Aloha Independent Living Hawaii (AILH) is non-profit organization that serves their community by providing individuals with disabilities independent living skills and training.

The site was re-designed by Timothy Bolden from ReadiPress. ReadiPress is a managed WordPress cloud hosting service that also provides web design and development services for their hosted clients. (The same guys who optimized the SmallBiz theme to load in 1/3 of a second on their hosting platform!)

I was blown away when I saw the site. So I put together an interview with Timothy over email. I really tried to justify a flight from San Jose to ReadiPress HQ in Honolulu but Timothy got back to me via email before I booked my flight. Rats.

Here’s the interview:

Q: Tell me about your client – Aloha Independent Living Hawaii

Aloha Independent Living Hawaii (AILH) is non-profit organization based in Pearl City, Hawaii that serves the community by providing individuals with disabilities independent living skills and training. We helped with the design of their logo and Microsoft Office Live site, almost 2 years ago.

Q: I love the look of the new site – it’s fantastic. It’s a perfect example of taking SmallBiz and applying a unique “brand” for your client. Where did you get inspiration for the colors and styles?

Thanks for the compliment. The inspiration was from our clients at Aloha Independent Living Hawaii. They knew what they wanted and our team helped bring it out.

The AILH organization wanted to create an image of warmth, care and people working together. The results are the The AILH logo you see today as well as the colors. The hands signify the care and human aspect of the AILH services and the Lei, represents the “Aloha Spirit”. And of course, the Disability symbol, the people who are involved in the organization, as well as recipients of their independent living services.

The purple color scheme was chosen because we and the AILH team, felt it was consistent with the desired image of bringing a warm feeling to the site. Our goal was not to appear so “corporate” but make it feel like local Hawaii and inviting.

From there, it was easy to continue the whole design concept into their printed materials and recently into the AlohaILHawaii.org website. The AILH team knew what they wanted which always makes our job easier.

Before Redesign

AlohaILHawaii Website Screenshot - Before redesign

After Redesign

AlohaILHawaii Website Screenshot - After redesign

Q: How hard was it to adapt your visual concept to the SmallBiz theme?

It wasn’t very hard for our development team to incorporate the look into the SmallBiz theme. The theme provided a solid foundation for the design concept. We had to make sure that it was a quality coded premium theme, well supported and allowed for options for custom looks.

The SmallBiz options panel allowed us to do so many things:

• Easily upload a custom header
• Choose from multiple layout configurations & colors
• Customize the mobile page to capture the look and feel
• Insert custom content in specific areas (e.g. Featured box)

Plus it helps that our team consists of talented designer and coders. They found it easy to work their CSS skills into the SmallBiz theme.

Q: Was mobile-enabling the site or having a Facebook Page a consideration for the client?

Definitely. The AILH organization had expressed to us that they wanted to engage more in social media. It would provide more exposure of their services, and the need for financial support.

Naturally, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms need to be promoted on their site. The SmallBiz theme made this easy for us. The eye catching social media buttons and the ability to customize placement throughout the site, makes managing/promoting social media for AILH easy.

Next on our list (phase 2) is to customize Aloha Independent Living Hawaii’s Facebook Fan page. This is an incredible feature of the SmallBiz theme that we’re looking forward to taking advantage of. We can easily access the media files, keep the color scheme consistent; and manage the Facebook Page Tab content from within WordPress by using the SmallBiz theme Facebook App.

With the ever increasing usage of smartphones to find local businesses, the mobile device auto-detection of the SmallBiz theme makes it easier for the local population of Hawaii to find and contact Aloha Independent Living Services. The touch-enabled Call and Directions buttons are shown automatically to mobile device users. The mobile set up was easy to configure and customize. Once you populate the content, the mobile page just works. Super easy!

Q: Tell me a little bit about the project. How long did it take to build the site out?

The project was completed in about a week and a half, which included transfer of the clients content. Once we had the design in place, the SmallBiz theme options panel made it easy to create the home page and populate the content quickly.

Q: What was one of the biggest challenges in the project?

We didn’t really experience anything too big of a challenge, but we did have a few small ones.

