Custom Wordpress Design: James Wigderson

I finished this project awhile back, but finally remembered to blog about it! Life has been pretty crazy lately, and I’ve let my blog suffer. James Wigderson contacted me this summer about converting his Blogger blog to a self-hosted Wordpress blog. He has been blogging for years and finally made the switch to a superior platform! Click on the image below to check it out!

Top Wordpress plugins

I am a huge fan of Wordpress – have been for years. And over the years, I’ve learned some tips and tricks to make life a little easier. The first of these is finding the right plugins. Plugins can make your life so much easier.

So, here’s my Top Five Must-Have Wordpress Plugins:

1. Akismet – This baby blocks just about every spam comment on my site. It’s a standard Wordpress plugin, which should be included with the installation of your Wordpress blog on your server. If it isn’t, make sure this is one of the first plugins you activate. Don’t believe it’s worth it? Check out my stats:



2. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade – Even for a Wordpress addict expert superfan such as myself, upgrading to the newest version of Wordpress can be tricky. This plugin takes all the guesswork out of upgrading. I always include this plugin when I set up a client’s new blog. It’s a life saver.
3. All in one SEO Pack – SEO has quickly become a hot topic on the interwebs. (and, rightly so.) SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a fancy way of saying “ranking higher in google and other search engines.” This plugin requires a little work after it’s installed. You can’t just install it and expect it to do all the work for you. Once installed, you should see this box near the bottom of the page whenever you are creating a new post.
   Here’s where you’re going to summarize your blog post with keywords in both the title and the description. Here’s an example of what I did for this post:
   
4. Twitter Tools – These days, everyone is all-a-Twitter, and rightly so. The social networking site is addicting. There are plenty of place where you can find out more about Twitter if you’re not already on it – just Google “what is twitter” and you should get a bazillion results. It’s a great, free tool you should be using for your blog/business. This plugin will automatically tweet for you each time a new blog is posted. Basically, it saves you the step of writing up a tweet and shortening the url yourself.
5. Sociable – This is one of my new favorite plugins. It will help your posts become viral. If your readers want to share your post, they don’t have to grab the url and post it into a tweet, on their Facebook page, fark, digg or stumble upon. All they have to do is click on one of the little icons (you should see it at the bottom of this post) and voila! Your post has viral potential.

There are thousands of plugins out there and I’m hoping to start blogging more about the techie side of me! If you have any good plugins you’d like me to check out, post a comment.

Pardon the dust

Pardon the dust here at Amy Kant Designs! The blog is taking on a whole new look…

Custom Blog Design: Just Me

It has been a pleasure to work with Anne-Marie Teo to create a new look for her blog. Anne-Marie is a gifted artist, which you’ll see if you look around her blog. Here are some screenshots and the proof of the site so you can see what we came up with together!

I created this blog look for Anne-Marie using digital scrapbooking kit items from the Neon Tantrum Kit by Studio mgl and glitter from Holly McCaig’s Jubilee Kit at 2Peas.

This blog was loosely based off the Weeds Wordpress Theme by Natalie Jost and features a bunch of fun plugins, like the Slickr Gallery, TwitThis, PostFooter and Twitter Tools.

My Blog Word Art

Get your own word art here: http://wordle.net/

H/T Holly

blog design still in progress

ugh, don’t you hate when you get an idea and then don’t have the energy to finish it right away?

That’s how i feel about my blog redesign.

so, bear with me please! still gotta import blogroll and other sidebar stuff and finish modifying this template.

New design

The black design was too much for me. Adios!

I’ll try this template out for awhile and see what happens. I really want to customize my CSS, but I figure if I can’t work a full day because of pain – typing makes things worse – I really can’t code at home.

Gotta get better… SOON!!!

Hmmm, gotta order some biznass cards too.