So, if you’ve had a look around our site at all, you’re probably wondering why we aren’t using an under construction page ourselves. Everything is half empty, there are unfinished pages in our services section, and the design isn’t even completely worked out in some areas. Frankly, it’s embarrassing. And that’s exactly why we made it live.

You see, there’s a trap that tons of developers and agencies fall into. With all the client meetings, deadlines, and a workload that never seems to get any smaller, it’s extremely easy to let your own company’s website fall by the wayside. This is when an under construction page becomes more of a problem than a tool.

Think about it. How many times have you worked with a WordPress development shop or an internet marketing agency who only had a coming soon page or a basic splash page for a website? How many times have you heard lines like this: “Well, we’re so busy with client work that our site isn’t quite there yet…”? If your experiences are anything like ours, I’m willing to bet that number is pretty high.

This is not acceptable.

Believe me, I understand about how easy it is to let your company fall to the bottom of the pile. We’re still guilty of it to this day. However, just because it’s understandable doesn’t mean you should accept it. If you run a business on the web and your site is an under construction page or a splash page I dare you to go take it down. What’s the matter? Scared? Don’t be! Check out these…

Five Reasons Why You should Take Down Your Under Construction Page Immediately

1. Motivation – This one is pretty obvious. If you’ve been coasting along for months or even years with an under construction page, you need a swift kick in the ass to get you to change it. Your under construction page is a security blanket and you need to drop it immediately. It will be uncomfortable and difficult, but that’s the goal!

2. You Can Start Blogging – One of the biggest reasons developers and agencies should avoid coming soon pages is because using them means you can’t start blogging until you’re 100% finished with your website. Think of all the traffic you’re missing out on! In the time it will take you to completely finish your website, you could have written 10, 20, maybe even 30 awesome blog posts. Have you made your site live yet?

3. Your Google Rankings Will Improve – Everyone knows that content is king. If your entire web presence is a single under construction page and some social media profiles, there’s not much hope for you on Google. Sure, you’ll probably rank for your business name… but that’s about it. Plus, with no blog posts, services pages, or any other content to speak of, how are you going to get any links after the initial launch? Nobody is going to link to your six-month-old splash page, no matter how cool it is.

4. You’ll Attract Better Clients – On top of the additional links and Google rankings you’ll obtain after making your site live, you’ll also start attracting a better class of clientele. A high value customer needs to be able to trust that your company isn’t going to fall off the face of the planet tomorrow. That’s pretty difficult for them to do when you can’t even finish your own website! Having a complete web presence adds credibility and sustainability to your brand. If you want to work with better clients, you need to wow them and trust me, a splash page isn’t going to cut it.

5. You Can Be Proud of Your Company – In my mind, this is the most important reason to dump your coming soon page. Before I started FAT Media, I was a freelance designer and developer. I had plenty of clients but I never had a website and I was always pretty ashamed of it. I avoided giving out business cards and networking with people because I was so ashamed. While this might be a little extreme, I believe that anyone who does business online feels at least some sense of shame if they haven’t devoted the necessary time to their own website. You need to be proud of what you’re doing if you ever want to be truly successful, so go rip off that band-aid and get your damn site up!

Well, I think I’ve stated a pretty good case for taking down your under construction page. Maybe you agree, maybe not. Let us know in the comments or start a conversation with us on twitter. I hope this helps other companies take the plunge and start improving their identity on the web. Stop leaning on that crutch and start improving your web presence. You won’t be sorry!

The post Under Construction Page – An Awesome Tool or a Needless Crutch? appeared first on FAT Media.

Unfortunately, the way their responsive menus work can be a little clunky on smartphones. They tend to push the content down in the viewport and dominate way too much screen real estate for my taste. The menu items also tend to be a bit difficult to mash with my fat fingers. In an effort to create a more user-friendly (and fat finger-friendly) mobile responsive menu, I decided to add a small amount of jQuery and clean things up a bit for smartphone visitors.

It should be noted that this tutorial assumes you are using a Nav in the #Header widget area. If you are using a Primary or Secondary Nav, a few things will need to be changed in order for it to work correctly. This tutorial also assumes that your Genesis child theme is already using responsive design. If it isn’t, you’re going to need to go through some additional steps before using this tutorial.

If you don’t already have one, create a folder called lib

Inside that folder, create another folder called js

Inside your js directory, create a new file called general.js and paste the following code into it:

Keep in mind that the #menu-main-menu selector will probably need to be changed to whatever ID your primary navigation is using. Once you’re finished with that, you’re going to need to load your new JavaScript file. Let’s do this the WordPress way by creating a new php file inside the lib directory.

We’ll call your new file theme-js.php and paste the following code into it:

This file is also where you would load any additional JavaScript files your theme needs. If you need to load more JavaScript files, simply add them using the same method I’ve used for general.js. You should also try to use WordPress conditional tags whenever possible to prevent your scripts from loading when they aren’t necessary. Speed matters!

Once you’ve saved your theme-js.php file, you’re only a few steps away from creating your awesome Genesis mobile responsive menu! Next, we’re going to add a bit of code to your theme’s functions.php file.

