Blog

I’m In The Right Place

by Em Are · Dec 23, 2015

I celebrated my birthday yesterday. Another one in the books. It was different somehow. Working as a freelancer, from a home office, gives me plenty of opportunity for quiet reflection, especially at this time of year when business activity seems to slow.

The development projects were all caught up, support issues had been dealt with for the moment, so I had time to read a few of the blogs I follow. There were a number of year-end wrap ups, and a few really good how-to posts. The year-end wraps caught most of my attention. You see, I am coming to the end of my first year as a full-time WordPress developer and small business owner.

In previous years I was able to look back and see how things went as a part-time freelancer. Those two years are marked with an asterisk (*), you know, the indicator to check the footnotes. They had some other form of income, either from a part-time job, or most recently, from another full-time gig that ended abruptly with the Friday-end-of-day-can-you-stop-in-my-office-before-you-leave-im. “We’ve decided to go in a different direction….”. Oh, please, spare me the BS!

While the income as a freelance business owner has no-way come close to the income I earned in corporate America, the intangible benefits have far exceeded my expectations.

Visited my doctor this past week for my 6-month check-in. Blood pressure and that bad cholesterol stuff are both way down. First time in more than 7 years. Now THAT’s an accomplishment to be proud of. I think I can count that as some sort of money in the bank, right?

I categorize that as a symbol of one of the soft benefits of my new chapter. I’m more relaxed, I think, and I have slowed down. I like to think that decisions I make are more thought out and less knee-jerk. I’ve learned to step back from potentially tense situations (aka questionable communications with clients, friends, family) to add space for thinking.

I can’t control how things will turn out. I can’t change things that have occurred. I CAN affect how I react to things right now. I can live in this moment and be present to what I am experiencing and how I react to it.

After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Being present to the situation we find ourselves in, engaging with it, and making the next right decision on how to proceed with it.

I’m going through the process of looking back on my business year. I think that I have positively impacted a number of small businesses by building new business websites for them, or helping them to maintain their existing small business website. Revenue has definitely increased from the previous year; albeit a little short of where I had projected. Time to re-think marketing and prospecting activities.

I have met a number of awesome people this past year. Some I have been able to teach something to, but many more I have been able to learn from. I attended 5 WordCamps and 12 WordPress meetups. I made presentations three times at meetups and volunteered at the Philly WordCamp. Being the’local guy’ I even helped coordinate a multi-national gathering of #genesiswp folks at the inaugural WordCamp US in Philadelphia earlier this month. Now THAT was cool.

So, as long as I’m willing and able to learn something new, I think I’m in the right place. This place, this moment, right now.

Onward and upward.

I Found Some Peace

by Em Are · Dec 16, 2015

It’s December. It’s Christmas-time. It’s crazy-time. It’s year-end. It’s “i-need-this-today” time.

I get that. I surprised myself. I found peace and comfort within the last 12 hours.

My wife and I made cookies last night. First time in I can’t remember how long that we did that. Have we ever in our 25+ years of marriage? Don’t know. But we did last night. Four, count ’em, 4 different kinds. Just her and I, in the kitchen, for a couple of hours.

Man, it was cool.

And the result? Lots of goodies to try. Sure, some of them didn’t come out quite right. What do expect when you put the two of us in the kitchen together to do one of HER favorite things? I posted a pic of the goodies to our family Google+ hangout. (Believe me, that’s the only way two empty-nesters can stay in touch with two adult sons anymore.)

Their responses to the pic were priceless.

Son #1:

Ok now I’m jealous.

Son #2:

Oh boy…I might have to stop by in the mornin”.

I chuckled to myself this morning while I was sitting at the kitchen counter eating my breakfast and I heard a key in the back door. Son #2 “stopped by to say ‘hi'”. He grabbed some cookies. We had a few minutes of quality conversation and he was off.

I had turned on the lights of the Christmas tree to show Son #2 how good a job his mother had done on the tree this past weekend. After he left, I sat and stared at the tree for a bit. It was simple. One of the simplest ones we have had in a long, long time. Memories of my wife’s mother covered the tree. Good memories.

Man, what a calm feeling.

As I walked to my office this morning (not much effort, only about 75 feet down the driveway), I thought to myself that I had really experienced some wonderful feelings of peace over the past 12 hours.

Not a bad start for December 16.

And Along Comes Something New

by Em Are · Dec 15, 2015

Something New and Different

Something new? Really? Yes, I have done something like this before, but this will be new and different, at leat I think it will. A combination of personal journey, technology, lifestyle simplification and entrepreneurial exploration.

I’m going to put them together, so that I don’t spread myself across too many different platforms. I will continue to add information to my business blog at capwebsolutions.com. That will focus on the business portfolio and the occasional ‘how-to’ for something that I’ve worked my way through successfully. Some of that may spill over onto this space. I’ll have to see how it plays out.

Write It Down

My goal, now out here, is to add something new a few times a week.

