Onboarding New Staff

Posted on 8th, August 2019 4:26 PM by Spencer Hill

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This article outlines the steps we need to take to setup a new staff member with everything they need.   Google Apps Email Drive Groups Teamwork Zoho CRM 1Password Slack HubStaff

Seeking Part Time Marketing Manager

Posted on 1st, July 2019 7:00 AM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Careers

We are growing and are in need of an additional marketing manager on a permanent part-time basis which will grow to full time. We are a teaching company, on-the-job learning is encouraged but this is a position that requires certain non-negotiable skills.   Who should apply? The ideal candidate must: Full of ideas. Loves to […]

Hiscox General & Professional Liability Insurance

Posted on 28th, May 2019 3:21 PM by Spencer Hill

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Professional Liability Policy Document 1 Occupation is listed as “website design” but it should be “Information Technology” – which is more encompassing and inclusive. We design, but we write code, consult, manage advertising, etc… Website Design is under their IT umbrella, title isn’t important as long as that’s at least one of the services you […]

What does a professional photography project look like?

Posted on 13th, May 2019 12:47 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Digital Marketing

There’s that old saying “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” But this time might be the exception! Photographers are, at their core, judged by their cover photos. You can instantly tell if you’d be satisfied with that quality of work. So this article is not as focused on identifying quality photographers but more focused […]

Process for Charging Clients

Posted on by Spencer Hill

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As of the writing of this document we rely on PayPal for charging clients cards, sending invoices and managing our finances. PayPal One Time Payments Hover over Tools > choose Virtual Terminal. Leave everything but the following as defaults: Amount Description – Should be the Product name. Or link to the Proposal if it’s multi-item. […]

Responsibilites of Executive Assistant

Posted on 5th, May 2019 8:43 PM by Spencer Hill

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First and foremost, an executive assistant is a catch all. But a catch all who should exercise autonomy in knowing when responsibilities can and should be delegated to another role. The primary goal of this person is to offload responsibilities from the executive team so they can focus on activities that grow and protect the […]

How to deploy a Laravel website using Laravel Forge

Posted on 21st, April 2019 8:33 PM by Spencer Hill

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U6JmzQURnuvetJFUWkIy8Z4CfvyDM1YLcNb_53Z2M0o/edit?ts=5c9e2a5a

Managing Credentials

Posted on 19th, April 2019 9:11 PM by Spencer Hill

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In this video we show you how we store, access and manage clients credentials such as their WordPress username, SFTP credentials, social media account logins and more.  

Seeking Executive Assistant

Posted on 16th, April 2019 1:50 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Company News, Press Releases

This position has been filled. We are seeking a part time (2-4 hours a week) executive assistant who will grow into full time. This person must be local to Portland, Oregon, USA and available to work from our Sherwood, Oregon office daily M-F during the training period. But we encourage working remotely, and respect the […]

How to create a Facebook Business Manager account as an agency

Posted on 11th, April 2019 9:35 PM by Spencer Hill

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Review of Razer Thresher Ultimate Headphones

Posted on 4th, April 2019 7:25 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Razer

As a company, we do professional cinematography, video production and photography. Having excellent headphones when shooting on set is essential for ending up with a great product. Interestingly, premium gaming headphones are often some of the highest quality headphones – especially with a mic – that you can get. So I recently purchased the Razer […]

Responsibilities of WordPress Website & Web Application Developers

Posted on 3rd, March 2019 2:43 PM by Spencer Hill

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This article outlines exactly what you are expected to know and do as a developer on this team:   General Expectations Thank you for joining our team! It is central to our mission to ensure you absolutely love working with and for our company. If you don’t feel that way: tell us! We will listen […]

How to setup Event Tracking for Forms in Google Analytics

Posted on 1st, March 2019 9:34 PM by Spencer Hill

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Roots Issue #13: tee: /etc/exports: Operation not permitted

Posted on 19th, October 2018 6:20 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Bash / Shell, Programming, Roots, Tips and Tricks, Trellis

Context I recently upgraded to MacOS Mojave.   Problem When I ran vagrant up for an existing site (but was new to my machine) I got an error message after entering my password: tee: /etc/exports: Operation not permitted mount.nfs: requested NFS version or transport protocol is not supported There was actually more to the error but […]

What Roots should tell you before you use Trellis, Bedrock and Sage

Posted on 17th, October 2018 9:17 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Bedrock, Roots, Sage Theme, Trellis

We have a love-hate relationship with Roots. What we’ve learned in the past 18 months of developing WordPress ecosystems with Trellis, Bedrock and Sage is that Roots claims to be a faster way to develop WordPress websites, but that’s not the whole story.   Our experience has been that lack of clarity on what technology, […]

Understanding Our Server Permissions

Posted on 3rd, September 2018 11:20 AM by Spencer Hill

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This article explains why our server permissions are setup uniquely from typical servers, how they got that way and how to troubleshoot issues.   The Why If you’ve developed WordPress websites in the past, you may think there isn’t a problem relating to permissions and we’ve just over complicated it. But, unless your server uses […]

Adobe Illustrator: Creating depth of field with blur, multi-tone coloring and weather

Posted on 30th, August 2018 12:24 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: 2D Vector Design, Adobe, Illustrator

In this video we’ll show you how to create a city scape, with water, and adding depth of field with multi-tone colors, layers and vector elements to create weather. This tutorial copies and deconstructs a design we found on Matt Simons’ website. All credit for the design goes to his design team. Download the Illustrator […]

Setting Up a New Server with AWS EC2 & AMI’s

Posted on 23rd, August 2018 9:57 AM by Spencer Hill

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We have switched from our former web-server-1.iteratemarketing.com to a newer model under TPC.   How to configure NGinx and PHP-FPM for increased uploads. On Ubuntu 16.04 edit /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini look for lines post_max_size and upload_max_filesize and set them both to 1000m. Then reboot PHP (sudo systemctl restart php7.0-fpm) and NGinx (sudo systemctl restart nginx)   How to configure NGinx […]

How to generate an SSL on our server.

