Our Groupon deal is now closed, we did not reach the 15 purchase mark to have the deal go through but we are working with Groupon to see if those who bought the deal can still get it.  If you did purchase the deal please contact us and let us know and we will make sure you recieve it.  If anyone was unable to purchase the deal before the time was up we will still honor the deal for 48 more hours so please contact us and let us know!

We have teamed up with Groupon to offer our current and prospective customers with a fantastic deal, a 3 page custom website for only $299 ($860 value) including 1 year of hosting with 10 email addresses. To take advantage of this great deal just head on over to Groupon and get started! Also be sure and check out our work on our Portfolio page!

I bought the Groupon, now what?

Well first off, thanks! Now we need to schedule your consultation which can be done over the phone or at our office in Tacoma, to schedule please call (888) 712-9545 or visit our contact page and we will get you scheduled right away! If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us as well.

Read More or Full Post?

First up, is the Read More button (sort of).  I had created a custom post type for a client to display some recent news on the homepage of their site and in such needed to have the more button displayed where it cut off but it wasn’t working, the button simply wasn’t showing up.  This is nothing new, i have come across this situation several times before and the solution is simple.  You just add the following code to your loop (i add it right above the the_content(); )

<?php global $more;
$more = 0;
?>

But then the client wanted a page that showed the news stream in its entirety so i thought no problem and simply put the custom loop in and removed the “read more” code above from that loop. It didn’t work, the more button was showing up anyway. My guess is because this was taking place of the normal blog the more button retained its default behavior which is to show up. So thus began my scouring of the WordPress Codex to see how in the world to overwrite the normal behavior and show the full post. Turns out the solution is beyond simple, you simply take the “read more” code from above and change the “0″ to a “1″ like so…

<?php global $more;
$more = 1;
?>

And viola! the full post showed and all was right with the world.

I hope in future posts to get into some far more advanced techniques but this alluded me for quite some time and I hope it helps someone facing a similar situation.

I’m a very easy going guy, funny (at least i like to think so) and this hasn’t really shown through in my blog or my company’s image.  I’ve been so worried about making a good impression i wasn’t considering who’s impression i was making.  If that even makes sense?

So this has prompted some changes, starting with this post I’m going to start blogging more off the cuff so to say and stop worrying so much about grammar and did this come of right or did that sound right and just get my message out there!

Along with that i will also be changing my Gravatar image, its currently me in a suit which is a rarity let me tell you   And also I’m going to give video blogging a shot as i think that will allow me to be more of myself then a written blog but i plan to mix it up!

Anyway, hope that is helpful to some people, i know its been something i have been thinking about lately and more so with Gary’s advice in being true to your DNA.

That’s it folks, until next time…

New Projects

If you have been following us this past year you have probably seen our blogging project “Build A Blog”, which aims to make blogging easier for businesses (and personal blogs) who don’t have the technical know how (or desire) to download a theme, install it and maintain.

So that being said, we have some big plans for making Build A Blog even better this year including new themes, and new easier to use theme switching along with a new look for the Build A Blog website.

Another new project we have for the year is an app we are calling “Stockpile” which we will be releasing more info on in the coming weeks.

Our last big project for the year is one that will help businesses build their online presence. That’s all we are ready to release just yet, but if you follow our blog then we will be giving you more and more details as we progress on this, but we are hoping to launch by the end of the year.

Project 52

One of the areas we have severely been lacking in the last few years is our blog, so we have joined up with bloggers all over the internet and all of the world in something called Project 52, which in a nutshell is a blog post a week. So that is our goal this year is to give you guys a blog post every single week, so if you have any topics you’d like to hear about then please leave them in the comments.

Giving Back

Lastly our goal this year is to give back to the design and business community by offering at first a few free themes, both website and WordPress and if there are any other items that you might be interested in then please leave them in the comments and we will do our best.

In the spirit of giving back we are also looking at either giving to a charitable organization or potentially starting one like The Rockstar Foundation. As we make our decisions on that we will make another post detailing what we chose and why.

Wrapping Up

Well that’s it folks, we are very excited about all the changes and upcoming projects this year and we hope you are too. And on that note, see you next week!

So now we have finally bit the bullet and rebuilt our entire website on WordPress. So take a look around and see our new website, take a peek at our portfolio and don’t forget to check out our blog.

And welcome to the new Phoenix Design!