Category: Business

This lightning talk was given at WordCamp San Francisco last year. I’m sharing it because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s a raging perfectionist, and I also know that I’ve had some ideas or even just things to say that I’ve left unexecuted or unsaid because I didn’t think they were good enough, and we all need a reminder not to let that happen. The takeaway from this talk is to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We all tend to be the most critical of ourselves, and if we let whatever we’re working on or want to work on not make it to the light of day because it’s not perfect, then we’re missing opportunities to help ourselves and more importantly, to help others.

Just pressing publish, (writing something and getting it out there, shipping a personal or client project, or just reaching out to someone we’ve never talked to before), doesn’t mean we won’t fail. But it also means if we don’t publish, we won’t succeed either. So don’t let “it’s not good enough” determine whether something you’ve created gets out there.

The short answer to this question is no, and there are two reasons.

1. It violates the WordPress trademark
2. It confuses users

The Trademark

The WordPress Foundation, the organization tasked with protecting the WordPress trademark, has set very specific guidelines about when and where the WordPress trademark can be used. Using WordPress as part of a top-level domain, (for example, WordPressisawesome.com or anything that is not WordPress.example.com), is strictly prohibited. Strictly prohibited as in “under no circumstances.”

It Confuses Users

Users know, (or learn) that they can go to any site with WordPress as part of the domain name to find information and resources that are part of the official WordPress project. If other business use WordPress as part of their domains, this creates confusion for users because the confuse the business with actual WordPress.

What if I Didn’t Know?

If you’re reading this post, or if someone else has made you aware of what’s here through other means, you know that you have to do something with your WordPress domain. You can redirect it to another non-WordPress domain name, but you can’t promote that domain. You have to promote the new one. Ideally, you should turn the WordPress domain over to the foundation, or at the very least, let it expire.

Offering WordPress-based products and services is a wonderful thing. There’s plenty of work to be had, and if your product or service is a good one that helps others and/or benefits the community, it will get noticed. Just ensure that you do right by the trademark.

If you google “WordPress expert,” you’re going to get About 371,000 results. That’s a lot of results. And if you don’t know anything about WordPress, or know very little about it, there’s no way you’re going to be able to sift through those results and find a true expert. Especially since anyone can slap a label on themselves, do some slick marketing, and get you to fork over the cash.

This makes me angry and sad.

There really are WordPress experts out there who can help you with whatever you’re creating. In this post, I’m going to show you what you should be looking for so that you can hire the person or business that’s right for you.

Do they care about WordPress?

Before you look for anything else, find out if the person or business you’re wanting to hire cares about WordPress. Do they contribute to the project in any way, like writing WordPress code, writing and supporting themes or plugins, writing documentation for the Codex, and answering questions in the official WordPress forums? Are they involved with the community and interacting with it, giving and taking as an integral part of it? Are they writing tutorials so that others can learn? And are they honest enough to admit that they don’t know something about WordPress, but also expressing and demonstrating a willingness to learn more and increase their skill set? These qualities are foundational to any WordPress expert’s pedigree.

Now let’s get technical

Does the person or business claiming WordPress expertise have intimate familiarity with WordPress’s underlying and surrounding technologies: HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and libraries such as JQuery among others, coding standards specific to WordPress, MySQL, Apache and other web servers like Nginx, and can they explain how all the pieces fit together in understandable language that is devoid of buzz words? If no, then they’re not WordPress experts.

Letting you Know when WordPress Might Not Fit

WordPress is great. It can do pretty much anything you want it to with the right amount of work. But it’s not always right for every project, and anyone who is an expert and works with it on a daily basis will be honest enough to tell you when it might not be the best fit for your project. They’ll also explain why, in language you can understand and that is empty of all the jargon. If they can’t do that, they’re not an expert.

What if I Still want to Build it with WordPress?

