This morning I launched version 3647 of thinkdave.com, with a new layout, a few new features and hopefully, better content. Here are the important additions:

Thesis updated to version 1.8

I’ve upgraded Thesis from 1.7 to the all new version 1.8. I haven’t had a chance to use the Custom Loop API yet but I have a few ideas I’ll be exploring in the coming weeks.

Branding (sort of)

Because I’m a lousy logo designer I decided not to bother having one. Instead I’ve gone for a big friendly greeting which I think sums it up beautifully.

New Services Pages

My PSD to Thesis and PSD to WordPress pages were in need of an update both to the quality of the content and the relevance of it.

I’m adding more features to my services every time I build a site and wanted a better way to show these off without overpowering visitors. Hopefully I’ve done a good job.

FAQ page

I scoured my emails to find the most commonly asked pre-sales questions people ask me and used the answers to compile a Frequently Asked Questions page that should help shed some light.

Better calls to action

Each sales page and gateway page now has a better call to action than my previous theme design. In the coming weeks I’ll be watching conversions to see how much difference this makes.

Before some wiseass asks, yes I did steal the idea for the buttons from Vaultpress.com. But I’m sure they’re GPL just like everything else WordPress releases

Portfolio sections

One of the big things I’ve always been uncomfortable with is the fact that I had no portfolio; mostly because I do white-label work for other designers. It never occured to me to just ask some clients if I could display their sites until now, and thanks to some really nice people, I can now show off some of what I do. I’m planning to expand these examples into case studies when I get time.

Typekit

It’s official: I’m becoming a typography snob. Thanks to Typekit I now have even more control over my already expansive Thesis font library. That is unless you’re an Internet Explorer user in which case no amount of font prettiness can improve your browsing experience.

Things I still need to do

• Find a better way to display my jQuery call to action buttons. I’m not entirely happy with the way they work right now.
• Move the site from my shared server to one of Xilo’s super fast VPS platforms.
• Add PSD to WordPress portfolio pieces
• Tinker with Gravity Forms default styling, which I hate.

So, there you have it. I’d love to hear your thoughts, comments and criticisms in the comments.

So today was fun, wasn’t it WordPress & Thesis people? In case you missed it, here’s a brief rundown of what happened:

Update: Thesis now sports a shiny new Split license which should appease all you GPL lovers. Can we get some work done now?

1. Bill Erikson sent out a Tweet explaining that WordPress had dropped him as a developer because he suppports Thesis (they feel Thesis violates the GPL).
2. A bored 12-year old in Elbonia injected some malicious code into the Thesis 1.7 and 1.8 Beta releases, so that anyone installing the theme from these downloads got infected. It’s fixed now
3. Matt smacked Chris across the face with a wet fish, suggesting he doesn’t know how to code (how many times has a WordPress site been hacked, Matt?)
4. Chris shouted at Matt for an hour on Mixergy.
5. Matt sounded bored, like he was reading from a script his lawyers prepared.
6. Chris challenged Matt to a duel in the highest court in the land.
7. Matt said he might just do that.
8. Andrew Warner gave up trying to convince (a) Chris to go GPL with Thesis, and (b) Matt to leave Chris alone.
9. #thesiswp trended on Twitter and everybody from me to a dodgy affiliate in Delhi chimed in with an opinion that at the end of the day, doesn’t matter one little bit. Even so:

My thoughts on Thesis vs. WordPress

Chris Pearson has built a product that’s allowed me to build a business. Of course, so has Matt Mullenweg. So both of these guys are kind of a big deal in my life and I don’t like the way the argument is going.

Yes, I agree that Matt has licensed WordPress under the GPL and he staunchly supports that. And yes, I understand that Chris doesn’t like his business being indirectly controlled by WordPress’ illogical (in a traditional business sense) choice of licensing.

But going to court will end in tears for someone, and both business models will be harmed in the process.

What could WordPress do?

They could relax the GPL. Custom theme designers get paid money by their clients to use WordPress’ code on their projects, and you don’t see them releasing the fruits of their labour under the GPL. So how is this different for a premium theme developer?

They could stand by their guns and sue DIYthemes. Maybe they’d win. But if they don’t they’ll be the laughing stock of the Internet.

