You’ve come to know about me that I’m A WP junkie - having spent the last almost year of my life converting all my sites into Word Press Platforms and designing them OVER and OVER Again. Well for one - re-designing myself has re-defined myself over and over again. I live for the possibility that those of you who have been to my blogs and know of the changes are WOW-ed every time. That is one of the most important things that a designer must do for you is give you that WOW factor. If I can’t do it on mine, how can you be confident I can do it on yours? That’s an honest question. So that’s been one reason why I keep re-designing/defining - I can’t keep up with everything!!

Well one thing that I have struggled with is setting up on-site payments. I knew there were plug-ins for SH WP Blogs (self-hosted Word Press Blogs - blogs which are hosted on your domain - not on word press) . I’ve researched several and never (until now) found one that I have liked. Things that are important to me is the ability to provide instant downloads on pre-made products which I will be adding to the site soon.
Another thing that is important to me when ordering custom made designs (and I swear by this because it does dramatically reduce product delivery time on custom products) is the ability for you to add custom instructions to me - in other words, form input while you’re in the process of ordering your custom products to me. Why this is important is because as the client ordering a custom product, I don’t have your ready made product, but I need to know the details of what you are ordering from my site and how you want it. This new ability I have will enable this feature to be available to you - that is going to save us both time, heartache & trouble. Timeliness is important to me because I firmly believe that time is money. I have people that are blown away at how incredibly quick I am - I know how it is to be in your shoes! As a consumer, I know I want my product right away, as soon as possible and I don’t want to wait for a designer/installer/tech to do it on their time - I want it on mine. You want the same. So with this new ability - this is absolutely possible - HALELUJAH!!!!

Another thing you may wonder is why do I specialize & swear my designer life by the Self Hosted Word Press Platform? Because I do test the installations in my cpanel, the fantastico autoinstaller. Blown away by what that is? If you don’t know, then you don’t have cpanel hosting - in such case - fire your host/designer. It is a must have for any professional who is sincere about making an honest living online. I have tested other platforms and on so many levels I go back to SHWP Blogs. For one thing - there is a template out there for just about everything you blog about and if there isn’t and you want one custom designed, well I have done enough work with it that it is my specialty, my preference & my favorite thing to do.

Also, because it is compatible with so many plugins, it is an all around content management solution. In my line of work, I deal mainly with other work at home moms - moms who run online stores. While there is nothing wrong with these stores, that’s not my implication, I do see a link for a blog as an addition to the site. Many moms have the blog and don’t even use it and that is a waste of space for one, or they use the blog more than the store - again, more of a waste of space. Many people use blogger which, while its popular - just as popular, does not give you full domain control - again, a MUST have when you’re running a business online. Yes with blogger, through aname and cname set up you can use blogger for your top level domain - but again, I stand firm, it is still not full domain control in which I must insist upon.

I just prefer the WP Platform as an all around content management solution - there are amazing adaptations out there on the word press site for self-hosted for everything your heart (and blog) desire. You can’t get that with most of the installations in fantastico - but you do with Word Press - it is the most noted, trusted and beloved for top level professionals. If you do need help with these, do contact me to ask for help and I would be happy to help you find anything you may need for your Self-Hosted WP Blog whether it is on your main domain or as a separate site. If you don’t have this and are interested in this, contact me and I can help you determine whether this may be a great solution for you, or not - but chances are it is - less hassle - one site to manage. The “One Ring To Rule Them All” Lord Of The Rings Philosophy.

And if you don’t want your main blog as your main site, you want to display your new catalog hosted on your WP blog as your home page, that can be done to. This will be the solution for me when I get the catalog set up.

Have a great week -

Shanni

I just wanted to make a special off-the-site-subject post here as I’m doing at as many of my sites as possible until I’ve covered everyone (about 10+ in all) to share with everyone a site you can go to, to donate. Please - by all means, if you can donate even just $1 - if everyone did that could, that would really add up. We did & I know that I feel like it helped because I am a firmer knower that it does add up - if a million people donated $1 - wow -imagine that - that’s a million dollars going to Haiti…

So check this out - purchase my check out these apples banner for $3 and $2 of it will go to helping Haiti per order. I will work on some new banners and offer the same kind of incentive for each to do my part. Every little bit helps.

Just In - The “Check Out These Apples” Spring Banner - I’m so exited for this - I think its absolutely adorable and will get everyone in the mood for spring - motivated & exited after these cold winter months!
You Can Custom Order It With Your Slogan And Domain For $3. Once You Order It, I Will Custom Design It With The Info You Provide And Email It To You At The PayPal Address You Used To Purchase Within 24-48 hours. Thanks for your order!

