Tools Of The Trade

Computer software and hardware for design work that I recommend.

Using Stock Photography

Published November 30, 2011 | By Sarah

As a designer, there are times when it’s best to create all of your own graphic elements, and there are times when it’s wisest to use and edit stock images. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, after all.… Continue reading →

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Recognized by WebHostingSearch.com

Published October 19, 2011 | By Sarah

WebHostingSearch.com is your number one source for quality reviews on the best web hosting available. They’ve done (and continue to do) all of the field research necessary in order to provide the most up-to-date and comprehensive listing of available web… Continue reading →

Posted in Artisteer Tips, Recent Projects, Tips and Tricks, Tools of the Trade, Wordpress Tips and Tricks | Leave a comment

BlueHost Offers Excellent, Affordable Hosting Service

Published October 10, 2011 | By Sarah

I’ve worked with several different hosts while helping clients set up their websites. There are a few I really don’t enjoy working with (Fat Cow and GoDaddy are two of my least favorites). There are a few that I really… Continue reading →

Posted in Tools of the Trade, Wordpress Tips and Tricks | Tagged hosting, self-hosting WordPress, web servers | Leave a comment

Site Upgrades

Published October 4, 2011 | By Sarah

As you can tell, I just renovated the site. Not only did the styling change, but most importantly I've added some important organization and feature changes that will hopefully help viewers more easily find what they are looking for. This post details the plugins that I recently installed. Continue reading →

Posted in Plugins, Tools of the Trade, Wordpress Tips and Tricks | 2 Comments

Easy Faux Quilt Design in PhotoShop

Published January 12, 2011 | By Sarah

Have you wondered how you can create a quilt style with threading or material like repeating pattern in Photoshop? This tutorial will show you specific steps on how to accomplish this. Continue reading →

Posted in Recent Projects, Tips and Tricks, Tools of the Trade | Tagged blog design, Blogger, Design, photo-editing, Photshop | Leave a comment

Widget Logic WordPress Plugin

Published December 12, 2010 | By Sarah

I just realized that I have never really discussed some of the great plugins that I make use of for my theme. So, I will remedy that in several posts by giving you an honest review and information on some of my favorite plugins. WordPress offers some fantastic plugins for free, and I’ll start off with one of my favorite plugins, Widget Logic. Continue reading →

Posted in Plugins, Tools of the Trade, Wordpress Tips and Tricks | Tagged wordpress plugins, Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Tweaks | 4 Comments

Smooth Slider WP Plugin Review

Published December 12, 2010 | By Sarah

I just added the Wordpress plugin Smooth Slider to my Artisteer generated site and have written the following review regarding it's installation and usage. Continue reading →

Posted in Plugins, Tips and Tricks, Tools of the Trade, Wordpress Tips and Tricks | Tagged plugins, sliders, smooth slider, wordpress plugins, Wordpress Themes | 2 Comments

Two Great WordPress Plugins

Published March 9, 2010 | By Sarah

As I was working on redesigning theStock411 WordPress blog, I implemented two fantastic WordPress plugins. One of these plugins is WP-Sticky. I’ve known about this plugin for a while, but had never used it. It’s a nice simple way to keep one post at the top of your blog at all times. Now, there are a couple of items to note if you are using this plugin after creating your theme in Artisteer: You must change a tiny bit of php if you want to hide the date. I found a couple of forums that had parts of the following information:

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Posted in Plugins, Recent Projects, Tips and Tricks, Tools of the Trade, Wordpress Tips and Tricks | Tagged Artisteer Tips, blog design, Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Tweaks | 10 Comments

Recent Projects

Published February 24, 2010 | By Sarah

Well, I’ve been very busy on some projects recently as well as other “life” stuff that have kept me from being able to post as much as I’d like to. I just completed a full WordPress website for a company that I did a WP blog for several months ago. They wanted their whole site transformed and consolidated into one WordPress Site. It was a huge process as I had to set up WordPress in their current hosting location, transfer the old blog over to it, and completely design and add content to their site from top to bottom.

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Posted in Recent Projects, Tools of the Trade, Wordpress Tips and Tricks | Tagged blog design, Blogger, Design, photo-editing, Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Tweaks | Leave a comment

Backgrounds, Icons, and Buttons

Published December 23, 2009 | By Sarah

Well, as you can see if you’ve visited my site before, I’ve just updated the theme again. I like to create new design themes for my own site both for variety as well as to demonstrate some nice Artisteer, Photoshop, and WP tweaking techniques. I’ll list a few of those techniques in this post.

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