Summaries
Hey I just wanted to let everyone know why there hasn’t been any content on Jesus Encounter all month. I’ve been working for ups all this month as a seasonal drivers assistant, we’ve been behind cause of weather here so I’ve been working like crazy so I haven’t had much time.
I thought going to have a job I’d be able to manage my time but I noticed I haven’t done so well. So I’ll be working on doing that here better. My job ends at the end of December cause it’s season so pray that I’ll be able to find another job here soon and I would love full time but maybe have a day off in the week or something.
I have fallen behind in my bible reading I will admit, I’ve been so busy it’s honestly the last thing that comes to mind right now. So pray that I get back on track with that.
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for holding out on me while I’ve been getting use to a different lifestyle. I love you guys, my readers and I thank you so much for reading and contributing. I should be back to posting here shortly so be on the look out for more and more updates.
Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton
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Well with my redoing our churches website and making it totally wordpress powered there is some hacking involved into wordpress. Well I didn’t want to hack the core to much actually at all cause then when you update it messes everything up. So I of course hacked the theme to do what I want but when the theme can’t do it all you have to look to plug ins to change how your wordpress works. So here’s the list of plug ins I have used so far to make wordpress a content management system. I’m using all the plugins on Impact Youth.
This plugin helps you to manage, where your posts should appear, and where shouldn’t. I’m using it currently to restrict only one category to the home page so my navigation isn’t messed up with other posts.
Adds a widget that can display a specified number of posts from a single category. Can also set how many widgets to show. I’m using this plug in to show other posts on the sidebar of the front page instead of making them show up in the main navigation.
I’m using this plugin anywhere you can find a contact form. I’ve used other contact form plugins but for me this was the easiest to set up.
Uses your current theme to display login, registration and profile pages instead of the WordPress look and feel. If you want to see an example look here.
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
Generates a fully customizable sitemap. What’s nice is when you activate it and edit any settings if you have to you never have to touch the plugin again, at least I haven’t had to. It runs in the background perfectly and keeps google up to date. You can also use it to show the sitemap so if you have a complex site people can easily find what they need, but I tend to refrain from having to use a sitemap to show people where stuff is.
Allows the site editors to send an e-mail to the blog users. This plug in took me forever to find and I finally found it so I hope you all find it useful and don’t have to look as hard as I did. If you want to create a user base then this plugin is essential cause then you can email your users letting them know when new updates are out or to keep them up to date with anything related to the site, all from the dashboard of wordpress.
This plugin shows google maps anywhere on blogpage. Just add a permalink of google map to any text (with images) in a page, set title=”googlemap” and you’re done. Also works with complex multimarker maps and KML-based maps. To see an example of how I used this plug in look here.
Wordpress 2.5+ only. Automatically installs and updates WordPress plugins. If you are going to be using plugins this is essential. It have saved me so much time cause I know when a plugin is out of date and I can update it from the dashboard of my wordpress installation without ever having to leave or download a thing.
Wrapping up
Those are the plugins I have used to change wordpress from being just a blogging software to a content management system. I’m using a few other plugins but nothing that changed anything that would make it a content management system. Anyways look through the site and if you want to know how to do something or have a suggestion please leave me a comment.
P.S if anyone can help me code a text link header to hover over a repeating background instead of being imbedded into the background that would be extremely helpful cause I can’t find help on google.
~ Jeremy Newton
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Well last week I posted about how I was redoing our churches youth website using wordpress as the CMS. Well I got to say once I started working on it I soon realized it was a bigger task than I had thought, but the task is finished, somewhat.
I got all the theme editing done and stuff. So since what I feel like all the content is up and the theme was ready I went ahead and launched the new site yesterday. It still have some more stuff that I will be adding to it but it’s mostly user features and stuff. Although I got all the user profile and login form to take on the css of the theme so the common user will never see the dashboard, which is pretty nice. I put a login form on the front page but I don’t think I will keep it there long. I also need to write a how to use this site page for all the users and people visiting when I get all the stuff updated.
I don’t want to go through a big long spiel about what I did and what I didn’t do, that’s where you guys come in.
Go to the website and look around and get a feel for what I’ve done so far and ask questions and I will cover them in future articles to explain to everyone how they can start to turn wordpress into a CMS.
Here’s the site: Impact Youth
Feel free to post your questions below, in fact I highly encourage it, also if you think of anything cool you think I should add or anything or have an idea please leave a comment also.
