• The tools already exist. Plugins, APIs, 3rd party services — all of these make creating your site faster and less expensive. Many of these services are so good now that there is just no logical reason to build your own. For example, Flickr is an awesome tool for uploading and organizing photos, and it has tons of search engine weight, so why would you build your own photo gallery when you can use a Flickr Pro account and their API to display images on your site? Another example is Paypal and Google Checkout. Many small businesses have no need for a full-blown e-commerce solution, as they only have a few products, low inventory, low sales volume, or they track sales themselves. For those people, having a merchant account with gateway fees is just throwing away money when they could do just as well with a site that uses Buy Now buttons (at a fraction of the development cost).
• The code library is already available. A few years back, everything had to be hand-coded from scratch. Now it is not unusual to find code repositories of PHP, JavaScript, CSS and HTML. I know that I have my own library of common functions from past clients that I can use on future projects, decreasing their development time as well.
• Themes are better than ever. Five years ago, a custom site would have meant hiring a developer and hand-coding the entire thing from scratch. Now that Wordpress is widely used and theme developers offer framework and layout options, customizing simply means rebranding a layout with some module changes — which slashes the website development time and costs. Many businesses can use the same layout without the end-user ever catching on, thanks to customization of the theme. (If you want an example of that, see how one theme is used very differently by over 100 sites at the WooThemes Showcase.
• Stock imagery sites offer a wide array of choices. By combining stock imagery elements in new ways, you can create unique graphical looks for less. Even if another site is using one of your same elements, the overall effect will be very different because it is the combination of the elements (along with the developed functionality) that creates the overall look and feel.

Now I am sure some developers out there will hand-code you a small brochure site for $1-5k, but why go that route when there are so many more options available? I know that I have dropped my prices in the past five years as technology and processes have improved, as it is only fair to my customers to pass those advancements on to them.

Nikole Gipps is a PHP/CSS/HTML web developer who takes pride in using out-of-the-box thinking to find unique solutions for the small businesses and entrepreneurs she serves. Catch more of her posts at That PHP Girl.

To that end, I’m going to try attaching a signature to all my posts here. I already tried it out with my latest post over at Oregon Treehugger, and I am happy with the signature itself. As this content-based closing could live on in Google caches indefinitely, I think it’s important to put a lot of thought about it and figure out what to say. Some important points to remember:

• Focus on what is most important. If you only have a few seconds to get across what is most important about you, make sure you are not rambling! Think of this in terms of your 7-second commercial — give us your unique selling proposition and get people interested in finding out more.
• Use three links or less. I went to a networking event last year and I was surprised at how many people were trying to tell people about many of their businesses/projects at the same time. If you want to lose your audience, link everything in your signature to all your various project. If you want to keep your focus, link one or two things so your readers have a clear direction to learn more.
• Tailor the closing to the content, or use them all for the same goal. If you are like other entrepreneurs, you probably have multiple pots on the stove right now. This leaves you with two choices — either tailor the closing to the content it is attached to, or use the closing of all your content to steer people toward the same end goal. For example, I write for a lot of sites but my main goal is always to increase business for myself here at That PHP Girl, and my current signature reflects that.
• Use simple formatting. As your CSS doesn’t always go with your content, use simple formatting for your signature, such as using italics and the small tag.
• Sell — or don’t. If you want your signature to be a commercial for your business, use it that way! Pitch a service like "Learn how you can double your income in just 6 months …" or "Get your free consultation today at …" If you would rather make it more of an about text, such as "Judy is a marathon runner and elementary school PE teacher in Fitchburg, MA…", that is fine as well. There are no set rules for every business. Just be careful about putting anything temporary, such as a monthly special, as the content signature could outlive the advertised special by far.

Nikole Gipps is a detail-oriented web developer, mud-loving Cornell Aggie, avid gardener, occasional iron chef, patient wife and fun mom of two. You can follow her work at That PHP Girl or see all of her feeds at NikoleGipps.com.

• Twitter for Wordpress
  This plugin can be coded into your theme or used as a widget. It is a very simple plugin that offers customizable CSS for styling.
  
• TweetMeme
  TweetMeme easily allows your blog post or page to be retweeted. It provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been retweeted throughout Twitter, and is a very popular plugin for large brands like TechCrunch and Mashable. The tweets are tracked at TweetMeme.com.
  
• Lifestream for Wordpress
  Obviously this plugin does a lot more than a twitter feed, but it offers several key advanced features like the use of custom themes for feed display.
  
• Tweetroll / Tweeple
  These tools give you customizable widgets to show your recent tweets, list your followers, and other stats. There is also an option to monetize your tweets.
  
