Archive for Developers – Page 3

Benefits of video on your website

Friday, August 26th, 2011

More and more companies are adding video to their websites. Production costs have dropped drastically and the benefits are pretty straightforward:

1. Video is sticky
In the world of web stats, “stickiness” refers to how long people stay on your site. If they click on your site and immediately click away, your site is NOT sticky. Video makes people stay longer on your site. When they stay longer, they are more liable to click on other links and investigate your site more deeply.

2. Video improves your search engine exposure
Youtube is the second most popular search engine in the world. The math is pretty simple: if you don’t have some type of content on Youtube, then you are not listed on the second most popular search engine — period. If you have a product or service that requires an “educational” sales pitch, Youtube is the perfect place to tell your story.

3. Video is engaging
Generations of Americans have grown up on TV. They prefer to watch than to read. It’s easier to get people’s attention and hold it with video than with written text. When you want to call someone to action, video generates better results than copy.

4. Video reinforces your brand
Video lets you say a lot in a short time. Everything from the choice of talent, to wardrobe, to backgrounds and music send messages to the viewer. If you are in an industry with many similar competitors and products, video can help you stand out as unique.

Main Street now offers custom web video production with packages starting under $500. Contact us for  details and start using video to improve your website responses.

Who Uses WordPress?

Friday, August 26th, 2011

WordPress recently conducted their first ever user and developer survey. Over 18,000 responses were received from all over the world.

The results show most developers are using WordPress as a complete content management system, and not just blogging software. WordPress is the platform for a huge number of new business sites, and there are experienced WordPress developers on every continent except Antarctica.

Some highlights:

  • 14.7% of the top million websites in the world use WordPress.
  • 22% of new active domains in the US are running WordPress.
  • 61% of WordPress developers use it as a content management system without a blog.
  • Only 8% of WordPress sites are developed specifically as a blog.
  • There are over 6,800 WordPress developers worldwide.

Details and a “State of the Word” address are available here: http://wordpress.org/news/2011/08/state-of-the-word/

Web video production from Main Street

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

Main Street now offers complete production of custom web videos starting at less than $500. We work with you to develop the script, then Main Street provides professional onscreen talent, the background with your logo, and all production and editing. You get a finished video formatted specifically for use on your website and youtube.com.

Check our video production page for details.

Many WordPress theme developers (including Main Street) have relied on a nifty little code plugin called TimThumb to resize images for WordPress themes. Yesterday a security vulnerability was discovered that can use this plugin to load malicious code on your site.

Current versions of WordPress do resizing automatically, but until recently developers had to rely on plugins like TimThumb for these functions. Unfortunately this flaw is in an incredibly popular plugin that major developers have used for years. All themes by ElegantThemes include this code.

We recommend all WordPress users verify that they are not running TimThumb on any themes installed on their site, even themes that are not active.

To determine if any of your themes use TimThumb, go to Appearance Menu > Editor. In the list of Templates on the right column you are looking for a file called timthumb.php. If you have that file in your theme, it needs to be updated immediately. Be sure to check each theme installed on your site, you can use the pulldown box in the upper right corner to select each theme. Do not edit anything. You can break your theme.

Update instructions vary based upon your theme, contact your theme developer or Main Street if you find the timthumb.php file in your theme.

This is a serious security threat and should be investigated immediately.

 

For years, theme developers have been creating sophisticated themes that let us easily change colors, backgrounds, and even column widths. But we’ve always had to revert to “programming” to change the way archives list or posts display. Even seemingly simple tasks like “listing only posts from category=’News’ in a widget area” required searching for plugins that never quite did exactly what I wanted. Of course, you can custom program anything. That’s how companies like Main Street make their living, but it seems like WordPress should offer some extra flexibility in formatting output from the loop.

Now with Loopbuddy from iThemes we have a great tool for selecting and formatting loop results without programming. This is the plugin I have been waiting for.

Loopbuddy lets you create custom queries and layouts. These results can be displayed in a widget area or on a page via shortcode. They work on iThemes themes or any other theme.

My first task for Loopbuddy was to create a sermon library page for a church website. I have a series of posts tagged with category of “sermons” that each have a title, thumbnail and short body copy with a link to the audio file. I wanted a simple page that would show all the sermons in tight list that didn’t require clicking the title to get to the audio link. The standard theme archive page was too verbose and I didn’t want code a custom category page for such a simple task. Looks like a job for Loopbuddy.

First I created a query that only selects records that have category = “sermons” and sort them newest to oldest. That’s all we needed in the query to get the right records.

Next I created a layout that would form my abbreviated listing page. On the layout I selected the title, post thumbnail, date and content. I can ignore author, categories and comments that make the standard archive list too long for my needs. These selections are all drag and drop, no coding required.

Finally, I created a page for my sermon library and inserted a shortcode on that page that specified which query and layout to run. That’s it. Exactly the results I wanted with no programming. I can use CSS to adjust any spacing or fonts to perfect the page design. Since I used a shortcode it didn’t matter if I was using a Loopbuddy compatible theme or not.

I never recommend clients use the 1.0 version of anything on their business websites, but for $45 for use on unlimited site, Loopbuddy is pretty sweet for a brand new plugin.