I’ve had a few people suggest I teach online classes about WordPress. And I thought, hmm… I think that would be fun. But what kind of stuff should be in the class? Yes, I know what “basics” should be covered — but what do people really want to know? What would they hope to gain from taking the class? So, now I’m reaching out to you — if you’re someone who would like to learn about WordPress, that is. I want you to give me your opinion.

Are you interested in a class on WordPress?

What would you like to learn?

Do you have any specific questions you’d like to be answered in class?

Would you like to know why the sky is blue? // Sorry, that won’t be covered in this class.

Shoot me an email: kayla@bellafaithdesign.com, leave a comment below or fill out the contact form & let me know what you’d like to learn.

And if you are interested, sign-up for the newsletter below – to stay up to date on WordPress class details!

]]> http://www.bellafaithdesign.com/2012/02/so-you-want-to-learn-wordpress/feed/ 1 http://www.bellafaithdesign.com/2012/01/project-confrugal-com/ http://www.bellafaithdesign.com/2012/01/project-confrugal-com/#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:18:11 +0000 Kayla http://www.bellafaithdesign.com/?p=1482

Client :: Confrugal.com
A blog about coupons and saving money

Eve was the winner of the giveaway from Energizer Bunnies’ Mommy Reports. After looking through lots of coupon sites and what Eve likes and doesn’t like, I decided I wanted to have fun with this project & try out a torn/curled edge look. Eve wanted something that she could call her own – something that would make her coupon blog stand out. She gave me some ideas she had in mind, told me her tagline was “CAUTION: Hot Deals Ahead”, and Eve got her own caution symbol, complete with coupons.

For this project, we also created buttons (for people to grab & put on their own sites), social media tags (in the header & footer) and a graphic for her coupon database.

:: The buttons ::

:: The coupon database button ::

:: The blog ::

I had a lot of fun working on this project (as I’m sure you can tell by looking at the design). And make sure you swing on over to Confrugal.com, like Eve’s facebook page, follow her on twitter, and add her rss feed to your reader so you can get coupons and super deals as they’re posted!

See the live site → Confrugal.com

client :: BabyBrowns.com
An online baby boutique specializing in:
designer diaper bags, designer baby furniture, baby gear, baby gifts, nursery decor, and more

Troy and Bethany Beaver purchased BabyBrowns.com in Fall 2011 and wanted a new identity and website for the store. They shared ideas they had for their baby boutique’s new look with me, and we put together concepts for their new identity. We also created business card, letterhead and envelope templates. And then moved on to the design of the site, and building the design into a BigCommerce template. Plus, I created a matching WordPress theme design for the BabyBrowns.com Blog. Overall, it was a very fun project. I had always wanted to do a design for a baby boutique, and I couldn’t have had better clients. Troy & Bethany are amazing people and were fabulous to work with.

:: The identity ::

:: The website ::

:: The Blog ::

Some fun things done on this project for extra flair (with JavaScript)

• An image on the homepage (under main content section) that will randomly change on page load/refresh
• A featured slideshow that displays actual text, with drop-shadows, button navigation & hover title
• Featured product carousel slider at bottom of store homepage

BabyBrowns.com has some really gorgeous baby stuff. Their designer diaper bags don’t even look like diaper bags! Their nursery bedding makes me wish I could sleep in a crib. Their kids’ bedding for twin & full beds is fabulous as well. And they have Bella Bands, which I could not live without during my last two pregnancies. I just wish I had found them sooner. So go check out BabyBrowns.com, because they are truly a unique baby boutique & carry a rockstar supply of baby stuff!

See the live site → BabyBrowns.com

client :: tranquil mind+body
A new mind+body studio offering yoga, pilates & massage services in Lenexa, KS.

tranquil mind+body was a unique project for me on many levels.