- We updated to the newest SmallBiz theme version during the project. We weren’t sure how this would impact our changes. Always a bit scary when upgrading or updating right? To alleviate our anxiety, we do daily backups.

- We wanted the blog to be “excerpts” automatically, instead of using the manual “More” option.

Q: As I mentioned, I think the site looks amazing. What was the client’s reaction when they saw the site?

Thanks again – I’m happy to say they were really pleased with their new site design!

Q: Tell our readers more about your company, ReadiPress. What do you guys do?

Sure. ReadiPress consists of R. Anthony Solis and Timothy Bolden. Anthony is a web enthusiast and a survivor of the dot com 1.0 companies. With a background in Computer Science and Internet Technologies, he manages all the server technologies, WordPress integration and business operations of the company. I’m a Navy Officer, Combat Veteran and IT project manager with a background in web technologies and design.

Together our dynamic duo run ReadiPress, which focuses on managed WordPress cloud hosting service. All of our sites are hosted on a powerful, reliable, auto-scaling cloud architecture platform. We manage the technical aspects of the site (software, server, security, optimization) so that clients can focus on growing their business. For our hosted clients, we provide web design and development services.

Q: Anything else?

One other reason we chose the SmallBiz theme is for the integrated local SEO marketing features. AILH is a local island service and it is important to them to be found locally. As part of our services, we will help them improve their local marketing and the SmallBiz theme provides a great foundation for that.

We think it should also be noted that Don Campbell and Thomas Hasch, have built an incredible community and provide stellar support. When providing WordPress solutions to clients, we always have to consider the company and people behind the them, technology or service.

Whether you are a business owner or a web consultant looking for tools and training, you will never feel like you got “sold” with these guys. They have a vibrant and caring community.

And the Support? Lets put it this way. We consider Don and Thomas a part of our team. They provide solid help and insight that makes us look good in front of our clients. We are learning a lot from Don’s training courses and we get expert CSS/WordPress help from Thomas.

The ReadiPress team can’t thank them enough. We look forward to a long lasting and prosperous business relationship.

So do we! Thanks for taking the time to do this interview Timothy.

I recently used the Classic with Video layout of the SmallBiz theme for a client, Ram’s Spinal Care. I wanted to achieve the look of the header spanning the full width of the screen, which I was able to achieve using the theme’s built in header and background uploader, making the process super simple and giving the site a very customized look.

I began by creating the header, which I did using a very inexpensive version of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements. The size is 960 pixles wide x 150 high.
Then I created the background:

• Match the exact colors of the header background and the navigation bar.
• In Photoshop Elements create a NEW file
• Select transparent as the background layer

The key to achieving this look is in the height. The width can be incredibly narrow, the slightest sliver of background is all that you need.
• I used a width of 100 pixles and height of 300 pixles.
• Then I created a layer that is 170 pixels high; make this the same color as the header background.
• Create a second layer that is 30 pixels high and fill that layer the exact color of the navigation bar.
• The remainder of the image leave transparent.
• Save this as a .jpg and upload the background to your SmallBiz Theme.
• Select Tile Horizontally from Display Options.

Viola – a nice wide looking header that stretches the width of any size screen or browser window.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

Pro Tip: To examine the background image on any website, simply right click on the page. You will link to another screen that has the image, right click on the image and you can save it to your hard drive, upload it to Photo Shop and customize the colors.

About Eileen

Eileen Lonergan is a WordPress website designer who has a concentration in SEO. To learn more about Eileen and see her work visit http://www.EileenLonergan.com

Want to Write for Expand2Web.com?

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In my last post, we talked about the Facebook HTTPS migration coming on October 1, and broke it down to understand what it means to you if you have custom Facebook Page Tabs on your Facebook Page. Then I introduced two options for meeting the Facebook requirements.

Let’s get into more detail on each of the options now.

Option A: Use a Free Shared SSL Certificate

Some hosting providers offer a Shared SSL Certificate that you can use for FREE. I know at least BlueHost and HostGator offer this, and many others probably do as well.

