in San Diego. The fun part for us was that there was no specific design guideline, just content.

We created several designs, but one was a clear favorite and we submitted it first.  The other prototypes were never viewed!

Check back for details of when this site goes live, meanwhile here is a link to the development version:

San Diego Yacht & Boat Show Prototype

For the techies, this was developed using WordPress v3.1.2, and a number of custom components. The majority of the work was customizing CSS. The basic design was completed in 3 hours.

Contact Daylight Websites for a quotation on your website project.

WordPress, the Daylight Websites choice of CMS, is clearly the 2010/2011 Market Leader

Hot on the heels of WordPress winning the 2010 Open Source Award, Water & Stone have released the related Market Share Report.

WordPress leads the pack.

“WordPress had a phenomenal year. Our research shows downloads up over 100% and page views for the project site up nearly 200%. Publishing and developer support also increased dramatically since the 2009 Report,” notes lead analyst Ric Shreves.

“While many of the other systems had good years, they were simply outpaced by the strides made by the WordPress CMS.”

Daylight Websites is unashamedly a WordPress shop. Not only is the software fast, easy to use and magnificently SEO-friendly, it enables us to keep our margins low, passing on remarkable cost-savings to our clients.

Blogs and Blogging are essential tools in the internet marketplace. Those who seek high traffic and good search engine rankings have no choice but to look seriously at the advantages. For those who do not have the time to blog, we offer our unique Blogging by Proxy service, where we blog for you, every week, in your name and with your unique voice.

We specialize in seamlessly inserting a WordPress blog into an existing site, or replacing your entire website with a WordPress-driven environment. The results are almost immediate and are happily cost-effective.

WordPress offers a paradigm shift: there is no longer a sound business reason to devote thousands of dollars per year to website creation and maintenance. A WordPress-driven website places control, content creation and ownership back where it belongs … in your hands!

Contact Daylight Websites to learn how an association with the best-of-genre CMS in the marketplace today can not only help your bottom-line, it will help you forge ahead.

In this series, Tim Twinam will continue to explore the history and culture of the Internet and the impact of modern day tools such as WordPress. Subscribe to his WordPress Series by email.

Regular blogging keeps the home-fires burning - need our help?

They say that a successful blogger should be controversial. This heading should upset one or two.

When training a Daylight Websites client, one of the most frequent debates is about the necessity of blogging. Our conversations from the very beginning underscore the importance of blogging. It is the reason we use WordPress, it is the essence of what Daylight Websites stands for and the range of services we offer.

At the core of this lies the unique ability of WordPress to automatically summon the search engines. the moment you publish something in WordPress, the software not only places your formatted contribution on your website, it also ‘pings‘ all the major search engines to let them know you have published. They come immediately – normally arriving within a few minutes.

The effect of this is dramatic. The updated Google search engine indexing formula is called ‘Caffeine‘ and it is well-named. Almost miraculously, your latest post will appear in Google under the keywords you chose for your all-important Title. WordPress allows you to dictate the URL layout as well, so you are able to control the two most significant components of a search engine result – the Title and the Link.

Why is this important? Because it brings traffic. Organic traffic. This is new traffic from the billions of people out there searching for everything under the sun – including your products and services. The freshness of your post will ensure that it is up there in the latest results and that will attract interest, clicks and visitors.

But you have other things to do. You have a business to run. That is why Daylight Websites offers a unique service that itself is listed at #1 on Google! Blogging by Proxy is our way of putting your money where our mouth is: we blog on your behalf.

It makes perfect sense. To make the most of the power of WordPress and the search engines, there is a set of rules. These rules involve the careful use of the key words and phrases that define your products and services. We are expert in the use of these techniques and apply them to a weekly blog post that is designed carefully to attract interest in one or more aspects of your specific niche market.

So go run your business. Go do what you are good at … we will keep the home-fires burning on your blog. One log at a time.

The 2010 Open Source Awards

One of the reasons it’s fun to work with WordPress is the often self-deprecatory nature of the humor of the developers.

When a company can afford to poke fun at itself or risk minimizing its achievements, you should immediately know that this is a sign of great confidence.