• First unique fact: tranquil mind+body is located in the Greater Kansas City Area, making it a local project.
• Second unique fact: Jason Duke, the owner of tranquil mind+body, already had a logo + a template for his website.
• Third unique fact: Jason knows some basic html/css, which meant he understood 99% of what I said, without needing an explanation.
• Fourth unique fact: My first site, in 2 years, that was straight up HTML/CSS.
• Fifth unique fact: My first project, ever, using HTML5.
• Sixth unique fact: Jason’s my first client, who is younger than me.

Wondering if Jason already had a logo, template & knows code – what did he need me for?

Well…

• I customized the site for him.
• Wrote some code.
• Moved stuff around.
• Added stuff.
• Created new page templates.
• Added social media links.
• Made the navigation a drop-down & styled it.
• Added some JavaScript accordions to some of his content.
• Made the contact form work. Made his HTML5/CSS template compatible with Internet Explorer (IE9, IE8 & IE7).
• Uploaded the site to the server (FTP).
• And some other little stuff here & there.

Overall, it was a fun project, and Jason was a blast to work with.

If you’re in the Kansas City area, especially Lenexa / Olathe / Overland Park / Shawnee, you definitely need to go get your yoga & pilates on at tranquil mind+body. And you also need to schedule yourself a pampering massage. The tranquil mind+body studio is gorgeous. After a hectic day at work, it is the perfect oasis for you to relax & rejuvenate.

If you haven’t been to tranquil mind+body before, you’ll want to sign-up for their fabulous intro offer: Unlimited yoga & pilates classes for 3 weeks, for only $29!!!

See the live site → TranquilKC.com

Looking for an easy way to download all the 12 Days of Christmas Coloring Pages? Well, I finally took a moment to compile all the pages into one easy to download file. And if you only need specific pages, I have some other easy download options for you as well.

First let me clarify what I’ll be calling “single” pages & what I’ll be calling “combination” pages.

Single

Combination

Download all 12 Days of Christmas coloring pages as a PDF (Yes, this means single + combination pages)

(Have dial-up or want a little bit faster download speed?
Download the 12 days of Christmas coloring pages as a .zip file)

Download all single 12 Days of Christmas coloring pages as a PDF

(Download as a .zip)

Download all combination 12 Days of Christmas coloring pages as a PDF

(Download as a .zip)

Only need specific days? Click on the image below to download the corresponding PDF!

:: The Singles ::

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

:: The Combinations ::

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

I hope you enjoy coloring these pages!

I would love to hear how you’re going to use them, or even see them after they’ve been colored! You can leave a comment below or send me an email: kayla[at]bellafaithdesign[dot]com

Happy coloring // colouring !!

I’ve been a fan of Headway for WordPress since I discovered it over a year ago. Most of my WordPress designs are built using the Headway theme as a framework. Which means that I install the Headway theme & then build off of it’s awesome features to create the custom design (click here to see my portfolio of sites using the Headway framework). The Headway theme is easy to use & includes a lot of cool features like a visual editor (where you can change certain design aspects of your site without a lick of code) and built-in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for you to customize the meta keywords and descriptions of each post/page (great for search engines).

I just received an email from Headway announcing the release of Headway 3.0 next week with a video preview of what the new release will include. And. Wow.

It. Is. Amazing.

See for yourself.

I am so giddy, I made my non-geek husband sit down to watch it, too.

The developers at Headway Themes have taken their drag & drop visual editor to a whole new dimension. You can actually draw a rectangle with your mouse — similar to how you would draw a rectangle in Photoshop (or even Paint) – along their grid to create your “boxes” of content (the header, sidebar, footers & other content areas). Once you’ve drawn your “box”, you then select what you want that box of content to be (choose from header, navigation, footer, widgetized sidebar, + more).

I cannot wait for the release! Mom, we may have to take a timeout from Black Friday shopping, so I can see the new Headway 3.0.

Currently, Headway Themes offers a personal license for $87 (with support for up to two sites) and a developer’s license for $164 (with support for unlimited sites that you own or develop). Both sites offer free updates to the Headway Theme for life. That is important to note, because the email mentions that they will soon increase the price of Headway & will have an annual renewal fee. I personally have a developer’s license for Headway & it has been worth every penny (I’ve developed eighteen sites with it to date).

