Tools for Development & Design

When it comes to developing and designing your website you’re not left alone in the dark. Even for complete beginners there are many tools and resources to ease the overall learning curve and greatly help you to improve productivity.

First, we’ll start with the browser. Three great browsers that I recommend for development and overall web surfing in general are:

- Firefox
- Chrome
- Safari
- Note about Internet Explorer: I do not recommend this browser for any reason. This is poorly designed software that is neither secure nor respectably standards compliant by web industry standards like the above three browsers. 99% of all browser specific issues occur within IE where every other browser manages to display the same website beautifully.

The only reason to use IE is to check and see that nothing is broken to appease those that still use the browser. We try and educate people the best we can and we hope that people will continue to stop supporting IE until it no longer dominates the browser market. Until then we will support IE within reason. But, when we have to compromise design and function (to bring the best in modern web design) is where we draw the line.

Firefox comes with a personal favorite add-on of mine, Firebug and all three natively support Inspect Element.

With Inspect Element you can simply right-click on any area of your website and gain more info about the code of that specific section and make live test edits (that only you can see) and troubleshoot and style your site before actually implementing them in your theme options:

Design > Custom CSS
http://cyberchimps.com/question/pro-custom-css/

For more advanced users we can also make hard coded changes to the actual template files, framework (HTML) or even edit the PHP, add JavaScript and so on with a child theme:

http://cyberchimps.com/question/child-themes-support/

Using either of these techniques you will never have to actually modify template files or add to your stylesheet of the main theme files. Meaning your changes will be safe upon upgrading (which still very much should be done correctly regardless).

For graphics editing I love Photoshop (and Illustrator too). But, for web graphics all you’ll ever need is Photoshop. However, if you don’t already know you’ll soon find out that Photoshop is very expensive software. A wonderful and completely free alternative is GIMP:

http://www.gimp.org/

Which can help you design logos or create beautiful and professionally prepared and sized slides for your slider:

http://cyberchimps.com/forum-topic/slides-best-practice/

One amazing tool I use for precision both in web and graphics design is Screen Calipers.

The default WordPress Visual (WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get) editor is plenty powerful already to help you style your pages and posts. However, what you see in the editor isn’t always what you get in the page/post (as many of you know).

It’s the same issue that occurs when using web design software like Dreamweaver. It’s not 100% precise and involves a lot of guess work. People will always be smarter than computers when it comes to certain things, and this is definitely one of them. So, once you get more comfortable and any time you add code to pages/posts you need to anyways, I recommend always using HTML mode.

Learn CSS | Learn HTML

Enjoy!

Thanks, Bryan

Feed Me Ideas

This week I’m reaching out looking for your feedback on just what tips you’d like to see on Tip of the Week.

(If you haven’t been reading Tip of the Week and are unfamiliar checkout old Tip of the Week posts here and to keep up with the latest, make sure to subscribe.)

What would you like to learn?

What would you like to improve?

Comment with your ideas below.

(please note that this is not the place for feature or design suggestions, Tip of the Week is about improving your web knowledge and skills)

Thanks, Bryan

We’re getting to the point where we could really use a hand. There are just too many browsers, devices, screen resolutions, plugins and a million other variables. The CyberChimps community has gotten so big we simply can’t test/prepare for everything. But with your help we could get a little bit closer.

We certainly care about the quality of our products and for your happiness and general success with whatever your goals are with your website. We hope this comes through with the level of support we provide, even when it has nothing to do with our themes ;).

We hope that our down to earth and transparent approach is appreciated. And regardless, you’re the customer – you make or break CyberChimps. We’re a small team and I personally try and educate as much as I can in the forums.

We’re evolving all the time and we’re learning ourselves and we could always do more. With that in mind, I present the Bug Testing Program. The program is simple, we’ll send you betas before official release for you to test and report back any bugs/suggestions, all by email. In return will grant you indefinite access to all CyberChimps products indefinitely.

To Apply

You should have decent experience with all things WordPress, themes, plugins related and a good understanding of web design in general.

