Burger Homes Development is a residential and commercial builder. They build stunning homes and commercial properties with every attention to detail.

Bob Burger has been building for over 33 years and his wife Deb is a Realtor with Skogman Realty in Marion.

Burger Homes is thoroughly committed to building Energy Efficient homes in order to sustain low-cost and low-maintenance houses. Our experience and understanding allows us to use methods and materials economically with less of an impact on the environment.

Burger Homes and Development wanted a website that was easy to update, with integrated real estate features and of course connections to their social networks, email and the ability to host photo galleries online.

Website Development Overview

We started the WordPress development with the iRealEstate Theme from iThemes as it was developed with real estate in mind.

Next was features and plugins. We wanted to find a way for the Burgers to display the homes and properties currently under construction. When we build website for Realtors we primarily use IDX integration. This allows the Realtors listings and other listings in the area to be displayed on their website without the need to manually enter each listing.

Great Real Estate Plugin

Author: Roger Theriault

Great Real Estate was developed to enable real estate agents, brokers, and REALTORS to display and manage information about their listings in WordPress pages. The plugin creates custom pages for your listings AND pulls together additional existing plugins.

What we liked was the fact that the Great Real Estate Plugin also used NextGen Gallery plugin so the client only had to learn one way to upload photos! They are able to create a gallery in NextGen, then create a photo page in their website AND use these photos in the Great Real Estate Plugin.

The Great Real Estate Plugin also integrated Google Maps, WordTub for videos, FPP-Pano for Panoramas, WP-Downloadmanager for easy file upload/download management (property fyers, blue-prints, etc.) and finally Feed Wrangler for managing the RSS Feeds.

Although this solution requires the client manually create a page for each property, upload photos, pano, videos etc. It does a very nice job pulling the information together!

Featured Listings allows the client to show the current featured properties they are building on the home page. They can also change the listings to “under contract” and “sold.”

For a Realtor I’d still suggest using IDX integration for WordPress but for a small Realtor, builder, property manager the Great Real Estate Plugin cannot be beat!

Other plugins:

To connect to social networking sites we enabled FindMeOn, WPFollowME and other social networking plugins.

We added SEO and Google Sitemaps for search engine optimization

We also added database optimizer, caching engine and of course BackupBuddy to consistently get backups of the database AND content in case something would happen!

Closing

If your group or organization is looking for an affordable website solution we can help. We create the site to fit your needs then you can maintain page updates and changes. Contact us as needed to add more functionality and features!

We can host your WordPress website and we offer plugin, database and SEO maintenance for WordPress.

Contact us today for more information on how we can help with your web development, design integrated with social networking and web hosting!

Of course to learn more about http://BurgerHomesDevelopment.com just visit their website!

While working on WordPress project with a client today we ran into an interesting problem. Our client had a 30mb audio MP3 file they wanted to host on their website for playback by anyone who registered for the free newsletter. The page was hidden and re-directed after successful newsletter registration. Of course this page and MP3 can be found by search engines so if this is a problem for your situation and you don’t want people finding your hidden files don’t host your MP3 or any large file in this manner!

WordPress support for large files

There are numerous was to create a link, to a large file in a page. Or you can add a plugin to host, stream or play the MP3 files in WordPress. Some of you reading this will think they are crazy for hosting a large file and worry about monthly bandwidth limits? They have an unlimited account and we aren’t hosting top 40 music files or movies so it’s relative to the hosted content!

Problem

The problem was the client couldn’t upload the MP3 file via the WordPress Media Library upload. The PHP limits were restricting large files commonly anything over 8mb???

To get around this problem and avoid PHP editing we helped the client this way:

We logged into the website cPanel and simply clicked on “File manager.”

Next you double click on sub-folders or click the plus in the folder structure to dig down to the WordPress content library. The window will be open in the right pane.

example: ../wp-content/uploads/2010/2 (of course your year and month will change with the date you upload)

With the folder open on the right next click “Upload” in the top toolbar.

You will see your maximum file size upload. Often this is greater than the WordPress limits but if it’s less than your file size STOP HERE and contact your web host to increase your limit!

Next simply click Browse and choose your file and upload.

