The new premium wordpress theme has been launched by StudioPress, which offers a “Theme Framework” approach to developing your website or blog. The ‘Theme Framework” of genesis is in simple terms, the ‘engine’ behind your website, or as per the website designers:

“In short, a theme framework is a robust WordPress theme that can be utilized out of the box as is, but also easily extended with child themes and hooks. Not only do they provide a number of enhancements above a typical WordPress theme, but they also serve as a platform to build upon for additional functionality.”

A theme built in such a way as to give users a tool with which they can build new themes quickly and easily, taking advantage of an extensive library of extensible functionality, by using a “Child Theme”.

There are currently a small number of child themes available to work with the new genesis functionality, such as the Mocha Theme, shown here:

We’ve been testing the genesis website design theme framework and the child website themes during the ‘ironing out the glitches’ period. We are happy to report that the new premium Genesis Theme and Child Themes are now available.

You can buy the Genesis Premium WP Theme as a stand alone theme, or you can purchase a child theme, which comes with the genesis theme framework that powers it.

The Genesis theme includes access to detailed theme tutorials, including limited customization techniques and support through the extensive private forum. You will also have access to any future theme updates at no additional cost.

Click Here to: Buy or View Genesis Demo

Other professional wordpress themes

Are you a Chester Woman in Business and want to get motivated this year?

A good friend and business colleague of mine, Nikki, has written an article on how to Get Motivated in 2010, which I read today. She writes in her entertainingly unique style, she doesn’t hold back or spare your sensitivities. She tells it like it is!

And so it is for many women in business!

The sub heading in her article that grabbed my attention is this one:

“Reading about or watching the success of others isn’t going to
make you successful”

Nikki precedes that sub heading with various points about the potential of success, or failure, for women in business, and yes, she tells it like it is for many who don’t take action, or fear failure, or even fear success itself. But that last sub heading is the one I enjoyed the most, which she neatly added to with a well worth watching video by Will Smith, the Actor, in which he ’shares his wisdom on life’.

Watching the video, I noted the titles.

• Greatness is in Everyone
• There’s No Shortcut To Success
• Focus On Making A Difference
• Represent An Idea
• You Have To Believe
• Nothing Is Realistic
• Our Thoughts Are Physical
• Attack Your Fears
• Be Willing To Die for The Truth

Personally, I agree that reading about, or watching others success, alone, isn’t going to make you successful. Yet, by reading the success stories of other successful women in business, or watching how they achieve their success certainly does help you pick up some really useful hints, tips and strategies that you can then put into action in order to help you achieve your own level of success.

My take on Will’s titles:

Greatness Is In Everyone

Yes, greatness is in everyone and it’s in you too!
In general terms, it’s really difficult to see your own greatness. Greatness is such a BIG word that you may wonder if you can actually do it justice by applying it to yourself, your skills or your knowledge. There are many Chester women in business quietly applying their individual brand of greatness into their daily lives at home and at work. Do you recognise your greatness?

There’s No Shortcut To Success

If there was a shortcut to what most people believe to be success, then the world would be so overrun with successful people, you wouldn’t be able to move an inch! The reason that the world is not overrun with these overnight successes, is that in the majority of cases, successful people didn’t find that elusive shortcut, they’ve instead worked long and hard to achieve it! Success of course means something different to everyone. What do you see as being your level of success?

Focus On Making A Difference

Don’t you love this one? I do. This title instantly brings a friend of mine to mind, Karen, a Chester Woman in Business, working tirelessly in her spare time to Focus on Making a Difference that benefits ethical small businesses, supports charities and helps others raise charitable donations. She’s making a difference for people like Jason who is raising funds for Crohn’s Disease. Where can you focus on making a difference?

Represent An Idea, Believe and Be Unrealistic (3 in one)

Represent the idea, to yourself and for others, that you can achieve your goals. Believe that you and others can achieve and perhaps throw in a dose of, what others may view as ‘unrealistic’, dogged determination! How unrealistic are you choosing to be today?

