Web Designer & Online Marketing Blog

5 Reasons Why Websites Still Matter | Web Designer & Online Marketing Blog | Valpo Creative [Digg]

Digg — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:27:19 PDT

As you leverage social media and other forms of online marketing to increase awareness of your brand, your websites still remain most popular with

Web Design & Your Online Reputation | Web Designer & Online Marketing Blog | Valpo Creative [Digg]

Digg — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:36:45 PDT

We tend to think of the SEO fundamentals when we think of online reputation management: get a high Google search ranking and backlinks from popular

Web Designer & Online Marketing Blog | Valpo Creative » Phantom Blue Blogger Theme - Blending strategies to build your brand [Digg]

Digg — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:33:23 PDT

Phantom Blue theme is an seo optimized theme with Popular posts and floating social share buttons included.

10 Useful Responsive Web Design Tools | Web Designer & Online Marketing Blog | Valpo Creative [Digg]

Digg — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 23:24:37 PDT

Responsive design is all about adjusting designs to accommodate screens of different sizes. If you want to create a responsive web design you should use fluid

Content Marketing Checklist for Facebook [Digg]

Digg — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:25:33 PST

Content Marketing Checklist for Facebook

Creating a custom WordPress theme options page [Digg]

Digg — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:55:54 PST

Creating a custom WordPress theme options page

20 Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Small Business [Digg]

Digg — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:33:51 PST

20 Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Small Business

Finding killer SEO keywords for content marketing: Part 1 [Digg]

Digg — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:19:41 PST

Finding killer SEO keywords for content marketing: Part 1

Optimize Your Social Media Schedule: 4 Tips for Avoiding the [Digg]

Digg — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:19:26 PST

Optimize Your Social Media Schedule: 4 Tips for Avoiding the

Web Design Trends Infographics [Digg]

Digg — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:29:51 PST

five website design & Development infographics based on popular online trends. The following five infographics are displayed in order of coolness, good design and creativity.

Step Away from the Social Media: The Top 10 Social Media eBooks of 2011 [Digg]

Digg — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:05:50 PST

Step Away from the Social Media: The Top 10 Social Media eBooks of 2011

Future Trends: 2012 Online Marketing & Technology Predictions [Digg]

Digg — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:58:13 PST

Future Trends: 2012 Online Marketing & Technology Predictions

5 Webmaster Tools to Analyze & Check Your Sites Health. [Digg]

Digg — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:52:40 PST

The following is a list of 5 webmaster tool to help you analyze and optimize your site for maximum loading & SEO performance...

More People Now Using Mobile Apps Than Browser — comScore [Digg]

Digg — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:50:19 PST

More People Now Using Mobile Apps Than Browser — comScore

Google Reveals 2012 New Year’s Doodle [Digg]

Digg — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:44:02 PST

Google Reveals 2012 New Year’s Doodle

Web Design & Your Online Reputation

Valpo Creative — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:48:19 PDT

We tend to think of the SEO fundamentals when we think of online reputation management: get a high Google search ranking and backlinks from popular sites. But the design of your website has as much to do with how popular it becomes and ultimately how associated you become with positive searches. In this day and age, we’re obsessed with the figures behind solid search engine optimization and reputation management.

Sometimes it’s something as simple as a design flaw or a fluke in your visitor connectivity that keeps you from getting the high-ranking positive online reputation you deserve. It all boils down to how many people visit your site, how long they stay there, and which links they click. Design, therefore, is essential to your reputation. How else can you expect to generate a mass amount of visitors who spend quality time on your site if they can’t navigate it effectively? How can the important links be clicked if you don’t take the time to properly lead visitors to them through the way you’ve built your site? Integrating automatic user-oriented experience-enhancers is a great way to keep a steady stream of traffic without having to put in extra hours of website management. Non-intrusive perks offered to visitors in the form of honest savings and bonuses can keep them there longer and more importantly keep them coming back. Such tactics require a delicate balance between “overwhelming” and “obnoxious.” You don’t want to annoy visitors but you also don’t want to give them too much to think about. Don’t hesitate to post user-accolades regarding your website on it for others to see. You should be proud of your ability to please visitors with your knowledge sharing and revealing that fact to other visitors is a great way to drive up those hours of traffic. Never forget how important website design is in the maintaining of your online reputation. It has the power to boost your website’s popularity in the most organic of ways. When it comes to Internet marketing, old tricks still stand out as the best, and you can’t go wrong with doing everything you can to present to your visitors the best website experience you can offer. [sb name="show-post"]

