Posts By Brian Bourn

While he is technically the boss, Brian Bourn spends most of his time deep in WordPress and the Genesis Framework, testing and exploring new plugins, and researching new code methods.

Brian consults with Bourn Creative’s clients on all things technical including, hosting, auto responders and follow up sequences, opt-in setup, plugins, domain names, and more. He also delivers all client WordPress training sessions and oversees the development of our technical client education materials.

About Brian Bourn

As CEO of Bourn Creative, Brian manages the business, the team, project workflow, and all custom web design projects. He’s basically in charge of the nerd stuff and specializes in website functionality, Star Wars, WordPress, and the Genesis Framework.

Genesis SEO Settings Guide

WordPress Genesis SEO GuideAt Bourn Creative, we build our custom designed WordPress websites exclusively on the Genesis Framework by StudioPress.

The reasons behind our choice to develop our custom themes on the Genesis Framework are numerous, but a few we often highlight are that the Genesis Framework is very flexible/customizable, coded extremely well, and has been built with SEO as a priority (SEO — the art and science of being found online through organic search).

After all, a beautifully designed website means nothing if consumers and search engines can’t find you.

Genesis already has most SEO requirements built into the framework. As a result, a separate WordPress SEO plugin isn’t necessary, which means one less plugin to manage, and keep updated.

Get Our Genesis SEO Settings Guide & Instructions

5 Must Have WordPress Plugins We Use On Every Site

At Bourn Creative we have a stable of various paid and free WordPress plugins that we regularly use on our clients’ sites, depending on needed website functionality.

Out of our collection of trusted WordPress plugins, there are five must have plugins that we use on pretty much every custom WordPress site we build — and this past week I shared these five plugins in a lighting talk I gave at the Sacramento WordPress Meetup.

WordPress Plugin #1: Akismet

Akismet WordPress Spam Blocking

Why We Recommend the Akismet WordPress Plugin:

  • Created, managed, and owned by Automattic
  • Save time with simple comment spam protection
  • Low monthly fee (still free for personal bloggers)
  • Download Akismet

Learn Our 5 Must Have WordPress Plugins

PressNomics Review & Awesome Stats About WordPress

PressNomics | The Economics of WordPress

Last week I was in sunny Chandler, Arizona (just outside Phoenix) for the first annual PressNomics event; the economics of the WordPress ecosystem.

The event sessions were amazing and even better was the caliber of the attendees. There were all types of WordPress and technology professionals in attendance from around the world including freelance designers & developers, enterprise level web development agencies, hosting companies, commercial theme and plugin shops, representatives from Automattic including the founder Matt Mullenweg, tech startup founders, and many more.

Learn More About PressNomics

Soliloquy Slider WordPress Plugin Review

Soliloquy Premium WordPress Slider Plugin That Allows Multiple Sliders Throughout a WordPress SiteSoliloquy is a premium slider plugin for WordPress offering ease of use and superior performance.

We bought the unlimited developer license and have since used the Soliloquy Premium WordPress Slider Plugin on several client sites and love it.

On multiple sites we’re currently working on — and the new www.fabulousafter40.com that we just took live — we needed the ability to have multiple sliders with different settings on the same site, and to create both image sliders and video sliders (See screenshot at end of article).

Unlike many free slider plugins, Soliloquy handled multiple sliders on a single WordPress site with ease, and it is super easy for our clients to use and update.

Check Out Soliloquy’s Features and More Screenshots

3 WordPress Security Tips To Help Keep Your Site Safe

Learn The Basics of Website SecurityRecently I attended WordCamp Chicago (basically summercamp for WordPress nerds like me), and one of the sessions I attended was titled “WordPress Security: The Nitty Gritty” by Tony Perez of Sucuri Security. Tony’s presentation supported the title and reinforced some web security basics that anyone with a WordPress website can implement in under an hour.

Back Up First!

