If you’re after a full-featured theme that still has the ease of customization and viral linking powers that you’ve come to love about Launch Effect Lite be sure to check out Launch Effect Premium!

Please feel free to contact us at our support forums if you have questions about setup or are experiencing any issues with the theme.

Setup in Three Easy Steps

Step 1 — Set Your Launch Page as your Homepage

Go to Settings > Reading.
Where it says, “Front page displays,” choose “A static page,” and select “Sign-Up” from the dropdown menu. When you refresh this page, it will disappear and your launch page will appear instead.

Step 2 — Set Permalinks

Go to Settings > Permalinks.
Select any options besides default. If your .htaccess file is not writable, instructions from WordPress will appear in a grey box below the “Save Changes” button for how you should set the rules manually.

Step 3 — Start Designing!

Go to Launch Effect > Designer.
Now for the fun part! The Designer is now divided into three sections: Global Styles, Sign-Up Page, and Theme (premium only). That submenu is located directly under the giant Designer/Integrations/Stats tabs. The best way to get started here is to just start playing around and gaining an understanding of what selections affect which parts of the design. Good luck!

I’ll get right to the point!

SECURITY

Well hackers will always be hackers.  And guess what, they love to hack so we had to do something about it!  All of our websites are now monitored and protected by Sucuri.net, boom!

New WordPress

The fun doesn’t stop, we upgraded the all of our websites to utilize the new WordPress version 3.3.1.  Makes everything cleaner, easy to use, and more secure, bagoosh!

New Themes and New Look and Support

Woo!, as in WooThemes! We just got the license and OK to use Woothemes on our website.  That means about 100 more additional PREMIUM themes that you can choose from!  In addition, Studiopress themes will be coming soon as well.

We’re also working on getting a brand new look for the website as well as a new Custom Website section.  Where you’ll be able to get services like custom designs, customization, SEO (traffic building), consulting and much more!

We also added a new support feature.  No more pesky emails, now you can contact us directly through your website. Just log in, click support, and we can have a conversation!!

What the future holds!

We’re going to be opening up a plugin market place where you’ll be able to add amazing new things to your website like Facebook integration, help desks, and much more.  We’re also going to open up the premium purchase package where you’ll be able to purchase the entire website and take it where ever you want.

We’re very excited to be pushing these new features and capabilities and we’ll be keeping you up to date along the way!

Let us know what you think!

1. Type in the address of your website followed by wp-admin. So for example, if the name of your website is “fromscratchman”, you would type in http://fromscratchman.itsbuiltforyou.com/wp-admin. This would then take you to the login screen.

2. Go to ItsBuiltForYou.com and click on the “login” link.

Once you click the link, you’ll arrive on the log in page below.

Enter your username and password.

Once submitted, you’ll be sent to your profile page. From here you should see an admin bar on the top that looks like this:

Note: If you don’t see the admin bar, make sure the following boxes are checked off, then click save:

You can always un-check this in the future.

Once you see the admin bar, move your mouse over “My Sites”. You’ll see a dropdown with ItsBuiltForYou.com (which you are a member of) and the website you created when you signed up!

Click “Dashboard” to bring you to the dashboard of your website.

Your are now in your websites dashboard!

Once your in the dashboard, the next thing you will need to do is decide which look/design/theme you want for your website.

You can click on the “Step 1″ link:

or click “Themes” under appearance on the left side.

Once you click that, you can now select any theme you like!

Click “Preview” to view it, or click “Activate” to make it your website! You can change it any time you like so feel free to try them all out!

Note: When you click preview, some themes may not display properly because they require you to save the settings first. If this happens, just activate it, then click the link that says “This must be saved first” and save it.

Your all set! And remember if you ever get stuck, you can always contact support@itsbuiltforyou.com, and we’ll be more then happy to assist you!

We’re constantly trying to improve our service to offer you the best premium themes and easy ways to implement them. We’ll be working on a few updates in the coming weeks like video tutorials, plugin upgrades, and much more!

We’re going to be doing a software update this weekend to improve the sign up process and hopefully make it easier for everyone. So ItsBuiltForYou.com may be down for a short while. But don’t worry, this won’t effect your website at all!

Would like to thank BackUp Buddy because it is just awesome!!

Enjoy your websites!!!

-
Jonathan

1. Labor Costs
When you are running a store it requires helpers to keep it working at a respectable standard. An ordinary sport goods shop needs two salesmen, a cashier and a manager. Bigger shops require a larger workforce, which means more labor cost. With a switch to an online store you can get rid of all these people. At most you would will need one helper to keep your orders checked and dispatched.

2. Setup Costs
When you are starting your shop you would will need a decent space in a suitable area where you can get customers. A shop in a commercial area would will cost your around eight to ten thousand dollars, or maybe even more depending on the size of the shop. On the other hand, an online store would will only require a hosting and a domain name to set up your online shop. This will only cost you $180 a year.