In the case of WordPress, it is well-deserved!

For example, read this announcement on their blog a couple of days ago:

WordPress Wins CMS Award

by Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress)

I was just informed that WordPress, in head-to-head voting against Joomla and Drupal, has won this year’s Open Source CMS Hall of Fame award.

We have to be careful because if this trend continues people might think WordPress is a real CMS, useful for more than just a blog. This would ruin our stealth campaign and might bring dozens of new users to the WordPress community. If you could keep this on the DL we’d appreciate it.

We don’t want WordPress to develop a reputation.

Full blog: http://wordpress.org/news/2010/11/cms-award/

WordPress was competing with two of the ‘heavy-duty’ market-leader Content Management Systems and won the Hall of Fame Award.

Drupal and Joomla!, the two losing nominations, are both excellent products, but they are 16-wheeler trucks compared to the size and speed of WordPress. With an extensive array of templates and thousands of  plugins it is possible to deliver a fully-functioning WordPress website in a matter of minutes.

Impossible?

secureRAD - brilliant advances in radiology

Oh no. Daylight Websites recently took an existing website, chose a suitable template, ported the existing content, added some SEO and had a new live website in just over a week. The original porting and development work was accomplished in just two hours.

The cost to the client reflected this speed – way under $1,000!  You try and do that with a non-WordPress approach …

The client, secureRAD, LLC, a Medical Imaging Services company in Maryland, was so pleased with the new look and functionality, they made a number of extra additions and changes. The resulting WordPress-driven website is already drawing new organic traffic and is attracting applause from a number of their clients and contacts.

WordPress is a remarkable environment and one which richly deserves it’s success.

We’re sorry about the ‘stealth campaign’ Matt. You blew it, not us!

In this series, Tim Twinam will continue to explore the history and culture of the Internet and the impact of modern day tools such as WordPress. Subscribe to his WordPress Series by email.

How to schedule a WordPress Post

If you’ve been following our series on WordPress, you will have already learned that this blog environment is far from being just a bloggers tool, it is a better mousetrap, it is easy to learn, it keeps the search engines busy (a very good thing) and … even helps you choose breakfast.

What you may not know is that WordPress has a feature that is guaranteed to extend your life!

» On the right-hand side of the ‘Add New Post’ screen lies the blue ‘Publish’ button that will simultaneously publish your new post and call the search engine spiders. It is the single most powerful mouse-click you can make in WordPress.

» Just above the ‘Publish’ button, note that the default setting is for WordPress to publish your post immediately.

» If you click the ‘Edit’ link alongside, you will see that a date and time can be entered. This can be set to any time in the future. It will instruct WordPress not to publish immediately, but to publish at the time that suits you.

» Once you change the date to the required date and time and confirm by clicking ‘OK’, the wording changes to ‘Schedule for:’ … and you can now continue to edit, add extra information, review tomorrow … or head to the airport.

» The blog post you have just edited will automatically publish at the date and time you specify. It’s magic and a much-overlooked feature of WordPress!

And just how will this help you live longer?

Easy! The famous Framington Heart Study showed that increased leisure time, including vacation, contributes to a greater positive attitude and fewer negative emotions and depression. People who enjoy more leisure activities report more life satisfaction and finding more meaning in life. They report having a lot of support from friends and having a large network of friends and family.

Among the benefits to be found from engaging in multiple activities are lower blood pressure, lower stress hormones and smaller waists.

See Heart Currents – http://heartcurrents.com/risk-reduction-heart-disease-30-vacation/

There's surfing ... and then there's surfing

Of course, it can be argued that what you do with your vacation is equally important to your longevity. My idea of a vacation involves white sand, warm sea breezes and something cool and delicious with a small umbrella floating on top.

The co-founder of Daylight Websites, C. Jane Taylor has rather different ideas.

She does have a smaller waist though …

In this series, Tim Twinam will continue to explore the history and culture of the Internet and the impact of modern day tools such as WordPress. Subscribe to his WordPress Series by email.

