We love how this site came out!
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We do a lot of WordPress design, and often I’m challenged to find a solution for a site, and that’s where WordPress plugins come in. There are a lot of great ones out there, but here’s a shortlist of my favorites, ones I use on a regular basis.
- Contact Form 7 - I use this in every WordPress site I do. It’s simply the easiest plugin for having a form on your WordPress site. You activate the plugin and pop the shortcode in your page. Instant form. Plus, it’s easily customizable, you can make multiple forms, and you can add a database extension to track your contacts. Lots of possibilities.
- NextGen Gallery – Whenever anyone needs a gallery, I pop this one in. It’s easy to set up, has lots of options and you can add on lots of extras.
- Akismet – A given, if you want to block blog spam, Akismet is the best.
- ShareThis – In this day of social media, you need to make every post share-able, and this is an easy way to do it.
- Widget Logic - For a long time, I didn’t realize you could control the sidebar for each page, but here you have it. Just some logic and a little time, and your pages have individual sidebars for each page.
- WP Archive-Sitemap Generator – Creates a sitemap of your pages and posts. Not an XML sitemap for the search engines, but an actual sitemap for users to find your content.
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This March marks Sumy Designs 5 year anniversary as a web design company! Hooray!
In March 2006, we had an idea and an interest and two clients. We have worked really hard over the past five years, often working late nights, early mornings, weekends, and everything in between but we’ve built a business of which we can be proud. We’ve developed websites for successful e-commerce stores, famous authors, and small businesses from coast to coast.
It’s been an exciting journey, and I can’t wait to see where the next five years takes us.
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The Sumy Designs team will be taking a much needed vacation from March 12 – March 20th. We will be available via email if needed but will only be responding to urgent issues. All other issues will be addressed upon our return.
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Yes, we do. We love to help out great causes whenever we can. If we have time in our schedule and we think an organization is truly worthwhile, we are happy to help out.
Below are a few examples of organizations for whom we’ve done web designs for free/reduced fees:
- Children’s Advocacy Center of Denton County
- Shaletest
- MOMS Club ® of Copley/Fairlawn, OH
- MOMS Club of Lafayette/West Lafayette, IN
- Community Gardener Association of Tippecanoe County
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Sumy Designs will be celebrating our 5th anniversary next month, and we often get asked for advice on starting up a business, how to get clients, how to advertise, etc. So I have a few tips for anyone who wants to enter this field. If you are serious about starting a business in web design, there are a few steps you need to take.
- Incorporate: Take the legal steps to protect yourself and your business. Get an EIN from the IRS and file the appropriate papers with your state to obtain your LLC, either sole proprietorship or partnership or whatever. Yes, it’s a hassle, but it’s to protect your interests in the event that someone decides to sue you in this sue happy world. Also, it shows your clients that you are a real business and not some random person who is going to disappear in the night. (We’ve received a fair amount of business from clients who had designers who did disappear. It happens.)
- Develop Your Website: Take the time and invest in your own website. It’s your first impression. I have actually talked to freelancers who don’t have their own website. If you are a web designer, and you don’t have a website, what are you telling your clients? How are they seeing what you can do? Get a domain and develop your website and do it right. This is very important. And also, keep it up to date!
- Set Appropriate Prices: Are you good at what you do? Then value your work. Put appropriate prices on what you offer. You have a skill that other people don’t have. Don’t sell yourself short. Often times clients will be wary of designers with prices too low, because extra low prices scream “inexperienced!” If you don’t value your work, other people won’t either.
- Take Credit Cards: I know, freelancers hate to hear this. But if you are going to run a virtual business, then you have to take credit cards, especially if you want to get paid regularly. I know the fees suck, and you lose a percent of your income to pay those fees, but in exchange, you get more business and get paid regularly. (No, Paypal doesn’t count, although you can accept that in addition to credit cards and checks.)
- Get a Contract: With every client you take, you are entering a business agreement with someone. Get it in writing. Don’t make it up yourself, find an attorney who can draft the appropriate contract that will protect your interests in the city/state where you reside. It’s really hard to force someone to pay for your work, or defend yourself, if you didn’t get a contract signed before starting a project.
- Get a Deposit: Don’t wait until you’ve put 40 hours into a site to get paid. You are opening time in your schedule to work on a project, you need to get a good deposit to ensure your client’s project is a priority. Develop a payment plan and make sure your clients know when and how you expect to be paid. There’s nothing worse than putting hours into a website, only to have the person decide they changed their mind and don’t want a website after all!