3. Marketing Your Name
When you start a new business you need to market yourself before you get customers. In case of aan on-land shop you would will need to distribute flyeliers and use billboards in the area to make people aware of your business. It could cost more than a $100 a day and you would will not even know how much attention you got. In case of an online store, marketing will be done online costing around $10-15 a day and you will have a record of every person who visited your site or the marketing page using trackers. These trackers give you the count of the visitors and their locations.

4. Man vs. Machine
In a normal shop you would will have humans working for you. So the delivery of the services of your business would naturally depend on them. You would need a staff which has characteristics such as self motivation, determination, competitiveness, etc. Apart from these, the medical situation also comes under review. All of the staff you hire are human beings so naturally they can get sick or injured without prior notice. This can lead to devastation if one or more of your important staff members get injured or sick on the same day. In an online shop you would never need to worry about these troubles. No humans mean no sick leaves, no mental stresses and no lack of motivation and performance.

5. No Holiday
True! With an online store you can stay online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. Nothing can cause you to close your shop. No cultural holiday, no strikes, not even a national holiday, nothing can force you to keep your shop closed on a particular day.

Another major advantage of an online business is its portability. You can manage your business from anywhere in the world, – all you need is a computer with an internet connection.

You say to yourself, “Hey, this looks interesting, I think I’ll give it a shot!” So you sign up for an account.

You look at the backend and then think, “OK, I’ll get to this tomorrow”.

Tomorrow comes, you start your day job or something else comes up.

Before you know it, a weeks gone by and your website is still the same. Two weeks go by and you completely forgot about it.

Not a great scenario because you still need a website! So we decided to do the work for you!

That’s right, we’ll add all of your information for you at no cost (FREE WEBSITE SET UP)! All you have to do is sign up for the year, send us your information, and you’ll have a fully functional, premium website!

Why is this so awesome?

Well, for one thing, we understand that shopping around for a website isn’t easy. There are so many different companies to choose from and so many different pricing options, oi!

So we want to make it as easy as possible for you to get a great quality website, at an incredibly affordable rate.

What you get

You’ll receive the following with each yearly sign up:

The best part is, you’re getting a fully functional website, with everything included, for only $19.99 a month ($239.88 a year)!

Things that cost more then your website a month

• A cell phone
• Gas
• 5 cups of coffee at starbucks
• Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner
• Paper Towels
• and the list goes on…

And which one of these can get you more business…(besides the cell phone).

So don’t delay, getting a website is so easy!

Start with a 14 day free trial! »

I knew one “salesperson” who always said:

Well, I DISAGREE!

It’s time to equip yourself and not get fooled by the “buzz” words that website design companies may throw at you.

Website “buzz” words and what to look out for

There are so many different terms used in the web industry to describe the same things.

When it comes to web site design, the first thing you should  know is:
“What is website design?”

This brings us to our first buzz word, “solution“. When someone offers a “solution”, there has to be a problem!

If a someone says they offer “web solutions”, ask yourself:

“What does that mean?”
“What problem are they solving (for you)?”

How can they provide a solution if they don’t know what your problem is yet?

Just something to keep in mind.

Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing

Be very, very careful when you hear a website design company saying they offer SEO. I’ve seen too many people wasting their money on “SEO” that just doesn’t bring results.

Here’s what you need to know about SEO:

1. SEO isn’t easy, it takes a lot of work!
   From content writing, to link building strategies, and even key word research.You need to make sure your content is original. Find out if you can even compete with certain key phrases, and link building is very, very tedious but IMPORTANT!!
2. SEO takes a very long time!
   You will not be ranked high in the search engines in one week. 

   Search Engines need to trust you, trust takes time to build. You may start seeing results in a few months.
   Remember: SEO is a long term strategy, not a “get rich quick” scheme.

3. There is no such thing as a guarantee!
   Search Engines change ALL the time. No one can guarantee you number one rankings. One day you’ll be up, the next day your gone, that’s how search engines work.
4. Good SEO is not cheap!
   Don’t be fooled by a $200 price tag. 

   If SEO was easy enough to do it for $200, everyone would do it. There are reasons why real SEO companies can charge $1,500 – $30,000 a month for SEO results, and this is not uncommon.

5. Don’t be afraid to ask!
   If someone is claiming to get you good results, ask to see some proof! 

   Although you are not an SEO expert, you can at least see some examples of the SEO efforts and tell if they are working (like this image of our client’s SEO).

BTW, Google LOVES wordpress! =)

Copywriting…Who, What, Where?

You may often hear this: “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of your content for you.”

Be careful!
When a website design company offers to “get” the content for you, ask them exactly where they are getting it from. Make sure that someone is actually going to be writing the content.

There are two reasons for this:

Buzz Buzz Buzz

Here’s are some common “buzz” words and their definitions.

Next time you speak with a website design company, you’ll feel and understand a lot better.

If you have any questions or would like to add to this post, feel free to comment below!

My name is Jonathan Perez and I have worked in the web design industry since the start of my career in 2003. I’ve worked for small agencies and large corporations where I’ve design many sites that you probably see everyday. I’ve studied under Ben Hunt (feel free to Google) to hone my skills in marketing and conversion. I currently reside in Staten Island.

See how you can add your own logo, change the background, change pages, add new pages, add a photo gallery and new blog posts.