Back to WordPress

Now login to your WordPress Dashboard and add the plugin “Add to Server” from Dion Hulse

Next go to your Media Library in the Dashboard and you’ll see a new link

Next choose Add from Server and you are taken to a file browser similar to file manager in cPanel. Simply drill down to your directory and choose the file or files and import.

You will now find your files in Media Library!

Other considerations

Maybe you have a need to upload a large number of files? It could be a combination of photos, video, documents or ?? Maybe you want to FTP a bunch of files and then add to the media library instead of uploading one by one in the media library!

If you find any other solutions or ideas please post them here!

http://LinnAreaPhotoClub.org

Linn Area Photography Club is a non-profit organization helping photographers gain more knowledge and experience as well as an inspiration or ideas to get out take more photos! They have members who are beginners up to semi-pros!

The group has over 80 members in the Linn County Iowa area and struggled with communications as a huge email list was their only means of communication. As people joined the club or changed email they struggled with keeping a single list. No one was sure all the time who had the most recent list of emails and every time they sent an email, they got returns and errors.

They had a website but it was old and very static. They also needed a better way to manage newsletters monthly, display images and have a calendar of events not only for upcoming meetings but upcoming photo shoots, contests and more!

Website Development Overview

So we started the website development with the Flexx Theme from iThemes.com as it gave us the flexibility to add a number of widgets on the main page. We have complete control over the background, colors, pages, widgets, layout etc..

As you might suspect they wanted rotating images on the main page of the website. We used the ever popular NextGen Gallery and Smooth Slide show plugin to display the member photos on the main page.

They also use the photo gallery for monthly contest winners and other events throughout the year. They post to the blog and include a link to the particular gallery so images are embedded into the blog posts!

This is small organization with a very specific focus “photography.” Photography is a very broad topic but when visitors come to their website we wanted to cut as many clicks to the information as possible.

The top row of navigational buttons or links are the “pages” in WordPress that we transferred and edited for the new site. The information is fairly static and only changes about once a year. We added a contact form and the ability to download the very simple application for membership in PDF format. Future plans are to make this into an online registration form with ability to pay via PayPal.

The second row of navigational buttons are actually links to blog categories. The navigational buttons are created dynamically as new categories are created. Don’t worry new categories need to be enabled in the theme settings to be visible. This is a great feature in case a user creates a new category incorrectly or by mistake.

Social Network Integration

We also create a Facebook fan page and Twitter account to allow people to follow the groups news and updates. We connected the blog to the Facebook fan page via notes. Then with Twitter Tools we linked directly to the  Twitter account so updates to the blog get posted to both social media sites.

We also add WP Follow Me to add the Twitter icon on the right side of the page. We also added Sociable plugin and the FindMeOn plugins for tighter social networking integration. Visitors can find the site via social networking then post interesting content from the website out to the social networks!

Widgets

The left and right columns were perfect to add widgets to show upcoming events, recent posts, links (blogroll) and links to member sites. Many of the members have their own websites and we want to highlight them here.

We added sponsor logos  to the footer area and the order rotates every time the page updates. This gives each vendor top listings every time the footer loads.

Calendar

Event Calendar 3 was our plugin of choice for this website. Of course there is a widget showing upcoming events but this plugin creates calendar events by creating a post. You use the post editor as you would write a blog post but at the bottom choose your starting and ending date/time. When you submit a calendar event the post is assigned to a specific category in your blog. IF you have setup RSS to email via Subscribe2 or aWeber or others, then your calendar event you just posted is emailed to your email subscribers as well as your RSS subscribers.

For this website we did not enable the Subscribe2 widget as they prefer to only have paid club members on the email list.

Newsletters

The photography club publishes a monthly newsletter saved as a PDF document. They post each newsletter announcement to the blog and PDF files are managed by WP-Download Manager. As stated above when they post a  newsletter their email list of subscribers gets an email notice where they can download the latest copy.

Backend Plugins

Once completed we added SEO, Backup, Optimizer, Google Sitemaps. The site is submitted to major search engines setup for regular backups and optimizes automatically!

Future Plans

We are also planning to create a membership site or a “members only” site. The club wants to allow people to post photos for review and ONLY allow other members from the club to see and give feedback on the images. There are amazing sites around the Internet that allow this but many feel uncomfortable doing this. They fear their photos being criticized by people they don’t know or someone may steal their photo. We will overcome this by keep the group local to the local members.

