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.
When the Cochrane Sustainability Plan came to us, they needed a professional site but had limited funds. They had ideas of what they wanted, but nowhere near the budget for a custom developed theme.
We consulted with them, helping them pick a Premium theme and then provided customization and support so they could complete the site content. They chose the popular Architect theme from iThemes. With a few hours of customization they had professional looking site for a fraction of the usual cost.
We just launched a new website for Trinity Church in Redlands, CA using WordPress multi-site.
Utilizing WordPress’ multi-site option we were able to create easily manageable sub-sites for each ministry, while keeping the administration and hosting in a single site. This gives each ministry the flexibility of their own site and content control, but still allows administrative access over everything by the central communications team.
A custom theme was developed which allows each ministry to be able to change the background, department header and widget areas on their subsite (but still retain the master header and footer and overall style of the parent site). Ministry sites can be accessed through the main navigation on the site home page, or through direct subdomains, ie. children.trinityonline.org, highschool.trinityoneline.org, missions.trinityonline.org, etc.
This site also included a custom interface with Google calendar, which automatically creates or updates Google calendar events based on items created in the WordPress site.