When you add the following code, make sure you place the
require_once(CHILD_DIR.'/lib/theme-js.php');
line under the
require_once( TEMPLATEPATH . '/lib/init.php' );
line at the top of your functions.php file. The rest of the code can be added farther down in functions.php

Here’s the code you’ll need to add to your functions.php file:

I’ve added the code for the menu toggle to the genesis_header_right hook which will place it in the header widget area above my menu. If your menu is in another location, you’ll probably want to move the toggle to a different hook. I recommend using the genesis visual hook guide to help you choose the best location.

Now, the rest is mostly up to you. There are some essential CSS rules that you’ll need to declare in order for this to work correctly. Add the following to your style.css stylesheet:

At this point, you’re basically done, but you’ll still need to style your new menu to fit your theme. My advice is to choose your breakpoints wisely and remember to scale around your content rather than cater to particular device widths. Popular device resolutions will constantly change, so try to focus on making your content usable and aesthetically pleasing at any screen size.

There are a few things about this method that bug me, particularly the fact that you have to use an !important declaration. If anyone has a better method for creating a menu using responsive design in Genesis, please let me know! If you have any questions, leave a comment or send me a message through our contact form.

The post Creating a Mobile Menu Using Responsive Design in Genesis appeared first on FAT Media.

Genesis Simple Sidebars

The Genesis Simple Sidebars plugin is essential for anyone who wants to control the content of their website or blog. It allows you to conditionally place different content in the sidebar areas of your site without writing any code. Need to display different widgets on a particular post or page? Just create a new simple sidebar and choose it from a drop-down menu. Simple!

Genesis Featured Widget Amplified

The Genesis Featured Widget Amplified is a really killer plugin by Nick the Geek. It replaces the default Featured Widget included in the Genesis framework and adds the ability to display custom post types and custom taxonomies. It also lets you exclude items by Term ID and supports pagination, plus a number of other useful options. To truly appreciate how much ass this plugin kicks, you’ll need to install and use it yourself.

Genesis Title Toggle

Crafting an awesome headline for your posts and pages is extremely important. Unfortunately, sometimes using the Page title input for your awesome title can make managing your content difficult. Using the Genesis Title Toggle plugin lets you stop the title from being displayed so you can name your page whatever you want and still have a custom, high-impact title.

Genesis Simple Hooks

One of the best things about Genesis is the ability to use hooks and filters to quickly and easily modify content throughout your website. Genesis Simple Hooks makes this process even easier by letting you add html and php code directly in the WordPress admin panel. We typically don’t use this plugin and opt for adding things manually, but if you’re less familiar with code or just prefer to work directly in the Admin panel, this will definitely help you you.

Genesis Visual Hook Guide

The Genesis Visual Hook Guide is a great companion for the Simple Hooks plugin. It adds a drop-down menu to visually display the various hooks available in Genesis. Being able to inspect the hook areas visually can make the process of adding and removing content from your site significantly easier.

Genesis Simple Menus

The Genesis Simple Menus plugin allows you to select different secondary menus for specific pages and posts on your website. Sometimes you may need to add additional menu items in a particular area of your site that aren’t relevant to any other areas. With this plugin you can easily do this without coding anything!

Column Shortcodes for Genesis Themes

Column Classes are another great feature of Genesis. They allow you to quickly split up your content into responsive column blocks and keep everything very organized. The Column Shortcodes for Genesis Themes plugin adds some easy-to-remember column shortcodes for you to use when writing your posts and pages. Now you don’t have to remember any HTML or CSS!

Genesis Grid

The Genesis Grid plugin by Bill Erickson allows you to easily display all of your posts using the built-in Genesis Grid function. It also allows you to control featured image sizes and a number of other options. There are also some advanced options for developers to hook into for displaying things more granularly.

Genesis Printstyle Plus

Want to make sure your content is readable when printed? Just install the Genesis Printstyle Plus plugin and call it a day. You can even add custom print styles by adding a CSS file to your child theme’s root directory. Make sure you read the plugin documentation for more info.

Genesis Connect for WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a powerful e-commerce plugin for WordPress created by WooThemes. If you’re selling products on your WordPress website you should consider using WooCommerce. The Genesis Connect for WooCommerce plugin adds some essential functions to Genesis so that there are no issues when displaying WooCommerce store, product, and account pages.

Well, that’s our list of the best Genesis plugins! What do you think? Did we miss a super-awesome plugin that you use on every site you’ve ever created? Do you hate one of the Genesis plugins we listed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Ten of the Best Genesis Plugins appeared first on FAT Media.

If you’re interesting in joining us, check out the WordCamp Orlando website.

WordCamp Orlando will be held at the Rosen School of Hospitality
9907 Universal Boulevard Orlando, FL 32819.

WordCamp Orlando 2012 will be on 1 December 2012.

The post We’re Going to WordCamp Orlando 2012! appeared first on FAT Media.

If you are a SEO Professional or Business owner in Tampa, head on over to WordPress SEO Tampa and join us!

The post WordPress SEO Tampa Meetup appeared first on FAT Media.