Shoot us an email and tell us more about yourself, your experience and your interest in joining the program:

http://cyberchimps.com/support/questions/

Thanks, Bryan

Long Beach, California February 3, 2012 – CyberChimps WordPress Themes releases iFeature Pro 4: A Responsive Drag & Drop Premium WordPress theme.

iFeature Pro 4 includes a Responsive Apple-like design (which magically adjusts to mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad), Responsive iFeature Slider, New Drag & Drop Header Elements, Page and Blog Elements, intuitive Theme Options, and over a dozen new exciting features and enhancements.

iFeature Pro 4 will be 50% off for a limited time only, and is available exclusively for sale in the CyberChimps WordPress Themes Store at CyberChimps.com. Please visit CyberChimps.com throughout the month of February for discounts, contests, and giveaways.

“When developing iFeature Pro 4 we were initially going to release it as version 3.5, but when we sat down to write about all of the exciting new features we realized that this was more than just a .5 release,” said Trent Lapinski, Chief Executive Officer of CyberChimps LLC. “iFeature Pro 4 introduces fluid Responsive Design, which enables iFP4 to magically respond to mobile devices, even the new iFeature Slider is responsive. It really is a whole new experience, and we know our customers are going to love it.”

iFeature Pro 4 also takes Drag & Drop to the next level with new Drag & Drop Header Elements, Drag & Drop Blog Page Elements, as well as other highly requested features such as WordPress Template Options, New Sidebar Options, New Color Selector Options, and other amazing enhancements.

All existing iFeature Pro customers will be able to upgrade to iFeature Pro 4 for free. iFeature Pro 4 offers many new features so please BACKUP iFeature Pro 3 before upgrading. To upgrade please use the WordPress Update system in WP-Admin or login to CyberChimps.com’s Members Area and download the latest version.

iFeaturePro 4 is different kind of WordPress Theme that offers advanced personal content management features including an Apple-like Responsive Design, Drag & Drop Header, Page, and Blog Elements, Responsive iFeature Slider, and intuitive theme options.

iFeature Pro 4 is built with HTML5, CSS3, and the Foundation Framework. It offers more experienced customers Child Theme support, Custom CSS, and Import / Export Options.

iFeature Pro 4 is one of the most advanced Premium WordPress Themes in the world and is released under the GNU GPL v2. iFeature Pro can be used on as many website as you want. iFeature Pro 4 is optimized for WordPress 3.3, Chrome, Safari, FireFox, and Internet Explorer 9 (but does not support Internet Explorer 6, or PHP4).

CyberChimps and iFeature Pro are not related to Apple, Inc. or endorsed by Apple in any way.

Hosting Matters

Whether you’re looking for optimal speed and performance or to make sure you get the right hosting so that your website even works at all in the first place, the host you choose matters.

You want to avoid Windows servers and you want to avoid small company web hosts as you risk the possibility of a high downtime percentage and worse, that they don’t keep everything up-to-date like PHP.

So, I have some recommendations for you of some really great hosts that also help you support us by signing up through us:

- CoolHandle
Offers more advanced hosting options and packages for those that intend on having a huge amount of traffic.

- BlueHost (the very same host that WordPress themselves recommend)
The perfect host for 90% of sites.

Enjoy!

Thanks, Bryan

Design Your Logo

You don’t need to be a corporation or fast food joint to need a logo. You also don’t need to be a pro to design your own logo. Whether you’re just an artist, musician, club, sports team, blog whatever… you need a logo.

A logo ties a site together making it feel complete and allows your readers, customers, clients, visitors of any kind to easily identify with you. Be it through your website or Facebook, Twitter or any other social profile you should carry a signature image.

Build Your Logo

Use a free online logo generator. Something like Cool Text.
(note that it’s very easy to make an ugly logo if you overdo the effects, subtlety is the key)

Design Your Logo

If you don’t have Photoshop or Illustrator which are very expensive programs, you can use GIMP (Mac users see here). Find a great tutorial for designing a simple text logo in GIMP here.

Have Your Logo Professionally Designed

And of course, should you need your logo professionally designed, checkout 99designs. And of course we offer logo design ourselves.

Enjoy!

Thanks, Bryan

There’s Probably a Plugin for That!

With 17,833 plugins and counting there is a plugin for just about every feature, customization, enhancement, optimization and security measure you can think of.

Here’s the easiest way to add a plugin and some tips on plugins to choose (choose wisely):

- First, Back it Up!.

- I strongly recommend becoming familiar with FTP as a safety measure. Should you get a white screen of death you’ll want to immediately delete the plugin you just installed out of the plugins folder, wp-content/plugins. If you’re unfamiliar of how to connect to your files and folders with FTP please check with your host.

- Inside your WP admin, go to Plugins > Add New > Enter a Keyword or Two and Search Plugins.