~ Jeremy Newton
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Well I thought I would shoot you all a quick update to what I’ve been up to. I’ve taken the liberty of whiping our churches youth website and starting from a clean slate. My problem was that when the mac broke all my design stuff was on that. So I decided it would be better to have a website designed with a CMS so I can update it whenever I want and and new and cool things. So that is what I’m doing.
There’s a lot of hacking I have had to do which I’ll share with you so far my list of what I’ve done;
- Make the sidebars widgetable
- Change the background
- Hack the front page to only display the posts I want
- Hack the front page to display the posts alphabetically
- Got rid of the footer
- Made the front page to only display what categories I want
- Hacked the rss to only display posts in the update category
- Hacked the administrator interface to find stuff easier
- Implemented Google maps into a post
I have a huge list of stuff I still have to do before I totally switch the site over. So be prepared to future updates and I’ll be allowing you all to ask questions so I can help you with what I’ve found to help all of you to.
~ Jeremy Newton
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In this post I’m gonna try to cover why you should choose premium wordpress themes.. There’s alot of pluses. I will be giving some examples of some themes that you can start using that aren’t going to put a huge hole in your pocket.
Premium Themes
With premium themes there are alot of things you get that you just wouldn’t get with a free theme. I personally haven’t used a premium theme for the sake of I don’t blog for profit so I’m not making money to buy a premium theme for this blog. But with a premium theme you are usually always paying for a great design but most important as wordpress gets updated themes need to be updated and if you buy from a developer in most cases they are going to keep their themes up to date for those who have purchased them. So by buying a premium theme you are almost guaranteed to have a working theme. I honestly don’t think I would purchase a premium theme if the developer didn’t state somewhere they were going to keep the theme up to date.
Here’s some key features that I tend to have noticed that premium blogs tend to have;
- Free themes have credits in the footer in the theme, but with a free theme you get the rights to the theme.
- Most premium designers are willing to tweak a theme for you for a little extra price so you don’t have to.
- Premium themes usually always have advance techniques that coders aren’t using or aren’t using yet in free themes.
- The more advanced the theme means the developer has usually coded a good, easy to use back end for the user.
- With premium themes there aren’t as many people that have the same theme you have, so people wont look past your blog cause you have the same thing some other blog had.
- Cause premium themes are made for purchase to whomever you don’t end up having to pay the price you would if you paid someone to design a theme for you.
That’s just some of the highlights of having a premium theme. I could spend awhile talking about premium themes pros and cons and I wouldn’t cover them all, I’m sure the commenter’s to this post will have some good features to bring up that I didn’t. So now onto some of the premium themes you can find around that may interest you;
Elegant Wordpress Themes
Elegant Themes has some great things, the coolest part is to use any of there themes you join their theme club for 19.95 a year. Once you do that you can pick what themes you to use on your blog/s. So here’s are some of the themes that Elegant Themes is offering;
Influx/ Demo
Grunge Mag/ Demo
Wooden/ Demo
eGallery/ Demo
eVid/ Demo
Theme Forest
Theme Forest is a pretty new site but they are amazing in what they do. They are offering premium theme’s but they all have a small price tag. Theme Forest isn’t one designers site, it’s a place were designers submit their designs to sell them and if the review team likes the theme and it passes their requirements it goes up on the site. If you are looking into going premium but don’t want to pay a premium price tag then Theme Forest is the way to go. Here’s some of my favorite themes they have to offer;
The Other Blog - $15/ Buy / Demo
Our Community - $30/ Buy / Demo
Wrapping Up
Well I managed to share a little bit about what I though about premium themes and I managed to share with you some great premium themes for under $50.
This is were I invited you to share any theme’s you think deserved to be recognized that I didn’t mention, so leave a comment and share, oh and please i0f you do try to keep the themes under $50 so they fall inline with the post, if they are really good I’ll let it slide =)
~ Jeremy Newton
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Ok so I’ve been in this place this last week were I think if the world or God wanted to confuse me anymore or to shake my mind into a jumble it probably wouldn’t be possible. I’ve had so much thinking to do over the last few weeks especially within this last week. I’ve started to notice that the more you think the more you get confused.
I’ve gotten to were my life well my mind is so jumbled and confused that if I was to have to make a conscious decision there is no way I could cause I can’t process anything straight all week. I’m not a person that has mental breakdowns or just kind of zones off but I will admit that I am in that place.
I’ve entered that place right now where I’m in a haze, anything that can happen in my life right now is all based on choices of other people like employers and the such. I’ve had so much to think about and I’ve gotten to the point I’m getting pooped out by praying to God cause I keep coming to him with everything.