I have tried this before, the blogging goal thing, but without writing it down. My head-space mentor, Michael Hyatt, tells me that if the goal doesn’t get written down, it substantially reduces it’s chances of being realized. Check out his podcast. It is well worth your time.

Exploration

I want to explore the opportunities that come along, share those experiences, and hopefully find some like minded souls to walk with me. Along the way I’ll be share to share bits a pieces of myself, as appropriate. After all, if you don’t know who I am why would you even be interested in reading what I have to say.

Regular Blogging

Blogging isn’t only about originality of content; a good deal can be learned from reading someone else’s interpretation or reaction to a piece. You’ll find that here too. I will always add attribution to the original author. It’s only fair.

Technology

I did it. I finally grabbed a domain with my whole name. How ’bout that. A dot co, as in, well, a shortened dot com. It’s real. You WILL be seeing more and more of these in the interwebs. Pay attention. Get in touch with me if you’d like to get one for you. I can help.

With that, let’s do this.

WordPress 4.3 – Oh The Things You Can Do

by Matt · Aug 19, 2015

I upgraded this website today to the latest release of WordPress. That is version 4.3, code-named “Billie” after the famous jazz singer Billie Holiday. You can read the back story about the name and the rest of the new features here. It’s a cool read.

WordPress 4.3! Oh, the things you can do with this release…

It WILL increase your happiness. There’s so many reasons to upgrade to the new release, but the thing I’m most jazzed about are the updates that come to life in the post editing screen. Oh baby! I love keyboard shortcuts. I have from my early days of MS-DOS (yes, I did say MS-DOS, you do the math). I always go to the keyboard shortcuts whenever I get a new app to use. I’m so much more efficient when I can rely on the keyboard, as opposed to the mouse/touchscreen/trackpad/<insert fav GUI device here>, when trying to do almost anything on the PC. Maybe it’s different on a MAC, but I don’t know; I live in the Windows world.

Back to WP 4.3 … the content editor, that’s the big empty box you usually see when you are adding a new page or post, now has really cool SHORT, shortcuts, that work, and are so helpful.

Cool Heading Style Shortcuts

No more clicking up to that ”Paragraph’ box to select the heading I want to use. The heading for this paragraph … I just kept typing to add it. Finished the previous paragraph, hit “Enter” followed by two “#”, the words “Cool ….” and, voila, it turned into a Heading 2 format style. Be still my twitching fingers. Sorry “Anker Vertical Mouse”. We’ll being seeing less of each other from now on. You want it to be Heading 1 style … you know … the biggest one that looks great for top of page headings. Just hit one # and keep typing. You have a Heading 1 style. Works for three, four, five or 6 # in a row. All the heading styles, literally at your fingertips.

Lists, Lists and More Lists

I am a list lover. I use Evernote for everything. Lots and lots of lists in Evernote. Constantly hitting the Ctrl + Shift + B sequence to make bullet lists. I missed that when writing in WordPress. I could copy my EN list into WP, but, well you’ve seen what happens to formatted text when you drop it in to the content editor. It always seems a frustrating game of chance for me. I never know what I’m going to get and it always involves deleting end of line characters, adding a new “Enter” character, rinse and repeat.

But now, in WordPress 4.3, I can keep writing. Start that line with a “-“, and as you type through to the end of line, “YES”, a bullet list item appears! Life is good. Simplicity flows over and around me. I hear the sound of ocean waves caressing the beach, so zen-like. Okay, maybe it’s not THAT great, but it is pretty damn cool.

Blockquotes Too

I’ll be honest. I don’t do much with blockquotes. The first three, yes three, websites I put up for clients had blockquotes interspersed in the content pages to emphasize, well, quotes. Know what? During the site acceptance review, ALL three of the clients came back telling me I had a typo in all the quotes. No right quotation mark. It’s indented. Looks out-of-place.

Really?

So that’s why I stay away from them unless the client SPECIFICALLY SAID THEY WANTED IT.

But when I do get to use them, starting the block of text with a ‘>’ is just about as cool as sliced bread. Auto-formatted just like my style sheet says. No selecting, clicking, adding new lines. Just keep typing and it appears!

Hit the little ? button in the editor menu bar to get the full listing of shortcuts. I’m sure you will learn something new.

More Changes Under The Hood

There’s quite a bit more stuff in there too. Easy to add site icons and favicons. I guess I don’t have to use that custom code snippet any more. Clients can now change that at will. An easy way to add menu items right from the Customizer. While I haven’t’ used it much yet, I do anticipate it streamlining my website setup workflow. And that is a good thing.

I think one of the most important under the cover items is the update that forces strong passwords. I am a true believer in strong passwords. My LastPass vault has just over 500 unique passwords in it, all 12 characters or longer, in the most obtuse arraignments ever. I could never remember them all, or even 2 of them for that matter. A password manager is a must. Forcing users to use strong passwords will be an inconvenience, for a while, until they figure out how to work with it. It is just one of those things you need to deal with.