- Before installing, click on Details and check that it’s compatible with the latest WordPress version. Check that it has a popular rating and that people generally agree that it works well. Note, sometimes plugins are abandoned, but are still fully compatible with all WordPress versions so if for example it says it’s only compatible up to WP 2.9 it could still work without any issues.

- When you’ve found a promising plugin Click Install Now > Click OK > Then Click Activate.

- Depending on the plugin, it may now need to be configured further within it’s own settings page. This will usually be found under Settings, Plugins or Tools.

CAUTION
Not all plugins play nice together or with our themes. There are any number of possible issues.

Some Plugins I Recommend

W3 Total Cache – Minifies and caches your code and pages for quicker loading.
Warning: This is a very advanced plugin that required fine tuning and often does not play nice with other plugins. If ever you’re adding CSS or other updates to your site and they don’t seem to be taking effect you need to clear the W3 Total Cache.

All in One SEO Pack – Automates the most basic of SEO optimizations.

Google XML Sitemaps – Creates and submits a sitemap.xml file to search engines.

Bad Behavior – Block bad bots, spam and other junk from your site.

Secure WordPress – Some basic security measures to harden your WordPress install.

Contact Form 7 – Add a contact form to your contact page.

Theme My Login – Incorporate user registration and sign in into your theme.

bbPress – Add a forum to your site.

Widget Logic – Let’s you control what widgets show on what pages.

WP Touch – Make sure your site looks good on mobile devices.

So, so many more plugins to checkout…

Enjoy!

Thanks, Bryan

Our friends over at CoolHandle are offering our users 30% off any shared hosting plan (1 year minimum purchase)! Simply enter the coupon code CYBERCHIMPS when checking out and the discount will be applied. This offer is only good for one week, beginning at 9 am EST on January 11, 2012 and ending the following Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 9 am EST.

CoolHandle features a 1-click WordPress install so you can get your site up and running in minutes! Don’t wait to take advantage of this terrific offer from a terrific hosting company, head on over to CoolHandle today.

Back it Up!

Using WordPress and web design in general is a constant progression. Technology will always continue updating, bugs will be fixed, security holes patched and innovations reached. But, from unexpected upgrade errors to server outages with your host and really for safekeeping and your own peace of mind you need to routinely back EVERYTHING up.

Specifically for WordPress and CyberChimps you need to backup all your files and folders, database and CyberChimps settings. This can be a tedious and daunting process if you do not how to use FTP or MySql going in the first time. I do recommend manually backing up all of your stuff, but this is something you’ll need to check with your host on. Also, many hosts already backup all of your stuff.

However, I’ll instruct some easy and more automated ways to manage your backups.

- Install the BackUpWordPress plugin. This will take care of backing up your important files, folders and database. I recommend setting automatic backups for once a week. (Quick tip to install: go to Plugins > Add New > Search BackUpWordPress and install and activate with ease.)

- Also, you’ll want to backup your CyberChimps settings often. From Appearance > [THEME NAME] Options > Import / Export > Export Settings you’ll want to copy all your settings out and save to TextEdit or Notepad. If you don’t care to use either of those you could always email yourself the settings. Just compose an email to your own email, make sure there’s nothing in the email but your settings and send and archive. (Improvements to the ease of backing up settings will come.)

- When upgrading/updating for the first time, please read How to Upgrade for more tips.

Enjoy!

Thanks, Bryan

Mckinsey1993 is the Winner!

To those that didn’t win don’t forget that because you entered you’re entitled to 25% off iFeature Pro. Email us for the discount code.

How to Enter

To enter simply iFeature Pro and Like us on Facebook, then comment below:

That’s it! Good luck!

Extra Ways to Enter

In addition to the mandatory steps above to enter there are additional ways to enter for increased odds of winning:

- Buy a Theme +10 Entries (once only – current customers do not count)
- Leave a Testimonial +5 Entries (once only – current customers who have not yet left a testimonial ARE eligible)

If you enter by these two methods you must indicate this in your comment.

Make sure to comment with a valid email address (do not actually enter it in your comment, only in the email field if commenting as a guest). Enter by Tuesday at Noon (Pacific Time), January 24th, 2012. One grand prize winner of an Amazon Kindle will be picked randomly. Bonus, just by entering you will receive a 25% discount code on the iFeature Pro 3 WordPress theme. You must request this by email.