The Solostream Blog
Tips, tutorials and news from Solostream.
How to Create a Custom WordPress Navigation Menu with Menu Manager Plugin
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With most WordPress themes, your site navigation menu is based on your pages. For each page, a link is created in the navigation menu, and the link text is based on the title you choose for the page. This method of creating a site navigation menu is inferior for many reasons, some of which are these:
New WordPress Theme WP-Ellie (Demo Video)
16Our new WordPress theme, WP-Ellie, is now available, and I just uploaded a short demo video. YouTube is still processing the video, so it may be a bit blurry for the next hour or so.
Top Ten WordPress Plugins for 2010 (Part Two)
22In part one of this post, I offered up 5 plugins that I think are must-haves for any WordPress site in 2010. So, lets move on to part two for 5 more of my favorite WordPress plugins.
6. Improve Search Engine Rankings with All-in-One SEO
By default, WordPress is a very search-engine-friendly publishing platform. Likewise, so are most WordPress themes. Whenever we develop a new theme here at Solostream, SEO is a key factor in deciding how it’s put together. Still, you can never have enough SEO for your site, and the All-in-One SEO plugin offers a set of features that can take your SEO to the next level.
Top Ten WordPress Plugins for 2010 (Part One)
20One of the best things about WordPress is the community of savvy developers who create all those wonderful plugins. If you visit the WordPress Plugin Directory, however, you’ll find over 8000 available plugins to give your WordPress site a little extra bling.
Phew. That’s a lot to pick from. Unless you like to experiment ALOT, how can you possibly know which ones you should be using? So, with that in mind, here are 5 of my current top 10 favorite plugins for 2010.
1. Stop Comment and Trackback SPAM With Akismet
If you get any traffic at all to your site, you will get some SPAM comments and trackbacks. The more traffic you get, the more SPAM you get. And you certainly don’t want Viagra ads popping up (no pun intended) all over the comments section of your site. So, you need some protection.
Akismet, created by the same folks who develop WordPress, is an awesome first line of defense. In fact, it’s the only SPAM filter we use on all Solostream sites. The only minor drawback is you need to set up an account at WordPress.com, and get an API key to make Akisment work. And if you’re using it for a commercial site, you’ll need to shell out $5 per month.
Screencast: WP-Ellie Sneak Peek Part Two
0I’ve been intchin to try out a new screencasting service called screenr, so I did a quick little screencast showing the various background images available on the soon-to-be-launched WP-Ellie. Enjoy!
New WordPress Theme WP-Ellie: Sneak Peek
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This is the real Ellie.
Coming soon to a WordPress Theme Store near you … it’s a brand new WordPress theme we’re calling WP-Ellie, named after my lovable, but slightly overweight beagle (her name is Ellie). We’re still putting the finishing touches on her, but WP-Ellie should be out before Valentine’s Day. Perfect timing to buy your sweetheart a new WordPress theme.
Like many of our previous WordPress themes, WP-Ellie will have multiple home page layouts (see screenshots below). That includes a basic blog layout as well as several different magazine style layouts, one of which you can see on the WP-Ellie demo site. It also includes social networking site integration, including the latest tweet from your Twitter profile.
How to Use the WordPress Image Uploader and Image Editor
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Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent some time playing with the new WordPress image editor that shipped with WordPress 2.9. It’s pretty cool and something you should play around with if you use any images on your site. I went ahead and did a short video tutorial covering the important parts. The video runs about 6 minutes.
Design WordPress Themes for Solostream
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Solostream is looking for some serious web design pros who would like to earn some extra cash and get their design work in front of a wider audience. Take a peek at some of our latest WordPress themes, such as WP-Launch, WP-Sublime or WP-Genius. If you can produce designs that are of similar quality (or better), we want to collaborate with you to help produce our next theme.
What are the (2) Most Important Factors You Consider When Buying WordPress Themes?
12That was a question we posed to Solostream readers over the course of a week, and here are the final results of the voting:
- 39% – Quality of the Design
- 21% – Ease of Use
- 11% – Quality of the Code
- 10% – Level of Support
- 9% – Low Price
- 6% – Other
- 4% – Reputation of Developer/Company
Have You Seen Our New WordPress Themes Browser?
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As part of our continued website renovations, we’ve created a new Themes Browser that should make it much easier to check our available Premium WordPress themes.
With this new theme browser, you’ll be able to view all our Premium themes in one place. No more bouncing around from site to site. Just use the drop-down theme selector up there in the header area. And when you find a theme you like, there’s a second drop-down selector that will take you to the theme purchase page. Feel free to click on the image to the right, or just take a peek at our most recent theme, WP-Launch.
One other little feature we added is the ability to view the various color options for each of the themes. You’ll see that option on the theme’s top navigation bar listed as “Color Option.” Just hover over the link, and you should see the available color options for that theme. Click the color you want, and the theme should magically change colors.
As we continue to make these upgrades, we hope they greatly improve your user experience of the Solostream site. As always, your feedback – positive or negative – is most welcome and appreciated.
Say Hello to the New Solostream Website
21Ahhhhh, there’s nothing like the smell of fresh pixels in the morning. And there’s nothing like a snazzy, new design to give your website or blog some new energy and vitality.
Yes, after more than two years, we finally got around to freshening things up around here with a completely new look for solostream.com. Long overdue you say? Most certainly. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader, why not come on over to the site and see it live as I walk you through some of the new stuff and our thinking behind it.
Our Goals Behind the Redesign
As we made our way through the redesign process, we had two main goals in mind. First, we wanted to give Solostream a more modern, up-to-date look and feel. I don’t have to tell you that the original design – while adequate for its time – had gotten a bit tired and stale. And since we are in the web design business, we can’t be out there with a tired-looking design for our own site now can we? Here are the before and after shots in case you forgot how the old site looked.
Beyond a fresh, new look, our second primary goal was to create a site that speaks to the broader market of business web publishers beyond the WordPress user community. Yes, there are still a few people out there who don’t know how awesome WordPress is as a web publishing platform, and we hope to enlighten them a bit. Don’t get us wrong though. We still love all you WordPress users out there, and I hope you’ll agree that the new design speaks to you as well.
How to Back-Up Your WordPress Site Consistently and Automatically
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It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. There’s a SNAFU with your web host, and they tell you that your website is no more. It’s gone. Kaput. Like Elvis, it has left the building. And worse, they don’t have a recent back-up of the data. Or worse still … they don’t have ANY back-up copies of the data.
Think it can’t happen? It can. And it does. But it doesn’t have to be that big of a problem if you’re prepared for the worst.
How to Install WordPress Themes: Video
0This is a short video that walks you through the WordPress Theme install process.
WP-Launch WordPress Theme Demo Video
14Our latest WordPress Theme, WP-Launch, will be available very shortly, and I wanted to go ahead and publish a short demo video that I just uploaded. This video is a little under 10 minutes long, and it demonstrates some of the features of WP-Launch.
The video is still being processed by YouTube, so it may be a bit blurry still, but it will clear up in an hour or so.
If you’d like to embed the video on your own site, go ahead and grab the embed code from YouTube.
How to Install WordPress: Video
2This is a short video that walks you through the WordPress install process. If you host offers WordPress Auto-Install, you probably want to watch this video instead.