I know he’s not but I wouldn’t be surprised if God was confused with everything that is going on in my life and in my head right now ha ha. There are alot of people that want to help in life and want to give you their advice and want to tell you what the would do, but they aren’t you.
I’ve come to a place were I’ve figured out that sometime all the people in the world can try to help but no one is going to, and I don’t want anyone to. I want to figure out my life with God and that’s it.
So that’s were I’m at. I’m glad people want to help me but right now I’ve come to the place were the only person that can help me right now is God and I.
I wanted to post something really cool or profound but really I couldn’t come up with anything cause nothing is cool or profound with me right now so I guess I can’t expect to have something like that. So I want to share some cool quotes on confusion that I found that I really really like.
Quotes
“Try to find your deepest issue in every confusion, and abide by that.” -
– D. H. Lawrence
“The mere attempt to examine my own confusion would consume volumes.” -
– James Agee
“Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.” -
– Sir Francis Bacon
“When a man’s knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.” -
– Herbert Spencer
Wrapping Up
Well if anything I said makes no sense I wouldn’t be surprised, Trying to write something in the state of mind I’m in probably isn’t smart and you tend to say stupid things but I just needed to get some of my mind out of well my mind.
So here’s a quote that I made up for this post that is orignal with me.
Well sometimes I think there comes a time the more you think the more you add to your confusion, there’s gotta be an answer but you never find it and might not. ~ Jeremy Newton
So I hope alteast the quotes helped you. Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton
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So in my last post I was talking about my current situation I’m going through with how I have to be patient even though I really don’t want to. Being patient can be really really hard especially when you know that the end result of being patient is so awesome but you want that result now. That is where patience is better than pride comes in. Being patient means being smart and knowing that in the end it will be better but being prideful means that you are wanting the end result of the patience right now cause you want it for you or what you get out of it.
So as I’ve been going through this I’ve asked God to just take control of the situation to work out the way he wants and I asked him to show me some verses that would help me and to remind me to be patient. I know not all of these verses will pertain to everyone’s situations but they fit perfect with what I’m going through and help me out alot, and I hope they help you to. So here are the verses…
The Verses
Isaiah 43:2-4 (NLT)
“2 When you go through deep waters,
I will be with you.
When you go through rivers of difficulty,
you will not drown.
When you walk through the fire of oppression,
you will not be burned up;
the flames will not consume you.
3 For I am the Lord, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I gave Egypt as a ransom for your freedom;
I gave Ethiopia and Seba in your place.
4 Others were given in exchange for you.
I traded their lives for yours
because you are precious to me.
You are honored, and I love you.”
Proverbs 16:1, 16:9 (NLT)
“We can make our own plans,
but the Lord gives the right answer.”
We can make our plans,
but the Lord determines our steps.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, 7:3, 7:8, 7:10 (NLT)
9 Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. 10 If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. 11 Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? 12 A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.
Sorrow is better than laughter,
for sadness has a refining influence on us.
Finishing is better than starting.
Patience is better than pride.
Don’t long for “the good old days.”
This is not wise.
James 1:2-5 (NLT)
2 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.
5 If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.
1 Peter 5:7 (NLT)
Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.
The Tattoo
After I got my first tattoo I really liked that I could put something that meant something to me on my body and people can see it and ask me questions as to why I got it and what it means to me. Well I started thinking that I wanted another tattoo but put it on my forearm so it’s a little more visible so I can be open to share with people what it means. Well I decided that I wanted to get “faith” written on my arm. I have always struggled and like most people do, with trusting and putting my faith in God that he will provide and will work my life out to the best if I allow him to. So I’ve had this idea in my head for 2 years and then all of a sudden I’m put in this situation and it reminds me all the more that I need faith. So not only is this tattoo reminding me to put faith in God but to always have faith in everything that goes on. I knew I wanted it to be bold and black and that was about it. So I went looking for the script I wanted cause I was having no luck finding a script style I liked. Well the other day I finally ran into the design I want to get, it’s from the website I actually purchased my first design from.
You might notice a little something about this design that looks different, well you can read it upside down and right side up and it says the same thing. It’s called an “Ambigram”. I’ve always seen them and thought they were really cool but never saw one I liked tell now.
So I wanted to share with you some about my next tattoo I want and why. I also wanted to give you a part in making this come true for me if you want to help out for me to purchase it. At the end of the post there will be a button so you can donate to paypal whatever amount you want to help me be able to get this tattoo.
