Nate Covington

“Covington Creations has been creative, professional, timely and flexible in preparing our new website.  Working with Nate has been a pleasure!” - Phil Schlosser, President

1. Claim your Google Listing (also, keep an eye out for feedback and reviews that others may have posted about you by creating a Google Alert!)
2. Update your site's footer (e.g. © 2003 Your Company, LLC)
3. Mobile Device Check: Check your site from an iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc...
4. Check for broken links, broken search boxes, etc... test everything!
5. Visitor Tracking: Check your Google Analytics reports - find out what's working and what's not. Also, schedule monthly report delivery via email if you haven't already!

Domain Registration -> Hosting & Email -> Framework, Content, Updates

As a business owner, the thought of not having control of your website is is most likely frightful.  I've experienced a handful of situations where a client hired a different web developer previously, hire me to re-engineer the site, then come to find out that their prior developer has more control of the site than they do...

I've had some requests for me to put together some sort of a "guide" to show how I organize all of my "work stuff" on the computer - client files and folders, notes, leads, invoices, to-do's, bills, etc... this is one writing assignment that I put off for a while.  Luckily, clients are keeping us busy.  The other issue is the non-disclosure agreements I've signed, so I'm not able to include screenshots or provide helpful examples of my actual data.  Moving on...

Choosing a font is vital to your site's performance.  If you choose a common font like Arial or Trebuchet (see list below), your site will load more quickly because there is less scripting involved:

• This is Arial Font
• This is Courier New Font
• This is Georgia Font
• This is Tahoma Font
• This is Times New Roman Font
• This is Trebuchet Font
• This is Verdana Font

There are also options for loading a custom font on your site. You don't want to embed your text in images, because the search engines cannot read it. The alternative is to use a little bit of javascript, we can inject the custom font onto your site dynamically.

Google Fonts

If you are using Google Fonts for your site, be sure to include the "display: swap" command in your CSS!

Don't Make Me Think - by Steve Krug
A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

We've heard from multiple clients who have received letters in the mail from Domain Registry of America (DROA).  Read carefully - this is a solicitation.  They are trying to trick domain owners into transferring their registrations to DROA.  If you are happy with your current registrar (we suggest GoDaddy), you don't have to do anything!

"Covington Creations worked diligently to build us a user friendly, state of the art website.  Our website is now very professional and pleasing to the eye.  Nate, the developer assigned to our account,  was very responsive in both emails as well as over the phone.  He provided a quick turnaround… as soon as we provided the content, it was up on the site.  He has also been helpful in suggesting new ideas and working to continuously improve our web presence."

I wish someone had written an article like this when I first started with Joomla.  It would have saved me a *LOT* of time.  The first thing that Joomla does, whenever it loads, is to check and see if an ItemID exists for a given page.  Normally, a Joomla link will include an "&ItemID=" statement, but not always.  If it doesn't, then Joomla will look for a match in the database.

An ItemID in Joomla effects all of the following:

- Component
- Modules
- Template
- Access Control (ACL)
- sef URL

...we will explain each in detail below.

1.  Enhanced visibility for your members and yourself.

Build your own online community and news portal.  Let your members advertise on the site.  Manage all of your members’ directory listings, contact information, and site content through a web-based control panel.  Visitors will be able to search your directory by zip code or keyword. Some of the latest third-party extensions for Joomla, like the K2 Framework, make managing content a breeze!  [Video]

2.  Online payment processing for membership dues, donations, and events.

Automatically send email reminders to past-due members for payment.  Offer online payments through PayPal, Authorize.net, 2Checkout, or other supported platforms.  Do your members pay with cash or check?  No problem, offline payments are supported as well.  Your members’ information is stored in a database, so we can connect Joomla with third-party platforms.