How do I Force Facebook To Use A Thumbnail From My Website?
How to force Facebook to display the image you want when sharing your website on Facebook. Part I in our mini-series
How Do I Force Facebook To Use A Thumbnail From My Website?
Part II of our mini-series on how to get Facebook to show the correct preview image when you share your website on Facebook.
Innerleithen Music Festival web site design
New website, branding, adverts, flyers and Social media templates for the Innerleithen Music Festival.
The Festival committee approached us earlier in the year as their current website, which had stood them well, was starting to look a little dated.
The brief was to design a clean, responsive web site along with new logo, branding and promotional and advertising material.
How to add an extra CSS file to your Genesis Framework
Genesis Framework.
We use and love the Genesis Framework by Studiopress and their varied and versatile themes play a big part in our business. But we don’t just grab a theme, paste content into it and invoice the customer. Each site uses bespoke styling using css and Genesis functions in the functions.php file.
Adding an extra css file to Genesis Framework child theme
Normally we just roll these in to the existing files but it’s always a worry that when the theme developer updates their theme. Our updates will be over-written.
This is where this very handy tip by Chris Cree comes in use. Instead of adding your custom css edits or new classes to the existing stlye.css file, either mixed in with the original code or if you’re organised, at the bottom of the file. Use this PHP function to load an extra css file and place your code there.
You can grab the code from this post or on our Gist on GitHub
[php]
add_action( ‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘wsm_custom_stylesheet’ );
function wsm_custom_stylesheet() {
wp_enqueue_style( ‘custom-style’, get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . ‘/custom.css’ );
}
[/php]
Ok, so what are the downsides?
Some WordPress and website developers argue that adding additional server calls is detrimental to performance and you should try to minimise them by amalgamating code but personally we feel that with all the otehr overheads of Wordpess and plugins. Loading an extra css file will be negligible.
Innerleithen Holiday Lets – New Website Design & Hosting
Innerleithen Holiday Lets Web site
Innerleithen Holiday Lets is an established local business who, having just moved to the High Street, wanted to update their website to coincide with the move to their new premises.
Providing high quality holiday cottages, houses and apartments in the Innerleithen, Walkerburn & Peebles area. Innerleithen Holiday Lets came to Digital Essence looking for a modern, mobile responsive redesign of their current web site.
Working with them over the last couple of weeks. We discussed what they wanted and expected from their new web site and set about making the magic happen.
Their old site was hosted on a custom built backend and we worked closely with their developers to ensure the smooth, hassle free transition over to our system.
One of the most important items on their wish list was the ability to edit the website themselves, we suggested the popular WordPress Content Management System (CMS) as it not only gives them total control over their site but also updates and improves stability and security.
On top of this we add our favourite Genesis Framework which gives us and our customers total security and fantastic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) so they rank well in Search Engines like Google.
Working with a local Innerleithen based photographer to provide high quality interior shots of the holiday homes, we’ve produced what we think is a fantastic web site.
Mobile Responsive
With nearly 20% of all web traffic coming from mobile devices like Smartphones or Tablets, web sites have to work well on all devices from a Desktop computer to a Mobile Phone otherwise you risk losing business.
All of the websites we design are 100% Mobile Responsive. This means that whether you are sat at your desk, browsing on your iPad or on the move using your Mobile Phone. Our customers web sites will look just as good.
And needless to say, the Innerleithen Holiday Lets website works superbly whatever device you are using.
Blogging for Improved Search Engine Results
If there’s one Golden tip/nugget of information we want to pass on to our customers. It’s that Content is King. It doesn’t matter how fancy your website is, it is good quality, relevant content that will show in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). One of the best ways to produce this is to Blog. Blogging allows a web site owner to write about events that are relvant to their locality or business.
Without original and desirable content, any media venture is likely to fail through lack of appealing content, regardless of other design factors.
One of the reasons why we use WordPress to power all of our websites is that, it’s an amazingly powerful blogging and news platform. WordPress allows our customers to quickly and most importantly, easily update their site. They can write news items that are relevant to them and post them to their website (eg: this is a Blog post). This means that they can keep their websites updated with local news and help drive traffic to their site.
Please have a look at the new Innerleithen Holiday Lets website at www.innerleithenholidaylets.co.uk and if you are interested in a new website or redesign of your existing site, please give us a call on 01896 888 235 and we will be more than happy to discuss your requirements.