Like all major changes performed on a WordPress site, be sure to completely backup your files and database before proceeding with the following basic security tips:

Learn 3 Important Website Security Basics

How to Easily Add a User-Friendly FAQ Page to Your WordPress Site

A while back I came across the plugin WordPress FAQ Manager by a very talented developer I follow and heard speak at a WordCamp. I downloaded the plugin recently and spent some time testing it, trying different options, and adding my own custom CSS to change the default appearance.

After reviewing it thoroughly, I like how it works so much that we are using it on several client projects.

WordPress Plugin to Create Expanding FAQ Lists

WordPress Plugin to Create Expanding FAQ Lists with Custom Post TypesWordPress FAQ Manager is a WordPress plugin that uses custom post types and taxonomies to manage an FAQ section (or multiple) for your website and utilizes a simple shortcode for displaying them on a page or post.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, you will see the new custom post type available in your dashboard menu.

Here you can easily create and manage all of your FAQ lists. Plus, because it uses custom post types, creating the frequently asked question and answer lists is as easy as publishing a blog post, or even easier!

Settings:

Like most good WordPress plugins, the settings page has minimal options, but there are a few settings we recommend:

Learn More About the WordPress FAQ Manager Plugin

WordPress Shortcuts to Speed up Formatting Your Blog Posts

WordPress ShortcutsSometimes writing a blog post can be a long process.

To help you save time formatting your blog posts in WordPress, we have decided to share with you the 21 most useful time saving WordPress shortcuts.

If you know any more then feel free to reply and suggest them in the comments section below and we will add it to the list. (THANKS!)

Get WordPress Shortcuts for Formatting Content

How to Use the WordPress Next Page Tag to Manage Long Content

At Bourn Creative we believe that the design and layout of your content is equally as important as the visual look and structure of your WordPress templates. Design is more than how something looks; it is also how a visitor to your site “moves” through your site and are naturally guided to your intended action.

One small part of this design principle is choosing the right way to manage long content, and one way we accomplish this is by using the WordPress “Next Page” tag to break long content into sections that are more easily consumed.

The next page tag should not be confused with the WordPress “More” tag used on blog posts to limit the content on blog index pages. Read this article on how to use the WordPress more tag to learn about the differences.

On a recently completed custom WordPress theme, our client had extensive content that was important information to have on one page URL instead of broken over several pages and/or subpages. We decided this strategy based on SEO and site visitor usability. Without the Next Page tag, the content would have created one extremely long page that would seem to endlessly scroll and slow to load.

The Solution: On-page internal linking to each of the different content sections (using divs in the HTML) and use of the WordPress next page tag to break the content into several normal length webpages instead one extremely long page. And to help visitors access the information quickly, we added a bulleted list of quick links just before the first use of the Next Page Tag.

Same list of quick links used with the WordPress Next Page tag

Learn More About The WordPress Next Page Tag

High Performance WordPress Hosting | WP Engine Review

WP Engine Managed WordPress HostingImagine this: Your WordPress website loads extremely fast. It is completely backed up daily and is guaranteed against getting hacked. When there is a WordPress upgrade, your site is updated automatically. You have a magic button to push if anything goes wrong on your site that restores it to normal with one single click — just like Time Machine on a Mac.

Sound like a nerd fairy tale? Yes, but thankfully it’s a real-life fairy tale, and it’s possible for YOU with the managed WordPress hosting company WP Engine.

Quick Side Note: WP Engine is an avid sponsor of WordCamps across the country, supporting the WordPress community and contributing to the success of WordPress with business owners just like you. I’ve had a chance to speak with some team members at WordCamps, and while we really like their approach to WordPress hosting, we also really like the people behind it too — that’s why we are also a proud affiliate.

WP Engine specializes in high performance WordPress hosting. They have custom built and tuned their servers specifically to achieve performance, scalability, and security for WordPress powered websites. Over the last several months we have launched many of our clients’ new custom WordPress sites on WP Engine and are quite happy with the results.

Learn More About WP Engine