5 WordPress Speed Tweaks

Valpo Creative — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:08:05 PDT

1. Shrink your images.... Here is a good free website that wil do that for you imageoptimizer 2. Use Expire Headers for your files & images, you can copy and paste this script below to your htaccess file:

# BEGIN Expire headers

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 600 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml "access plus 600 seconds"

# END Expire headers

3. Minify & shrink your CSS and JavaScript. The Minify CSS portion is a bit easier then Javascript minify, simply copy your plugins CSS files to your theme css after you deregister the file(I will explain this below). What does this this do? Reduces HTTP requests, instead of having queries/requests [sb name="hide-post"]made for your theme css and every plugins css file when your site is loaded, in my case that would be 40 calls/40 queries, you will have just one. Compressing Javascript Go to plugin, click "edit" search for ".js" ending files, copy or cut, the codes and paste them here jcompress, hit compress & paste your new shrunk code back & update. Compressing CSS For plugins that have long & necessary CSS files(I will also get into this more below), follow the same steps ".css" copy or cut, the codes and paste them here csscompress, hit compress & paste your new shrunk code back & update. 4. Use cache plugin, personally I have tried W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and Quick Cache. I did find W3T Cache to be by far the best all-in one fully featured caching plugin for wordpress. W3TC has every feature you could possible ask for (Some users have reported that W3T does not always play nice with other plugins), if you are one of those users, go with Quick Cache, it will play a lot nicer with multiple plugins. A killer combo recommendation that will get you as close to the w3T cache plugin as possible is Quick Cache, DB Cache Reloaded Fix & WP Minify. Speaking of cache, adding cache control headers can also help, here is another script you can add to your htaccess file:

# BEGIN Cache-Control Headers


Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592000, public"

 Header set Cache-Control "max-age=604800, public, must-revalidate"

 Header set Cache-Control "max-age=216000, private"

 Header set Cache-Control "max-age=600, private, must-revalidate"


# END Cache-Control Headers

5. Last but not least, deregister your plugins scripts on your functions.php file. A lot, if not most plugins like to add unecessary css styles to your beautiful blog, so let's go ahead and deregister them. Step 1: Go to your plugins, click "EDIT" search (cntl +F) for this code in your plugins file, "wp_enqueue_style" and find the handler that is calling upon this plugin (the code next to "wp_enqueue_style" in (parenthesis).. Example: I searched for "wp_enqueue_style" in a plugin called "please stop putting unnecessary scripts in plugins" and I find this=

wp_enqueue_style( 'stop-putting-unnecessary-scripts-in-plugins-css' )

The handler here is = 'stop-putting-unnecessary-scripts-in-plugins-css' Step 2: So I copy all the codes in 'stop-putting-unnecessary-scripts-in-plugins-css' file and paste it to my theme's CSS file (usually style.css). This is not always necessary, then I head over to my functions.php file, click edit & paste the following code. Step 3:

add_action( 'wp_print_styles', 'my_deregister_styles', 100 );

function my_deregister_styles() {
wp_deregister_style( 'stop-putting-unnecessary-scripts-in-plugins-css' );
// deregister as many stylesheets as you need
}

Let's just say I wanted to deregister 3 more css files from "please stop putting unnecessary scripts in plugins" plugin. Find handler, you can copy the code to your theme's CSS, not always needed & deregister it.