They could ignore Chris Pearson and Thesis, and focus on making their software so damn good that people no longer have an incentive to buy premium themes, thereby winning the fight with a superior product.

What could Chris Pearson do?

He could carry on as is, and maybe get sued, maybe not. His community (me included) are very loyal and most of us simply don’t care about the GPL. We just want a development framework that makes sense. For me, Thesis does that.

He could develop a competing platform to WordPress; Thesis as a standalone product. Personally I don’t think this would work because the sheer number of WordPress plugins that would need replicating to make the framework commercially viable is staggering.

He could accept the GPL and change the way he does business. This is probably the easiest way out, but Chris is a very opinionated person and has some of the strongest beliefs of any man I’ve ever known. I don’t see this happening unless it makes perfect sense for Thesis. And in Chris’ mind, it doesn’t.

What I’d like to see happen

I’d like every single plugin and theme developer to release their work outside the GPL, and charge money for it. This would instantly get rid of 90% of the crap plugins, themes and add-ons that don’t work and aren’t supported. And it would leave behind a core product offering that is easily robust enough to be used for any Enterprise web project.

I’d like WordPress to charge for their product too. The money they make from sales could be spent on Forum moderators that answer questions in a helpful manner instead of shouting ‘SEARCH THE FUCKING FORUMS, MORON’ every time someone new asks something. DIYthemes has some of the best forum moderators known to man. I dare you to ask a Thesis question on the forums and not get an answer from Godhammer, Girlie or Phil. And if they can’t help, another developer will.

I’d like to see Matt and Chris get in the ring and fight it out. It won’t solve anything but it’ll be fun to watch…

I know a lot of people have opinions on this matter, and I’d like to hear yours.

Thumbnail credits

Thesis is a great theme framework, but if you’re anything like me you probably don’t enjoy updating it every time a new version is released.

Luckily, there’s a plugin called PHP Widgetify that makes life a little bit easier.

What is PHP Widgetify?

This plugin adds a new type of widget to your Widgets panel, much like the default Text widget, that allows you to add text, HTML and PHP code. Big deal, right?

Actually it is a big deal. Consider the path to this image in a fictional sidebar:

<img src="http://www.thinkdave.com/wp-content/themes/thesis_17/custom/images/image1.jpg" alt="Just another Image" />

In the image URL you’ll notice the reference to thesis_17, the current Thesis version my site is using. Now suppose Chris Pearson decides to launch Thesis 1.8 next week (to coincide, albeit a bit late, with WordPress 3.0). After updating your theme and delete the old theme files you notice your sidebar images are broken.

To fix the problem you need to manually change all the links in your Widgets panel. When you’ve got 20 images in your sidebar, that’s a tedious job.

PHP Widgetify gives you the option to set and forget your image paths each time you update Thesis by linking to your images using PHP instead of static HTML. Here’s how you could change your image path:

<img src="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/custom/images/image1.jpg" alt="Just another Image" />

Notice that we’ve replaced the reference to thesis_17 with a Bloginfo reference directly to your current Thesis version’s image folder.

Where to find PHP Widgetify

You can download PHP Widgetify directly from the WordPress plugin directory, or install it from within your WordPress dashboard ‘Plugins > Add new‘ area.

Once you’ve activated it, simply drag the PHP Widgetify widget into any sidebar in the ‘Appearance > Widgets‘ area and start adding content.

PHP Widgetify may not seem like much but it does give you one less thing to worry about when you next update Thesis, which will be REALLY SOON, won’t it Chris?

Over the Christmas break I wrote a one-page marketing plan for my business. On it I decided what my goals for the 2010 Game of Freelancing were going to be and how I wanted to go about achieving them.

Just as every game needs a system to keep track of the score and figure out who’s winning, I’ve built a Weekly Scoresheet to keep track of my performance as a freelancer and give me a kick up the ass when the other team is beating me.

The most important factor in me building a freelancer’s Scoresheet is that I’m lousy at keeping score, so I (a) decided to track only the metrics I consider vital to my business, and (b) built a system to track this information within my WordPress Admin panel.