Posted on 16th, August 2018 4:16 PM by Spencer Hill

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sudo certbot –nginx Choose the domain from the list. You’re done.   sudo letsencrypt –nginx Choose from the domain list. You’re done.

A plain text list of all countries in the world and their respective states / provinces / counties

Posted on 28th, July 2018 10:36 AM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Programming, Tips and Tricks, Website Development

We created a plain text list of all countries in the world and their respective states / provinces / counties. It’s incomplete but that’s the goal. Available on GitHub in raw format.

What is a wireframe in website development or application development?

Posted on 10th, July 2018 7:27 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Business Development, New Products or Services, Search Engine Optimization, Search Marketing, Website Development, Website Development

In the context of website development or application development a wireframe black and white, deliberately simplified line drawing of the layout of a website or application. This is sometimes mistakenly synonymous with website prototyping.   Example   How are wireframes used? Wireframing is one step in a professional website design process. It’s a time and […]

In Depth Comparison of WordPress vs Laravel (CMS & eCommerce Included)

Posted on 24th, June 2018 3:55 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Programming, Website Development

We developer custom WordPress Themes from scratch and existing platforms like Roots (Trellis, Bedrock and Sage), as well as custom WordPress Plugins. We’ve done so for almost the entire time we’ve been in business (circa 2005). Over time we’ve gradually discovered the limitations with WordPress but ultimately decided that the alternatives were just that: an […]

Absolute Beginners Guide to Root’s Trellis + Bedrock + Sage

Posted on 30th, April 2018 9:12 AM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Uncategorized

I have a knack for hitting every possible obstacle. It stems from the early days of my education and is something I’ve had to hobble through life trying to mitigate. Since the internet though, I’ve found that there are many others like me. So when I try a new technology I am in the habit […]

Debunking and Demustifying Bid Adjustments and Max CPC in Google AdWords

Posted on 13th, April 2018 6:00 AM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: AdWords, Pay Per Click Management, Search Marketing

A client recently asked us this question: “I was looking over our Google AdWords campaign and noticed we are no longer being charged around $X a click but $X more per click. And then on the ad groups some terms are even more per click. Is there a way to bring down the cost per […]

What should I pay for Google AdWords management?

Posted on 6th, April 2018 6:32 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: AdWords, Pay Per Click Management

If you’re investigating hiring a company to manage your advertising on Google AdWords (and other platforms) then this article was written specifically to help you understand the typical pricing models and the pros and cons. This article specifically talks about Google AdWords, but it really can apply to other platforms like Facebook Advertising, Instagram Advertising, […]

What is professional logo design?

Posted on 20th, March 2018 2:08 PM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Digital Design, Digital Marketing, Uncategorized, Website Development

These days, it’s easy to create your own logo or remotely hire individuals for as little as $5. Yet, some agencies still charge hundreds, or thousands of dollars to create them. Why is this? And which one should I choose?   Shorter Answer Regardless of who you hire here’s what you should get: A horizontal […]

Roots Issue #12: Code, styles, not updating

Posted on 7th, December 2017 5:01 AM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Bedrock, Roots, Sage Theme, Trellis, Ubuntu

The Issue Recently, I discovered that when I saved my code it was no longer appearing when I reloaded the website while working locally in development. This occurred along with this error so I thought they were connected.   The Solution It turned out that when you run gulp –production that the Theme begins to look in […]

Roots Issue #11

Posted on by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Roots, Trellis, Ubuntu

[Browsersync] Couldn’t open browser (if you are using BrowserSync in a headless environment, you might want to set the open option to false) I have built several sites with Roots stack now and suddenly, BrowserSync is no longer working on one of them. However, BrowserySync is working on all the others. So this suggests to […]

How do you publish / update a Plugin to the WordPress.org directory?

Posted on 20th, November 2017 5:38 PM by Spencer Hill

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This article explains how we publish or update our own Plugins that are available on WordPress.org.   Prerequisites Please read this official documentation on publishing a Plugin to WordPress.org   Our sister company, WPPluginCo.com develops WordPress Plugins that our team here uses. Some of these Plugins are free and available on WordPress.org. So the question […]

Roots Issue #10

Posted on 17th, November 2017 5:40 AM by Spencer Hill

Posted in: Bedrock, Roots, Sage Theme, Trellis, Ubuntu

Today I switched from my Mac to my Linux Ubuntu and attempted to continue working on a Roots site. After cloning it down and using vagrant up to start the server and the site. Then I noticed the sites styling was broken. So I looked at the main.css stylesheet and discovered it was not found. So […]