I guess you could say you are helping out by buying me a birthday present (my birthday is November 15th).
So if you would like to help out that would be really cool if not that’s cool to I’m just happy I can share with you some of my vision and my life.
I hope you got something out of this post and that you will be encouraged by the verses that God has shown me and I pray that they will help you out in your hard times to.
Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton
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There’s something I hear entirely to much and it goes along the lines of “patience is a virtue”.
I can honestly say I don’t want patience to be a virtue, I want it to be something that when I don’t want it I can turn it off an the world won’t bother me with it anymore. Well if only that was the case but it isn’t.
So I’m going to attempt to make a long story short. I’ve known a girl for about 2 years and pretty quickly after I met her I started to really notice her, she was cool, looked cute, had some great characteristics and just seemed over all like she was a really awesome person. Well as time progressed I got to know her more and she turned out to be even more of any awesome person than I originally had thought. So I started to pray and ask God about her and the situation. Well God was telling me to wait so I started to wait even though at first I didn’t want to but knew if God said so I should. Well come to June of this year and its been over a year since I made that commitment and from a few turn of a events in her life we get to the point were we have expressed to each other that we like each other and have so for quite awhile.
So we start getting to know each other even more cause we like each other and start hanging out more, well we end up getting into a physical relationship. We started expressing how we felt towards each other by holding hands and kissing which wasn’t suppose to happen cause her dad has expressed to her he doesn’t approve of that. So we screwed up but problem was we opened the can of worms and we couldn’t turn it off when we really really liked each other it just seemed right to be able to express your feelings physically. Well come down to point in the end of last week some events didn’t turn out so well and right now I can’t really be around her. We really care for each other but cause we messed up it stirred up a huge hornets nest that we didn’t want to stir up. I know I’m being pretty vague but I don’t want to give away to much information.
So now we are at the part of really liking and caring for each other but not being able to see each other or anything. So we talk and that’s about it right now tell we figure out what to do, because of everything that happened there is alot of confusion and we don’t know for sure if we are making a decision if we want or if the decision has been made for us but has been stated in a way as to not seemed forced.
So we are being patient once again and trying to figure things out. I can say for my fact that I have prayed about this girl for over the last year and God has never told me no and the more and more time I get to know her and spend time with her I realize how much more she is really compatible with me. I am pretty sure God has shown me the one which may be hard for alot of people to believe cause of my age but I’m not young when it comes to my relationship with God and hearing him. So right now we are waiting and just asking God to have his way right now the way he wants it.
This is entirely a game I’m new at playing and if I had a choice I wouldn’t be playing this game, but I care about her so much and if we have to deal with this right now its a short time compared to forever. So I hate patience cause I don’t want the situation to be the way it is cause I want to be with her but I know patience is good instead of being prideful and letting our feelings control the situation instead of how God wants the situation. It reminds me of a verse God showed me last night:
Ecclesiastes 7:8 (NLT)
Finishing is better than starting. Patience is better than pride.
I need to remember that my situation with her and how we are is better than when we started and will only get better as we are together, and that being patient is better for us cause we are taking time to not let just ourselves be involved but giving God a chance to work in and for us.
In my next post I will be sharing a collection of scripture that God has shown me to help me with this current situation and I hope to share it cause I know there are a ton of us that have to wait for the one when we don’t really want to.
Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton
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So in my last post I talked about why church web design has being sucky as of par. Most church websites look like they are designed in 1998 and they just put stuff up there which ends up bloating the layout with to much info or they don’t give any of the relevant info.
You can learn from the following church websites how you can do things right content and design wise. It also doesn’t mean that you can’t use the designs or what you would find on only a church website, there’s alot of good useful stuff you can study from the sites on how to get important information out without bloating the design or the simplicity of the site.
So without further procrastination I give you the church websites you can learn from….
The Websites
Wrapping Up
There’s alot you can learn from those 12 websites from design,to layout,to content and what is important to put up there.
In my next post I will be going over some of these sites I shared and talking about content and what you should put on your website for the visitor.
So I offer the challenge you to the reader to go through the sites I’ve listed and let me know something you like about one of the sites or something you see them doing that I should recognize in my next post.
~Jeremy Newton
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So you have a church you attend,there are a great group of people, a great pastor and great outreach. But do you have a website or does it convey any of what I just said? Chances are your church website in my lingo “is conveying nothing and the design looks like crap” problem is alot of church websites are following this trend. Churches think the next best way to get coverage for their church is have a website, problem is your church is doing more harm than good if it looks like it was designed in 1998. There are numerous church websites that I can show you to prove my point but for the sake of the churches I will not be pointing them out.
