Blogging | Church & Web Design

Tyler Stanton

February 1st, 2010 by Matt Haff

So last night Mack Kitchel and I were up at the Catalyst office working with Tyler Stanton, one of the emcees of Catalyst, until midnight doing some final touches to his blog. I think late nights pay off, at least I hope they do or else I’m wearing down my body for nothing -smile-

Go take a look around TylerStanton.com let me know what you think.

Blogging

Freelancing With WordPress Like A N00B

January 9th, 2010 by Matt Haff

Presented by: John Saddington | human3rror

Five things that will help you

how do you price an install
what do I need to learn about servers and hosting
platform knowledge, how well do I know wordpress?
begin to understand your network
managing expectations

Steps to build WordPress

Themes
Hosting
Upgrades
Plugins
Strategy Consulting

How you develop your business

Where you want to grow your business is where you have fun
Legal stuff & taxes
Building a team & expand
Full Time or Part Time?
Time Management & Project Management
Developing that business

Contracts & Managing Expectations

watch for scope creep
Saves you time, money & heartache

Keep Growing – keep learning, be curious
Connections & Networking – get with people that are better than you, get with people that can bring you business
Take a break, have a life, vacations - have fun, if you’re not having fun then don’t do it
Pricing – the better you get, charge per project not hourly. The less sure you are, charge by hour.

Resources

Freshbooks – Time Management & Invoicing
Basecamp – Project Management

Blogging, Web Design

How To Design A Killer Blog

January 9th, 2010 by Matt Haff

Presented by: Mitch Canter

to STAND out
to have CONTROL over CONTENT
to PERSONALIZE your brand
to {re}FRESHEN your online image

It Boils Down To Three Tenants:

readability – if they can’t read your content, they won’t
usability – if they can’t navigate your content, they won’t
findability – if they can’t find your content…

Basic Tips

know your craft
know enough html to understand the basics
know your blogging platform
use discrection
widgets distract from content install widgets readers will utilize if you want fun widgets, put them in a widget section
find widgets that style to your theme automatically
use good markup
(im)proper markup can make (or break) a site’s SEO
Utilize H Tags (h1-h6) accordingly
One h1 tag per page (main keywords)
Allow specific CSS targeting.
use color theory
1-3 colors work best (2 primary/secondary and 1 neutral [black/grewy/brown])
Font colors too – stick to a pallete and be consistent
use good images
a good image tells a story that accentuates the content
good images should work with your design, but good designs also have styles built in for images
it’s the little things
most overlookd “polish points”
bulleted lists
hover colors
headlines
post format
comments