Cory and Brad will walk through how to use PluginBuddy Mobile to easily create a mobile-ready versions of your site, including live demonstrations of creating mobile versions of some pretty cool and famous sites!

Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/518100906

• Finetuning your WordPress Back Up Strategy
• Creating a Mobile Version of Your WordPress Site
• BuddyPress for Dummies Webinar with Lisa Sabin-Wilson
• Builder Theme for Beginners Course
• Creating Stunning Blog and Website Headers
• Convert Your Website to Builder
• Social Media Consulting
• and more!

Please check out our entire calendar and details by visiting the EVENTS PAGE and to sign up for the FREE WEBINARS you would like to attend. All webinars and courses will be recorded and available to the annual WD Members.

>>If you don’t already have a WD Membership, check out all the great details and benefits today!

Course Description:

The WD Consultant and Business Course addresses the important information for entrepreneurs wanting to become a Web Design Consultant or who are starting and building web design businesses.  This class will provide over 20 years of valuable experience in the web and graphics media industry.

Course Dates:

Session One will take place on Saturday, May 22 and Session Two will be scheduled for Saturday, June 12.

Fees and Recordings:

The WD Consultant / Business Course is free for all WebDesign.com Annual Members and it will be recorded and offered as a part of that membership. If you are not a WD Member, you can sign up here to get this course and all the others: http://webdesign.com/training/

Certification:

Upon completing the course, WD Members will have the opportunity to become WD Certified for the additional fee and by taking the certification test. For more information on WD Certification, please click here for more info.

Webinar Links:

Once you are signed up as a WD Member you will be able to access the webinar links in our member’s forum as well as be e-mailed with the information.

The session for next week, May 22nd, is still on and we will do the Session 1 material then and possibly go all day to cover both sessions.  New details and information will be mailed out by Monday.

Thank you for your understanding!

The upcoming courses include:

• BluePrint Basics (WordPress Websites) : Friday, May 14th
• WD Consultant Course : Saturday, May 15th and 22nd (Two Part Course)
• Builder BootCamp (Advanced) : Saturday, June 5th

We’re also providing a bunch of FREE WEBINARS including:

• Plug In Focus (Widget Logic) : Monday, May 17th
  
• Pricing Your Work and Your Worth : Thursday, May 20th
• Helping Your Clients Understand Websites : Friday, May 28th

Check out our WebDesign.com events page to sign up for your FREE webinars (space is limited) and to get the times for each one of these events.

And if you get signed up for the WD ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP you’re going to get all of those new classes as a part of your yearly membership!!!  You’ll be saving some dough and getting premiere training that is going to be awesome.

Trying to find the right web designer or developer to help you to create and build a strong online presence can be an overwhelming task, especially if you’ve heard the countless stories of people being taken to the cleaners on their web development projects. Today, I’m going to give you a few great tips on how to hire the right web designer for your next project.

This is going to hurt but I’ll say it  … I agree that designers are getting lazy.  I feel that in many ways we have neglected the true creativity that is hidden within us and settled for mediocrity in order to pump out our work.  Things have changed and it reminds me of the first MTV music video I ever saw, Video Killed the Radio Star, at the age of eleven.  Digital killed the the artistic star.  Terrible, I know!  However, on the other hand the advances of technology have been extremely beneficial for graphic and web designers.  Who remembers burnishing Letraset for ads or coding on the Tandy TRS-80?  Some things in the past were just a pain in the butt to do and now we can be more creative in certain areas, more quickly.

How does this relate to WordPress themes for web design?

Simple.  There are those discussions where the purists thumb their noses at the kids who “cheat” and use a template, theme, or stock art.  But is it really cheating?  Can we blame some designers for finding ways to be more productive and for making more money by not creating everything from scratch?  Here are some considerations:

• It takes a lot of energy and time to create something from nothing
• The world has devalued true artists and the worth of creativity to who can do it for less
• The economy really sucks and those ‘cheap bastards’ have gotten cheaper
• Many people wait to the last minute and then need it yesterday
• Business is about being profitable not winning design awards
• Solopreneurs or small shops are limited by time
• There really isn’t too much new or original under the sun

If you just consider these true and valid thoughts, then it absolutely makes sense to streamline the creative process or development.  Time IS money. You either can sell your custom artwork or creativity for a very high and lucrative price because you do less projects and time is limited, or you can sell efficiency and good enough work for less and bang out more projects.  As long as the client who is paying your fee is happy, why does it really matter?

Please know that I value custom artwork and the lost arts and crafts we once knew.  I also value the ability to make quick money and getting on to the projects that I really love that might not pay.  My belief is that using WordPress themes or stock artwork is definitely not cheating or wrong – it’s smart business!