You may ask me “why is a church websites design and what it conveys so important?”
Well here’s the thing, it means everything. Anyone looking for a church now a days especially under the age of 30 isn’t going to pick up a yellow pages to find a church. That’s why it’s important to have a website, but you can kill all your chances of someone coming to your Sunday worship service if you have a design that makes your church look old and behind. If your website doesn’t look appealing your church isn’t going to look appealing to the visitor and they make the decision right there about your church without ever coming.
Another question to ask yourself is; “does my church website look like it was designed for the church staff or elderly to come to?”.
Here’s the problem if your site is designed for the church staff your church staff is typically made up of people over 40 and isn’t going to appeal to people that are looking for a church. Your site should be intended to help convey your church and you want people to know you care about your church and if your website doesn’t look appealing it’s going to look like you don’t care.
Biggest advice if you have someone in your church that can do web design and make it look good, let them do it! Don’t try to learn how to do it if someone can do it better for the sake of your churches website and how it appeals to the visitors.
The Survey
I decided to do a quick survey on plurk and twitter to find out what other people thought on this subject and I hate to say it that everyone expressed exactly what I have expressed. Here’s the question I asked and how people responded;
Do you think that typical church websites look really corny or like they were designed in 1998?
My idea of a church website does. I haven’t been to many, however, to prove this. But the idea in my head = yes. ~ programmingchicky
Yes, they mostly look like something I could have designed in the 90s, when I was still in high school. I should note, at the time, my geocities website played under the sea and had a beach theme. ~ chicandcharming
most…. I was looking for a church in SC… and I would not want to attend any that I saw… I asked a friend for a recommendation & she gave me: www.newspring.cc/ then I found this one: midtowncolumbia.com/ so they don’t all suck. ~germaine.
With germaine saying that I asked her another questions to get a little more info.
“Would you not attend based on the design or for what was put up there?”
a little of both… mostly depends on what their mission & core values are, but if there site isn’t appealing…
I am not going to be intrigued to visit… ~germaine
So it seems like the broad census agrees with me on church web design. I also hate to say it but I’m one of these people. If I go to a church website and it looks ill designed I don’t stay long at all and I useally will never forward anyone to that site either. I do both our churches youth website and my blog design, cause they are both religious I do my best to make sure I don’t look ill designed with anything I’m designing cause part of having a good design makes it seem casual to the visitor and everyone likes casual.
If I’m allowed to wear pants and a t-shirt to church, that churches web design should convey that in the design. It should look good and professional but casual,easy going and comfortable.
One last problem
One last problem is SEO (search engine optimization). If your web design isn’t designed good it’s not going to be Search engine optimized well either and that means your going to rank poorly in the search engines which means less traffic.
If I’m looking for a church in a town I’m going to use a search engine and if your site is optimized well it’s not going to show up at the top of my search results which means I may never see it.
Wrapping up
I’m not going to go into much more detail with this post but I want you to see the common problem with church websites. My next post is going to show church websites that do a great job of looking good and conveying their church well.
If you have any questions, comments or feedback I would love to hear them and answer them.
Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton
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Well I gotta admit I have been crazy over the last week with web design still and I haven’t been helping that urge by reading a bunch of web design stuff. I’ve been looking at ways to improve and wow I have a way to go, but I can say that it’s so much fun being challenged to learn something new.
Anyways to continue the post for today I’m going to keep it simple and just show you what blogs I am currently following in my rss reader and I hope you share with me what is in your reader also.
I will be adding my own idea of what the blog is about or use their about if it’s better at describing the blog than I can. That way everyone can get a feel for the site some before they ever go.
What’s in my rss (24 feeds)
An awesome web design blog focused on freebies and helping you the designer to keep designing.
A blog that has some great tutorials and resources. One thing that stands out is the not so typical black theme.
Pro Blog Design is a blog that has set out to help you design one thing and that would be your blog, they do a really great job of it to.
A site that offers some great photoshop and illustrator tutorials and free vector resources.
“Six Revisions is a weblog the provides practical, useful information
for the modern, standards-compliant web designer and web developer. It
seeks to present exceptional, noteworthy tips, tutorials, and resources
that the modern web professional will appreciate. You’ll find a variety
of content from tools that can speed up your workflow processes to
showcases of beautiful designs for inspiration and tutorials on
JavaScript frameworks like jQuery and MooTools.”
