We’ve been pretty quiet at Focus Web Works lately.
This is partly because of projects and partly because our awesome clients have asked for some research and development.
If you missed it, we wrapped up the Ed Slott project in November: edslottintucson.com
We built a support site for a big client, Event Driven Media Partners: eventdrivenmedia.org
We’ve also added a new slide show for Tucson’s Golden Corral’s specials and community service: tucsongoldencorral.com
We’ve been busy updating press releases and updating staffing pages for DeConcini McDonald Yetwin & Lacy, P.C.: deconcinimcdonald.com
On The development side, we’ve been collaborating with software developers to create one of the best survey and quiz tools/plugins for WordPress. WP Survey And Quiz Tool: It’s become a very robust tool to add value to WP sites.
We have also been leaning some sophisticated new features for WordPress 3.0+, so it’s been pretty exciting.
If you spend any time in your WordPress site, you may have noticed that version 3.2 is available for an update.
If your website uses a slideshow/slider, this update will probably break it. Right after testing the new version on our Focus Web Works site, I upgraded one of our clients. The first thing we noticed (after the cool new look for the dashboard) was that her slideshow stopped working.
I’ve since done quite a bit of research and discovered that most slideshow/slider plugins are not working.
One more thing… It turns out that the WordPress developers group has decided to sunset Internet Explorer 6.0. This means that you should avoid upgrading if a large portion of your clients use IE 6.
If either of these situations are a concern for you, we recommend that you wait on that upgrade or at least contact us about your options.
WordPress has been updated again. This time with some interesting new features.
Really there are two keys that will make managing you site easier.
1. Vastly easier linking within a site
2. A handy administrator bar to speed navigation while updating a site
There are also hundreds of minor improvements under the hood, but item 1 and 2 above are the ones that will help you out every day.
New intra site link example
I found a nice explanation of how to use the new linking feature here. Basically when you are editing a page or a post, you can easily highlight a word or picture, click on link and then search your own site for a post or a page to link to. Click! and you’re done.
The other helpful addition is an administrator bar that stays at the top of the screen while working on your site. This is really handy when you are reviewing the pages of your site and you want to jump in and edit a page, or just straight to the dashboard, or even review comments left on your site.
I might note that the Admin bar seems to have redraw issues with Google chrome. It draws the bar on the screen multiple times.
There were some really good questions, like: Does updating the content on your website require the involvement of your technical staff or a third-party web vendor? or Do you manually collect customer information and then re-enter into a separate database? or Does your site house “dynamic” content; i.e. – does the information on it change on a regular basis?
Focus Web Works has simple solutions for all the problems in the article. The one topic that was not addressed is follow-through. The internet is full of people who want to educate you up to the point where they sell you something. Then you will find that support falls on it’s face.
Before I ever sat down to code a website, I worked in the technical support industry for 7 years. 5 of those years, I trained support representatives. Before that I taught at the University of Arizona, while finishing my masters degree. In short, education is a cornerstone of what I offer clients.
The future of the Internet includes websites managed by their owners and I am here to help you get started AND keep going.
If you have any questions, just use my contact page
Sometimes you can’t be there to explain something in person. Sometimes it’s just plain easier to show people then to tell people. Sometimes you need to show something to many people, but they can’t all be there at once.
A great solution is a screen cast. That’s where you record a session on your computer and then share it on your website for others to see. You can share a PowerPoint presentation or even steps to setup email. Higher end solutions let you add custom artwork, audio and your branding.
Contact Nohl at Focus Web Works to learn how you can do this too. The software is free. We like Jing