Your Website Address

Your Slogan

I am so sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. The holidays were lived from one crises in our family to the next - we’re still recovering. I’ve had a design job for the past few weeks and am working on clearing out all the holiday stuff from my sites and re-vamping with so many awesome things - I’m really exited. I’m going to soon be offering my images for very cost effective prices - pardon the cliche, quality work, not quality prices. Check back for those!

We are so grateful to have 3 beautiful children in our home! We have a baby again this year for the holidays who is almost 10 months old now, she was born a month after last Christmas. In The Einer home, The holiday season extends beyond Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years - it has been extended by our 3 kids’ birthdays all in January, February & March and we don’t have another kids’ birthday until next year when (GULP) I have a second kid turning into a teenager who isn’t home this year. Its hard to narrow down everything I am grateful for because the list goes on forever and I have to make rounds at all my websites. I apologize for this being a cover post but I have a dozen domains to cover & thank God for all my blessings at. Folks - I have the most amazing blessing of all - the love of family. May God bless you with the same always, and not just the holidays. We don’t stop living the other 9 months of the year so God Bless You ALWAYS!

And Carter, whereever you are - Mom Loves you always & forever!

Love, Shanni and the Einer Bunch

And Carter, whereever you are - Mom Loves you always & forever!

Okay, not really - well sort of? I had to post something about designing and why we charge so much. I’ve recently been doing A LOT of designing of my own sites for the holidays and I do have a fantastic Word Press Blog Design coming that I will be charging a pretty penny for.

It goes along with what I know about design and being a spoiled brat designer such as I am - okay, not really either.

See, most of my sites I’ve chosen the self hosted Word Press platform for. What does that mean? An example - this very blog - my design blog, is a self hosted word press blog. That means, its not hosted by word press itself. It is a feature of the fantastico auto-installer that comes with cpanel. Confused? If so, then you either have never had real, paid hosting, or someone else does your design work.

I used to struggle with paying for anything online, nowadays, what I wouldn’t do to pay less than $50 a month to run my business online. There’s your first reason why we designers charge so much - cost. But I tell you, its worth it. I’m so sick of seeing people who expect me and others to shop at their sites online who are referring me to free websites rather than ones that they have paid for hosting for on so many levels. I’ve probably just made some people mad, or scared others who are doing this and know that I’m right when they realize how much money they’ve lost because they’ve done this. I’ve found lately that some direct sales companies highly recommend getting a domain exclusively for their reps/affiliates to link to. That is an exeption - that’s smart actually. But for main sites - NEVER. Quit it!

And then those who are still using free sites but paying a designer? Huh? I’m lost there.

Professionalism is everything - your own style is everything. I highly recommend the simplicity of self hosted word press blogs because you want a blog and are likely to have one any ways. Why is this so simple? Because you do it once. Then you can run it all from your front end. You can still have a store or set up manual payments with a paypal account. On your page you should also have a contact, links, about page - I love those.

Designers know what you will most likely need and can accomodate. This is why I always recommend pre-sales contact with me and don’t quote rates for large design projects on my store. Who knows what kind of project I’m going to work on that I could under charge or over charge for. But I tell you, sometimes it is a website that looks like it took days to design that took less than 20 minutes.

And then there’s last nights exeption - a tiny little background image for one of my recently re-designed sites ShopWithASAHM.com. Here’s an image that, no joke, took 4 LONG hours to make. The size for it is 50×41 - check it out -

This took 4 hours? YUP! See it in action at shopwithasahm.com

Now here’s why it took me 4 hours. See how it vines down very perfectly as if it was made that way in a vine pattern? If its not perfectly aligned in creation which is hard with this type of element, its not going to make its correctly aligned background image, its going to go all over the place and not look like it was made that way. But its pretty isn’t it? It should be after 4 LONG HOURS!

See I can create backgrounds that will fit your entire blog. For this template it usually takes a 50×50 image on both sides. But I wanted something simple elegance that would be very pretty on the site and stretch my skill a bit. Well it did, I still have a headache.

But see wee designers get paid to go through these headaches for you - make something like this look so simple. It goes deeper. You’ve gotta take a look at the more fragile component of design - this is just the design, not even the functionality. That’s a whole new blog post and I barely had time for this one. There is the absolute heart of a design job more important than the actual look, the function. The function, protocols, codes, scripts layout, meshing them together. That’s the hard part. Makes a simple design look like a walk in the park.

That’s why we dear designers charge so much but its bittersweet, like childbirth. You go through 9 months of labor, hours of hell giving birth but look what you have to show for it in the end.

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