QUICK FIX #1 – Setup each page with Google Analytics

QUICK FIX #2 – Make sure all images and links are working

QUICK FIX #3 – Add a search or sitemap of your content

QUICK FIX #4 – Setup your site on a CMS

QUICK FIX #5 – Get a professionally designed template

Tonka Park can help you with your existing website with each of these items. Feel free to contact us by email at hello@tonkapark.com or by phone 573-557-3147.

Visit the site: Lake of the Ozarks web services

Creating a theme

A big part of the redesign with wordpress is simply creating a custom theme. There are hundreds of howto's when it comes to wordpress theme development, I will not attempt to go into details here.

The key points in the theme development are creating individual page templates. This can be done by creating files with the name format of page-templatename.php.

<?php
/*
Template Name: GrowthHome
*/
?>

A page template can then be assigned when creating a new page in wordpress. This allows the Portfolio page to look different than the services page or the about page. I am actually using a Page template for my blog index page instead of the index.php default page.

Different Sinlge Page by Category

Another trick many developers are using with wordpress is to add a conditional statement to the single.php file in the theme. This file then selects a custom named file of your liking to display.

<?php
$post = $wp_query->post;
if ( in_category('29') ) {
include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/single-portfolio.php');
} else {
include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/single-blog.php');
}
?>

This simple block allows my portfolio item posts to be displayed completely different than my individual blog posts. A handy trick indeed when working with WordPress as a CMS.

Short Urls

Something new I added to the site was a feature that several other websites now have and is becoming more common due to services like twitter. Many of the times when using twitter you have to shorten a url to fit your character limit. I have used bit.ly for url shortening but I don't like having to use a third party domain to mask the actual endpoint when my domain is the one in question. I want to build name recognition and have trust in my links. So rather than using a plugin or a fancy solution to create my short urls and use hashes I took a simple approach that I believe to be pratical and elegant.

I changed the WordPress permalink structure from the previous /%year%/%month%/%postname%/ to /%post_id%/%postname%/. This change required no coding on my part, the previous links continued to redirect to the new structure and I get my short urls by cutting off the postname. I am not sure if there are any flaws to this approach yet but my existing links on twitter, my new links and my short urls all work. Using the All in One SEO plugin each of my pages is given a canonical link tag in the head section so the search engines will be able to index the full url even if the short url is used to link to my pages.

Giving WordPress its Own Directory

Finally to have the root of my website clear of all the wordpress php files I left the wordpress install in a folder (/blog) and followed the easy steps to copy the htaccess and index.php to the root so that you can have the front page outside of the wordpress directory. The steps are on the wordpress codex pages and linked from within the WordPress Admin General Options

So those are the basic steps I took to setup wordpress to take over control of my website. I am sure there are plenty more steps I can take but for what I need this works.

The site is to be a community portal for the landowners of Tonka Park Springs where we purchased land last year. The land is just outside Ha Ha Tonka Park off HWY D among the hills and trees south of Camdenton, MO. There are lots of landowners and only one or two houses built at this time. My intent is to build a site that can allow the owners to share the experience of building out their new homes on their 5+ acre lots. It would be very helpful to get to know each other, share recommendations of local builders and contractors and show off the final homes when complete.

To do this I have chosen to use Ruby on Rails as my application framework. The rails community provides a long list of plugins and gems to help get you started in building this type of web application.  I want my application to be simple and clean.  Some of the other projects out there like lovdbyless and insoshi, which are both well designed and supported social network applications, have so many requirements and dependencies it is hard to get them up and running without detailed knowledge of the application.

The application will be invitation-only once it is up and running for the owners. However, depending on the progress and succes I will consider opening the site to the public or starting a second site that is public and possibly even open sourcing the code.

For now let me share the list of useful gems and plugins I have utilized at this point:

• Clearance - an authentication and registration gem by thoughtbot.
• Paperclip - this is so easy for file uploads.
• will-paginate - it does what it says.
• RedCloth - I am starting with this for the post sanitizing and formatting. We will see.

With this project I am also looking into writing tests more proactively using:

• Shoulda
• Factory Girl
• Matchy

At this point I am in the look and feel stage. I have written much of the actual functionality and now need to make the application look finished and ready for users. I hope to share more progress soon and even a write up on how I used some of these gems in my application.

When we moved to town I began watching for business cards, billboards and other advertising that had websites listed. I wanted to find out who had websites and what the quality of the websites was for the local businesses.

I have found that all the Realtors in the Ozarks have a website, most having paid the same company for a template website that some 1000+ Realtors probably have elsewhere in the United States. The larger chains or franchises have a website but it is always something maintained by the corporate location in some other major city. Then there are the majority of places that have nothing on the internet except phone book entries which are usually only good for a phone number and sometimes you can get an address, if that is all you were looking for. Finally, there is the small, but bigger than I first observed, group that have websites for their business or organization that was either designed by a friend or contracted to a web design professional.

Part of my search for these company sites is to find targeted clients and also find out if there are companies or individuals offering similar services that I am offering through my Tonka Park web design site. It took some time to find these local businesses or individuals offering domain hosting and registration, email hosting, web design,  and computer support. This list is incomplete but these are the professionals that I will begin with to compare my services and I want my clients to know what else is available to them in the area.

• http://vbmedia.com/
• http://cdoc.net/
• http://hip2click.com/
• http://www.beaboutweb.com/home.htm
• http://www.osagebeachwebdesign.com/
• http://www.djonesassoc.com/webpages.htm
• http://www.lakeoftheozarkswebsitedesign.com/

I will work to differentiate myself from this list so that I can show value in my product. Maybe even some day I will meet these individuals and work with them.

I take pride in my work and want my clients to know that while I may not offer the lowest priced services I will produce stylish, clear and simple designs that will benefit their organization. Whether I am designing a website, database application, business cards or hosting websites and email I will get the job done well. A website is an extension of a company image.  Company advertising, billboards, business cards and store fronts are all carefully designed and arranged, shouldn't the website for your company be given the same attention? With more and more people using the internet to compare products and services it is necessary to have a professionally designed website to improve conversion rates.

If you are looking for help for your business in Camdenton, Osage Beach, Lebanon, Linn Creek, Sunrise Beach or Lake Ozark area check out my portfolio and list of services.