Erich Stauffer

Category: Web Design

  • WordPress Plugins

    I use WordPress for all of my blogs and mini-sites. Here are the plugins I recommend:

    • Add to Any – It’s important to turn off the annoying hover feature by clicking the box “Only show the menu when the user clicks the Share/Save button” under Menu options.
    • All in One SEO – be sure and fill it out for the whole site and for each page/post you create
    • Akismet – prevents spam comments so use it
    • Cbnet Ping Optimizer – prevents you from getting banned from blog directories by refreshing a post too often
    • Cforms – best email form plugin
    • Google Sitemap Generator – keeps google updated with pages as you make them-builds google a map
    • Related Posts Plugin – gives options for displaying other posts at the bottom of a post, based on tags
    • NEW – Enhanced Recent Posts – include or exclude categories from listings of recent posts.
    • Redirection
    • Yoast Breadcrumbs
    • WP-Page Navi
    • Robots Meta
    • Image Widget – add images to widgets from within the widget.

    Please write your favorite WordPress plugins in the comments below. Contact me if you need help with WordPress in Indianapolis.

    Tools for Listening and/or Monitoring

  • Comments Sense

    There are as many ways to run a commenting system as there are ways to comment. In this post I talk about some of the main strategies and how common sense sometimes doesn’t apply.

    There are main choices to a comment system:

    1. Turn comments off or don’t use them.
    2. Turn comments on with a website, but filter for spam.
    3. Turn comments on, but if a website is added, don’t allow.
    4. Turn comments on, allow all comments with or without a website.

    Michael Hyatt, a popular blogger and public speaker, uses Disqus for his comments system and encourages people to not just comment, but to backlink as well. This means that he falls into the 4th category of allowing all comments with or without a website. Michael knows this helps the commentor with their SEO and yet he still allows it.

    Douglas Karr’s site, DKNewMedia also uses Disqus for it’s comment system, but he falls into the 3rd category which doesn’t allow comments with a website. Doug is a social media guru and knows a lot about SEO and blogging so he probably doesn’t want his Google juice spilling out all over the Internet’s floor.

    I don’t use Disqus, opting for the standard-issue WordPress commenting system. I use Akismet to help filter for spam and I manually approve or decline comments. I will allow links to websites in comments as long as they are relevant and not obscene. This puts me in the 2nd category.

    And instead of giving an example of the 1st category of no comments at all, I wanted to mention Ed Dale‘s commenting system of choice: Facebook comments. Ed believes in the transparency that Facebook comments provides. He likes knowing exactly who is making the comment. In Facebook comments you don’t have the opportunity for a website backlink, just a link to your profile. (more…)

  • Indianapolis WordPress Development

    Erich Stauffer is a WordPress implementation shop serving the greater Indianapolis area. We specialize in developing web sites for WordPress using professional web design techniques. WordPress is an open source, fully supported content management system (CMS) that was originally developed for blogs, but can be used for almost anything. We chose WordPress because it allows our clients to manage their own content if they so choose, not to mention all the built-in functionality like search and RSS.

    Another one of WordPress’ greatest features is the ability to add software called plug-ins that add functionality for SEO, web forms, or social media, just to name a few examples. And for those who stay up at night worrying, WordPress has backup tools and we at Erich Stauffer use international web port monitoring to make sure your web site is up at all times.

  • Environmental Management and Development

    We just finished updating Indiana Backflow prevention specialists, EMD Consultants’ website. They run WordPress with a custom theme designed and developed by Erich Stauffer. It features custom widgets, SEO, and will soon be adding social media elements like Facebook icons and Twitter feeds.

  • Our Client is #1 on Google for Indianapolis Dentist

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    By using our SEO and social media management, Dr. Reese, DDS, MAGD is now the #1 ranked search engine result on Google for the term, Indianapolis Dentist. Using SEO and Social Media Management, we beat out hundreds of other dentists and we can do the same for you – even if you’re not a dentist. Use our contact page to get started or read our testimonials.

  • Monthly Website Reports

    Here’s an example of what our customers get from us each month in their Monthly Website Report:

    Good afternoon. I hope your summer is going well. Attached is your monthly Google Analytics report and a special message below.

    A Special Message

    Have you ever thought of an app for your phone that you thought could enhance your business or help your customers? What if there was a way you could see that app come to reality on the iPhone?

    We have recently partnered with a company that develops applications for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that can be used around the world – for your customers or to turn your idea into profit.

    There are many different reasons why you might want to develop your own app such as a way to help your customers interact with your business (ex. scheduling or bill payment) or maybe it’s a non-business idea you had that you just want to explore to either sell or make money from ads.