• TweetSuite
  TweetSuite offers a whole host of features like tweet tracking, most tweeted, and retweets.
  
• Twitter Widget Pro
  Twitter Widget Pro properly handles and displays your Twitter feed in your blog’s sidebar.
  
• Tweet Stats
  Tweet Stats utilizes the TweetBacks plugin (above) to display "Most Tweeted" and "Recently Tweeted" widgets on your blog.
  
• Tweet This
  Tweet This adds "Tweet This" icons to your posts, shortens the post URLs, and automatically tweets new posts. Note: This plugin may or may not work in Wordpress 2.9 — there have been mixed reviews on using it with the latest WordPress release. I’ve gotten it to work, but your mileage may vary.
  
• Tweetable
  Tweetable turns your Wordpress admin into a Twitter client with status updates, URL shorteners, and the ability to tweet your posts as they are published.
  
• TwitterCounter
  TwitterCounter allows you to easily integrate and customize TwitterCounter.com followers and stats widgets for your sidebar.
  

Good luck and happy developing!

Nikole Gipps is a punctilious web developer, marketing-minded writer, enthusiastic gardener, improvisational cook, loving wife, and fun mother of two. Read more about her work at That PHP Girl or follow all of her adventures at the nhgnikole mashup.

Why is this important, you may ask? It’s simple: Your current work is the best source you have for new work. How am I going to talk about the different versions or things I did to certain sites if I don’t have the screenshots of the earlier versions? You’d think I would have learned my lesson after I kicked myself over this last week, but no … I went and did it again. I realized I should have taken version screenshots of Rockstar Wedding Planner LIVE while I was rebuilding my portfolio on this site, and today I sat here adding some great new features to Cherry Tree Occasions without taking a screenshot of the existing site before I started.

Your take-home lesson for today: Remember to take lots of pictures. It doesn’t matter what industry you do, or what your product is, it is better to have too many pictures than to realize you have none. If you work with digital files, take screenshots. If you are a wedding planner, take pictures of the wedding. If you do teleseminars, save all the recordings of your calls. Don’t just save the final product, too — save the process, take notes of what happened, and gather testimonials about the event/product. The work you do today (and the people you work with) will always be your best source of future work, so don’t forget to beef up your portfolio and talk about your projects at every chance you get!

P.S. Thank you for the magic that is TextWrangler because I used about 700 undos to get the site back to the original on 4 files, saved as a backup version copy, used that for a screenshot, and then put the new version up again.

• Removed the decorative sidebar and shifted the content left.
• Dropped the sidebar lower, modified it to randomly select testimonials, and added a logo to the top of the page on that side.
• Created custom backgrounds for the page, header and footer.
• Swapped out the footer widgets for a special announcement and a link list (using WordPress links).
• Used a structure of pages instead of posts.
• Connected to an existing shopping cart to create purchase options.
• Changed color schemes and some font treatments to achieve the right look.
• Created a graphic for the slogan to connect the elegance and star power of the event.
• Formatted the content and pictures for flow.

The end result is a flirty and fun site featuring the site owner’s favorite colors that does a great job in getting across the feel of the event itself. It is a big departure from the original format of the Rockstar Wedding Planner LIVE! site, which was more of a long sales form — and the folks at RSWP couldn’t be happier with their new design! The event (and the site) are sure to be another smashing success for Daykin Productions.

• Custom backgrounds throughout.
• Dropped navigation in the header, expanded wording in the footer.
• Replacement header featuring Callandra’s fantastic logo.
• A new sidebar that changes from the blog to the static pages, and features a rotating testimonial and social media icons.
• SEO helpers like the WPSEO plugin, sitemaps, and search engine pinging.
• New blog formatting to suit Callandra’s needs.
• Custom WordPress templates for blog archives, recent posts and testimonials.

The end result is the launch of Cherry Tree Occasions — Wedding Planner to the Wildly Romantic! I think all the small details on this site make it one of my favorites. Callandra and I really came together as a team to make this site great!

This was the question recently addressed by Heart on Your Wrist, a custom jewelry maker. They have an existing e-commerce site built upon Zen Cart with a theme they like, but they tried to add a blog in a new directory and were unhappy with the the mismatch in themes … until That PHP Girl came along!

I worked with the team at Heart on Your Wrist to rebuild a theme on their existing WordPress installation to match their Zen Cart stylesheets. This theme features:

• The use of common stylesheets with the ZenCart theme.
• Custom templates for the index, archive and single pages.
• Custom archives listings by tag/topic, date or category.
• Updates for all existing WordPress and Plugin software.
• Modification of the Socialable plugin for WordPress to make it work in this application.