In my marketing plan I set out exactly what improvements I feel are necessary for each metric I’ll be tracking, giving me something to work towards.

1. My Blog

I notice an increase in sales leads when I post articles on my blog. I figure that a good measure of the number of people actively taking part in a community is to set up tracking for RSS subscribers and website visitors, so I set up 5 metrics:

• Feedburner average visitors. I could have chosen Feedburner’s actual subscriber number, but that feature always seems to be broken, so I chose an average subscriber count in the hope of smoothing out the bumps.
• Feedburner reach. Reach is the number of people who opened a feed in their feed reader, and took action (like clicking through to your site, or on a link in your article). Reach is important because it shows your much influence you have over your readers.
• Google Analytics Visitors. The number of people visiting my blog on a weekly basis is important because I can use this information to calculate what percentage of visitors send sales inquiries, giving me an idea of how much income I can safely predict. Granted, this data isn’t always going to give me accurate information, but it’s better than nothing.
• Google Analytics Pageviews. I included this metric to see how well I’m doing at keeping people’s interest. If people are clicking through to 3 or 4 articles on my site, I’m obviously doing something right.
• Google Analytics Bounce rate. I don’t really understand the technicalities behind bounce rate, but I do know mine is too high. I figure that if the quality of my content is high enough, fewer visitors will simply move on without taking part.

2. Twitter

Twitter also plays a major role in my marketing strategy and I believe most of the people who follow me have the power to make or break my business.

• Twitter Followers. The obvious metric for Twitter is the number of followers I have. I don’t go trawling for new followers, but I do hope more people follow me based on what I say on Twitter.
• Twitter re-tweets. I’ll be honest, I don’t know how to track this yet but I’m sure someone will tell me the blindingly obvious methods available. Tracking the number of people who re-tweet an update shows how worthwhile my Twitter updates are. No re-tweets = no worthwhile content = sort your shit out Dave!

3. Money

Money is kind of important to me. It makes life a lot easier when you have enough to pay the bills. I’m not an accountant though, so I track only 2 metrics in Paypal (I use Paypal for all my payments).

• Paypal Balance. This is a simple weekly summary of money in (what I’ve earned) vs. money out (usually what I’ve blown on crappy ebooks). It tells me how I’ve done and whether or not I need to sell my kids to pay the rent.

4. Sales Leads

Finally, I track sales leads on my own website. You may think I blog, Tweet and stumble my way around the Interwebs for fun, but there’s a point to all of this: I’m here to build relationships with people who need what I have to offer.

• thinkdave.com inquiry form submissions. My contact page has a simple form that emails me details of people who want to ask me questions, complain that my promised Thesis skin release is late, hurl abuse or sell me something.
  I use the Gravity Forms plugin for WordPress to do this and can take a quick look at my WordPress admin panel each week to see how many people have used my contact page to get in touch.
• thinkdave.com RFQ form submissions. I also have a form on my PSD to Thesis page for new prospects to send me an inquiry about their Thesis coding projects. These projects are my lifeblood so it’s important to measure the number of leads I’m generating and take corrective measures if the numbers are too low.

Building the Scoresheet using WordPress and Gravity Forms

I have a really short attention span so I need a system that doesn’t require too much mental input on my part. I wanted to have my Scoresheet data saved online somewhere, and I usually end up working in my WordPress admin area at least once a week. So I decided to use Gravity Forms again (See how useful this plugin is? You should buy it) to build my Scoresheet. I simply built a new Form, added my ten fields and placed the form on a WordPress Page nobody would think to look for.

Time from start to finish; 3 minutes. I also noindexed the Page using Thesis’ built in function just to make sure nobody lands on it. If it does get found and I do get a few rogue entries it’s no crisis. I’ll just trash them.

The Scoresheet serves 3 purposes:

1. I can see at a glance how my business is doing as soon as I log into WordPress.
2. I can use Gravity Forms Export function to send a bunch of weekly Scoresheets to an Excel spreadsheet where I can play around with the data to my heart’s content.
3. Bonus: I also set up a notification function within Gravity Forms that sends me an email with each report’s data, which prints nicely just in case I ever need to destroy a tree and fill a file.

