Today, I got my New Every 2 phone from Verizon. For the last two years after deciding to get a plan with Verizon, I have used the free Samsung phone that came for free at the time in which I purchased my plan. My little phone was okay aside from horrible sound and its inability to properly recognize its voice, not to mention the occasional lost message and the occasional lost text. All in all, though I tried to remain positive about its prospects, my old phone did not treat me properly.

I discovered this today whenever my fiance and I decided to purchase a twin set of Motorola Droids with the New Every 2 and Verizon’s current “Buy One get One Free” marketing campaign; the guy even threw in some accessories for 20% off.

At first I was very critical about smart phones and could not imagine that they actually had the impact on small business as they would, until I began to discover the worth of my Droid. Read more »

How the hell did I get here, and where am I going?

Sometimes I sit back and wonder about the journey I took to become a web designer. I started out as that kid you pay $20 to for something quick because they know a little bit about computers. I loved graphics, and making images. I would take poetry and images, and combine them through blends, with textures and other things I experimented with. A friend of mine from childhood knew a little bit about how to get started with a website; she had me going with Geocities in very little time. I was able to post my writing, my graphics, and explore a world I was only just beginning to learn about. Read more »

Generally speaking, WordPress doesn’t like to create two post pages. It takes getting the platform out of its comfort zone to force it to make it do something it doesn’t like.

Technically, my own site has two post pages. It displays the first few characters of a post (first one thousand characters, to be exact) and displays them on the home page, and then takes the rest of my posts (all content included) and displays it on my Blog page. However, to be really savvy, it just takes a little bit of PHP plus maybe a plugin, and your web site’s guests will never know the difference! Read more »

I rarely make my political beliefs public, as I feel that they are something which I hold close to my heart. Nevertheless, I am always willing to take on any project, no matter how controversial it may be – and that includes political or religious projects. My work with Forward Focus Media can only be described as one word: rewarding. Honestly, I have greatly enjoyed the month of work which I put into the site, and the month which I worked closely with the people behind the company.

That being said, I’m quite sure that they give their clients the same amount of brilliant treatment. If your political beliefs happen to fall under “libertarian” or “conservative” and you happen to be politically involved, this Alabama-based firm can certainly help you out – but how? Why not check out their site to find out!

Specifically, my work with this site was to customize a pre-built WordPress template. The original design was very nice, I must admit, but I saw many ways in which it could be changed in order to better suit the site’s purpose. From coding an RSS puller in order to display their latest posts to editing a Twitter widget, the facelift to this design was actually pretty large; I may as well have written the theme myself from scratch. However, Forward Focus had already selected this template, and I noted that certain things could be thrown out altogether and that certain things could be redone. We started small, working on the graphics you see – the logo was provided, but I did create all of the graphics such as the Twitter and Facebook graphics (after all, graphics were how I was pulled into design in the first place).

There are a few fundamental features in a WordPress theme. To create a custom theme, a developer must simply have a functions.php, a stylesheet, and an index.php with the loop in it. However, the Internet is expanding, and not only are themes becoming more and more complex with a greater amount of options, but further additions are being added to the amount of files included in your average theme.

This post, however, is not directed at the aged WordPress designer who has been churning out themes since 1.5. This post, instead, is directed at designers which are simply just beginning to explore the possibilities of WordPress.

I was one such designer not too long ago. I became acquainted with WordPress through a job opportunity – I was hired by a company to create and edit WordPress themes. I received a day or two of training learning the needed PHP and other tidbits – such as what certain files did, and how to install themes. To date, I have been programming WordPress themes for about a year now – whether editing them for SEO, or creating completely new themes, or even redesigning other themes. Through my work, I have discovered the power behind not just the CMS, but also through the lesser-known power of index.php and hierarchy. Read more »