add_action( 'wp_print_styles', 'my_deregister_styles', 100 );

function my_deregister_styles() {
wp_deregister_style( 'stop-putting-unnecessary-scripts-in-plugins-css' );
wp_deregister_style( '1-no-purpose-css-codes-css' );
wp_deregister_style( '2-seriously-why-add-useless-css-codes-to-plugins-css' );
wp_deregister_style( '3-another-useless-code-css' );
}

Let's move on to javascript. SAME EXACT THING EXCEPT WE ARE SEARCHING FOR "wp_enqueue_script" Deregistering JavaScript can be more meaningful given they are usually more useless then the unnecessary CSS, but cause conflicts Jquery, which by the way is already built in to Wordpress so it doesn't need to be loaded once again. For fun purposes, let use "please stop putting unnecessary scripts in plugins" plugin. This is what the deregister in functions look like:

function my_deregister_javascript() {

wp_deregister_script( ‘I-serve-no-purpose-js’ );
wp_deregister_script( ‘I-load-already-loaded-jquery-to-your-blog-js’ );
wp_deregister_script( ‘hi-im-jquery-conflict’ );
}

With CSS, deregister all after you copied the file to your theme CSS, with Javascript deregister 1 by 1 to test and see if your plugin has been affected by it, if you have any trouble with this Let me know because my plugin "please stop putting unnecessary scripts in plugins" is currently under development.

Author:Tony Porto

Kansas City full-service web design studio. Web Developer & SEO enthusiast.

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5 Reasons Why Websites Still Matter

Valpo Creative — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:28:06 PDT

As you leverage social media and other forms of online marketing to increase awareness of your brand, your websites still remain most popular with consumers surpassing social media business pages. According to statistics from the Global Web Index report "22 percent of U.S online users visit branded social networking page such as Facebook Business pages while 62% regularly visit branded websites. If your small business website is becoming outdated, consider a redesign. The figures above clearly point

[sb name="hide-post"] out, websites still matter. 1. Branding: Your website means your web design, flexibility to optimize the user experience in ways that follows your business model and brand-related goals, no competition on your webpage, only branded content that is controlled and directed by you. 2. Control: once you manage your own web site, you control everything: the code, hosting surroundings, content, and what ever else you decide to integrate. simply as i discussed higher than with regard to branding -- here too you've got the elasticity needed to form little or sweeping changes at can, a plus you do not get with third-party websites. With sites like Facebook, you'll be able to amendment minor graphics and a few content however not code, navigation theme, server speed or the graphic user interface. 3. The Content: more content is found on your website then in any other social platform, content on your site does not competes for your visitor's as they do in social platforms. produce compelling and helpful content that speaks to why somebody is visiting your website and you stand a better probability of that visitor taking action with respect to your product or services. And since inventory (i.e., internet pages) is just about unlimited on a website below your management, you have got ample chance to feature further content and calls-to-action within the format you deem most applicable. 4. SEO: your website distributes natural search results (SERP) that drive pre-screened traffic to specific URL's on your site where you would like guests to be. 5. Analytics: While several social utilities, platforms and networks give access to knowledge associated with demographics related to who accesses your profile and the way usually they are doing thus, web site analytic tools go abundant deeper. they will give you with the sort of business intelligence you would like to work out in real-time how your online marketing performs and stacks up against the competition. What does this mean? It does not mean I recommend you drop social in favor of your own website, simply means lead first with your business website, followed by social media and other forms of marketing that drive traffic to your website helping you generate qualified leads and convert viewers into customers. What do you think? [sb name="show-post"]

Legal Firms turn to content marketing

Valpo Creative — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 09:26:27 PDT

Like most industries, the legal sector suffered greatly in the work of the recession and has altered its designs to boost revenue moving forward. JD Supra reported that legal websites will serve more as a centralized promotion and informational platform, integrating promotion efforts from several platforms, including social media and personalized content. Among the primary benefits of

