In the past we’ve used and tested several of the free ecommerce plugin solutions, which can be, shall we say, challenging, to seamlessly integrate into WordPress website designs. Now we’re not knocking the free plugin options which can indeed be useful for certain types of start up websites, but those options are not suitable for this client.

We have also tested several other premium ecommerce and shopping cart theme solutions that work with WordPress and whilst some of the options were ‘satisfactory’, we found ‘challenges’ with all the options we tested.

As our client will be managing their website on an ongoing bases themselves, they really need the shopping cart to not only have a great design for website visitors, but also needs to be well structured ‘behind the scenes’ for ease of content management, so as to avoid technical complications for the client.

Of course pricing for ecommerce and shopping cart development is important to our client, and as ShopperPress comes in at just over £50.00 ($79 on special offer as we write), it’s a tiny fraction of the overall web design project budget.

Other Shopping Cart Benefits

ShopperPress is a fully featured shopping cart theme for WordPress, suitable for selling all types of products, services, and digital downloads online.

Includes 20+ store designs, unlimited installations, lifetime free support and upgrades!

Allows you to setup as many stores as you like, quickly and easily with unlimited number of products, categories and sub-categories.

All products can be modified simultaneously, assigned to multiple categories, include extra product images, extra information and custom fields such as sizes, colors and discount pricing.

And the list goes on… you can [ read more here]

This particular project is scheduled for September, we’ll do our best to update you on our review of this shopping cart solution.

Members of Pledging for Change are ethical business owners who help Pledging for Change raise funds for various charities. In doing so, they also receive valuable promotions via Karen, who is a dedicated online advocate for her ethical members and the charities she helps raise funds for.

The image above is of the new design we have created for Karen and an example of a supporting Member page.

Karen is currently working with us to organise her website structure and new content. It’s early days, but Karen’s passion for helping others and dedication to raising funds for charities drives her ideas forward.

If you’d like to find out more about Pledging for Change and how you can help raise funds for charities by joining as a member, just send Karen a message via her Pledging for Change Contact Form

Perfect for Crafts & Kids Websites

Craft Style Child Theme has a bright, colourful and cheerful design that is suitable for a craft focused or kids focused website or blog.

Depending upon your market niche, the craft style theme may suit a ‘child toy’ type website or even a ‘baby product’ type website, you decide.

Craft Style is a ‘WordPress Child Theme‘ specially designed to work with the Genesis Framework.

Craft Website Design Updates

The craft style theme was designed by us at Website Designs Chester, and we are shortly revising the layout of the theme. The Genesis framework is undergoing even more improvements, so we want to incorporate some of those new features and possibilities into our own child theme.

If you feel that the craft website design would suit your needs, then please do contact us so we can let you know personally when the upgrades have been completed and when it’s ready for purchase.

In the meantime you can see the current layout of the craft theme here : Demo: Craft Website Design

The Genesis Framework gives you a solid foundation for creating an incredible website based on the powerful content management system, WordPress.

Together WordPress and the Genesis Framework provides you with an amazing range of options and solutions for selecting a ‘ready to go’ small business website design, and for including the functionality that’s relevant to your online business.

Plus with Genesis and WordPress you can be up and running quickly, easily and very affordably, even if you’re a total novice! It’s that easy to operate!

Genesis works perfectly well as a stand alone blogging, website design and operating platform. However, we’d recommend that you do use, or have one created for you, one of the Professional WordPress Themes, known as child themes.

Using Genesis to ‘power’ a child theme brings you the biggest benefits, not least of which are convenience, affordability and the option to customise or replace your child theme design, layout or functions, without affecting your Genesis framework files.

Note to remember: Child themes need Genesis in order to function as intended.

It’s very tempting to just tweet about ‘you’ when you get started using twitter as a social media platform for your small business. But twitter is not all about you, you, you… it’s all about what your readers, followers or clients would like to read about.

In this video, we show you how to post your first tweet, bearing in mind that you may want to find something interesting to tweet about, even though you don’t have any followers yet. Although “this is my first tweet on twitter” wouldn’t be frowned upon to get you started.

Best Practice Twitter Tips

“Instead of approaching Twitter as a place to broadcast information about your company, think of it as a place to build relationships.” Here’s more best practice tips from Twitter to get your social media messages off to a good start.

If you’ve not opened a twitter account yet, check out our previous Social Media Twitter Video.

Twitter was originally an experimental project started in 2006/7 which was based on the concept of short messages, similar to SMS text messages, for updated, latest or breaking news.

It’s come a long way since those early days and it is now well recognised as a perfect social media vehicle, for individuals and businesses alike, as a way to build relationships and communicate with others locally and worldwide.

Twitter Points

• Twitter lets you write and read short messages of up to 140 characters inclusive of punctuation and spaces.
• You can choose who to ‘follow’ and control who follows you.
• Your messages will be made public, except private messages known as a DM or direct message, sent to others.

If you are new to social media and Twitter, then the following video will take you through the simple steps for creating your own small business or personal account.

Learn more from Twitter

“When you combine messages that are quick to write, easy to read, public, controlled by the recipient and exchangeable anywhere, you’ve got a powerful, real-time way to communicate. And real-time communication is turning out to be ground-breaking for users and businesses alike.”

• Open Your Twitter Account
• Connect with us @WebsitesChester on Twitter
• Read the Twitter 101 Guide here.

We’ll be covering more twitter tips and tutorials in future social media articles.

App cleaner came in very handy when I had some trouble with a different mac application, which needed to have all files removed before an upgrade could be installed properly.

There were some pesky hidden files that needed to be removed, for the life of me I couldn’t locate the little devils.

After a little hunting around on the net, I found App Cleaner, a free app for mac users, which ‘does what it says on the tin’.

Download: AppCleaner (free)
(a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps)

Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space on your Hard Drive unnecessarily.

AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them.

Simply drop an application onto the AppCleaner window. It will search for and find all the related files and you can delete them by clicking the delete button.

yes … pretty simple and effective!

Certainly one of my favourites.

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes, as a great deal has changed here at Website Designs Chester.

We are delighted to announce that our dedicated team of professional experts has expanded, and as ‘they’ say, behind every great small business start up and website, you’ll find an expert team of people!

Our team are experts in the fields of consultancy, web design, membership website development, specialist coding, application development, graphic design, design for print, training, virtual assistant services and more

… but we’ll tell you more about all that another time.

For now, thanks to you for your patience as we continue with our ongoing updates and refreshing website design efforts.