If your WordPress expert has explained to you why WordPress as it stands might not be a good fit for your project, and you still want to build it with WordPress, the next answer should never be “You can’t do that with WordPress.” This is different from “WordPress might not be the best fit.” You can build anything you want with WordPress and make it do whatever you want, given the right amount of work. That work may include theme customization, plugin customization, or completely custom plugins and a completely custom theme. It also might be outside your budget. Any WordPress expert should be able to explain all of this to you as it relates to your project. They should also be able to tell you whether or not they are the right fit for you or your project, and if they aren’t, refer you to someone who is.

Becoming a WordPress expert is hard work. It doesn’t happen overnight, and you don’t become a WordPress expert by reading one book, finding a page builder, and throwing together one or two sites. It requires eating, sleeping and breathing WordPress and being surrounded by the community. it requires constant learning. And the work never ends. Things change on a pretty frequent basis within the WordPress ecosystem, and any WordPress expert worth their salt has to be a part of that. So when you’re looking for a WordPress expert, don’t just go with the first one you find on Google claiming that title. Don’t just go with the cheapest, but don’t go with the most expensive either. Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions. Doing this initial work will save you in the long run and could be the start of a wonderful relationship between you and your expert.

Highlighting your credibility is very important. One way to do that is to collect and display testimonials from your clients.

The Town Crier during the Old Town Week’s 2007 opening ceremony

Is there an easy way to do both?

In short, yes. As with a lot of things in the WordPress universe, there’s a plugin for that. Actually, there are several plugins for that. But the best one I’ve found so far is Strong Testimonials by Chris Dillon. This is a complete testimonial manager. You can add, display and collect testimonials from your clients, and it’s accessible out of the box.

The plugin provides both shortcodes and a widget for displaying your testimonials, as well as a built-in form for collecting them that asks for the headline, content, and client information such as name, email, company and company website. It also allows for adding a photo to go along with the testimonial for display purposes.

how It Works

The plugin adds a testimonial custom content type to your WordPress installation, and will work with any theme. You have the option of either using the default styling or styling it from the ground up so that it works best with your theme and matches the look and feel of your website. It comes with complete documentation on usage with examples of how to employ the shortcodes.

This is a great solution if you either don’t want to write and add your own custom content type, can’t code, or just don’t have the time. I found myself in the latter situation, and this is the best plugin I’ve found that will display the testimonials the way I want them to be displayed. The plugin author will be taking feature suggestions at an unannounced date, (see the “future” section in the documentation).

What About You?

Now it’s your turn. Are you collecting testimonials for the work you do? If so, how are you displaying them on your site? Leave your tips in the comments below.

As a follow-up to this guide on invoicing clients, Kate Loving Shenk wants to know how to invoice with PayPal. This guide will walk you through the “Create New Invoice” screen found in the “Request Money” section of your PayPal account.

Before You Start

Before you can invoice a client using PayPal, you will need to ensure that you have at least a Premier account. This is because, in order to take advantage of PayPal’s invoicing feature, you will need access to its suite of merchant services. You have limited access to these services with a personal account, and full access with either the premier or Business account types. It doesn’t cost anything to upgrade from a Personal to Premier account, but some extra documentation is required. When you wish to upgrade, PayPal will walk you through that process step by step, and let you know what kinds of documentation you will need.

Creating your First Invoice

Once you’ve either upgraded your account, or ensured that you have at least a Premier account, you can begin sending invoices. To start creating your invoice, go to the “Request Money” section of your PayPal account. Once you click on that section, a “manage Invoices” screen will appear. On this screen, click “Create New Invoice.”

Selecting A Template

The first thing you need to do when creating your invoice is select a template. PayPal provides a default template to start with, and you have the ability to create new templates from any invoice you create. When selecting or creating your template, you have the option to add your logo. You can ensure that your logo is added to every invoice by visiting the “Invoice Settings” section. You can also set your business information here so that you have the option of not entering that information for every invoice.

Entering the information

Hopefully, you’ve already set up your business information. Next, you need to either add or select a client to send the invoice to. You can either add the client’s information manually, or select from your address book. Note that this address book is not the same one that comes with your email client. The address book you’ll be using is stored with PayPal. if you’re manually adding client information, you have the option to save that information to the address book so that you can use it lager.