Good Overview

wpbeginner.com did a great overview of this update, and broke it all down to very simple ideas for implementation. Go check out their blog post on what’s new with WordPress 4.3.

I’ll be updating the rest of my sites, and client sites, over the next few days. Can’t say enough good stuff about this.

Need Some Help

Cap Web Solutions, my alter-ego, can help you update your WordPress website to this latest release. Reach out, even if you just have some questions, they/we/I can help.

Until next time.

All the best.

WordPress Maintenance Release 4.2.3

by Matt · Jul 24, 2015

It was announced on wordpress.org on July 23 that version 4.2.3 of WordPress was released. Being a point release, in most instances this update will be automatically applied to your site. However, if you have automatic point release updates turned off, be sure to manually apply this update. The wordpress.org post provides instructions for the process.

It is a security release addressing problems in WordPress versions 4.2.2 and earlier where a cross-site scripting vulnerability was uncovered. This XSS vulnerability, could allow users with the Contributor or Author role to compromise a site.

Here is a link to the post on WordPress.org.

WP Tavern, one of my favorite go-to sources for breaking news in the world of WordPress, offers another great perspective on this release by Sarah Gooding. Check out her post here.

List of Genesis Themes

by Matt · Jul 8, 2015

Recently I have been asked by a few web development clients to give them some ideas about where to look for Genesis themes for their websites. A couple of the website packages we offer at Cap Web Solutions allow clients to choose an existing theme to be implemented on their site with varying degrees of customization.

I always send them first to the StudioPress Theme Selector page. Then I usually identify a few other top tier theme shops and pass along those links. I would go through the typical email copy-n-paste to assemble the lists and then I thought “someone must have already done this. Someone has already built a list of Genesis theme shops.” A tweak of my google search from ‘Genesis theme shops’ to ‘Genesis theme lists’ did the trick. A number of great lists were my reward. I went through a bunch of them, and, well, you know, I stayed near the top of the search results. Don’t we all?

There right near the top was Andrea Whitmer. While she and I have never met face to face, we have had a number of “conversations” via comments on her blogs. I trust her. After all, she’s the one who calmed my fears about jumping on-board with the Genesis Developer Pro Package last year. And I am soooo glad I did. Anyway, I feel that I can trust her theme shop recommendations to pass them along, untouched, to my web development clients.

So here it is. Andrea has assembled an awesome list of 3rd party theme developers. No doubt you will find something that coincides with your mind’s eye of what your site could look like.

Enjoy!

[listly id=”ZLH” layout=”short” show_header=”true” show_author=”true” show_sharing=”true” show_tools=”true” per_page=”25″]

Disclaimer: Some of the off-site links referenced on this site are what is referred to as an affiliate link. If you choose to purchase or use the product or service through that link, I will get a small referral fee from the service or product provider. The price of the resource is the same whether or not you use my affiliate link.

Cap Web Solutions 3.0

by Matt · Jul 2, 2015

Live Without a Hitch. Gotta Love It.

Pulled the trigger right around 5:00 pm UTC-5 yesterday. Thanks to the excellent DNS change documentation from WP Engine, everything went smoothly and the newest incarnation of capwebsolutions.com went live. I actually needed to do some tweaking on the WP Engine hosting end of things since I was running a completely new instance of the site.

Version 3.0

Yep, that’s correct. Version 3. Cap Web Solutions LLC has been officially a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania entity for one year now so I thought that it was appropriate to give the company the gift of a complete online presence makeover. The previous site, which was more focused on the website maintenance and support service, can now be found at it’s new address – TopHatTotalCare.com. I really hope that the name clicks when you read it. ‘Top hat’. ‘Cap’ Web. Get it?

That was actually version 2.0 – a complete rewrite of the inaugural site that was launched just over a year ago. Version 2 came out in late winter 2015 as a full Genesis website rocking the parallax effects for the front page images. There’s a little more detail on the portfolio page of our new site. Check it out.

This incarnation solidifies Cap Web Solutions’ focus on developing websites fully utilizing the Genesis Framework. As our portfolio demonstrates, we are gaining more and more experience in the Genesis camp. I have found that the framework is well written, appropriately documented, and after having a couple of advanced classes under my belt, very easy to customize to accommodate any design requirements that I have come up against.

Community is Where Its At

I continue to be awestruck by the WordPress community, both here in the suburban Philadelphia area (shout-out to the Philly ‘Burbs WordPress Meetup ) and nationwide. That sense of community runs even stronger within the Genesis camp. WordPress enthusiasts, be they users, administrators, or hard-core designers and developers, tend to always want to help one another, offer support to strangers, improve the technology, all in the name of moving the WordPress project forward. I recently attended my second Philadelphia WordCamp and came away from the day with renewed excitement for the path I’ve chosen, the people I’ve met, and the opportunities yet to be explored.

Onward and upward.

« Previous Page