Are you trying to add the Quantcast badge code to your website, but having problems getting it to show up for you? Then read this post for the solution, if you can make it through my nerd tech talk.

I’m a nerd. There, I’ve declared it to the world. No, I don’t wear glasses with tape in the middle, or even have a pocket protector. {Now a pocket projector – that would be cool. Something you could carry in your pocket – or purse – that would project movies onto any solid surface. That would rock my world. I’m sure something similar exists, but I digress.}

In school, my subjects were math & science. It wasn’t that they were my favorite subjects, but I “got” them. They just made sense to me. I couldn’t teach and explain math to others {trust me, I tried tutoring & failed}, but somehow I knew the answers. On my ACT, I got a 34 in the Science section. And that excited me. See? Told ya, I’m a nerd.

So why do I share this with you? Because one of my favorite things to do is troubleshoot. And if you want to know why I like troubleshooting so much, the reason is because I’m a nerd.

Yesterday, I had a colleague email that she was having trouble getting the Quantcast badge to appear on her site & wanted to know if I could take a look. If you don’t know, Quantcast provides audience measurements by collecting data from your site’s visitors, and then gives you a breakdown of your visitors’ demographics.

Quantcast provides different badges you can display on your site with some information on your visitors (like how many visit each month). It’s supposed to be a simple copy & paste job. You copy the HTML code that Quantcast provides you & then paste it into your site. And the simple badges work just like that. However, there are a couple customizable badges with Sparkline, and the HTML code from Quantcast was not working for those. Instead of displaying the badge, it was showing an iframe of the Quantcast website with the Quantcast logo, slogan & a big rectangle link that said “Home” in it:

So, where's the widget?

So, I went to my first place to look for a solution → Google. Surprisingly, I wasn’t able to find any fixes. So, I started troubleshooting. I won’t bore you with the details of what didn’t work & how I came up with the solution. All that matters is that there is a fix. I’m sharing it here in case anybody else is having this problem & goes searching for an answer. The problem was in the source (src) link in the HTML iframe code provided by Quantcast.

{Please note that every time you see yourdomain.com in the following code examples, this should be replaced with the domain of the site for which you are wanting to display audience metrics.}

The default widget code for US People per month with Sparkline is:

<iframe src="http://widget.quantcast.com/yourdomain.com/9" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" width="160" height="120"></iframe>

The code above will display the right widget. The widgets with Sparkline allow you to set some custom variables for the widget’s display, and this is where it gets tricky.

To show the number of visitors per month, for the previous 90 days, the code from Quantcast looks like this: {note: this is what is not working}

<iframe src="http://widget.quantcast.com/yourdomain.com/9&timeWidth=30&daysOfData=90" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" width="160" height="120"></iframe>

Notice that the difference between this code and the one above it {that works} is the src url. The customized widget adds the following to the end of the widget url:

&timeWidth=30&daysOfData=90

This specific section needs to be moved to before the “/9″ in the url {9 being the identifier for the type of widget}.

So instead of this:

src="http://widget.quantcast.com/yourdomain.com/9&timeWidth=30&daysOfData=90"

You should use this:

src="http://widget.quantcast.com/yourdomain.com&timeWidth=30&daysOfData=90/9"

The final, working HTML code you should paste into your site should look like this:

<iframe src="http://widget.quantcast.com/yourdomain.com&timeWidth=30&daysOfData=90/9" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" width="160" height="120"></iframe>

If this solution works for you, your widget will look similar to this:

{this is the badge using audience data for quantcast.com}

Recently, I redesigned Energizer Bunnies’ Mommy Reports, a blog full of giveaways, reviews & inspiration from Christian mommy of 2, Marina. Marina wrote a review about working with me, and reading it truly filled my heart with joy.

Marina coined a new slogan for me “Designing Dreams into Reality” {what do you think, should I keep it?}, but my favorite part of the review was when she said I was “down to earth”. Because at the end of the day, I want humbleness in my heart. I want to be thankful for all God has given me. I want people to be able to see that. I want that to be their takeaway.