[sb name="hide-post"] this shift in web promotion strategy is the ability to convert clients outside a typical geographic location. As legal sites create more comprehensive promotion strategies, content promotion is expected to play a critical role in the future of the industry, a document from JD Supra found. Potential clients now use the web & for firms to attract these clients, SEO is critical. A comprehensive SEO strategy ought to include the development of a content promotion campaign and include social media. In terms of content development, law firms see the worth in generating news-based content that highlights growing trends in their market. Generating content that informs potential clients using targeted keywords is more likely to lead to ROI than traditional promotion content reformatted for the net. Digital promotion has already manifested itself in the legal community on other platforms. Brafton reported last week that 35 percent of law firms use QR codes to direct prospects to informational content on their sites. Source: Brafton [sb name="show-post"]

Checklist for Mobile Website Design

Valpo Creative — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 03:00:37 PDT

As the number of people browsing the web from mobile devices increases, the demand for websites that respond to those devices surges. And still there are websites that aren’t equipped with the tools necessary to respond to those changes, whether it be lack of information or just not having the time or money to upgrade. The process of optimizing your website for a mobile device isn’t actually as hard as it seems, but knowing the steps in creating an effective mobile website can be the difference between success and failure. In this article I will walk you through five fundamental checkpoints to keep in mind in the creation of your mobile website. Choose the Right Markup In short, markup will make the content readable by mobile browsers. In the creation of your mobile website, it’s important to choose one markup language and stick to it. Explore your customer’s needs in choosing the right one that best fits their demands. How do you go about choosing the right language for your user? Here are the basic languages below, along with their key benefits/limitations. WML WML (wireless markup language) is one language used to make sites mobile-ready. Sites providing email service, sports scores, and a calendar service are the one’s that can benefit the most from having WML WML is used by legacy systems or sites targeting users with low-end phones such as the Nokia. If your customer uses a basic, affordable phone such as the Nokia, WML is the best markup language for you. XHTML XHTML is the computer language designed specifically for mobile phones. Most phone-browsers support this language, and has become the predominate language of the web. XHTML-MP is a modularization of XHTML, and is basically indistinguishable from it. If you’re designing for an advanced device such as the iPhone, XHTML is preferred over XHTML-MP. In deciding between the two, access your site’s analytics to see which devices your visitors are using. Knowing Your Device Aside from markup languages, mobile phones differ greatly in rendering capabilities across browsers. Just as with IE6, Safari, and Firefox have extreme differences, mobile phones are a whole different device you have to account for. And since there’s so many shapes and sizes on the market, it makes the task even more cumbersome. Common screen sizes are 128 x 160, 320 x 480, 176 x 220, 240 x 320 Although many people have their website adjust automatically for hand-held devices, others create a mobile website from scratch. Web services such as Mobify make this possible. This is usually the best method, as you can create a customized site geared specifically towards mobile users, while allowing traditional web visitors to access your full site. To avoid user frustration, include links in your website’s footer to the mobile version of your site, and vice-versa. This way visitors know both are available, easing the stress of the unknown. Scaling Down Your Website A common tactic for those designing for the mobile web is to simply scale down their existing site to fit the parameters of a mobile device. This practice is counterproductive, as the mobile user is visiting your site to access specific information as quickly as possible. Also remember that many mobile devices use touch-screen technology so designing your UI around it is worthwhile. In determining what to include on your mobile website, consider the following: Remove any copy that is not important for the mobile visitor Reduce the amount of navigation items to only those your mobile visitor needs to access on the go. Increase the size of your text to a readable level, links are recommended to be 32 pixels to account for the human fingertip. Design UI elements large. Mobile users tab and drag so you must accommodate to their fingertips. Optimize blog posts using pagination to make skimming and reading more natural. Remove unnecessary animations or images as they will load down the loading time of the website. When applicable, Media Queries can be used to scale an image properly across all browsing devices. Usability Enhance your mobile websites usability by including only pertinent information that a mobile user needs while on the go. You have to keep in mind that browsing a website through a mobile device presents its own challenges. And while phones such as the iPhone and Android have made great strides in enhancing the web usability for its customers, not all phones make the task easy. Here are some tips to keep in mind regarding usability for mobile websites: Older phones aren’t able to scroll left and right, leaving the user unable to browse a full website. If your website requires a lot of tabbing and clicking, navigating it on a mobile phone becomes a challenge. In creating your mobile website, focus on the primary features that mobile users are likely looking for. Such features could be contact information and store locators. As mentioned previously, links should be around 32 pixels to account for the human fingertip. Contact forms should also fit the viewport. Test your Website. Your layout may look great in one device, but slightly different in another. Online emulators allow you to see what your site will look like on different devices. Adding Your Mobile Website There are few different ways for adding a mobile version of your site to your domain. For instance you can create a subdomain from your primary domain that houses your mobile site. For instance, mobile.yoursite.com and yoursite.mobi. In any case many viewers still reach the primary domain when typing in your url. In this case you can: Route traffic to your site depending on the viewer’s browsing agent. If they visit yoursitename.com, they can automatically be redirected to mobile.yoursite.com, for instance. Conclusion In this article I’ve discussed key checkpoints to keep in mind in the creation of your mobile website. As the web expands, so does the devices and technology used to access it. Gone are the days where we had to worry about how our site renders in Internet Explorer. These new advances in technology presents more opportunities to appreciate and gain the most from the web. It’s our job to make this as easy as possible for those who wish to get on board. Source: 1stwebdesigner