Our Thoughts Are Physical

No, this isn’t one of those ‘think yourself thin’ or ‘wish for a million and it will miraculously turn up tomorrow’ moments. It’s proven that your thoughts do become things, however, the ‘trick’ to turning your thoughts into reality is to know what you want to achieve, plan how you are going to get there and then take the required action, one step at a time. If you need a helping hand with that process, get your free small business start up audit. What, thoughts turned physical action, steps will you take today?

Attack Your Fears

It was Sue Jeffers, Author of Feel the Fear and Do It Any Way ( Amazon book search) who really tackled this topic. You’ve probably got as many fears as the next person, but as touched on above, if your thoughts become physical, by focusing on fearful thoughts, that’s what you’ll end up with! Change your thoughts, take the right action, attack and face those fears! What fears will you attack and face anyway?

Be Willing To Die for The Truth

What did he say? I’m assuming he means that you must keep on going, don’t give up on your dreams, even when others tell you that you’re being unrealistic, wasting your time, your effort! If you believe in yourself, your greatness, your ideas, and that you can and will achieve your goal of success, then yes, I’d agree, stopping is not an option. Just make sure that your action steps are ones that take you forward. Will you give up or die trying?

That’s some food for thought for all you women in business. You can read Nikki’s complete article Here: How To Get Motivated in 2010 and do take a little time to watch that motivating video of Will Smith sharing his wisdom on life.

Oh, and there’s a link to a competition just above Will’s video that you might find interesting too, check it out!

Thanks Nikki for food for thought for us Chester women in business today.

Enjoy…

For this mini-makeover, Diane wanted to move away from the previous website design theme as it was rather patterned. Although in a tasteful colour, there were numerous colour clashes going on, which was a distraction for the viewer.

Plus, as the Arts and Crafts Members are a very colourful group of creatives themselves, their artisan craft items weren’t being displayed at their best.

With just a few simple changes we have given Art Hobby Craft the uncluttered website design look they wanted for the artisans and for the Art Blog Readers. The main changes were made by removing the patterned background, replacing that with a light, but not white, background as their ‘blank canvas’. A new header graphic and main logo brings in the splashes of strong colour. Adding to those elements, we created a few website design themed graphics to tie the main theme of their new website design together.

As the website is powered by the Ning Platform, each Art Hobby Craft Member still has control over their personal web page space inside the AHC website. They remain free to express their own personal style and as you’ll see, some pages present artistic minimalism whilst others express their crafty creative tastes.

View this Arts and Crafts Website Design Makeover

Who knows when you’ll be in a position to utilize this analytics tool for benefits gained.
Do you know what users are doing on your web pages?
Watch the video which explains the whole concept :

By tracking visitor movements, and analysing the data, you’ll discover how visitors view your website, note what attracts their attention and additionally, what doesn’t work effectively from your visitors perspective.

Your website design decisions, the structural and graphic design elements, can be reviewed and tweaked in stages until you have refined your website to enhance the visitor experience.

Save 20% when you purchase a 6-month membership

All the benefits, features and pricing options are readily available on their website and there’s actually a FREE Option for bloggers, which is minus a few of the more advanced features, but worth a try out.

Well that certainly made for an interesting exercise over the holiday break. We finally located the main issues affecting the website due to the problems noted in our previous article covering the ‘too early’ upgrade to wordpress 2.9. We installed a 3 bug fix and all appeared well as we signed off for some rest and relaxation.

Nonetheless, wordpress were aware of the main issues and have now improved that version which fixes those bugs when you install the very latest and quickly released upgrade to 2.9.1. (no, we haven’t upgraded to 2.9.1 yet)

Anyway, back to our wordpress membership site plugin issues on upgrade.

On rechecking everything, there was a particular quirk going on with the plugin by way of an administration page feature vanishing. Not wanting to ‘mess about with their code’ we dashed off a support ticket and hey presto, they actually headed on over here and fixed everything up for us in a flash!

There’s excellent customer service for you!

So, this post is dedicated to a very Big Thanks to the Team.

Not only did they do it for us quickly to get us back up and running properly for our members, their ‘how to fix it if it happens again’ instructions were simple and clear and their emails were so friendly and pleasant you wanted to hug them (well, it was the holiday season after all).

Everything is back on track and we are now updating our web design course tutorials to reflect the latest wordpress version, and we’re adding another great free course, the Keyword Mastery Course, that will benefit small business startups, existing website owners and web designers who need to understand keywords and SEO (search engine optimisation). But more about that just as soon as it’s ready.