We plan to use WPWishlist and will post an update when the next phase is completed.

Closing

If your group or organization is looking for an affordable website solution we can help. We create the site to fit your needs then you can maintain page updates and changes. Contact us as needed to add more functionality and features!

We can host your WordPress website and we offer plugin, database and SEO maintenance for WordPress.

Contact us today for more information on how we can help with your web development, design integrated with social networking and web hosting!

Of course to learn more about http://LinnAreaPhotoClub.org just visit their website!

http://LCRMarion.org

I really enjoyed developing this website solution for a local church in Marion, IA. If there was ever a perfect fit for WordPress, a church comes very close. You have diverse congregation of people, the church staff and volunteer committees and groups inside the church. All of them share the need to communicate to the congregation on a regular and timely basis.

To date, most churches have used the traditional print newsletter on a monthly basis, weekly printed bulletins at the weekend services (for those members who attend) and more recently churches are using email, some too much!

The Details of the website

We developed a WordPress website using the bSocial Theme from iThemes.com and transferred their existing web pages to the new site. We then trained the staff on how to login and update and change the pages when they want to. We learned many of the pages hadn’t been updated for over a year and there were pages they wanted to add!

Next we added an online calendar and again trained the staff to add events based on a number of categories. They have started with simply the weekly services but soon plan to add all upcoming events around the church and groups/committees!

Next we connected their photos page to their SmugMug photo hosting site. The church has a photography club and all members who take photos upload to the SmugMug professional hosting site in high resolution. Now members of the church can order photos, posters, canvas prints and more!

The website pulls the most recent photos from the SmugMug website via the WP-SmugMug Plugin. As new photos are added the website is updated automatically!

Finally we setup the pastors and church leaders with the concept of blogging and the ability to send updates to the congregation when they publish a blog post. They can now post weekly sermon notes and other news/events without waiting for the weekly bulletin or monthly newsletter. This will allow more timely communications.

We added a video box for the church to include recent videos of events or videos pertaining to the holidays or sermon series!

Email, Facebook, Twitter integration with WordPress

We installed the Subscribe2 plugin to allow people visiting the website to sign up for email news and updates. Any blog post will be sent to their email automatically. This is similar to aWeber or Constant Contact but for free! It also allows the church to upload their existing email list of church members and manually add new members when they like. This is a powerful way to communicate but wait…

Next we add the blog RSS feed to the notes page of the Facebook fan page for the church. Now anytime the church posts to the blog it updates Facebook automatically! But wait…

Using the Twitter Tools plugin we also connected blog posts to Twitter updates. Again any blog post updates the churches Twitter account!

So ANY BLOG POST to the website is automatically sent to the email subscribers, updates Facebook and updates Twitter! Very powerful!

Christian Plugins

We did a search for terms like bible or church and Christian and came up with some very nice plugins!

Bible Reading Plan allowed us to put a widget on the main page with daily Bible Reading plans based on the bible used by LCRMarion.org! It supports many versions of the bible so this could be used for many denominations!

The Holy Scripturizer plugin is a really cool plugin. The plugin searches the pages and blog posts for any reference to a bible verse and automatically links them to the bible verse online AND displays a popup. The church can also choose their bible of preference!

Sermon Browser is an amazing plugin! The church is going to implement this next year but the site is setup and we have tested the plugin. Basically the plugin allows the church to upload audio/video copies of sermons and library sort them by date, pastor, series, keywords and more! Notes can be connected to a sermon and linked to iTunes for Podcasting support!

Additional Plugins

WP FollowMe was added to put a floating icon on the right side of the website to allow people to easily follow LCRMarion.org on Twitter.com

We also added the TweetMe – Retweet plugin so visitors can re-tweet any content or post they like. Sociable was added to extend this functionality to Facebook, LinkedIn and more!

There are many other backend plugins for backup and database management, SEO, XML sitemaps, Google Analytics and more!

In Closing

Churches today are looking for ways to reach out using technology to their current congregation and to find new ways to attract members to their church. Churches are also aging and looking for ways to bring younger people and families to their congregation. Collaborative WordPress sites that implement Web 2.0 technologies like Facebook, Twitter but more importantly have the ability to blog post their updates when they happen vs waiting till the the next weekend service or monthly newsletter!