    Whatever your ideas are, we’d love to hear about them. What’s your passion? Is there an app for that?

    Depending on your level of service, we may also add the following metrics:

    • Unique visitors
    • Twitter followers
    • Facebook fans

    Don’t have a Twtter or Facebook account? We can fix that up for you to manage for $120 or leave that to us for $60 a month with a six month minimum contract.

  • Juice Extractors

    Cost Publishing had us design a custom WordPress theme for their new Juice Extractors mini-site. We chose a clean, white look, but don’t let that fool you. There’s lots of bells and whistles (or apples and oranges in this case) going on under the hood.

  • How to Start Your Own Web Design Business

    I recently wrote a blog post on my Indianapolis web design site about how to start your own web design business. I shared a little bit about how I got started, but I wanted to go into more detail here on my own blog, An Entrepreneurial Mind. When I first started, I had just quit my job (much like today, but more on that later) and had started working at a call center for a textbook publisher company (hey, at least I was closer to my dream of being a publisher there than while balancing transactions at the bank). While in training on how to interact with customers over the phone, I became friends with another new employee who had some web design experience. I explained to him how I’d had a couple of people ask me to make web sites with them and asked him if he’d like to help build a new web design company with me. Neither one of us had any experience doing so, but that also meant we weren’t afraid to try. When the call center gig ran out, we both started working on the web design business, Watershawl, full time. It was a blast, but our lack of experience caught up with us and I had to let him go. I was now on my own, sustaining the business by myself. I would meet with clients, pitch them websites, and about half of the time, get turned down. Eventually I branched into computer repair, but over time, moved into more of a consulting role.

    Today, I can safely look back and say that I’m glad that I did it, that I learned alot, but it ultimately was just a stepping stone for what I really liked doing, which was building web sites to promote products for a commission, otherwise known as affiliate marketing. I write all about affiliate marketing success at my eRich Online blog. The things I learned about web design, SEO, marketing, and promotion for my customers I’ve been able to apply for my Internet marketing business where I get paid to promote products. One of the funnest parts for me is discovering profitable micro-niches, which are subsets of a niche, which is a subset of a market. The key is to find a product with high interest and traffic, but low competition. I know you’re probably thinking that all of the niches have been explored and exploited, but there are millions of micro-niches out there and new ones being created every day. For example, Farmville, the flash game on Facebook, wasn’t around 5 years ago, but it’s a huge niche market now. It even has it’s own magazine! You can learn on your own and sometimes that’s the best way, but if you’re like me, you’ll want help in learning how to do Internet marketing.

    Oh, one more thing, I mentioned that I quit my job today. I did, actually, which really scared my wife, but we have been planning for this day for a long time, we know what it takes to be successful, and we trust in God to provide for our needs. Before I start the day or begin to work, I pray for guidance from the Lord. God is the foundation of my life, my family, and my business. Before I started this work session, I searched for a bible verse about work. I came across Collossians 3:23-24 which says, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” In other words, Jesus is my boss – whether I work for a major corporation or myself I need to be working as if for the Lord. And just as I have meetings with my earthly bosses to get guidance and feedback, I am having meetings, through prayer and meditation, with the Lord, my boss.

  • Google Authorship Markup Verification

    Trey Smith sent out an email stating how, “Google just dropped a BOMBSHELL foreshadowing the biggest change to getting your page listed in a decent position.”

    Google’s newest thing is that they don’t want the web to be anonymous anymore. This is all part of Google profiles and Google plus being public. The new thing is to add a snippet if code to your theme that ties your site back to your Google profile and then your headshot appears to the right of your Google listing. The theory goes that anonymous sites will go down in rankings and Google profile sites will go up. Never before has your personal brand been so important.

    According to Ryan T. Malone, the first of these tags is the rel=”author” tag. This tag is used only on a link to your “about” page on your blog. What this tag does is quite simple – it tells Google that this page is a page that is dedicated to the author, and is the most important page on your blog or website relating to the author. Quite simple, right?

    The second of these tags is the rel=”me” tag. This tag should only ever be placed on your author page, and should only ever link to either a Google+ profile, or a standard Google profile. What this does is quite simple – it tells Google that the page that you are linking to is in fact the profile of the author. This is exactly where Google will pull its profile image from.

    The code to use in your functions.php file to enable to use of relationship tags in posts is as follows:

    function yoast_allow_rel() {
    global $allowedtags;
    $allowedtags['a']['rel'] = array ();
    }
    add_action( 'wp_loaded', 'yoast_allow_rel' );

    This post was heavily influenced by information given by Joost De Valk on his blog – I give credit where it is due, and as an avid reader of his blog, I recommend his work to anyone who reads this blog. His original post on this topic can be found here.