5 Sweet WordPress Slider Plugins

Valpo Creative — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 21:36:40 PDT

By Tony Porto | Valpo Creative Web Design & Development

1. Content Slider by SlideDeck

It's black, it's white, take your pick. This is one of my favs, looks sharp & it's very easy to use. Put the PHP code where you want it or set it to auto & there you go.

The SlideDeck WordPress slider plugin allows you to easily create a content slider widget or slideshow on your WordPress blog without having to write any code. Just create a new slider with the SlideDeck control panel tool and insert the widget into your post via the WYSIWYG editor with the TinyMCE plugin SlideDeck picker.

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2. UnPointZero Slider

Another very flexible slider.

UnPointZero slider is a plugin that display a slideshow for your news or pages. It's fully customizable with CSS and scale automatically images to the right size. You can set a basic slider with arrows navigation, number navigation, or advanced with thumbnails (see screenshots).

Slider preview ( you can manage all the elements easily by editing the css file and some options on administration page.

3. Promotion Slider

Promotion Slider is a jQuery slideshow populated by the promotions you enter into the WordPress admin area. An example of the Promotion Slider with some minor customizations. By following the instructions in the FAQ section, you can make your customizations upgrade-proof. An example of the Promotion Slider using the alternate navigation links.

An example of the Promotion Slider with some minor customizations. By following the instructions in the FAQ section, you can make your customizations upgrade-proof.

An example of the Promotion Slider using the alternate navigation links.

4. JJ NextGen JQuery Carousel

Another nice one, comes in 2 flavors vertical & horizontal. Only downside is it requires the NextGen Gallery Plugin. The 'JJ NextGen JQuery Carousel' allows you to create a 'JCarousel' as a widget or as a shortcode. This plugin uses the 'NextGen Gallery' plugin for its images.

5. Carousel-of-post-images

Carousel of Post allows you to quickly and easily put one or more galleries on a page/post using shortcodes. The images in the gallery will be selected from either all images attached to posts, or from images attached to a specific post.

The default is to select 10 random images from all posts.

Author: Tony Porto | Valpo Creative Web Design & Development

A list of of 5 sweet Jquery slider plugins for Wordpress.