We have started working on a new website for the LCR Youth. The goal of the separate site is to connect to youth from 6th grade to high school seniors but more importantly to stay connected to the youth through college and into the future!

More updates coming soon!

If you are looking for a solution for your church contact us today to get a quote and learn more about our services!

I suggest you take a little time and just move your WordPress site to the root folder of your website. It’s not very hard, just a lot of steps detailed below. Yes you could mess up your site but the odds are unlikely. To be 100% sure make a backup of your database and login via FTP and copy your site to your hard drive. Worse case you’ll be able to recover but you shouldn’t need to worry.

Disclaimer – No Warranty!

If you are not 100% confident with the idea of moving files/directories, using file manager in GoDaddy, changing settings in WordPress don’t even attempt this! The cost to hire an experienced person for this is much less than the frustration you’ll have making a mistake a long the way. I’m all for learning new concepts but don’t push it! Click here to inquire about us making these changes for you.

The Process Overview

Basically WordPress is installed in a sub-directory in your GoDaddy website. So we first need to go into WordPress and change the settings which tell it to use the sub-directory. We are changing http://yourblog.com/blog to remove the sub-directory /blog so your website url becomes http://yourblog.com. Problem is if you try to change WordPress after you move the files you’ll need to get SQL Database access to make changes and that gets really challenging!

So first you login to WordPress, change the URL, login to GoDaddy File Manager, move the files and then fix any missing images or links.

Getting Started

Depending upon your theme you may lose your custom header, rotating images, background images etc.. It depends on how the theme was coded. When you move your website files the configuration files may not change automatically. Just have copies ready before you make the move and upload when you’ve moved the site.

Open a web browser and login to your WordPress dashboard

1 – Login to your WordPress site then go to Settings>General and there you’ll see “WordPress Address and Blog Address” and they will show the subdirectory after your domain name like /wordpress or /blog. For now leave this window open and go to step 2

Open a new browser or tab and login to your GoDaddy Account

2- Open a new browser window or tab and login to GoDaddy. Click on Hosting Manager in the left column

In the next window on the right side click Manage Account under the words “Control Panel.”

When the next window opens, in the top left click the button “Your Files.”

This will open the online file manager which operates a lot like Windows Explorer or Mac Finder.

In the  left column choose your root directory if it’s not already chosen and then in the right column double click to open the sub directory that holds your WordPress install like /blog or /wordpress.

This is the directory and files you want to move to the root!

Warning number #2: If you are at all worried at this point don’t go forward as you can really mess up your site from here on!

Go back to WordPress and prepare it for the move

Step 3: Go back to the window with your WordPress dashboard opened and now remove/change the /blog or /wordpress from the Settings>General tab and click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Your final URL should be your root directory not the sub-directory. This should be what you want the new website to resolve to. Again after removing the sub-directory click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

At this point your WordPress install thinks it’s now in the root but it’s not!
At this point your WordPress site is broken and won’t work… how scary but don’t worry!

Step 4: Go back to your GoDaddy window with the file manager open. In the left column click the sub-directory folder with your WordPress files and directories in it. This will display your files in the right column.

Look close at the toolbar and there’s a setting for “Page Size” set this to 50 so you can see all your files and folders in one window.

Now click the check mark next to Filename at the top of the folder list in the right box. It will check or highlight all your folders and files. You want it to say 28 of 28 files or 31 of 31 files so you know they are all selected.

If you leave the above setting at 25 you risk not selecting all your files. If you see more than one page of files something is wrong.

You should have less than 50 files/folders in your site. If you have a very large site you may need to move files in two steps. The goal is to get all the files into the root directory.

NOTE: I’m assuming here your root folder is empty. If you have another WordPress site or website you’ll want to first make a sub-directory and move these files FIRST. Then copy your WordPress files!

Make sure you are copying your files into an empty HTML directory. There will be folders but you don’t want to try and overwrite an existing website!

Next you select the Move icon in the very top toolbar and you’ll be prompted to choose your root folder. Next in the left box you want to choose your root folder of your website and then click ok. Generally this is “html” and click ok.