Shared SSL Certificates – a Video Walkthrough

And here is a step-by-step walkthrough of what’s in the video:
To set this up, you’ll need to go to the CPanel of your hosting account and get your username. This is usually on the left side of your CPanel interface once you log in and it looks something like this:

Once you have your username, you can make the secure URL to your content. My secure url looks like this:
https://secure.bluehost.com/~username/smallbiz372/
(where smallbiz372 is the folder that this WordPress installation is in.)

If you are using SmallBiz to manage your Facebook Page content, go to your Facebook Page Tab, and click Edit Tab URL:

The SmallBiz Facebook App allows you to edit the Tab URL

Now change your URLs in the SmallBiz Facebook App to use the https links instead of the http links:

Change your URLs from http to https

Finally, you’ll need to go into your WordPress General Settings and change your WordPress address and Site address too:

Changing your WordPress address and Site address

That’s it – now your Facebook Page Tab content will be served via SSL and meet Facebook’s HTTPS migration requirements.

One caveat to this approach is that you’ll want to have a WordPress install just to manage the Facebook Page Tabs, since you don’t want the URL of your regular site to use the hosting provider’s shared URL. So you will have one WordPress installation for your website/blog, and one for your Facebook Page Tabs. Don’t worry – BlueHost and many other hosting providers let you install many WordPress installations on your single hosting account.

Option B: Install an SSL Certificate

If you are using BlueHost – which is my recommended hosting provider – you can install a dedicated SSL Certificate for $75 per year. (That’s $30/year for a Static IP address, which is required for SSL, and $45/year for the SSL certificate.) BlueHost will set the Certificate up for you so it is super easy. Other hosting providers may offer similar arrangements.

Installing a Dedicated SSL Certificate – Video Walkthrough

If you are using SmallBiz for your WordPress site, you can continue to manage both your website/blog content and your Facebook content from the same WordPress install using this method.

And here is a step-by-step walkthrough of what’s in the video:
Once you’ve installed the SSL Certificate, go to your Facebook Page Tab, and click Edit Tab URL:

The SmallBiz Facebook App allows you to edit the Tab URL

Now change your URLs in the SmallBiz Facebook App to use the https links instead of the http links:

Change your URLs from HTTP to HTTPS

Done.

If you are managing Facebook Pages for clients, you will need to get them to install an SSL Certificate on their sites as well.

Remember, this is a Facebook requirement so please don’t shoot the messenger! I’m just trying to help you make your content secure so you can keep serving your Facebook Custom Page Tabs when Facebook makes the change in October.

Good luck with this and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!

Looking for a way to manage your Facebook Page content from WordPress? Take a look at the SmallBiz WordPress Theme – including a Facebook App, touch-enabled Mobile landing pages, Solid SEO fundamentals, 26+ professionally designed header graphics, and 8 home page layouts!

Many SmallBiz Theme owners are using the SmallBiz Facebook App to manage their Facebook Page Tabs in WordPress.

On October 1 Facebook will be requiring that all content delivered through Facebook Pages be delivered from a secure HTTPS server using SSL. (Here’s their announcement.)

Getting Ready for SSL

So if you have created custom Facebook Page Tabs, how do you prepare for this?

To have custom Facebook Page Tabs you need two things:

1. A Facebook iFrame App
2. A place to host and serve your content from.

Both of these need to be delivered via SSL now. I’ll show you how to make that happen. But first, what is SSL?

What is HTTPS and SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is an encryption method for transferring data securely. When you buy something at Amazon.com, for example, they use SSL to make sure that no one can see your credit card information when you enter it in to buy something from them online.

An SSL encrypted URL starts with HTTPS:// rather than HTTP:// and is preceded by a “padlock”. If you click on the lock, you’ll see information about the certificate and who owns it (see screen shot below.)

Facebook is moving to make your connection to their site entirely SSL encrypted. In order to do that, they need to make sure all the content that is part of your page is served securely. So that’s why we have to jump through all these hoops.

Ok, with that out of the way, here’s what you need to do for your custom Facebook Page Tabs to work once they make this change:

1. Make Your Facebook App Secure

The SmallBiz Theme comes with a Facebook App that we wrote to help you connect your WordPress site to a Facebook Page and manage your content from within WordPress (it is based on the Facebook iFrame app).