• Custom imagery, headers and backgrounds.
• Modification of the base theme, and restructuring of the header.
• Changes and additions to the stylesheets (CSS), including font changes.
• A "social media hub" with a custom icon theme and links to all her various social media profiles.
• Assistance for the site owner in making new posts, adding images, and generally using WordPress.
• Critical plugins like Google Sitemaps and WPSEO.

• Custom PHP programming in the menu bar, sidebars, and content areas, including a request form.
• A new logo.
• Changes to the stylesheets (CSS) and new icons.

The company is continuing to work on their site and refine their message, and I see great things for their future.

Why Use WordPress for E-Commerce?

I have yet to find an e-commerce solution that I really like and that will do everything I need. Most of them are very complicated to do custom design on, or they are limited in terms of custom design in order to maintain functionality. The time-consuming nature of customizing e-commerce software is what makes an e-commerce site so expensive to make … and to be honest, most people don’t need a full-blown e-commerce solution because they won’t use most of the functionality, and/or they have very few products. Many people also don’t want a real store—they just want a way to throw in a few products into their content. So for those reasons, along with the ease of use and development of WordPress, finding a way to make WordPress work for e-commerce purposes makes sense.

Anatomy of a Products Post

Rockstar Wedding Planner has two main shopping areas: The products section and the coaching section. The products section is just a category listing disguised as a page — it uses WP_Query to pull all the posts from the products posting category and orders them by title. The loop then starts to display all the posts.

The first section is just a simple call to the the_title(); function in an h3 wrapper:

The second section calls the_content();, using the <!–more–> quicktag to control what is displayed on the page and what is displayed after the link.

The third section calls a price for the product, and a description for that price if it is available (which it is when there is more than one price option). It starts out by finding out if a price is listed using a custom field, displaying the description if there is one, and then displaying the price.

The code for that looks like this:

<?php if (post_custom(‘bundle_price’) == true) { ?><p><?php if (post_custom(‘bundle_price_descrip’) == true) { ?><?php echo post_custom(‘bundle_price_descrip’); ?> | <?php } ?>Price: <?php echo post_custom(‘bundle_price’); ?></p><?php } ?>

The fourth block is the actual add to cart button. Because the button and the surrounding code for the display stays the same for all products, I opted to just pull the link for this button from a custom field. The admin for the site simply pulls the store link for this product from their payment processor and adds it to the custom field.

Code:

<?php if (post_custom(‘bundle_link’) == true) { ?><div class=”btn-buy”><a href=”<?php echo post_custom(‘bundle_link’); ?>”><img src=”http://www.mcssl.com/netcart/images/cart_buttons/cart_button_12.gif” style=”border:none; background:none;” /></a></div><?php } ?>

The final block is a learn more link, which could possibly go to the rest of that post, or it could go to another page entirely.

This is also accomplished through custom fields, using an if statement to determine if there is a special link, or if the_permalink(); should just be called:

<div class=”btn-continue”><?php if (post_custom(‘bundle_learnmore_link’) == true) { ?><a href=”<?php echo post_custom(‘bundle_learnmore_link’); ?>”><?php echo post_custom(‘bundle_learnmore_text’); ?><?php } else { ?><a href=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>”>Learn More<?php } ?></a></div>

The coaching section pretty much follows the same functionality, with the biggest exception being that no link is display if a learn more link is not entered as a custom field, instead of using the_permalink(); as the else alternative.

Want a code-free version?

WordPress is built upon the structure of categories, posts and pages. Most modern E-Commerce software is built with categories, products and extra content pages. So why can’t "products" just be posts in the category of "products"? If you want to simplify this whole thing, you could just purchase an existing theme (or use whatever you are using now), and create a category of products. Inside this category, you would use a new post for every one of your products including the description, price, and a Buy It Now button. (Buy It Now buttons can easily be created through services like Google Checkout, PayPal and 1ShoppingCart.) Once you have all your products in, your "store" would then just be your category listing, for example /category/products/.

One note: Depending on your version of WordPress and how you edit your pages, it may not work to paste in button code for the visual editor. To solve this problem, enter your text into the visual editor, save the post, and then click on the HTML editor to put the button code in, clicking update post after you are done.

Hopefully I have given my readers some good ideas about what they can do with their own sites, but remember—if you get stuck, I’m always here to help!

Coming up: Part 2 will be on using WordPress with a custom, on-site cart solution. Part 3 will be about using a plugin to create a shopping solution.