Firstly, I hardly ever get round to writing anything on here and I thought this might help. Secondly, I can appreciate good work when I see it. Finally, I know I’m far from being the best web designer in the world. I like to think I offer great design and service but I’ll always want to be better. So this category will hopefully take me there.

It’d be nice if this category took you there with me rather than with the people I write about…

The first site I’d like to point to isn’t so much one site as a theme site. You may notice a link to this site somewhere on my site as I’m currently committing one of The Worst Sins A Web Designer Can Commit and am using a theme made by someone else while I don’t have time to sort my own site!

Elegant Themes is one of my favourite Wordpress design sites at the moment. Nick produces very nice themes that are easy to customise and also very well priced. There are no Developer licence options but the low price of just $20 gives you access to all the designs as well as support through a forum.

Themes range from simple blog designs to business card style corporate sites and more magazine like themes. They come with an easy to use control panel which allows for site customisation and the themes are easy to tweak for an even more unique appearance.

The speed at which new themes ate added is also very impressive.

So… First in the list of sites I wish I’d had a hand in is elegantthemes.com

The project involved replacing a rather static ‘old school’ site for Big Picture Triathlon Coaching. Initial discussion took place and then a concept was agreed upon. The concept was then turned into a theme and the theme was populated. I also did training on the site so that Big Picture now have the ability to control the site completely.

It’s another Wordpress powered site but the blog side of it is really restricted to some training advice at the moment. Thanks must go to the lovely michelledancer for some wonderful Wordpress coding work – things have been really busy so I’ve actually had to outsource some work! If all outsourcing goes as well as this project then I hope I get the chance to do it lots more!

And this brings me on to another self employed web worker lesson – it’s ok to say you don’t have time! I have a lot in the air at the moment with some exciting projects on the go and a lot more on the horizon. So when it got to the crunch I realised I just didn’t have time to do all that I had said I would. Obviously it means that profit margins etc aren’t as great but to be honest as long as I pay the bills I don’t really mind about that.

I am pleased with the result. I revamped the header but kept it with the feel of the old site and kept the Triathlon icons. The theme has a ‘sporty’ feel to it and the featured content scrolling images are complemented by the scrolling latest news feature in the sidebar. The latest forum posts are provided by an rss feed taken from the YABB Forum and provide even more regularly updated content.

The committee page is one of the key customisations.

Feedback from the Triathlon club has been very positive as they have been provided with a fresh site that looks as if it is used, something the previous site did not.

If you would like a similar customisation, or a completely unique site design please do get in touch.

You can view the site at www.sheffieldtriclub.com

One of the ways I have done this is by trying different methods of book keeping. I’ve done some work using Sage (and indeed still do) which is handy and nice but also very pricey and far more involved than I need so I have generally been trying out different free software. Microsoft Accounting has been my software of choice for the last year or so but the other day I thought “why not try to find something that let’s me do my invoicing etc online?” and I googled upon a site called Clear Books.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to suggest you try it too! I’m still only on the FREE trial period at the moment but they have different pricing plans depending on the size of your company – from Free for startups (limited to a few transactions a month) to Premium (unlimited transactions but at £15 a month).

It seems to be able to handle everything from reconciling bank accounts to invoicing customers to providing profit and loss information. There are some really clear video tutorials and helpful text documents that can get you started but to be honest the site itself is so clear and the software is easy to use that you probably won’t need any of them. Invoicing is a doddle and it makes it so simple to follow a process through. Most things (such as invoicing) are pretty customisable, including adding logos.

I won’t often do this but I thought I’d mention it – also they have an affiliate scheme so if you have a look and like please let them know I told you about it – my reference is 1413 and you can sign up at their website.

Jon Cooper is a writer from Sheffield.

He asked for a blog to put his scribblings on.  Not literal scribbling.  Computer scribbling. So Hoyland Web Services set him up a Wordpress Blog using some nice textures we found and a few icons from various places.

The theme has widgets for the sidebars and validates to xhtml transitional.  The site is hosted by hoyland and I like it.

You can view the site at www.joncooper.info.

Many thanks go to the artistic genius of Jonny Evans who supplied the artwork.

Ali Johnson is a Christian speaker and evangelist type guy who asked for somewhere to put his writings and his thoughts.  It’s a basic two column blog with a fully widget driven sidebar and a few nifty plugins.

The site is valid XHTML Strict and CSS 2.1 and uses the Fontburner Plugin to create the headers in the main posts and the sidebars and Twitter for Wordpress for the Twitter Feed.  A quick note on the Twitter Feed – at the moment it’s being taken from the Natwivity which is a special advent Twitter account telling the Nativity story using Twitter technology – the Christmas story in 140 characters.  If you’re on Twitter you should follow along – it starts today!

I am talking to a few churches at the moment about maybe taking on their sites so I am hoping that this theme may actually become a reality. The fact I’ve made it already will reduce the cost a bit which is nice!

If you’d like to use it drop me a line – it wouldn’t be free as I’ve not turned it into a WP theme yet so that’s a bit of work but I can certainly do some kind of discount.

Things have been pretty busy here at Hoyland Web Services over the last few weeks which is great news and I’m looking forward to announcing, among other things, an author’s blog, a couple of slice and dice jobs, an update to a local company and a potentially big project that I shall call “Jam Sandwich“.

But today has been frustrating because today I have spent a lot of time looking at the message “Error establishing database connection.”  Now, before you all run away from me screaming “He wants my business and he can’t even INSTALL Wordpress” I must tell you I know how to install Wordpress.  It’s pretty simple.  I reckon anyone could do it.  However, something just will not work.  I don’t know if it’s the hosting company (not Godsweb!) that is the problem or what but no matter what details I put into the wp-config file I can not get communication with the database going.  It’s made harder today by the fact that the work I’m doing is for a client who is talking to the hosting company.  The hosting company seem to be giving the client the run around and I can’t do anything about it.  So herein lies Self Employed Web Worker Lesson 2 (I’ve learnt far more than that but I haven’t blogged it!)

“It’s not always as simple as the instruction book suggests”

I’m off to establish a connection.  I’ll let you know about the projects I mentioned soon.  Oh yeah – before I go – Wordpress 2.8.5 has been out for a few days now – if you run Wordpress just click the Upgrade Now link in your dashboard.  It’s only a hardening update – getting ready for 2.9!

In WordPress 2.9, there will be the ability to add an image to a post, as it’s been known of magazine themes. The image need not be insert into the post. With the new feature the_post_image() you can use the new feature and thus control where to display.

You can read the rest of the article on wpengineer.com.

It’s a very useful idea as it’s the kind of thing I keep putting into themes I make but I have to use various custom fields and other bits of code. I’m looking forward to it.

It’s another simple, clean site that doesn’t do anything fancy but lets the gardener and their work speak through the use of images and some well written content. There’s space up the top for the name of the company or logo or anything else that is needed and again I have placed quick and easy contact info near the top of the page.

I am pleased with this one. Again – it’s been made now so please do drop me a line if you have use for it – it would need a bit of tweaking and somewhere to live but I can arrange all those things if you want. You can see it working on Hostingland. 

Right – back to some proper work!