Filling Out The Details

Fortunately, payPal’s invoice creation tools maps well to the previous guide on invoicing. All you need to do is fill in the information, and then, once you’re done and you’ve checked to make sure everything is correct, send the invoice. Your client will receive a copy, you will receive a copy, and PayPal will keep track of invoices and their status on the “Manage invoices” screen. Once your client pays the invoice, PayPal will automatically change its status to paid.

Conclusion

All of the WordPress solutions I linked to in the earlier guide support using PayPal as a payment gateway out of the box. So you can either use this guide and manually create your invoices directly through PayPal, or you can use one of the WordPress solutions to create your invoices and then accept payment with PayPal. Either method works, and the choice is yours.

Invoicing is one of those tasks every business has to perform, whether big or small. Whether you have one thousand employees or one employee. If you are a Limited Liability Company, (in the U.S., LLC) raising invoices is mandatory when doing business. They are used for record-keeping purposes, as well as being a handy way for you to keep track of what a client owes, and what has been paid. in this guide, I will show you how to prepare an invoice by hand, and then how to prepare and send invoices using WordPress. This last part will be useful especially if you use WordPress to conduct your business.

Preparing An Invoice

This guide walks you through preparing an invoice, but I’m assuming you have already discussed with your clients what the payment arrangements are, and that they are in writing so that both you and the client have a copy. Having a written copy of payment arrangements, (as well as documentation for other parts of the project, such as scope, deliverables, ETC.), means that everyone is on the same page and knows what to expect. The invoice is part of that process of communication. it details how much is owed, how much work has been completed, and how payment should be made.

What Should An Invoice Include?

The first thing your invoice should include is company or contractor details. These are:

• Company or contractor’s name
• Company or contractor’s address
• Company or contractor’s telephone number
• Company or contractor’s email address

Invoice Number

Each of the invoices you generate should have its own number. The numbering scheme you use is up to you, but the numbers should be in sequential order. This is so that you can keep track of outgoing and incoming invoices, and so that you have something to refer back to if questions arise.

Dates

Your invoice should include two dates:

• The date the invoice was raised
• The date the invoice is due

if no due date is specified on the invoice, then it is assumed to be thirty days after the invoice was generated and sent.

Client Details

Every invoice should include client details. The name should be included at a minimum, but other details such as an address or phone number can be included as well.

Fees

The fees section of your invoice should include the following:

• A description of the services rendered
• The gross amount due
• The taxes due, if applicable
• The total amount due

Terms of Payment

The terms of payment section should include how the invoice should be paid. How you accept payments is up to you. If you need the invoice paid via money transfer, that should be specified here along with your baking information:

• Bank name
• Account number
• Routing number if you bank in the U.S.

Sending the Invoice

Once you have finished adding all the above details to your invoice, it’s time to send it. How you do that depends on the relationship you have with the client and what has been previously discussed concerning invoicing. Some clients want paper copies of invoices, while others will accept digital copies. If sending a digital copy, a good practice is to send the invoice as a PDF so that it cannot be altered. You can also send invoices via email or in some other attached format.

Invoicing With WordPress

As discussed above, you can generate your invoice manually. But if you’re working with WordPress, there are several plugins that will help with the invoicing process, allowing you to automate as much of it or as little of it as you like. Elegant Themes has an excellent roundup of invoicing plugins for WordPress, (both free and paid), as well as a few themes specifically created for invoicing. I personally use a plugin called WPInvoice, which leaves a lot to be desired as far as accessibility goes, but comes with a lot of features in the free version, including the ability to accept payments using Stripe, and integration with the WPCRM plugin so that I can keep track of clients and automatically select the client’s information when generating an invoice.

Summing Up

Invoicing is a necessary task. It helps ensure that you get paid. You can generate them manualy, but you can also streamline the process using WordPress, which will make invoicing much easier. There are also other non-WordPress solutions for generating invoices. If you have a favorite WordPress or non-WordPress one, share it in the comments below.