Thoughts

• Yes, I could have done this in an Excel/Google Docs spreadsheet, but where’s the fun in that?
• This way I’ve got my data in a database and I can access it whenever I’m online. I probably won’t but you never know.
• I can’t think of a quicker way to record data. From end to end this is a 1 minute job, once a week.

So what do you think? Is this a waste of time? Am I measuring the right metrics? How would you/did you build a Weekly Scoresheet for your freelance business. Let me know in the comments.

Image Credits

If I was Barack Obama I’d hire someone to write a killer speech explaining how my new full-time freelance status is great for the country, humanity and the universe in general. Of course I’m not Barack Obama and I can’t afford a speech writer, so I’m going to make this post all about ME instead. I’ll add the word YOU occasionally just so you feel part of the conversation.

Here’s what YOU (clever, huh?) can expect from ME in the coming months:

More Blog entries

To say I’ve neglected this blog is an understatement. I know that when I write high quality posts I get high quality traffic. And new customers. So I’m nailing down a blogging schedule. Mondays you get a feature post (Thesis tutorials, adventures in online marketing, freelancing) and Fridays we’ll have some fun with a round up of the best Thesis stuff I’ve found over the past week.

I’ve also shied away from guest posts in the past because I don’t particularly enjoy writing or criticism, but they’re crucial to growing a community, so I’ll give guest posting a shot once a month, if anyone will have me.

DIYthemes forums participation

What sets Thesis apart from other WordPress frameworks is (a) it’s better than other frameworks, and (b) the DIYthemes forums. I very rarely run into problems on a slicing job that I can’t find an answer to in the forums. I think hope I’ve reached the point where I have something to give back to the Thesis community so I’m going to  try and spend more time helping others figure out their issues. This assumes Godhammer, Girlie and Kristarella don’t beat me to it (how do they type so fast?).

Awesome Thesis skins

With the success of my Osmotic skin for Thesis, I discovered how much fun it is to help people built websites they can launch in a matter of hours. Not to mention I think there’s a decent amount of money to be made. So I’m going to be putting a lot more focus on skin design. I’ve got 3 new skins in various stages of production, with the first set for release on April 5th (and a secret project you’ll hear about in due course).

Better PSD to Thesis services

Without imaginative clients constantly pushing the boundaries of what Thesis can do, I wouldn’t have a business. So I’ve started putting a lot of effort into making my PSD to Thesis slicing services better, faster, more affordable. It’s going to be hard to stay at the top of the slicing pack as more developers jump on the bandwagon but I’m up for the challenge.

And the occasional Thesis theme design

My son goes to Beaver Scouts (Boy Scouts for little kids). The thing that keeps him going back each week is the chance to earn his next badge. Well I want a badge too, which is why I’m now taking on Thesis Theme Design work to earn myself a Doublemule Certification badge. If you’ve got a design project in mind and you like clean, grid based design, then get in touch and let’s talk.

So there you have it. Feedback? Hearty congratulations? Insults? YOU can leave them in the comments or follow me on Twitter.

thumbnail credits

On a PSD to Thesis project I’m working on, the client wants a different logo on the blog pages (the blog index, single posts, archives, categories, etc.) to the one on the normal WordPress Pages.

By default, Thesis’ body class for the blog pages is simply ‘custom’, which doesn’t really help anyone. But by adding a few lines of code to your custom_functions.php file, you can style these pages any way you want. Here’s what you need:

// ---------------------------------------------
// Add a body class to the blog
// ---------------------------------------------

function custom_thesis_body_class($classes) {
	if ( is_single() || is_home() || is_category() || is_archive() ) {
		$classes[] = "blog";
	}
	return $classes;
}                                                          

add_filter("thesis_body_classes","custom_thesis_body_class");

Once you’ve uploaded your changes, take a look at the source of your blog pages and you’ll see the body class has been appended to ‘custom blog’. Now all you need to do is call the correct class in your custom.css file and Hey Presto! you’ve got a different logo on your blog pages. For example:

body.blog #logo {
...styles go here...
}

Obviously this isn’t limited to logos. You can use the blog class to style anything on the page that needs to be different/excluded from other pages.

As with most features in Thesis, it’s the little things that can make all the difference to the look of your site. Enjoy.