We’ve moved the SmallBiz Facebook App to one of our secure servers so that it is delivered over an SSL connection now. If you’re using SmallBiz, this is taken care of for you already.

2. Deliver Your Content Securely

Your content also needs to come from a secure connection. This means if you are hosting your WordPress site on BlueHost, for example, and want to continue to show some of your content on your Facebook Page Tabs, you need to install or enable SSL on your server.

There are two ways to achieve this:
A) Purchase an SSL certificate for your server. You can get an SSL certificate for under $100/year. This way, you will be able to deliver content both using http://yourdomain.com and https://yourdomain.com. Or,

B) Use a FREE Shared SSL Certificate. Many hosting providers have something called a Shared SSL Certificate. If your hosting provider has this, you may be able to use it for free. I use BlueHost for my WordPress hosting, and they have Shared SSL Certificates.

Click here for a step-by-step guide and videos for both options -> How to Secure Your Facebook Page Tab Content using SSL.

The good folks at ReadiPress have set up and optimized WordPress and the SmallBiz Theme together – and the site is loading in 1/3 of a second!

Wow, good work guys!

We’re very excited to announce something we’ve been working very hard on for the past several months – the SmallBiz Web Suite v3.7.

This version is more than just a WordPress Theme. It is the next evolution of SmallBiz, and provides the ability to create a complete web presence – including a Website, Blog, Facebook page and Touch-enabled Mobile site for your clients – in record time.

Video Tour of SmallBiz Theme

Watch a video tour of the new theme:

And we’ve made a ton of design and usability changes in both the back and the front-end.

New Features

• SmallBiz 3.7 features a complete design refresh, for both the site layouts and the Options panel. Here are just a few of the new features, many of them requested by you:
• New wider theme layout.
• New, professionally designed header graphics and auto-color schemes.
• New, modern dynamic navigation menu replaces the graphical based one.
• Larger default font size, and new social media icons for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.
• Reorganized Options Panel groups settings more logically so you can find what you are looking for easily.
• Tons of new options for changing the look and feel of your site without coding.
• Ability to hide options panel for customer sites.

And that’s just a few of the new features. Wait until you open it up and look under the hood

Video Tour of SmallBiz Options Panel

Take a tour of the options panel to see all the things you can change in the theme without having to know HTML or CSS:

How To Get SmallBiz

Visit SmallBizTheme.com to get your copy of the SmallBiz Web Suite and start building killer small business websites in minutes!

Marion, MA based Web Designer Eileen Lonergan has wasted no time putting together some remarkable looking Facebook Pages using the new iFrames capability released by Facebook recently.

Facebook Page Example - Make U Up by Eileen Lonergan

The new iFrames approach is very powerful, but comes with some challenges. For example, it’s completely up to you to host, create and manage the HTML content that shows up on your Facebook Page Tab.

The Solution – SmallBiz and WordPress

To solve this, Eileen used the latest version of the SmallBiz WordPress Theme – which comes with an accompanying Facebook App – and special page templates that allow you to manage your Facebook Page Tab content right from within WordPress.

This makes it easy to set up a completely customized Facebook Page Tab for a business using the new Facebook iFrames Tabs for Pages. Using this capability, you can create a mini-website within your Facebook Page complete with navigation, video, photos, etc.

See Eileen’s Portfolio

Here’s the story behind her latest creation. You should also check out her portfolio of Facebook Pages – she has created a lot of beautiful ones.

Nice work Eileen!

p.s. Eileen is an Expand2Web Experts Member.

The SmallBiz Theme is your all-in-one solution for creating a high-ranking Website, Blog, Facebook Page and Mobile-ready site. Watch the video!

I‘m excited to announce the release of SmallBiz WordPress Theme v3.6 – with some exciting new capabilities.

Version 3.6 introduces the ability to manage Facebook Page Tab content right from your WordPress site running SmallBiz!

Manage your Facebook Page Tabs from WordPress

Create Facebook specific pages in WordPress, create a Facebook specific navigation menu, and connect your SmallBiz site with your Facebook Page using the SmallBiz Facebook App.

With this new version, the Expand2Web SmallBiz Theme represents an all-in-one solution for Facebook/Mobile/Blog and Website, all managed in one place!

