Austin Themes - Website Design and WordPress Development in Austin, TX

Places to find great, free WordPress themes

Ryan Bishop — Sat, 11 May 2013 03:14:42 +0000

In the interest of finding the best option for a prospective WordPress website owner, I feel it’s only fair to cover free WordPress themes in addition to touting Austin Themes’ web design services. There are dozens of great websites out there, so it’s a only a matter of fine-tuning your expectations and finding a great theme that meets or exceeds them.

WordPress.org – It has to be said that WordPress.org’s own theme repository (IE, the themes accessible through your wordpress site’s theme search feature) is probably the best source. Not only are the themes guaranteed to be free (even if they’re lite versions of premium themes), but they actually maintain a fairly rigorous approval process for public themes.
SMthemes.com – a great resource for free themes from a diverse collection of authors. High-quality free wordpress themes that seem to be well picked for freebies.
NewWPthemes.com – another high-quality index of free wordpress themes, designed for a variety of industries and uses.
WPlocker.com – a good resource for free quality themes, with an emphasis on modernist responsive themes.

New Hourly Rate

Ryan Bishop — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:04:35 +0000

To encourage more sales, and for a break for clients wanting a website this summer, I’ve dialed my hourly rate back to $50 for the time being! Why not use this opportunity to get a website design quote today?

New Pricing!

Ryan Bishop — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 04:50:39 +0000

After reflection and consideration, I’ve decided to re-instate the previous hourly rate of $50 per hour, effective immediately and for at least the summer! Get a fresh new website for your business today

Now offering WordPress custom post types

Ryan Bishop — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 03:04:23 +0000

Let Austin Themes set up your WordPress site to present almost any data type (IE, “products”, “books”, “produce”, “groceries”, “to-do list”, etc) . Read More

5 easy ways to secure your wordpress website, and what the latest wordpress hacking spree means for your site

Ryan Bishop — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 02:47:21 +0000

If we’re honest, sometimes we all get a little complacent on the security front. Even the most security-conscious WordPress user re-uses a password, or occasionally writes it down on a note attached to the monitor.
Unfortunately, this latest round of WordPress hacking incidents shows us that the dark world of hackers still exists, and it’s always best to play it safe in terms of securing your WordPress site. Below are 5 easy tips for tightening up your WordPress website security

1. Change your Database Prefix
A wordpress website combines a database and files to create a rich, interactive experience. However, this leaves the site vulnerable to database hacking techniques. Use a plugin like the website defender wordpress security plugin to change this default, usually reducing comment spam and foiling a variety of attack types.

2. Remove or rename the default “admin” username (not the admin user!)
The recent WP hacking attacks have shown that the default username “admin” adds a lot of risk of your site being hacked. It’s recommended that you A) create a new username and select “administrator” in that menu, B) logout then log back in as the new username, C) go to ‘users’ then delete the “admin” account.

NOTE : Always keep one administrator-level user on your site at all time, or you’ll lose access to the site’s back-end administration menu.

3. Use strong passwords
Instead of easily-guessable passwords like “guest”, “password”, “password123″, use either a brief sentence with punctuation, or a string of random text and numbers (including an unusual character like ‘&’,'%’,'!’ if possible)

4. Don’t share usernames
Never give out your username and password unless you can trust a party 100%. It’s easy to create a new username and password for that friend, relative, or client, but it’s much harder to repair a hacked wordpress site.

5.Use a wordpress security plugin to find and patch security holes
There are a myriad of ways to easily patch up your WordPress websites, but one of the easiest is to let a plugin take the hard coding out of it. The same plugin referenced above, the WordPress security plugin by Website Defender automatically seals up a few issues in the code and the database to further reduce your WP site’s risk.

Now offering extensive WordPress custom post type work!

Ryan Bishop — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 05:22:46 +0000

Through a personal experiment, I’ve ramped up efforts in my WP custom post type work. What does this mean for future wordpress development work? To start, it means that virtually anything from products to portfolio entries to video galleries can be added alongside the “posts” and “pages” menus in WordPress, and will be treated as their own new content type. Then, the new custom post type can be used in the front-end in almost any form imaginable (within the technical limitations, of course!). Request a bid today, or contact for more info!

A new look for Late March

Ryan Bishop — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:59:57 +0000

Austin Themes got a quick Logo overhaul and a spare background change over the weekend, to keep up with a growing mobile design skillset. Sometimes, simpler designs are better, and Austin Themes offers a range of WordPress website design levels…

LINK : “Stars and Sine Waves” HTML5 animation demo

Ryan Bishop — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 01:44:58 +0000

Check out this great animation demo using jQuery and HTML5 to drive a 30+ second animation of stars moving about and forming a sine wave. Click the big demo button to check it out!

new PHP / jQuery demonstration : a tool for generating random colors

Ryan Bishop — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 03:33:14 +0000

After a couple of days worth of lull, I decide to take on a few spur-of-the-moment PHP website development challenges. In this case, what began as a color thumbnail generator written from scratch has evolved into a full-fledged HTML5 / PHP / jQuery random color generators.

Features:

Numerous features powered by Query parameters (“http://www.atwebsitedesign.com/colorgenerator/index.php?bg=white&lastcolor=555555″, for instance)
Most actions update a unique URL you can share with friends to let them see the great color scheme you’ve found over social networks, etc
Add new randomly generated color tiles
copy-and-paste hex color code output (more output formats to come!)
HTML5 (standards compliant)
The unique share URL imports your custom color scheme, clicked colors, and last color so you won’t be starting from scratch if you hit refresh.

To View It:
Click the big “View Demonstration” button to the right (or, if you can’t see it, click the article’s title until it’s just this article.)

What to do when your wp-admin is blank

Ryan Bishop — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 04:33:24 +0000

Ever try to access your wordpress admin panel, and it just pops up with a horrifying blank screen? The solution may be even simpler than you think. In most cases, if you can still access the site, but your admin area is blank, it’s the file “functions.php” in your theme. Even one blank space after the final “?>” at the end of your theme will cause the WordPress admin menu to be blank. Solution: Use an FTP program or your hosting company’s file manager access to remove any trailing spaces.

If you’ve verified that there are no spaces either after or before the “” of your functions.php, and/or the website itself is not displaying on the front end, then you’ll probably want to contact either a developer or your hosting company to find out if it’s a malicious attack or just a coding error somewhere within the website.