File manager will now move your web files, directories, plugins, themes, etc. to the root of your website.

When completed go back and check your original folder /blog or /wordpress and make sure it’s empty! If there are still files, select the remaining files and move them to the root folder and you’ll be fine.

You’ve done it time to test!

Now go to your browser and type in your root url/domain name and next you’ll see your WordPress site appear!

Now you can login and look around your site.

Clean up and testing

Depending upon your theme your site may work but your header or background or items may be broken? Some themes have special rotating images or if you have a custom background you may need to reset this. I’ve even seen some themes misplace your header file. Don’t worry the images are still there in your media library or your backup files. You may need to download and re-upload so the new url for the file is set.

Install the plugin Broken Link Checker and activate it. This plugin will scan your site and let you know of any links that are broken. WordPress will update your site links when you change the settings BUT it will not change any links you’ve placed inside of a post or page. Broken Link Checker will find the problem links and allow you to edit them. Just remove the reference to the sub-directory and save the link and you are good to go again!

Troubleshooting Problems

IF you setup a GoDaddy re-direct you’ll have to disable that

IF your domain name is forwarded to a sub-directory you’ll have to change that.

If you get 404 errors or page not found double check your browser isn’t taking you to the old site.

If that’s not the case make sure your files got moved to the root folder.

If the folders were moved ok first try another web browser. If you use Firefox try Internet Explorer to make sure you don’t have your pages in cache.

Maybe you didn’t save your WordPress settings? WordPress may still be trying to find the sub-directory and you’ve moved the files? You can change this in the SQL DB but that’s another long post!

Reversing what you have done

If there’s no other hope you can copy your files from the root HTML directory back into your sub-directory and test again to see if WordPress works. If it does change your General>Settings url and save. Next move the files back and you’ll be good to go.

Worse case reverse all we’ve done and go back to where you started but I hope you haven’t got this far to even read this

Any questions, comments or clarification just let me know!

Bob Randklev

CyberInnovation.com

http://CRAnimeals.com

Mission Statement:

Cedar Rapids AniMeals, a volunteer based nonprofit organization, provides food and spay/neuter assistance for pets of the elderly, disabled and families in need, helping them keep their companion, which greatly improves the quality of life for both.

Our History:

Cedar Rapids AniMeals has been in operation since 2000 and currently serves more than 350 human clients and over 700 pets of all types (dogs, cats, birds, fish, hamsters, etc).  In addition to providing food for these pets, we provide approximately 100 subsidized spay/neuter procedures and vaccinations each year.  We operate entirely on donations and the work of a dedicated group of volunteers who manage the client list and delivery schedules; collect donations; and sort, package, and deliver food.

Cedar Rapids AniMeals is an all-volunteer organization that provides food for the pets of Cedar Rapids-area elderly, disabled, and others in need – a “Meals on Wheels” program for pets.  For many elderly and shut-ins, pets can be sole companions and best friends and are critical to maintaining a good quality of life.  Enabling them to care for and keep their pets is a real benefit to their continued well-being.

Cedar Rapids AniMeals works in conjunction with area social service organizations who help screen our clients.  With the cooperation of area veterinarians, we also provide subsidized vaccinations and spay/neuter procedures to help our clients be responsible pet owners.

Project Goals:

The focus was to create a website with a few pages of information but really focus on reaching out to volunteers and donors both locally and abroad. The goal was to give the program directors a blog to post news, updates and event reminders in a simple format. The website allowed them to store their email list in one area and eliminate the need for each program director to keep a list of emails to CC when they send an email. Plus emails no longer came from their personal email address but a server email address.

The other goals were to allow for more photos, video and connect the new website to social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter. Now anytime they post to the blog an update is automatically sent to their Facebook Fan Page and the Twitter account.

PayPal was also setup and integrated to allow online donations which was not an option with the previous website.

Website Details:

For our base site theme we chose Titanium Theme by iThemes as it had support for multiple rotating home page images, video integration and an “about us” area on the main page then two vertical columns a side bar and footer.

CRAnimeals.org is small organization that has a lot to say about a number of different items. A home page with a lot of slots for widgets was our goal! It’s a balance of form vs. function and some may feel the home page is too busy others love all the information in one place.

