Recently, a client called me and asked how he could remove the extra line between copy that was appearing in the visual editor. For some reason, I must admit that I’m not sure why, when writing a post in the visual editor a return adds in another line between copy making it seem as if there is a double space. To remove this you can delete the extra break in the HTML editor of WordPress. This short video shows you how.
When I hand off a WordPress site I always have a tutorial on how to use the platform and walk the new owners through some of the basics — sort of like I’m doing with this video series. This video covers how to add a link to a WordPress post (it’s the same for a page) when using the WYSIWYG editor. I cover adding a link to text, and to an image. Additionally, I talk briefly about opening a link in the same window, and opening a link in a new window, or tab. It is meant for the WordPress novice.
We received the latest edition of AdAge today in our P.O. Box and I read with interest the article “Fed-Up Shops Pitch a Fit at Procurement.” A little while ago I wrote a post about how law firms were standing up for themselves and saying “if you want to pay less, that’s fine, then just don’t expect the top tier of our talent.” It appears that agencies are starting to do the same in negotiations with potential clients during the pitch phase. According to AdAge, The watch word between agencies after these budget sessions with procurement people is “don’t cave.” As the AdAge article mentions agencies (though, from the deals they sign to close a piece of business you’d never know it) are in this business to make a profits just as much as our clients are. We don’t expect them to sell their products at a loss, they should not expect us to do it either. If we don’t value our services and charge valuable rates, our clients won’t value them either.
We may not be saving lives here — though sometimes our work does, tangentially — but we are professionals who bring know-how, years of experience and insight to issues, problems, trends and best practices around marketing and communications. We are not a commodity, nor are our services. If clients, large and small, want to regard advertising and marketing in a commodotized fashion, then I say let them — and let them work with folks who regard it the same way. Get back to me when you see the results. In my experience the jobs that go worst are the jobs in which someone has decided to meet a potential client’s budget expectations rather than sell the best program for the client’s business needs. Stooping to make the sale is a recipe for disaster that sets the wrong tone from the get-go. It’s an incredible misjudgment on the part of the sales force. If you undersell yourself at the start in the hopes of raising your rates and gaining money back down the line, “fugghedaboutit,” as they used to say in Carroll Gardens.
Last week I was in a conversation with a colleague and we were discussing this very topic. At the time, when I mentioned my hope that we — the ad industry — would begin to finally stand up for ourselves, he said “it’s tough, because there’s always someone willing to do a job for next-t0-nothing.” I didn’t, and still don’t disagree — though it pains me as a small agency owner. Perhaps this latest bit of news from the pitch wars is good news for the industry. Like the lawyers we need to stand up for ourselves. We can work for cheap rates if we put our B-teams on a job, if that’s what the client wants. We can scale back wish lists. Deliver fewer features and functionality. Do fewer rounds of review. Help our clients to understand the intricacies of the review process. As some commenters below the article state, some client side businesses are hurting, but agencies are in dire straits too. Somewhere, amidst the carnage, the two sides need to come together and find common ground. We do need one another, but the client/agency relationship has grown abusive and nasty over the past few years. Many of the agency-side issues come from agency’s general lack of a spine. It’s nice to see spines hardening. Kudos to the big shops. It’s high time, though maybe too late, that we tried to regain some ground.
In this WordPress video tutorial I show users how to paste content from a text document. Some folks feel more comfortable writing content outside of the WordPress editor, and that’s fine. If using a word processing document like Word, I recommend saving the file as a straight text document with no formatting. This will make it easier to format and control styles in your posts. Working in word processing programs, and copying data from them, in their native format, often leads to messy transitions, and weird styles that then take time to sort out and clean up. This video will help save users much time and frustration if they do work in an editor outside of WordPress.
Often, the first thing people ask about when they take control of their new WordPress site is “how do I add an image?” In this primer video I show to insert and edit images in WordPress posts (it’s the same for pages).
I demonstrate how to upload an image from my desktop, float it left, resize it via the edit image button, and then resize it via the WYSIWYG editor, center it and then move it back to the left. I also briefly explain “title” and “caption.”
Another video in the how-to-use-WordPress series in which I cover some of the basics of editing, and changing content in a post. I’m focusing on posts right now because they are the most basic content in the WordPress universe, and all of the things I show in these post videos also applies to creating pages — the interface and the tools are almost identical. I’ll cover the differences between posts and pages — which have to do with tags, categories and page order — in a subsequent video.
This video is intended for the WordPress novice.
Thanks for watching, and as always, send me your comments so I can try and improve these videos.
Here’s the second installment in our WordPress tutorial series. This video covers creating a post with a brief overview of the editing tool bar. Another topic covered in this video is the Publish/Preview/Save a Draft module as well as permalinks (slugs) and how to edit them. This is intended as a primer for the WordPress newcomer.
Just to reiterate, these videos are being created in conjunction with a project in which the end users will have varying levels of knowledge and comfort with WordPress. As always, I welcome your feedback.
Today marks the launch of a new series of videos (well, our first series, actually) on how to use WordPress.
These videos come out of a WordPress site build that we’re in the process of completing for a K-8 school. The user-base is quite diverse and with differing levels of comfort with technology. Part of my bid for this job included the creation of how-to screen casts. The one below, “Introduction to WordPress Dashboard” is the first in the series. I’ve got some more in the can, so to speak, and am learning as I do each one, and hopefully getting better as a screencaster.
This video is basic, and intended for a user with no knowledge of WordPress. Subsequent videos will show more complicated scenarios. I hope to cover as many use cases inside of the WordPress admin as I can. I’ll be categorizing these as WordPress How-to, and also by what they cover like, WordPress Posts, etc. Thanks for watching, please send me your feedback so I can continue to hone my screencasting skills.
Personal Critique: I should probably zoom in more on this one than I do, but I am a fan of the steady camera position. In other videos, where it might be/is more important to do so, I’ll move in for close-ups.
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