How do you feel about it?

1. Can you really call people friends when you’ve never really met them? I don’t accept ANY friend requests unless I know a person or they come as a recommendation from someone I trust.  I think in some ways we’ve made it too easy to connect and I am more interested in “real-ationships” than a body count.  Not to mention, people do business with people they trust.  How can you do this if you don’t know them?

2. Does having thousands of followers really matter? I think the idea of building a massive follower list is just like those childish, school popularity contests where those with the most friends wins.  Where are your friends now?  We should be more concerned with building quality friendships over shallow quantity ones.  Plus, using trickery to build your list doesn’t equal qualified leads or good friendships…but maybe that’s just my Gen-X cynicism speaking.

3. Can you honestly keep up with them? Many bloggers or books say the proper etiquette is to friend or follow a person who does the same for you (and can also a magic bean tactic). This is a great theory and very kind, but highly impractical.  You can only keep up with a limited amount of people. And if you are only doing it as a courtesy, doesn’t that cheapen the deal?  I follow people because I care about what they are saying or doing, and at 227, this is very difficult to do!

4. What is the real purpose? I understand the power of reach and that having a large list of people can increase your odds at being heard, but there is a huge difference between earning the right/trust/privilege to be heard (or followed) as compared to marketing tactics to bait you into a relationship.  If your reason is to create true community then it has to be done with authenticity.

5. Isn’t Social Media about getting results? I’ve been reading Social Media Metrics by Jim Stern and it’s challenged me to go back to my old school reasoning of the ROI (Return on Investment) of using the social media apps at our disposal. In the Introduction, Jim states that you must measure the effectiveness of social media and that there are “The Big Three Goals” in business:

• Increasing Revenue,
• Lowering Costs, and
• Improving Customer Satisfaction

He writes, “they are all that matters in the long run.  If the work you do does not result in an uptick in one or more of those Big Three Goals, then you are wasting your time and spinning your wheels.” Stern also talks about how shallow relationships don’t usually generate good ROI. If we take his information as truth, then we must come to understand that the huge social media numbers game really doesn’t help us out and that smaller, authentic communities do.

Bringing it all together…

Many of us know that trusted relationships with our clients, customers, or community will help us with our business or venture.  Most of us, if we are being honest, would admit that we don’t use social media just for the sake of having fun – but for the purpose of business.  If these are all valid statements (and I believe they are) then shooting for a mass influx of friends, followers, or buddies will not benefit us and therefore making the magic beanstalk worthless.

My advice is that you build your following organically or because you are remarkable.  Then your social media numbers will mean something and have real value.

So how do you feel about these thoughts?

WEB TREATS: WebTreats has some fantastic textures, icons, and Photoshop resources that are second to none.  I’ll also mention they have many ‘treats’ available for free downloads.

COLOUR LOVERS: Why stress out about trying to pick the right color choices when you can get awesome combination’s ready to go?  Colour Lovers offers great palettes for the web, as well as a nifty tool that will help you find complimentary stock photos with some of their palettes.

HOUSE INDUSTRIES: While some fonts won’t work on the web, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t jazz up your graphics or other images.  House sells some of the best fonts on the planet and you can really kick it up a notch by using their fonts where you are able.

GRAPHIC RIVER: Need some sexy website buttons, business card ideas, or backgrounds? Graphic River has a talented community of people who sell their work through this site – most of which are fantastic and will save you design time. Definitely an investment well worth it!

These are just a few places that really help me to be inspired as well as save design time on projects.  As a web design business you should never hesitate to work smarter.  Check out these websites and see what I mean.

The WP Developer course will be taught by Benjamin Bradley and will include two live training events via your computer on April 17th (Part 1) and May 1st (Part 2) from 8 a.m to 4 p.m. Central Standard Time.  This advanced class will be available to everyone enrolled in our WD Membership program and will include valuable training on topics such as:

• Advanced Installation of WordPress
• Security Issues
• The WordPress Loop
• Building Sites with iThemes’ Builder theme
• Understanding Child themes
• Harnessing the power of Hooks and Functions
• Rolling your own plugin
• Understanding WordPress as a CMS Framework
• Development Migration to Live implementation
• and many other topics!

WebDesign.com Members will also have access to all the course recordings so that they refresh their knowledge, catch up on anything they miss, and use for reference materials for building their websites.  This is an extremely valuable course that you don’t want to miss!

Sign up for the annual WD Membership today to be a part of our two online WP Developer courses April 17th and May 1st, and to get all the other amazing courses already in the the membership along with new courses coming soon.