Dennis Hoyle Creative » West Michigan Web Design

Selling on the Internet is Easy

Dennis Hoyle — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 23:31:41 +0000

Do you have a product or service that you want to sell on the Internet? It’s a lot easier to do than you think. It can be as easy as setting up a PayPal buy now button on your existing website, to a new website that allows you to enter product and inventory information and process sales automatically.

There are two ways of creating a simple e-commerce website that I recommend:

PDShop by Pagedown software offers an inexpensive inventory control and online sales software that can be added to a .Net website using an SQL database. This means that you can login to a secure website, add, edit and remove products easily. The advantage is a reduce monthly cost and high capacity. Many websites offer online sales, but charge you a large monthly fee and limit the number of products. Some even charge a percentage of each sale costing you even more. By creating a website using PDShop your costs are; site setup and configuration, web hosting (around $20 a month) and fees charged by PayPay or Google Checkout. You will also have the ability to add, edit and remove website content inluding products, pages and any other information you choose.
If your selling needs are less ambitious, creating a simple WordPress website with an e-commerce plugin we really reduce the cost. The plugin WP e-commerce is a fairly simple way to do it. There are others, I can help you find one that meets your exact needs. The reduce initial setup cost and low maintenance costs make this a very effective way to sell products and services on the Internet.

Both of these solutions have the advantages of low cost, quick setup and the ability to make changes as you see fit. These are not the only way to do it, some Joomla plugins are very effective e-commerce tools. Please contact me if you’re planning on selling on the Internet. No cost to talk and I may be able to help you keep more of your hard earned money.

WordPress for Photographers

Dennis Hoyle — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:38:53 +0000

WordPress is largely known as an excellent blog and CMS (Content Management Software), however, it makes an excellent platform for photographers to display their images and promote their work. Virgil Hubbard needed a new website to display samples of his fine art and portrait images. After trying a few themes, Virgil chose the Black Canvas theme from Studio Press. The theme was designed for photographers and can have a black background or a white background.

Click here to visit StudioPress website!

Out of the box it is a very nice looking theme, however the default thumbnails are 50 x 75 pixels and will distort the image if it’s not a landscape image. With some minor changes the thumbnails are now 50 x 50 pixels and use a cropped image created by the WP media library.

To protect the images I used the wp-CopyProtect plugin by Chetan Gole. This plugin disables the right click “save image” function from a browser.

Other modifications include changing the title ”categories” to “portfolios” and using Contact form 7 for a simple email contact form. To reduce site maintenance I added the plugins for a Google Site-map and the WP database backup.

If you need a new photo website to display your images and promote your services, please contact me and I’ll get you up and running in very short order.

Websites for Churches

Dennis Hoyle — Sat, 02 May 2009 23:11:10 +0000

Does your church need a website? Maybe the old website isn’t working out as well as you thought it would. What good does a website do if no one finds it or uses it? Your ministry will benefit by having a well thought out Internet presense, after all, it’s another way for you to communicate to your members and bring in new visitors. To keep the information fresh, you will have 24-7 access to post new content, edit existing information and remove old pages, events or articles. Please allow me the opportunity to present ways that you can have a professionally designed site, with features you only imagined you could have for a very modest cost. I’ll help you through the process step by step, from choosing a domain name (or using your existing name), to make a hosting choice, design creation and final publishing.

Some of the features available for your church website include:

Content Management System (CMS)
- Let potential visitor learn about your congregation, add new programs as needed
- Latest news and information
- Add, edit and remove pages as needed
Calendar
- Worship times and location
- Special Events
Photo Gallery
Blog (public or private)
Discussion forum for your members
File Library
Mail list

Much more…

Please contact me to find out how you can be a more effective communicator!