Hi everyone!

As I’m writing you this email, I’m enjoying the wonderful smell of my mulled harvest candle burning in my kitchen and making my whole house smell like fall:) It really puts me in the mood for this beautiful holiday season.

It is so quiet in my home right now (all my kids are at grandma’s house) and it really makes me sit here and count all of my wonderful blessings in my life. One of them being all of you!!!  So thank you to all of you for your support for my lil business!  It has been 3 years since I have been a consultant for Gold Canyon Candles and I have LOVED every second of it!  But there is no way I could continue without your support or prayers.  I’m going to put this prayer request out to all you……could you please be my “word of mouth marketing for me?!”  What I mean, is when you hear that someone needs a candle or wants some beautiful decor for their home, could you please refer me:)  I’m really praying for my business to start growing and I need your prayers to help me:)  I work really hard and would love to host any party for you or your friends.  Catalog parties are also popular, because all you do is handout the catalogs and order forms (that I will provide for you) and you contact all your friends and family and give a deadline date and just collect the orders and I will do the rest!  It is simple and you earn free candles if your party hits $150.00 in commission sales.  I know that times are tough right now, we are sure feeling it, so there is no pressure….I just would love for you to put my name and information out there so that I can grow my business.

I will be making another order this Thursday, November 17th.  So if you would like some candles or scents pods for teacher, parents or friends gifts…please let me know by Thursday.  There are so many affordable gifts that you can select from.  Being a teacher, I know that any teacher would love a simple 5 oz candle for a Christmas gift and they are only $7.98!  Just add a cute card and you are done:)  It is a sweet and affordable way to say thank you for everything you do for my child or family:)  You can also make an order online whenever you please….just click below and it will take you straight to my site!!!!!  Thank you all again for all of your prayers and support, you are all such a blessing to me and my family!

Please feel free to pass this email along to all of your friends and families!!

Many Blessings,
Heather Flores
602-561-1835
Independent Demonstrator
Gold Canyon Candles
http://www.mygc.com/hflo

Academy Mortgage has been good to me and so have the Loan Officers of both branches! This site was done for not only a Loan officer of Academy Chandler, but also a high school friend. Right Now Funding

As I was getting prepared to do the structure of the site, I was remembering the needs of a loan officer and what is most important to them. The lead capture is big, the news is just a big, and the referral business is HUGE!

Kent wanted all three aspects to be within his new site. Great URL and good looking logo, he dreamed of a fast, sharp and classy theme, here is what he got

Chris Hamler of Peoples Bank in Colorado sent in a request to have a landing page (site) built in with WordPress as the engine, in order to capture mortgage leads. He was actually referred over to me by that guy!

So, he sent me a few examples of what he was trying to accomplish, and I started crackin’. The initial set-up comprised of a full width NivoSlider, but I soon realized that there would be no space for the call to action – the form! (more on that later) So, after a few modifications to the slider itself, I managed to get the form and the slider above the fold (key in the lead gen business).

After the slider, came the header and content areas. The header was quite simple really, and after taking out the normal navigation (because remember this is a landing page after all) and adding the logos with the social media links, it ended up pretty slick (actually hiding the call for the logo and then recalling it in the blog section). From there it was onto adding a cool show/hide feature for twitter and ‘whatever’ on top of the footer.

Now, about the form… although there are plenty of form plugins that allow for one to be created such as this… I gave this landing page a special form so that it was easily manageable via the admin widgets (yes, created a plugin for the form). I call this one: The Lead Capture Form. The special thing about this one is that all the management is done in the admin widget area. So all I had to do to the theme was widgetize that area. From the Title to the disclaimer, it all functions nicely. The form is also utilizing a bit of Ajax, which I am still getting used to a bit…just have to figure out how to call a clear:all; after the display success function, but I am sure to crack it soon enough.

