Resource List for Your WordPress Website

Resources for WordPress Website
This resource list for your WordPress website highlights resources I actually use for my clients or myself. There are lots of other good resources; these are just mine.

Domain Name Registrars

Namecheap - This registrar has good prices and customer support. Their management interface is easier to use than most.

Website Hosts

Tiger Technologies - Besides amazing support from company employees, this website hosting company gives refunds for partial months, if you cancel hosting. They have reasonable monthly or yearly prices, support from their own employees (no outsourced support), no CPanel, but a clean, simple interface, one-click WordPress install, shell access, up-to-date PHP, MySQL database access, backups, carbon neutral hosting, free domain name with hosting.

WPEngine - This website host has great WordPress-only hosting; they have managed updates (They update WordPress for you automatically.), daily backups, malware scanning, and staging area for testing.

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No Cost Email Newsletter Services for Small Business

No Cost Email Newsletters for Small Businesses

You’ve heard it before. “Your small business needs to build an email list for marketing. Without an email list, you have no business.” But you’re working with a very small budget right now, so what are your options?

Here are four easy-to-use, no cost email newsletter services to use to build your small business email list. All work with a WordPress website, and two work with any website. All can use double opt-in, so that you comply with CAN-SPAM Act. And you do need to comply with CAN-SPAM, so that your business is not marked as a spammer, and also so that more of your email newsletters reach your client’s inbox, rather than being delivered to their spam folders. You can read more about the “why” for using an email newsletter service. Also be sure to read the Terms of Service before you choose a service because the no-cost plan may not be available for your type of business.

  • Jetpack Plugin Subscriptions
  • Mad Mimi
  • Mail Chimp
  • Wysija Plugin

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Custom WordPress Website Design for Nonprofit C3 Tempe

Nonprofit Custom Website Design

This custom WordPress website design and development project was for Campus Christian Center (C3 Tempe), a nonprofit that provides shared-use facilities for student and community Christian organizations near Arizona State University. Their new facility is across Mill Avenue from ASU and features rooms that hold from 5 to 200 people. They were a wonderful group of people to work with; they have a lot of insight into what they do, and knew what they needed in a website.

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Support Small Business Saturday!

Amethyst Website Design Supports Small Business Saturday!Saturday, November 24th is Small Business Saturday®, a day to celebrate and support the local small businesses that boost the economy and help neighborhoods across the country. I encourage you to take a break from online and big box shopping today, and support a local small business. Shop Small® today! I’ll be shopping for gifts for my sisters and sisters-in-law at a small business in my neighborhood today!

Amethyst Website Design is proud to take part in Small Business Saturday. I have discounts on all blog and website design packages of up to 25%. For all the details, you can view my offers here. Discounts are in effect for a full week. They include:

~ Marcy
PS. Click to see my offers!

Custom CSS with Jetpack for WordPress Website Design

Jetpack Settings Page Activate Custom CSS

The Jetpack plugin now has a Custom CSS module for you to use to edit your WordPress Website theme. This means that you can customize your website design very easily, and more importantly, safely. Any changes you make here are easy to remove, and your default theme is still intact. Get started with the Jetpack plugin if you don’t have it installed.

Activate the Jetpack Custom CSS Module

In the admin sidebar, click Jetpack. Then scroll down through the Jetpack modules until you see Custom CSS. If you see a blue “Activate” button, click on it to activate the module. If you see the “Learn More,” and “Configure” buttons, this module is already activated. See the image above.

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How to Use Google Web Fonts in Your WordPress Website

WP Googel Fonts WordPress plugin for Google web fonts

It’s easy to use Google web fonts in your WordPress website. Google currently has over 500 free fonts in their web fonts library. There are all types from classic to handwritten with lots to choose from in between.

The easiest way to use Google fonts in your WordPress website is to use a plugin. I tried several, but the one I found easiest to use that allowed selection from all the current Google fonts is WP Google Fonts by Adrian Hanft. Go to your WordPress Dashboard, click Plugins, Add New, and search for it. Install and activate it.

Above is a screen shot of the theme changes we’ve been making to the Twenty Ten theme with the Josefin Sans font used for headings. The original Twenty Ten fonts are standard Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica fonts; see the image at the bottom of this post. So let’s get started.

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How to Customize Your WordPress Website Header

Custom Header for WordPress Website

The default WordPress themes have some beautiful images to choose for the header, but if you want to customize your WordPress Website header image to match your custom background, here’s how to do it.

Previous versions of WordPress did allow you to change your website header image, but you had to resize the image on your computer or use a web image editing service. Recent versions of WordPress (3.4) allow you to rotate, resize, and crop your images right inside WordPress. This tutorial uses the WordPress Twenty Ten theme, but many others have the option to edit the header.

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Get Started with the Jetpack WordPress Plugin

Jetpack WordPress Plugin

The Jetpack WordPress plugin is a set of plugins developed by Atomattic for WordPress.com blogs, but now available to WordPress.org websites, as well. Jetpack will cover many of your small business WordPress plugin needs. As of this writing, Jetpack is about a year old and has grown from just a few to fourteen separate features; all are free except VaultPpress.

Jetpack incorporates some of the best Automattic WordPress plugins that used to be available as separate plugins – Sharedaddy, Grunion Contact Forms, Wicket Twitter Widget, After the Deadline, and WP LaTeX.

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