Marina and I only communicated via email, which means she had to interpret my tone & emotion based on my words alone. So if she was able to get “down to earth” from that, I figure I must be doing something right!

Marina also wrote about how finding me was a total God-incidence. All of my clients have been providence from God, but some have been more obvious than others (especially when you hear the path of how they found me). Marina’s story is one of those.

I know you’re wondering: Didn’t she say giveaway? Where’s the free stuff?, so I won’t bother you with any more emotional stuff. Plus, I have a 4-month-old on my lap who has spit up on me while I am writing this, at least 4 times. Being a work at home mom is so glamourous, folks. Seriously, don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.

Marina is giving away a custom WordPress blog design from Bellafaith Design {yours truly}. It includes all the bells & whistles, so if you’re already on WordPress, thinking of making the switch, or starting a new blog, make sure you head over to Energizer Bunnies’ Mommy Reports for details on how to enter!{Hint: One of the entries includes looking at my portfolio.}

Click here to enter the giveaway, which is open for another week (’til August 27).

Click here to read the full review on Bellafaith Design.

This reveal has been a long time coming! Remember when I had this blog design giveaway? And Lisa from Healthiest Life 4 Me won? Well, Lisa’s redesign is finally LIVE! A lot happened between the end of the giveaway and now. Oh things like my husband switching jobs, the birth of our fourth child, adjusting to our new life [being a mom to 4 little ones, not a walk in the park, folks], web hosting stuff, and a crazy busy Summer [for both myself & Lisa]. Thankfully, Lisa was very gracious – a phenomenal woman she is indeed.

In the beginning of the design stage, I knew I wanted an illustrated version of Lisa. I mean, her blog title is Healthiest Life 4 Me, so I thought it fitting that “Me” [Lisa in this case], should be incorporated into the design. Lisa is into eating well & working out, so when I came across a picture of her in a tank with the words “Shut Up And Train”, I knew I wanted to use that in the design. So, I started on Lisa’s “Mini Me”.

Once I had her “Mini Me” done, I started to work on the blog’s logo. To incorporate working out, I drew a set of weights to go with the fonts I had chosen for her site.

These elements made the rest of the design and layout easy, and coding the design was a walk in the park. Below are some before and after screenshots of Lisa’s blog.

Before ::

After ::

See the live site → healthiestlife4me.com

I have been blessed to work with some amazing women lately, and Marina from Energizer Bunnies’ Mommy Reports is one of them. Marina was moving her blog from blogger to WordPress [self-hosted WP], she was switching the blog’s name a bit [Energizer Bunny's to Energizer Bunnies'], and she was adding a tagline [Family, Faith and Fabulous Finds]. The blog would still be full of reviews, giveaways and inspiration, but with the move & name change, she wanted a new look. She sent me some graphics of kids, fingerpainting and rainbows. Marina wanted something colorful & that would embrace the joy she sees in her children. Immediately, I knew I wanted to create a couple kids to represent her children, so I asked some questions. She responded with a picture, which led to the fingerpainting cuties you’ll find in her header. [Trust me, her kids are a lot cuter.]

Then, I played around with adding rainbows and clouds to the design. The design features a cloud and rainbow at the bottom right-hand of the site. So the clouds with rainbows wouldn’t look too out of place, I placed clouds behind the kids [adding some dimension in the header], and added the painted handprints to the clouds. Then, I deliberated on how to keep a bunny aspect in the design. The answer came swiftly as my hand formed a peace sign, & my brain delivered the message that it wasn’t a peace sign, but bunny ears, my hand was making – “Oh, use the fingerpaint!”

Once the design was done, everything else just rolled into place. Marina had expressed that she wanted her sidebar decluttered (and I just love me a good sidebar decluttering). Marina & I combed through her sidebar to see what we needed to keep in the sidebar, what could go on a separate page of the blog, and what could be left behind. I created a custom button for her that matched the new design.

Before ::

After ::

See the live site → energizerbunniesmommyreports.com