Anyways, I hope you like it! Enjoy. http://www.comortgageteam.com

I was attempting to build my own ‘Category Exclusion’ plugin, when it dawned on me: “why not just add a few lines into the core file?” (there are several reasons why you do not want to mess with core files, so have caution)

So, i began the search for the right file and came to the conclusion that what I was attempting to edit was wp_list_categories(). First stop, wp-includes. Searched widgets.php, nothing. Searched category.php, again nothing. Came to category-template, and resulted that wp_list_categories() is located in wp-includes/category-template.php, bam!

So, having read the 400 lines previous to what I needed, which is quite simple really, it resulted in finding line 417 and editing it accordingly.

It was actually line 425 that needed to be edited. In my case in order to exclude the categories I needed to add multiple arguments to the parameter of ‘exclude’.

So, step by step:

• Step 1. Find /wp-includes/category-template.php and open it up in your favorite text editor
• Step 2. Find line 425
• Step 3. Find your category ID of the category you want to Hide/Remove from the widget.
• Step 4. Edit the part after the “=>” sign and delete the two apostrophes there. For one category you can just add the ID number, for more than one you will need to add the array(1,2,3,4) function – like in the example above.
• Step 5. Save Changes and upload via FTP.

Simple, Clean, and done in no time! You just want to ensure that you write down all the changes you have made to the core files so that you are prepared when your client calls you and says “something is not right here, I updated WordPress like it told me to, and now it shows all the categories, HELP!?!”. This way you know where to go and what to do…

However, it will definitely be easier to simply install the plugin that extends the wp_list_categories parameters so that any re-writes done to the core files will not tamper with the exclusions. So, I will continue to write it and leave the update here soon.

Print ready, bleed, and all the necessary files needed for the East Valley Team to be ready to show off their new business cards.

Dean Ouellette from the East Valley Team asked me to mock up a new and shiny business card for him and his business partner, Kristin LaVanway. I utilized the colors of their website and a few custom styles in Photoshop and came up with a pretty slick design, if I do say so myself.

Let me know what you think about it!

Another loan office at Academy Mortgage asked me to get him on the web. I nice, clean approach to lending information is what he wanted, and the result is what you seen. This layout comes from a wire framework where one can actually see the lines in the sand between each item on the grid.

Fun to design the logo and take this information site and turn it into a lead capture site. Once spurred with great lending information, this site will surely grab the attention of his customers and business partners.

Let me know what you think about this layout and functionality. Fast Mortgage Lending Dot Com

Academy Mortgage has been poised to taking the steps to the next level, they have added the a mortgage education website with Academy-yoU.com. They have added this site to their web portfolio of sites, and in addition to that of tendayclose.com.

Academy came to me to expand their web presence into the education arena. Not only would this site provide a funnel to getting to know more about academy mortgage, but also allow its users to register for classes held at Academy Mortgage. Mainly focused for realtors, it uses many special features.

Backed with utilizing Thesis framework, so as to allow better SEO and easy to manage custom functions within. Also added was that of a calendar plug-in to utilize the registration process of Eventbrite.

The home page is fully custom built, and so is the navigation of the site… fun stuff, but the custom_functions file tends to get a little heavy and long… watch for word wraps is my education for the day!

Hope you like it! Academy-yoU.com

My college teammate Roy Holmes asked me to beef up his existing site and create a captivating and high quality magazine and advertising site for his workout programs. Here is what I came up with… once he adds the pictures, he will be looking good!

You can see what he has added so far

Arizona Mortgage Planner – is another exceptional loan officer out of the Academy team here in town…
Mr. Michael McDermott asked me to spice up his existing template site that he was simply sending customers to and having them fill out an application.
Wants:

• Classy Look and Feel
• Easy Navigation
• Search Engine Optimized (for each post/article/page/picture)
• New Prospect Data Capture
• Under Budget

Guess what folks, he got all and more of his desires with this one.

Check out the Arizona Mortgage Planner website here

currently working on this site… have a few new things in mind, but for the most part, the eCommerce bit is key…

thoughts?

Check out Lok Cup here