We also setup a PayPal donation button as the club has always taken donations by postal mail or in person. Now supporters local and abroad can make a donation to help the organization with their mission.

Social Networking:

We also setup a Facebook Fan Page and a Twitter account so any blog or news updates would be sent to the social networks to get more visitors to the site! Visit the site and follow the group via Twitter or become a Fan!

Some of the plugins we used for this site are:

Event Calendar – Post upcoming events using the blog Post dashboard!

Add to Any:Share/Bookmark/Email Button – Share website info with your favorite social networking sites or bookmarking

FollowMe – A cool Twitter widget in the right corner of the web browser window

Subscribe2 – Email management to announce updates to volunteers and supporters

There were many other backend plugins used for SEO, Google Sitemaps, XML and backup.

In Closing

To learn more about this organization and the great cause they support visit http://CRAnimeals.com and sign up for the newsletter or make a donation online.

For additional information or questions about this website design, plugins and more contact us!

Dance Arts Iowa offers a carefully designed and progressive program in dance technique, which takes the young dancer from the primary levels to pre-professional dance.

Dance Arts Iowa offers strong technical training in ballet and encourages students to take Jazz, Tap, and Irish Step Dance to stimulate creativity and enhance rhythm, musicality and fun.

The Website: http://DanceArtsIowa.com

The owner/director Ellis Stroud wanted a new website with more functionality and bright colors! She wanted the new website to match the new colors of their studio which are very bright and cheery!

Due to the number of options we built this site using the Flexx Blog Theme from iThemes Home Page. DAI wanted the rotating images look in the header so we created a base header image with text and changed the background images. We then uploaded the multiple background images and the theme has options to rotate the headers to get a “flash look.” I also like that the navigation buttons can be set above or below the header so we have full use of the header to show what the organization is about.

Next we built a custom graphic with the client’s provided colors to make the page stand out!

Due to the number of options they wanted on the home page we chose both right and left sidebars as well as a footer. This Flexx Blog Theme makes WordPress.org sites look and act very much like what many call a “standard website.” The sidebars, header, footer are consistent through the entire site. We can change that if we like but this is what the customer requested.

The “home page” or landing page was changed to be a static page the client can update. From there we created numerous web pages which are now managed by the client and they contact us for help as needed.

Plugins we used:

The online calendar was very important for managing upcoming events online. We decided to use the Calendar plugin from Kieran O’Shea as we find it’s the best plugin for schedule events that repeat. There’s a full page view as well as sidebar plugins to show upcoming events. The only thing we wish it had was the ability to create a blog post for each entry so clients can be emailed automatically!

Email Subscribers are important as many people still don’t understand RSS. I’m sure RSS makes total sense to all the techies reading this but to show someone what RSS is and then find a reader and then get them to check it, we needed an easy way to allow people to subscribe to upcoming events. So we used one of our favorites Subscribe2 by Matthew Robinson. The plugin allows visitors to enter their email address and subscribe to blog posts/updates. You can manually add people to your list and there’s no need to configure an email server or anything like that. Configure a few options and add the widget to the sidebar and you can build your email subscriber list.

One note on this topic: If you have multiple blogs and you want to build a single subscriber list you’ll need to use a service like aWeber. Setup one email list at aWeber, copy the code into EACH WordPress site and when people subscribe to any site or you update any site everyone gets the update. You can also customize the emails to clients more with aWeber. Click here to learn more: http://aweber.com/?313785

For the photo galleries we used non other than NextGen Galleries plugin. With NextGen you can create multiple galleries of photos, resize photos and even combine photos into albums. From there you can upload various flash or swf players to display the photos in moving “flash” galleries or individual photos.

For this project we used the iThemes Life Theme and customized the header and some colors.

Plugins include Subscribe2 for managing email subscribers, NextGen Gallery for photo albums.

We also integrated this site with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace.

When Jeff completes a photo shoot with a client he creates a blog post and includes a gallery of low-res photos which link to his online fulfillment gallery.

He then chooses a category for each post (Seniors, Commercial, Family, etc..) which auto creates his portfolio links.

Next every blog posts automatically updates the social network sites which brings users back to his website.