I love my job. I love being a small business owner, and I love working with new people from all over the country. Running a business is a lot like parenting. You have to set rules and boundaries and you can’t ignore the less fun parts of the job. It’s all important.
I hope this helps some budding web designers out there!
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Years ago, we offered e-commerce packages to our clients. Then, as time went by, we opted out of e-commerce design. Finding a shopping cart that allowed the design flexibility we needed as well as the functionality we needed, that was also secure and easy to use for the client, as well as affordable, was getting to be too much trouble. We started running into security issues and the stress of dealing with that got to be too much.
So we quit the world of e-commerce.
But I’m happy to announce that Sumy Designs does now once again offer e-commerce packages!
While we had quit taking new e-commerce clients, we still were maintaining a number of e-commerce sites for our existing clients, and the platform we’d been using was unstable. We had to find something new.
After much research, we found Big Commerce. We were impressed with the functionality of the site, the ability to design it, and all the offerings. So we started the process of moving all our clients from the old platform to this new, more secure one.
We now offer E-Commerce Design Packages starting at $1500.
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All the time when working on websites, I have requests from clients who have a certain font they want for their website. All the time I have to respond why we can’t use that font. I wanted to expound on that a bit here.
What is a web safe font? A web safe font is a font that is commonly available on all computers.
Why does that matter? If you choose a font that is not common to all computers, then your site will not render the same on all computers. Say I choose “Curlz” as the font for my website, if the user looking at my website doesn’t have Curlz, then they will see a generic font. So the work to get the Curlz font is in vain.
If you choose a standard font such as Verdana, then you can rest assured that all computers are going to see that font in the same way.
Also, you want to make sure your text is easy to read by everyone and nothing makes someone jump from your site faster than illegible text. (Aside from music that starts automatically.)
Why can’t I just make all the text into a JPG? Well, you can. But I strongly advise against it for a number of reasons. Number one, you can’t optimize for search engines with images. Google will not read the text that you put in that JPG. So you by putting all the text into images, your site is virtually without content for the search engines to find. Another reason is that you will make your site unusable for the visually impaired, who use screen readers to read the text on the page. If your text is in an image, the screen reader can’t see it.
Which fonts are safe? Here is a link to the commonly acceptable fonts for the web.
I hope this clears the way for lots of good, readable text on the web out there!
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At Sumy Designs, we are regularly contacted and asked, what kind of site do I need? That’s a good question, because today there are many different options. As a way to answer this, I’ve created this flowchart to help clients find the correct answer.
Some sites require a lot of maintenance, so the decision needs to be made about whether you want to maintain it yourself, or if you want the site to be maintained for you. We do both types of sites and are happy to take on regular maintenance once a site has been completed. Knowing if you will have the time to dedicate to updating the site yourself is important. We find that often times people really want the flexibility to be able to update the site on their own, but then are just too busy to make those changes.
We offer two different types of websites – a custom designed site that we maintain for clients. If your site has content that won’t change frequently or you don’t want the hassle of updating it yourself, then this is the way to go.
Our other option is a WordPress content management system. This gives you the flexibility to update the site yourself easily from any computer.
What happens if I change my mind after my site is done, and I don’t have the time to update the site myself? No problem! We are happy to maintain a site in either form.
What if I chose a static site, but later decide I want to do a blog? No problem, we can add a blog to your existing site, either incorporating the current site into the CMS, or just setting up the blog as an add-on.
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I get asked this question a lot, so I thought this would be a good place to answer it. How does one upload a PDF and link to it in WordPress?
First, make sure you open the page or post in WordPress where you want your PDF to be linked.
Step 1: Find the Upload/Insert area above your formatting buttons. You have four options: Add an Image, Add Video, Add Audio, or Add Media. Click on Add Media.
Step 2: Click “Select Files” and find the PDF from your desktop that you want to upload, click “Select.”
Step 3: Once uploaded, you will see a “preview” screen like the one below. Give your PDF a title. The title are the words someone will click on to get your PDF. Check the Link URL box to make sure the URL appears there. That’s the location of your file. If it does not show a URL, click the “File URL” button and it will show up. Once you have your Title and URL, click the “Insert into Post” button.
Once you hit “Insert into Post”, you will have a link in your post like this one.
Read our Latest Newsletter (this newsletter has no real content, it’s just an example)
Step Four: Once your PDF link is ready within your content box, just click the “Publish” or “Update” button to update your post or page. That’s all there is to it!
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