Ramblings of a Freelancer

Musings about my Freelance life

[alexstandiford]

View this post on Instagram

She's getting pretty good at listening to me. I can't think of anything more tempting than a perfect disc throw mid-fetch. #ess #dogsofinstagram #springerspaniel #fetchdog #pets

[alexstandiford]

Best WordPress Plugins for Breweries

This Article is a snippet from my free email series that teaches brewers how to run their website and social media accounts more efficiency. To learn about the tools I use to manage my social media

So in case you haven’t heard, I’ve been working on a plugin that helps breweries manage their beer easier on WordPress.

[dash]

404 - Page Note Found

[alexstandiford]

Wait...wouldn’t page 405 actually be 406...?

[alexstandiford]

About a month ago, I finished up my first WordPress theme, where it continues to go through the extensive manual review process with the folks at WordPress.org. I am big on building personal habits...

I made a thing on CodePen; an SNES controller made out of SCSS and HTML.  I had a blast making it, and thought it would be nice to have some information on the thinking behind how I made it. So, here you go!

http://codepen.io/tstandiford/pen/bEzqMo

[alexstandiford]

Finally went ahead and set up a sample of my photo-friendly Wordpress theme called Photogrid.  It should be on the repository some time in the not-too distant future, and will be free.

I designed it to be a WordPress theme for Photographers, but I think it would do well with most visual portfolio-based services.

[alexstandiford]

Find Leads Online With a Robust Listening Station - Alex Standiford

Learn how I built a tool that will find leads online for me using free tools.

[alexstandiford]

[alexstandiford]

New WordPress Theme For Photographers: Photogrid

So, I made a WordPress theme.  Hopefully I will be able to get it onto the WordPress repository soon.  It is a theme specifically for people who need to show off a visual portfolio, such as photographers and designers.  It would do well with industrial designers, as well.

I built it from the ground up to use every last inch of the available screen space.  I have a 27″ monitor, and it renders beautifully on there.  Of course, it formats on mobile quite well, too.

Independent Sidebar

One of my favorite features is the independent-scrolling sidebar.  The content in the sidebar will scroll at a slower (or faster) pace than the rest of the window, so that both the sidebar and the page end at the exact same time.  This gets rid of that awkward white space between the post content and the end of the document when your blog post is more than 500 words.

Single Post

An individual post displays a prominent header, featuring a huge featured image at the top.  The content has plenty of white-space on either side, which I think breaks the otherwise busy theme up.  When the content is longer, it reads a lot like an eBook, and that makes me very happy.  At the bottom, related articles are displayed based on the category of the post you’re reading.  All of the “Blog post boxes” you see are smart, and will fill the space appropriately if there is an odd number of posts.

Sidebar menu

The menu displays on a sidebar, and will darken the rest of the site when you click on it.  This helps put focus on the menu when it is clicked on.  A company logo can go above the menu, and a google-friendly, structured data address below the menu.

Image Gallery

All Wordpress image galleries will look like this.  I made a point to not use any special code on the user’s end, because I didn’t want to force users to go through all of their existing content to swap out for a new “fancy image gallery”

Mobile

Portrait

Landscape

[alexstandiford]

About This Client

The National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization formed in 2005 that is dedicated to the development and enhancement of a national infrastructure for the recycling of used electronics in the U.S. They use their website to notify people about upcoming conferences and updates to electronics recycling law.

This Client's problem

NCER had an older non-mobile friendly website with few customization options. They needed a scale-able web platform to publish updates and customize long-term.

Click to view slideshow.

Solution

Evaluate & Research

I looked at their original website, and evaluated how all of the information could be migrated to a Content Managed System in a more scale-able way. I noticed that a lot of their pages could be written as blog post topics and determined that WordPress would be a good option for their new site. NCER came to me with an HTML template that they liked, so I had plenty of design direction to go on.

Custom WordPress themeDesign and Layout

we determined that a custom WordPress theme would be a good fit. Changing the layout of their website was important to them, so all of the text on their site can be changed without writing any code. Most of my WordPress customization was building a theme that looked like the template they wanted, and organizing the menu in a way that would allow them to add content to the site easily. I made it a priority to not do anything outside of the core WordPress functionality in the theme, so that if they ever change to a new theme in the future their website content and structure will stay intact.

Training and Launch

After the custom WordPress theme was complete, I hosted an hour-long training session with the NCER, showing them how to use WordPress, as well as how to customize all of the elements of the website. It was a lot of information, so I sent them the session’s recording so they could refer to it at a later time. The resulting website is a modern, mobile friendly, WordPress-based website that will easily scale with their additional websites in the future. If they ever decide to change to a different WordPress theme, their site will still function properly because I stuck to core WordPress functionality, and taught them how to use that functionality with a training session.

View Website

The post NCER Custom WordPress Theme appeared first on Alex Standiford.

[alexstandiford]

I have built my content marketing system for a few years. With a lot of trial and error, I have come up with a list of 5 tools that I have in my SEO content marketing toolkit. Combine this with a solid writing habit, and you will write blog content consistently. Aside from one of the items on this list, you won’t need to pay a dime to get the use out of the tool that you need.

Read on Medium

The post 5 SEO Research and Content Tools that I Currently Use appeared first on Alex Standiford.

[alexstandiford]

[alexandervansteel-deactivated20]

This comment represents a programmer's thought process • /r/ProgrammerHumor

446 points and 20 comments so far on reddit

[alexstandiford]

Lol. The Reddit comment "oh god, it's not monospace"

[alexstandiford]

5 SEO Research and Content Tools that I Currently Use

I have built my content marketing system for a few years. With a lot of trial and error, I have come up with a list of 5…

I’m not past writing an occasional listicle, trite as they may be.

[alexstandiford]

This article talks about how I support my daily habits.  It talks about the tools, and paradigms I take on to keep up with my daily goals. Read on LinkedIn

The post 5 Things I do to Make Habit Forming Easier appeared first on Alex Standiford.

[alexstandiford]

This guy’s sentiments really resonate with me in a lot of ways.

[alexstandiford]

5 Things I do to Make Habit Forming Easier

[alexstandiford]

Just a fun project I wanted to work on to sharpen my JavaScript. You can type on the window, and the morse code (and the letter you typed) will show u...

I’ve been playing a lot of “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” with my family, so I figured I could sharpen my JavaScript a bit while learning morse code a little better.