Here are some of the major benefits and features:

New Features in this version:

• Facebook specific pages and navigation menu
• Facebook App included: based on Facebook iframe Tabs for Pages
• “Reveal on Like” functionality – show one page to new visitors, another to people who have “Liked” your Facebook Fan Page!
• Brand new Image Rotator Layout with easy image uploading, linkable images, scalable text area
• Collapsible Options Panel for tweaking and styling your site
• Color picker for Mobile Call and Directions touch buttons

Screenshot of SmallBiz Facebook Page Tab

SmallBiz Benefits:

• Create and manage Facebook page tabs from within WordPress (you have a full CMS for Facebook with this theme!)
• Automatically display touch-enabled mobile landing pages to mobile visitors using iPhone, iPad, Android or Blackberry devices
• Build a professional website and blog for a small business in minutes!
• Social Media widget included for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn
• Optimized for top Local Search Rankings (hCard microformats, SEO plugin built-in)
• User Guide with Video Tutorials
• Legendary Customer Service
• 8 design layouts out of the box
• Tweak and change the site with the custom options panel. Customize the header graphic, color scheme, navigation menu, business information and much more without coding.

As you can see, the SmallBiz theme is packed full of features to help you deliver a complete web strategy to small business clients quickly and efficiently.

Along with this release, we are offering a 20% discount until April 21. So what are you waiting for – go grab a copy of SmallBiz!

Get SmallBiz!

p.s. I’ve already sent out an email to existing customers with a link to the new version.

According to Google, traffic from mobile devices and smart phones like iPhone, iPad and Android is exploding. And 50% of the searches from these devices is for local goods and services.

We’re very excited to announce the SmallBiz 3.5 – a new version of the SmallBiz WordPress Theme packed with new features, including:

• Mobile Landing Pages – Serve special touch-enabled layout automatically when mobile a device is detected. Including iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) and Android devices.
• Fully customization navigation menus – New CSS Based alternative navigation menu with color chooser
• New color schemes – 3 New graphical color schemes
• New Layout- New “Classic Video” page layout due to popular demand!

Mobile, Touch-Enabled Layouts

We’ve found that the most common actions that people are looking to take when they look your business up on their mobile device are:

1) Call you with questions or for an appointment
2) Get a map and directions to your business

So we’ve created a touch-enabled landing page that you can activate and customize. This page will be displayed automatically to anyone viewing your website on a mobile device.

Here’s a screenshot of a SmallBiz mobile-enabled landing page on an iPhone:

The mobile landing pages are touch enabled

Once activated, the mobile layouts are served automatically to any smart phone or mobile device that visits your website. The viewer can still view your site in its original format if they wish.

When someone visits your website on a mobile device, they can call you or get a map and directions with just one touch!

Fully Customizable Navigation Menus

In this release we’ve also made the look and feel of the navigation menus completely customizable from within the SmallBiz Options panel. If you don’t like the nav menus that come with the color schemes, now you can completely customize the colors and styles.

You’ll find this new capability in the SmallBiz Options panel:

Custom WordPress Nav menu options

New Color Schemes

There are three new color schemes in this release, bringing the total out of the box color schemes to 7. You can still create your own custom color schemes as well.

SmallBiz WordPress theme new color schemes

New Video Layout

By popular demand, we’ve also added a new layout that features a video on the home page. It’s just like the “Classic” SmallBiz theme layout, but features a video on the home page instead of a picture. This brings the total layouts that come with the theme to 7.

There are now 7 layouts in the SmallBiz Theme

Download it now!

As you can tell, we’re very excited about this release, and I hope you enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed making it!

If you are an existing SmallBiz customer, you’ve already received an e-mail in your inbox with the new version. If you don’t have the SmallBiz WordPress theme yet, you should get it here!

I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New year from Expand2Web.

Thomas and I truly appreciate our readers and customers and really enjoy meeting and getting to know you.

If you haven’t already dropped us an email or commented and introduced yourself, please do – we’d love to meet you.

Have a great holiday!

p.s. We are just put up a 20% holiday discount on our SmallBiz WordPress Themes until January 1. If you’ve been thinking about getting the SmallBiz theme now is the time!