Play to your strengths, Potter

I subscribe to a Word-of-the-Day feed.  Today’s word of the day is Alchemical. Having once owned my own welding shop, alchemy is close to my heart. Online it is also close the premise of my work: Changing something small into something more meaningful.

My favorite Alchemist is Dumbledore played by Richard Harris (who else is there, really?). He advised his students to develop their individual, unique talents. Similarly, pop-psychology advises us “Do what you love and the money will follow.” In Hinduism, this is called svadharma and refers to one’s own right, duty, or nature; one’s own role in the social and cosmic order. In a business blog, this means authentic content.

Take some small aspect of your business, something you are passionate about, and make it your muse for an educational and lead-driving blog. Adding a regional slant will give your words even more impact in Google and on the street. This blog takes this notion to publication with great effect.

alchemical \al-KEM-ik-uhl\, adjective:

1. Pertaining to the transformation of something common, usually of little value, into a substance of great worth.
2. Relating to a form of chemistry and speculative philosophy practiced in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance concerned principally with discovering methods for transmuting baser metals into gold.

De tal palo, tal astilla.

It is a natural progression. Indeed, one could almost call it organic. First, WordPress, the most popular CMS on the planet, outsmarts the traditional Content Management System affectionados by removing the mystique, minimizing the jargon and maximizing the SEO impact. And now it offers you breakfast.

Daylight Websites was founded one morning over a cup or three of fresh ground coffee in late 2009. C. Jane Taylor and I had served a four year tenure in the traditional web design industry. Jane is an accomplished SEO Tactician and Copywriter and I have been writing code since the days of punched cards (anyone remember Hollerith Code?).

We realized that a new SEO-tuned website could be created in just a morning using the WordPress capability of installing, thematically designing and functionally customizing – in sometimes just a few mouseclicks. When we stirred-in the uniquely powerful ability of WordPress to literally call the search engine spiders to every new posting, we realized we had a recipe worth attempting.

Our first public tasting of the concept resulted in that stunningly motivational sound of a check being torn out of a check-book – before the sales meeting was even over! We had our first client. A short while later, their first Google Analytics report showed an astonishing 700% increase in traffic!

Modern web design and development is perhaps not such a far cry from the kitchen after all

As with any new idea, there were lessons to be learned. Using a theme is not always the easiest route if the proposed design is non-traditional. Fortunately, certain WordPress themes are highly customizable: the default Twenty Ten allows you to change header, menus and sidebar content; Arjuna and Atahualpa offer far greater flexibility but demand a higher level of technical ability; the increasingly popular Thematic requires the use of child-themes; the list goes on …

Our favorite quickly became Suffusion. This free WordPress theme allows Daylight Websites to quickly produce customized websites by manipulating the settings in its comprehensive setup pages.

We’ll share some more of our discoveries in the weeks ahead, but for now its time for breakfast, several clients are waiting and FoodPress is tempting us with an array of early-morning treats.

In this series, Tim Twinam will continue to explore the history and culture of the Internet and the impact of modern day tools such as WordPress. Subscribe to his WordPress Series by email.

The forgetful iPhone 4

On Monday November 9th, 2010 the iSomething generation all across USA may be arriving an hour late for work. Using the well-worn Microsoft technique of releasing all software without adequate testing, Apple has just been made aware of a programming bug that means all pre-set iPhone alarms will ignore the ‘Fall-Back’ change in Daylight Savings Time at midnight tonight.

iPhone users in Europe and Australia reported the problem as their DST changed last weekend. The notice is too soon for Apple to make a fix and so, on Monday morning, non-iPhone users in USA will possibly enjoy an extra hour of peace in the office.

How the US economy will survive without a  proportion of the iFolk at work for an hour on Monday is uncertain.

One thing for sure is that this time, Apple cannot blame me. I didn’t do it.

How to fix your iPhone:

• Open the Clock application.
• Click on the Alarm icon at the bottom of the screen.
• Click the “plus sign” icon in the top right corner.
• Create an alarm and make sure you have the “repeat” option set to “never.” (The glitch only occurs with repeat alarms, such as those workers set to wake them up at the same time each weekday).
• Select the appropriate time and sound, and click “save.”

Alternatively: