Jonathan and Lea Woodward are running a five day course to teach people how to build a custom WordPress theme using Headway.  If you have always wanted a custom look and feel for your site but cannot afford a custom design costing several thousand dollars this course is for you.

Who Are Jonathan and Lea?

I’ve worked with this dynamic duo on a number of projects as client, as their contractor and as business partner on a couple of joint ventures and they are a great team, Jonathan is a design guru ( he did the custom design for my site) and Lea is a marketing and tech side of the partnership.

Between them they have an excellent set of skills which makes this course sound so interesting.

Why A Custom Theme

Headway is the theme framework I use for all of my sites and clients sites, it allows you to create a custom theme using drag and drop designer.  You get a custom look and feel without the need for coding skills, this course will teach you how to do that.

I Was Looking Into This Option

I was planning to build my own Headway course like this but I felt I lacked the design skills to pull it off, I’ve shelved that idea and now I’m going to direct everyone to Jonathan and Lea’s course if they want to learn Headway.  Jonathan’s design skills and Lea’s tech coaching skills will make this a great course.

What On Offer

A five day live training course which will step you through the process of building a custom theme with headway. I’ve swiped this copy from their sign-up page

Day 1: Today we’ll be making sure your site structure is “just so” with the right pages, basic page designs and layouts all set up and ready to style on day 2. We’ll be making sure you have WordPress configured for maximum effect and installing any additional plug-ins which will really power up your site. And of course, we’ll be formally introducing you to Headway 

Day 2: Today we’ll dive right in and learn how to apply your site colours and the design to your site, including how to style all the text on your site and use custom fonts to really give your site some personality.

Day 3: Today we’ll show you how to set up custom page layouts with Headway – you’ll learn how to set up your pages exactly how you want them (yes, each page could be completely different if you wanted it to be), including stuff like pages with no headers or navigation bars (ideal for landing pages), pages with several columns, pages with a different sidebar on each page and more.

Day 4: Today we’ll be showing you how to add and style the content and other bells & whistles on your site such as sidebar widgets, footers, sign-up boxes and more to get your site exactly how you want it.

Day 5: Today it’s all about making the final tweaks and learning some nifty tricks and advanced skills to help you take your Headway powers to the next level.

Book Your Slot

To get more details about the course including times/dates and cost visit their Hello Headway Page (affiliate link)

Course Details

This WordPress training course will teach you how to troubleshoot and isolate problems with your WordPress site.

I will teach you a methodology to move through the various layers of your WordPress site to isolate, diagnose and fix problems with WordPress.

(more…)

This is a guest post by Carol Wilson of http://www.businessinsurance.org/

According to the most recent statistics available, more than 35 percent of the U.S. populations owns asmartphone—a majority of which heavily depend on their device for immediate internet access. Thus it’s important that your WordPress blog has a mobile version as well—if not, you can be missing out on a
huge pool of readers and costumers. If you’re worried because you don’t have the slightest clue about how to build a mobile-friendly version of your blog however, don’t be. There are tons of mobile-builders and plug-ins that can do all of the hard work for you. And the best part? All of the ones listed below are free.

That said, to learn some of the top free mobile-builders in the biz, continue reading below.

1. WordPress Mobile Edition.

This free mobile plug-in allows users to choose from four different Carrington “themes” in order to select the best one that will correlate with your desktop version. In either case, all four selections are specifically designed to present your mobile WordPress in a clear and crisp way. The plug-in works with all major smartphones, including the iPhone, Blackberry and Android operating systems.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-edition/

MobilePress

This mobile-builder, which also allows users to choose from customized themes (or create their own), works hand-in-hand with Aduity so that users can post ads on their mobile version from some of the biggest ad agencies on the web including Admob, Quattro Wireless, Buzzcity and InMobi.

Of course, users can also post their own managed ads. Just be careful with the ones that use Flash as they slow up mobile-uploading time and may not appear at all. This plug-in also allows its users to keep track of analytics.

http://mobilepress.co.za/

WordPress Mobile Pack.

This crafty plug-in, in addition to offering an array of mobile themes that can specifically correlate with each unique visitor, also allows users to add widgets and a “mobile switcher.” This switcher will give mobile browsers the option of viewing the mobile, compacted version or the desktop version of your site. If the user chooses the mobile version, the plug-in will automatically rescale all of the images and articles to fit the tiny screen of a smartphone and will remove any media that cannot be supported on the mobile version.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-pack/

Mobify

While this mobile-builder typically charges for its services, it does offer a “Studio Basic” package at no cost. The free basic version will easily send mobile users to the correct site for an easy and pleasant browsing experience—and the interfaces are exceptionally sleek and professional-looking.
But in exchange, the company will place their logo on the footer (no worries it is tastefully done and isn’t distracting). The only downside is that the free version will not give you access to information regarding analytics or statistics, so you’ll never know how many people view your mobile-site. This mobile-builder works with all major operating systems, including Android, Blackberry and the iPhone.

http://mobify.com/

Zinadoo

This mobile-builder is only available for free for a 14-day-trial period, but that might be all the time you need to get hooked and purchase the real thing. This service allows its users to create widgets, keep track of analytics, have an unlimited number of pages and as a bonus users can optimize their site for Google Mobile with keywords and tags.

http://www.zinadoo.com/

Byline:

This is a guest post from Carol Wilson who writes for business insurance guide. She contributes articles about a variety of marketing, business, stock market, small business topics. She can be contacted at: wilson.carol24 @ gmail.com.

Neil’s Two Pennies Worth

Two things I have found when using mobile devices & mobile theme plugins

1. Can I just add a nugget of wisdom if you are planning to use a mobile theme and use a performance cache plugin such as wp-supercache or w3-total-cache, they don’t work too well, so reject the user agents of mobile devices http://www.user-agents.org/
2. iPhone and Ipad DO NOT SUPPORT flash video, so if you use WordTube or one of the many video plugins that use flash, they will not display on those devices, go for jetpack to dispaly video or some other html5 compliant video plugin

I am running a webinar on Thursday to teach people how to integrate their WordPress site with the main social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the Upstart Google+.

Social media can be a real time suck, but if you follow my simple step by step plan you can push blog posts out to the social media sites automatically.

In this webinar I will be teaching:

• Why you should integrate WordPress & the social media platforms.
• Integrating WordPress & Twitter.
• Integrating WordPress & Facebook.
• Integrating WordPress & LinkedIn.
• Automating the process.
• Setting up your sidebar for follows
• Getting people to favourite your posts
• Q & A session

I’m going a little off topic in this newsletter, apologies if this is of no interest.

I have launched a new project that may be of interest to some readers of wpdude.com and I want to let you know all about it.

My new blog is called neil-matthews.com and, as the name suggests it is a much more personal project where I can step out from behind the wpdude brand and talk about things none-WordPress.

I will be writing about the the tools. tips and techniques you need to employ to market, grow and run an online service business.  I will be drawing upon the experience I have gained building wpdude.com and my WordPress technical support and coaching services.

I’ve got a lot of information I want to share that just doesn’t sit under a WordPress umbrella, so if you are looking for information to help you grow your business please check out my new site.

I am also starting an “Inner Circle” group coaching program to help people who want to go deeper with me and find out how build and grow their own online services business.

Please take a visit at: neil-matthews.com

Did you know that WordPress has an in-built function which allows you to run multiple sites from one install of WordPress? This is called WordPress multisite.

The beauty of this functionality is that you can have multiple sites, but only one set of WordPress code, plugins and themes. You can greatly reduce your maintenance burden if you have lots of sites update and administer.

I’m running a webinar this week to introduce people to WordPress multisite. I will cover the following topics.

• What Is Multisite
• Building a network
• Network models
• Domain mapping
• Managing your new sites
• Network themes and plugins
• The super admin user
• Q & A

This webinar is part of my members only WordPress training and support community the WP Owners Club.

I would like to give you a 14 day free trial of the WP Owners Club so you can attend the multisite webinar and test drive the rest of the members benefits at no cost.

For full details of the WP Owners Club including how to sign up for your free trial go to

https://dev.neilmatthews.com/wp-owners-club

I hope to see you in the club house.

I’m offering you the good readers of my site a 14 day free trial of my WordPress training and support community the WP Owners Club

What Is The WP Owners Club

The WP Owners Club is my members only training and support environment.  When you join the club you get access to my expertise in three ways

1. Twice monthly live training webinars
2. An ever growing library of self paced training video in the members area
3. Access to me for ad-hoc support via the members only helpdesk

It’s probably Easier If You Come And See

People don’t quiet get how effective group coaching is until they give it a try on a webinar that’s why I have setup this 14 day free trial.

Hop Over And Sign Up For Your Trial

Full details of the community including how to sign up can be seen at

https://dev.neilmatthews.com/wp-owners-club

I hope to see you in the club house.

Image by fragiletender

Course Details

In this course I will show you how to make your site as friendly as possible for the search engines to help get more people to your site.

All 0f the techniques I show are white hat, and will not get your site barred.

(more…)

Thanks to everyone who joined me yesterday on my WordPress SEO, the questions and the interaction made it a great event. I hoped you learned something new and will be implementing that on your site.

Here is a replay of the webinar if you could not attend the live event or if you want to review the session. I will keep this replay up until 12pm Sunday before moving it into the members only area in the WP Owners Club.

Something I missed was details of the sitemap, the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin uses. It does not create a file called sitemap.xml it creates a file called sitemap_index.xml, see this post for full details http://yoast.com/xml-sitemap-in-the-wordpress-seo-plugin/

Video Replay

SORRY YOU MISSED THE DEADLINE THE REPLAY HAS BEEN MOVED INTO THE MEMBERS AREA, LEARN HOW TO GET A 14 DAY FREE TRIAL AND SEE THE WEBINAR AT

wpdude.com/wp-owners-club