“The goal of Design Reviver is to provide Web Designers with valuable
information. Here you will find useful tutorials, free downloads,
sources of inspiration, and articles covering a wide range of web
design related topics.”
“Go Media is a group of guys and girls who are passionate about art and graphic design. Now you’re reading a blog basically filled with lots of helpful tutorials and advice about business and design. But that’s not all Go Media does. In fact, we spend most of our time designing for clients or cranking out design resources for the Arsenal.”
“Smashing Magazine delivers useful and innovative information for designers and Web developers.
Our aim is to inform our readers about the latest trends and techniques
in Web development: clearly, precisely and regularly. We try to
convince you not with the quantity but with the quality of the
information we present. That’s what makes us different. We smash you
with the information that makes your life easier. Really.”
“Through our blog we aim to provide helpful and informative posts that meet the needs of our readers. The majority of our readers are web designers or online entrepreneurs of some sort. If you’re unfamiliar with our blog, we hope that you’ll take a few moments to see what is available and we encourage you to get involved by commenting and subscribing. We have an intelligent audience that regularly enhances the quality of information on the site by participating in the discussion.”
a great blog of a personal web designer about wordpress themes,hacks and tips.
Hv designs offers a bunch of tutorials from photoshop, to css and anything related to web or graphic design.
Tutorial 9 offers tutorials and resources. The tutorials categories they offer are photoshop, photography, illustrator and web tutorials.
Photoshopstar offers a great collection of photoshop tutorials.
“PSDTUTS is a blog/Photoshop site made to house and showcase some of the best Photoshop tutorials around. We publish tutorials that not only produce great graphics and effects, but explain in a friendly, approachable manner.Photoshop is a fantastically powerful program and there are a million ways to do anything, we hope that reading PSDTUTS will help our readers learn a few tricks, techniques and tips that they might not have seen before and help them maximize their creative potential!”
“CSSG is a community driven site dedicated to web standards. Members keep the content fresh by contributing in the following sections: * Articles * Community News”
“Script & Style was created with the goal of helping to improve Web Designers and Developers. By creating a website where users may submit interesting articles, Script & Style aims to bring users the latest and greatest in XHTML, CSS, and javascript.”
(Updated snapshot cause of blog redesign)
“The purpose of design shard
is to produce a valuable resource for designers ranging from design
tips, inspiration and free resources such as photoshop brushes or
textures that can be downloaded for free.”
“NETTUTS is a blog/tutorial site aimed at web designers. We run
tutorials on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how you
design and build websites. We cover HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS’s,
Simpler Development Examples in PHP and Ruby on Rails, and Flash.”
“CSS-Tricks is a home for examples, tutorials, tips, tricks, and news regarding Cascading Style Sheets. Topics sometimes go beyond CSS to include larger web design issues and other languages like Javascript (jQuery rulz!), PHP, and perhaps a little Ruby as I learn more.”
“NOUPE passionately delivers stylish and dynamic news for designers and
web-developers on all subjects of design, ranging from; CSS, Ajax,
Javascript, web design, graphics, typography, advertising & much
more. Our goal is to help you communicate effectively on the web with
an engaging website or functional interface.”
Larissa is a creative designer and this is her personal blog. She offers stuff about her and tutorials.
“Having played around with the web, wordpress and photoshop I find myself now with styletime a mixture of all these thing’s that interest me and with the ability to share with other’s.My main purpose for styletime is to highlight the amazing work that YOU designer’s do that I can only dream of (with my copy of PS 7.0 running on XP!).”
“Hey, you can still blog in your pajamas, but its time you build a better blog design to send the right message to your readers. Blog Design Blog is all about helping you: * get traffic * gain subscribers * communicate your message * sell something * and do all of it while looking good”
“WPCandy was created on October 1st, 2007, as a blog on everything about
WordPress, from the latest themes and plugins to tutorials and tips.
Already on it’s 3rd redesign, WPCandy is one of the top sites about
WordPress and still kickin’ butt.”
Wrapping it up
Well there is the list and I’m glad you stuck through it to find some simply amazing sites.
~Jeremy Newton
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So you want to know more about me who wouldn’t? I’m just kidding you probably have no clue who I am or know very little about me so that is what I am planning to do with this post, I want to give you a chance to know me more personal than you did before.