Again our sincere thanks to the Membership Site Plugin Team for your excellent service

If you’re planning on creating a membership website, I can highly recommend them for not only a great Membership Site Plugin, that does what it says on the wrapper, but also for their fantastic customer support and service. Thanks again to the team.

Watch this video on How To Create A Micro Continuity Site with this awesome plugin: Easy Membership Sites

We have noted an issue with our email to members functionality and are unable to email directly via our members plugin.

Issues noted:

• post tags not functioning – “choose from the most used tags in Post Tags”

• although – are able to “add new tag”

• preview post option not functioning

• Image upload from computer not working – reports an http error

• Image from library not working – although the uploads folder exists, and the images exist on the server, these are not showing.  Note: the thumbs are however showing.
• Widgets “save” option does update and save, still appears to have an issue

Makes for an interesting exercise.

If you are considering upgrading your wordpress site, we’d recommend that you don’t do it right now as there are several bug fixes needed before it becomes stable.

Updates will be added into New Year, in the meantime

Happy Holidays

If you’re thinking of, or are already using, a brand name and / or domain name,  which doesn’t actually describe what your business does, then you’ll certainly need to add a marketing plan and a marketing budget into your overall business strategy.

Just like those ‘Big Boy Brand Names’, you’ll want to ensure that people will over time, become more familiar with, and be consistently exposed to, your brand name and your domain name, your website address.

Let’s expand on what you looked at in your members white paper “Brand Name Pre Domain Name Purchase“   ….

Domain Name Pre Purchase tips and suggestions for small business start up online.

[Content protected for Wp-course-101 members only]

Cold porcelain specialist, Katy Buck has used her own hand made cold porcelain recipe for some years now to create some amazing Wedding Cake Topper Decorations, humorous characters, like, Fred there on the ecover of her new ebook, and some of the most beautiful orchids you could wish to see.

Although Katy has been in the arts and crafts niche for some time, she has actually specialized within a sub niche by combining her passion for flowers, especially orchids, and her creative passion for making things with cold porcelain and teaching others how to master this creative craft.

Cold porcelain, if you’ve not come across it before, is a non toxic air drying clay, or paste. The reason for it’s name is essentially that the finished product or item looks like it’s made from traditional porcelain pottery and the ‘cold’ relates to the fact that it doesn’t actually need firing in a kiln. It does however need some heat to cook up the ingredients that make the cold porcelain paste

In an earlier article, we touched upon understanding niche marketing and how you can focus down into a niche, like Katy has done. She has taken her main arts and crafts niche down to focus on cold porcelain, a modelling craft that lots of people are really interested in learning and taking up as a hobby for pleasure or for business, and that she is talented in as an expert. As Katy works with cold porcelain for pleasure and for business herself, she knows how rewarding this craft can be.

Katy has also focused into the cake decoration niche which is a fairly wide niche. If you research the cake decoration niche, you’ll soon create a long list for the different types of cake niches there are and how many forms of cake decoration and cake toppers there are. Why not do a little bit of research just to see for yourself? However by focusing on her own interests and talents in wedding cake decorations, she has tied that into her cold porcelain topper creations.

By sharing her cold porcelain recipe and showing people how she makes wedding cake topper decorations, she gains much more focus in a niche where people want to know more about how she does what she does and how they can do the same for their own benefits, for either pleasure or business.

When you are researching your niche marketing, by all means start your research in the main niche area, then think about how you can focus down into that niche to find a niche topic area that you are able to compete in, where people want to know more about what you do and how they can learn from you and of course buy your products or services.

Once you’ve found your sub niche, you do then need to promote your business online, it doesn’t have to be over the top fancy, and we looked into niche marketing web site design in that article, using “knitting a niche” for example.

Katy’s niche website design consists of a couple of simple web pages and an easy payment system, so her costs are minimal. Her ebooks were flying off her virtual shelves within 30 minutes of going live, so she can tell you how well this simple process works. You can check out the simplicity of Katy’s Cold Porcelain and Wedding Cake Topper Decorations ebooks website page here.

What sub niche will you research this week?