Check it out at: http://rubicon-photo.com

Point is the majority of Internet users understand email and the last thing they want is another RSS Reader on top of checking in with their social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or by following Twitter. If you own/manage/contribute to a blog and people find your blog interesting you want to give them an option to subscribe to your posts/news/updates.

Another way to say this is every time you update your WordPress.org site (either posts-pages or both) an email is sent to your email subscriber base. So how do you collect these email subscribers?

There are numerous plugins available for WordPress.org and external solutions that can be linked into your blog. Today I’ll talk about the most popular solutions chosen by our clients.

Subscribe2 – (Free)

Subscribe2 is a Free plugin to add email user management to your WordPress site. Due to the cost this is a very popular plug-in especially for people getting started with their first blog.

Once you install and activate Subscribe2 your registered users in WordPress are notified of any changes/blog posts moving forward. You can disable notifications for page updates or only send updates for certain categories. There are a number of settings to set future configurations if you add categories etc..

You also have the ability to edit the default subscription/notification and unsubscribe emails. HTML or text emails, send email for every post or a daily/weekly digest.

A common option is to enable the sidebar widget so you can add the “email subscription” widget to your blog. Now people can easily add their name and email address and click subscribe.

To see an example of the widget you can visit: http://LaurieSexton.com

To learn more about Subscribe2 visit: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe2/

If you need more advanced Double-Opt In email management or you want more control over the look/feel of the HTML notifications keep reading. Otherwise Subscribe2 will take care of your needs for a very good cost!

G-Lock Double Opt-in Manager (Free up to $349)

If you need a more advanced email subscription manager and/or you are looking to do a lot bulk mail G-Lock has a free plugin to manage your email subscribers in WordPress. They also offer a separate program for bulk mailing and there is a free version, Personal version $149.00 and Business Edition $349. Here is the description of the personal version right from the G-Lock website:

You can easily manage opt-in mailing lists for your subscribers, create personalized messages such as HTML newsletters, e-magazines, account statements, reports, statistics, bills to your customers and send them with G-Lock EasyMail in just minutes. G-Lock EasyMail easy-to-use address book provides a convenient place to store the recipient information. You can use the program built-in database to segment your recipients into groups in order to send more relevant targeted emails.

Visit the G-Lock website here: http://www.glockeasymail.com/

To learn more about the WordPress plugin go here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/g-lock-double-opt-in-manager/

If you are looking to just notify subscribers of blog posts/updates Subscribe2 will take care of your needs. If you need to bulk mail, send newsletters and sync your subscriber info to another program G-Lock is a good solution and one time cost.

aWeber.com (Starts at $19/month)

aWeber is not specifically created or developed for WordPress but it’s very powerful and easy to integrate with any web platform! With aWeber  you have a simple “subscribe to” form on your website but your subscriber information is stored at aWeber. Now you can login to aWeber and create amazing newsletters, announcements and more! Plus you configure Blog/RSS to subscribers so anytime you update your WordPress blog you subscribers get an update.

Custom landing/confirmation pages. You can also create custom confirmation landing pages and direct subscribers to specific website URL’s. So when a subscriber enters their email address and name they click submit and are redirected to your custom confirmation page saying thank you then a link to redirect them back to your site.

Custom fields: Do you want to collect a full name? Postal address? phone? or any other questions? You can create custom sign up forms and ask any question you like.

Custom HTML emails: You can edit your HTML formatted emails going to your subscribes to include your colors/logos, links to other sites or information and make it look more like a custom newsletter. There are numerous templates to choose from and edit to fit your needs

You pay a flat monthly fee and you can create multiple subscriber lists, multiple registration forms, multiple HTML templates, multiple RSS to email templates etc…

The theme with aWeber is “multiple.” If you have multiple websites and/or want to manage multiple subscriber lists or maybe you just want one list but you have multiple sites you can copy the same subscriber form to all your websites and collect all your subscribers into one solution at aWeber.

To learn more about aWeber and get a free trial account click here: http://aWeber.com

CyberInnovation.com – Consulting and/or implementation services

We can help your organization with a strategy to drive more people to your website and collect email subscribers for future marketing and updates. Our focus is to help our clients balance form with function which in turn compares price to features. Whether you need a consultant to help you build your solution or our designers/developers to create a solution for you we can help! Contact us today for more information!