BIO
Well my name is Jeremy Newton, I’m 19 will be 20 on November 15th of the 08. I’m a typical teenager. I’m very into electronics and gadgets that most people would consider me a nerd. I’m in to Web design and love making something that millions of people might look at on the web it gives me a sense of accomplishment just knowing I made something look good. I’ve designed a few websites, the first would be my churches youth website the others would of course be related to Jesus Encounter which you are reading this post on. I’m a student leader at Impact Youth which is our churches youth group. I currently volunteer some of my free time at the local middle school just going in during lunch, hanging with the kids and getting to know them and listen to them. I’ve got to say that has been a huge blessing in my life as of far. I remember when I was their age I felt young and like I wasn’t that important but I can say from being there that these kids are amazing. Everyone is so stinking brilliant and all in their own way is unique. This year the sixth grade class is a little over 400 students and I got to say its totally epic getting to spend time with 400 sixth graders, who else can say they get to do that?
I’m a musician and I love alot of different kinds of music. I’ve been play guitar for 6 years as of yesterday September 23rd ‘08. I played piano for 3 years tell I was probably about 10 or 11 and I got bored with it so I quit. Well I had the chance to pick up guitar and I was relectant cause I didn’t like piano that much but I loved music. So I picked up the guitar and started to rock out, I haven’t stopped since then. Now I can play any guitar electric,acoustic and bass which I own all three, I can still play piano but I use what I know mostly to create synth and effects when recording and that’s about it.
I currently play in our churches youth worship band as our main guitarist so I play lead and rythme which is quite the act going between the two but it has been fun and quite the learning experience. I also play on our adult worship team as a lead electric guitarist and I’ve been doing that for a little while. I started playing music in church about six months after I started taking guitar lessons in our kids ministry for those in elementary school. A few years later I ended up moving up to the youth team and I’ve been there ever since and the drummer and I are the longest running players on the team so that’s been fun.
Religion
I’ve been in church since I was born but I will be honest I’ve never been the good church going kid. I’ve stepped out of church when I first became a teenager and I was into pornogrophy almost my whole teenage life which was really tough but God helped me through it and I knew when I fell he would help lift me back up again, if you want to know more about my struggles you can read my testimony. I came back to church when I was bout 13-14 and I’ve stayed every since and God has greatly effected my life. God has called me to be a youth pastor and everyday is pushing closer and closer to fullfilling that desire he has given me. I can say when you go to a football game and get mugged by sixth graders and get in trouble for trying to give three kids at once a piggy back you sure know your in your place. I will admit there are times it makes me crazy knowing that I have to be so responsible sometimes but then I look at the outcome and realize that I would do anything for anyone to see them have a better life or just have a friend.
Currently right now I am working on getting money to go to college and study to be a pastor but that costs money, so I started a website to help me raise funds which you can find here. I know God wants me to do it and will provide as long as I am patient but I feel that he want’s me to be able to raise some of the funds to put myself through college so that’s what I’m doing. Ive also gone to Europe twice in my life for missions trips and that has been amazing.
Social
Well now that you know more about me I want to make sure I give you some ways to keep connecting with my around the web. So I’m going to give you a list of social networks I’m on so you can view my profile and be my friend.
Well I encourage you to ask me questions about me. I want you to get to know me and what I write. The best way to do that is by asking questions. So leave a comment and I will do my best to answer any questions you have, also feel free to just leave feedback also.
Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton
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Well yesterday during church my cousin and I used his DSLR camera to take some pictures for some web stuff for my youth pastor and the youth website. So I just wanted to share with you some of the pics I took and of course I’ve ran them all through Photoshop to clean them up a little bit. I hope you enjoy.
Well those are the pics and I now want a DSLR so I can learn to take better photographs and stuff. Anyways that’s some of our church.
Much love ~ Jeremy Newton
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Well I can say I have officially been bitten by the web design bug this last week do design updates to my churches youth website. My mind has been thinking of ways to be creative all week and has been thinking of fixes to code and graphics. It’s a really fun thing and I love doing web stuff but the downside is it’s very time consuming. So I figured out since it’s consuming my time I’d post about it *ha ha*. So anyways here are the six web design blogs I follow and you should to.
6 Web Design Blogs
If you want to follow more people and learn more about graphic design I suggest you get a twitter and/or plurk account. I follow alot of designers on there and you learn alot of cool stuff cause you find out when they do updates or alot of them share really cool stuff.
Anyways I’m making sure I stay up to date with posting and keeping the website up to date. So if you want to help out and do me a favor let me know what you like about Jesus Encounter content or design wise and I will be doing something cool with them and giving you credit and a linkback.
Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton
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Well with the new age of the world wide web chances are your church needs a website. It’s not a matter of your church wants one but your church needs one! There are to many things you can do with a web site so every church should have one, but the problem with that is getting someone web savvy enough to do your web stuff for you, that way you never have to sit down and learn and pay for photoshop. So that’s what I’m here to help with today.
I do all our churches youth website along with everything you see here at Jesus Encounter. But I can tell you there is still alot that I don’t know and I’ve spent alot of time learning what I do know and you probably don’t have time for that so I’m going to make it easy for you.
CMS(Content Management System)
The easiest way to keep content update and get it published right where you want it is to use cms. With a good cms all you have to do is have your design actually template in this case but you use the cms to upload audio, text or images. Jesus Encounter uses wordpress which it in and of itself is a content management system. I just write what I want and cause the site is all set up when I tell it to publish it puts it right on the front page for everyone to read and see. There’s some things I have to do to put stuff were I want it but that’s easy compared trying to design and keep content up on a website. So let’s talk about the top to content management systems I’ve found and one from which I’ve used.
Wordpress
Wordpress has an amazing back end for doing this stuff and is really really simple to get stuff published to. The only problem I think anyone will have the most difficult time is installing it. For the common person that doesn’t know web stuff it can get very confusing fast, but thankfully most web hosting companys offer a way to install wordpress for you automatically so you don’t have to. There are many templates you can find on the web for what you may be looking for. You can find a good list of 50 that are great starters at crazyleafdesign.
But there are also premium themes is what they are called for wordpress. Basically they are designed for you or you can buy a stock premium them which offer a better backend so you can customize the theme better to basically run a website instead of a blog. Wordpress was first written so you can run a blog but it has taken a new toll into people actually using it for websites. I can think of two church websites that do that NewSpring Church and Edgepoint Church. The other CMS I’ve recently found is….
Sky CMS
I just found Sky CMS yesterday but from looking at it it’s probably the best way to go for any church website. They offer some great looking templates better than any stock one you will get for a church website. They seem to have a great back end that looks like it could be easier to use than wordpress is. They even say on the web page they are a great way to teach multiple people to run updates on your website or for the person that doesn’t know how to start with a website. Here is an excerpt from the page….
SkyCMS has all of the features you need to build and manage a great
website — all with simple, familiar web-based tools — no programming or
HTML needed. Create pages using text, images, links, and even video.
Blogs, calendars, file downloads, interactive photo galleries, and
forms are a snap. Want to collect donations, offer private members-only
sections, or view your website’s traffic statistics? It’s all built-in
If you want a different template than they have they offer web design for a price. I know to sites that use them. One is a local church and the other is a pastors ministry. I can say from what I have seen I am overly impressed with sky they may be the new way to go for church web design and maitnence. The two sites using sky are Rolling Hills and Benny Perez.
Well it sounds like it could be the best bet for any church website but if you want to design it yourself and have a good cms I would go with wordpress. In fact I would pick wordpress cause I’ve used it and fallen in love, but for the person that doesn’t know web design or what to do then go with sky.
But if even if you don’t want to use a cms you can use a program to design a website and keep it updated. I won’t go into much detail but here are the two I recommend.
Windows: Sharepoint or Expression Web Mac: Rapidweaver
I hope this article has helped and if it has please spread it around using our social networks so others may find this useful as you did.
Much Love ~ Jeremy Newton
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There’s an old Rolling Stones song that says “you don’t know what you got tell it’s gone”. Well I’ve come to figure that it is so true but not always. Yesterday I had a weird day that all I can sum it up to be that it was really just weird. But I had time at the end of the day to think and all of a sudden the thought struck me “that I’m really happy and have alot going for me and I don’t even realize it”. It’s weird to say that I can be the happiest man ever with my life but not act like it, but here is the synopsis in which I mean it.
I’ve been blessed in so many ways and there are so many things in which I enjoy doing. I have friends and people close to me that I love and I wouldn’t replace for the world, I have a church that is the greatest church I’ve ever been to and I fit right in there, I’m able to go in weekly to the middle school and just hang out with the kids, get to know them and encourage them when they need it, most everything that I hold dear to me whether it be music or a relationship it’s all been a blessing. It’s all stuff that has come in God’s time and stuff that I’ve waited for the best I could.
But the things that keep me from realizing that I really almost have it all is the fact that I don’t have a job and I am having alot of trouble