Hello from Janine, Project Manager here at Big Boom Design. I’m writing this from our office in West Asheville. A couple miles away, Boomer’s in a room on the A-B Tech campus with all the folks who signed up for Pre-Camp, giving a crash course on building a WordPress website. We are so pleased to be Gold Sponsors of WordCamp Asheville this year. It means a lot to us that the WordPress community in Asheville is so vibrant–WordCamp Asheville is always a lot of fun on top of all the new things we learn about WordPress and websites every year. This year, make sure you stop by the Big Boom Design booth to try your hand at some vintage video games (did the WordCamp theme finally catch up with our fav booth activity??) and take a stab at winning a gift certificate to a local hotspot. We’ve also got a couple of our staff sharing their expertise in sessions on both Saturday and Sunday, myself included! There’s so much happening, and it’s sure to be quite a time. Anyway, I’ve got to wrap this up before my laptop dies–FYI we’ll have some chargers and charging cables available for you to use while you swing on 8-bit vines or challenge Boomer to a round of Smash Brothers. It’s going to be a great WordCamp and I hope I see you...
To paraphrase an old saying: If content is on your site but no on knows it’s there, is it there at all? The answer, of course, is yes. It’s there. Let me show you how to optimize your images so people don’t miss the forest for the trees. Avoid embedding text into images Browsers and search engines can’t read a picture of text. Not sure what that means? Try to highlight the text in the photo above. You can’t, because while editing the photo, I typed in some words and saved the whole thing as a JPG. Whenever possible, avoid putting your most important message directly into an image. This way, you’ll get that message to a much wider audience. Give images informative filenames When you take a photo, your camera has no way of knowing what the contents of that photo are (stupid camera). So, the camera does the only thing it can. It assigns a generic filename to the image according to some predefined internal naming system. Take a moment to run a Google image search for image001 or DCMIMAGE4 and you’ll find a wasteland of unrelated images that are all but lost to search engines. This is where your site’s images are likely to show up if you don’t name them properly. Thankfully, this is an easy thing to do. If your image is of the black 2007 Honda Civic Coupe you have for sale, you wouldn’t name it “20160425_092402.jpg”. Instead, you might name it...
The WordPress theme from Elegant Themes named Divi has changed the way that many people build websites. Here at Big Boom Design it is our Theme of choice. Even this website that you’re on right now was built on Divi. The extreme functionality, responsive design, built-in page layouts and ease of use are just of a few of the amazing features that makes this theme our go-to theme for building WordPress sites. We’ve decided to offer up our Divi Child Theme for FREE! The child theme gives you a great base to build out your next website. Here are a few of the child theme features: Set length of excerpt Set read more text Set Featured image size Hide projects custom post type Sets up some syntax elements that will let you easily create your own additions Download your copy of the Divi Child...
Time lapse Video by: Boomer Sassmann For more videos visit the Big Boom Design YouTube channel I’d like to give a big shout out to all the awesome 2015 Asheville WordCamp organizers. This little time lapse was made from 157 still shots that were taken on my GoPro....
The Schedule has arrived! Get ready to make some tough decisions, because we’ve got a great set this year. Our speakers are preparing some wonderful sessions – see what’s in store by checking out the full WordCamp schedule now! Click on each session to read a description of the talk and who’s giving it. Or click on the speaker to read their bio. You can also view the long list of all sessions here. View the Tracks All Users Business Design and Front-End Developer Excited about a certain session? Let us know on Twitter or Facebook. Thanks to our wonderful sponsors! Copyright 2015 WordCamp Asheville, All rights...
PreCamp: Beginner’s Day — Friday, July 24 2015 @ 8:30am-3pm PreCamp is a hands-on session for those new to WordPress. Unlike WordCamp (Sat & Sun), which focuses on presentations by various speakers, PreCamp (Fri) is a do-it-yourself day. Are you new to WordPress (or know someone who is) and want some hands-on support in setting up your website? PreCamp is designed to take you from a blank slate to a fully functioning website before you walk out the door. We provide almost everything* you need to get started – including three months of hosting for your site thanks to the generous sponsorship of SiteGround. If you’re a beginner who is wondering if this is the right place for you – the answer is YES! We have an amazing team of experienced WordPress users, designers and developers that have donated their time to make this an incredible learning experience for you that will definitely bring results. You’ll be guided through the steps needed to get your first website up and running. And we have enough facilitators to step in and provide some individual support if you get confused along the way. Registration, Internet Connections, and Access to Webhosting is from 8:30am-9am. Website Creation is from 9:00am-3pm (lunch provided). Tickets are an amazingly low price of $60 and includes access to all WordCamp sessions on Saturday and Sunday. To view more about this event, click...