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More Consumers Responding Favorably to Place Based Digital Ads

Valpo Creative — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 20:24:57 PDT

Last week I highlighted statistics from PQ Media and the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) that showed a quickly growing market for this media format. Newly released data from GfK MRI supports marketer interest inplace-based digital ads. Over half of consumers say they are noticing these ads. 2011 GfK MRI Omnibus Recontact Study statistics revealed that 60.7% of U.S. consumers age 18+ have seen ads on video screens in the last month. And 64.1% of these consumers say they have an interest in these ads.

[sb name="hide-post"] In the GfK MRI study design, ‘interest’ cover consumers with both ‘considerable interest’ and ‘some interest’. While the video place-based ads seem to be popping up everywhere these days, consumers are more likely to notice them in specific venues. These include:

Grocery stores: 31.8%
Quick-serve, fast-casual restaurants: 17.2%
Warehouse/club stores 16.9%
Shopping malls 16.9%
Pharmacies 15.1%
Coffee shops/cafes/delis 14.0%
Medical offices 12.1%

Between 40% and 50% of consumers who noticed ads in these locations say they were interested in them. Scott Turner, SVP of Agency and Advertiser Sales at GfK MRI, says “Place-based digital is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the advertising industry.” PQ Media has valued the DOOH market at about $2.07 billion. With consumers growing increasingly difficult to target with traditional advertising, it’s easy to understand why marketers are turning to the place-based digital format to connect with shoppers as they go about their busy day. [Source: Six in Ten U.S. Adults Have Viewed Place-Based Digital Ads in Last 30 Days. GfK MRI. 1 Aug. 2011. Web. 12 Aug. 2011] Adology [sb name="show-post"]

Using Search Engines to Drive Visitors to Your Website

Valpo Creative — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:00:03 PDT

Generating more business from a website is the/should be the main goal of any business website. Most business owners tend to forget that if no one can find your site then no one can buy or call your store to esquire about the products or services your business has to offer. My last post I talked about how to get targeted local SEO Traffic for your small business, this post will hit more on pre-campaign initiatives for finding your keywords and back links.

Finding The Keywords For You Target Audience In order to lead potential customers to your website you first need to step into the shoes of your ideal prospect. Search and identify typical phrases they may use in search engines when looking for your products/services. For example, if you are a lawyer in Kansas City, your potential customers may search for "Kansas City Lawyers" or "lawyers in Kansas City". Google adsence, has an excellent keyword search tool, it let's you type in any keyword and this tool will show you how many times that keyword has been typed into Google locally and globally. On-Page Optimization Your Keywords Use your keywords in your meta tags, H-tags, content, and title tags. Remember to use keywords on the body content of your website, if included in Titles. Search engines can and do read text in your website and if they see these keywords all over your titles and nowhere in the body of your content, consider it a bad check mark on the trustworthiness of your site. Let's recap, do not abuse your keywords and do repeat them in titles as this will also give you a check mark for duplicate content. Use your keywords in links leading to other URL's in your site, this will help search engine crawl your site and increases the relevancy of your site from the search engine's perspective. Building High Ranked Relevant Back links If you asked any SEO expert, "What is the single most important aspect of SEO, (assuming there was just one) to raise the rank of my site? 9 out of 10 will tell your backlinks, not just back links, high ranked backlinks that are relevant to the subject of your site. A good start to finding sites that are relevant is by googling your keywords and try to find blogs or forums that will let you comment and include your links. Again do not abuse this by giving useless comments and putting hyperlinks in hope of getting back links, this will only give you another bad check mark. Another less recommended approach is to exchange links with webmasters, be cautious and make sure their sites are relevant and ranked higher then yours, do not over due this, link exchanging is sure to put holes in your SEO juice bucket. Too many external links/holes in your bucket/your website, meaning no matter what you do, your bucket/your site will never be full. Generating relevant web traffic is very important if you plan on converting your visitors into potential customers. Likewise, building high quality back links is the key to building relevant traffic that will allow your site to make the conversions. Remember SEO is not a three week campaign, it's an on-going never ending campaign, if you want to play it follow the rules.