Witness Web

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Web Designer | Lee Pettijohn

Lee is the Web Designer and Developer for Witness Web Design. With skills including HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and Flash, he is committed to delivering the best possible product while providing excellent customer service. With a background in mathematics and business, Lee brings his expertise to the table by taking direction and making clients' visions a reality. “I feel most comfortable when working with code,” Lee says. “It’s a joy to take the ‘painted canvas’ given to me and recreate it in such a way that captures the attention of the user and creates an incredible experience.” Lee brings many skills including database management to the table, and is excited to make his customers' potential dreams...their tangible realities.

Add an Event to The Events Calendar Using Gravity Forms

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gravity forms to the events calendarThe Events Calendar and Gravity Forms are two plugins for WordPress that are incredibly powerful.  After much searching and coding, I was able to put together several different sections of code.  These are some of the highlights of what’s included that can be automatically created:

  • Name and Description
  • Date of Event
  • Start and End Time
  • Cost
  • Venues (which can be selected in the form and is populated with previously inserted venue entries)
  • Organizers (same as Venues)
  • Event URL
  • Upload an image and automatically use as Featured Image

Still working on getting the Event Categories portion to work.  If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Here is a page that utilizes the function – http://experiencehermann.com/event-submission

Here is the Gist of code with comments throughout – https://gist.github.com/leepettijohn/0ab7e5a7474f9f77df20

All sources of used code have been cited in the comments and thanks to the many people that have contributed to this.

What Can You Do For Me?

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“That’s exactly what I needed!”

These are my favorite words to hear from my clients.  They drive me.  They encourage me to understand their needs.  They are at the core of why I do what I do.

I can manage your website build or redesign

Are you ready for a structured and streamlined system for developing your website? Would you like to incorporate a professional design for the information you provide your customers?

If your website is important to you, then it’s important to me. We can walk through your needs, come up with an action plan and then I will implement that plan until you have a finished product you and your business can be proud of.

I can take your design and develop a custom website for your client.

There are few select people that I’ve met that can both design and develop effectively. Many designers love to work with colors, layouts, aesthetics, etc., but they don’t want to deal with the coding side of developing a website.

I love looking at code. I think it’s beautiful and I enjoy the process of taking design apart and looking at its individual pieces to put them back together to form a functioning website.

If you are a designer and you want to focus on what you do best, let’s work together.

I can answer your coding questions.

Often times business owners or graphic artists don’t need a full fledged website developed. The bulk of the work is already done. But, they are frustrated by a little piece of the puzzle that isn’t coming together like they wanted.

If you have a development question about PHP, CSS, JavaScript, etc., let me know. I love digging into a problem and finding the solution.

What Do Others Say About You?

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Raylene Hollrah“Lee Pettijohn has been instrumental in helping me get my foundation off the ground.  He has been very reliable and pays a lot of attention to the details of how to make my website run efficiently.  One of my favorite aspects of working with Lee is when I need a new functionality to my site, he has an answer or knows where to find an answer to get me what I’m looking for.”

– Raylene Hollrah

American Family Insurance Agent &

Owner at Just Call Me Ray

Full Fusion Logo“Your involvement was and is a blessing with your WordPress expertise. Your responsiveness was great and on target throughout.”

– Dan Hall

Designer at Full Fusion

starry nights inn“I LOVE my new website!!!!! Lee is awesome!”

– Laurie Ramseyer

Starry Nights Inn

tsheets“Lee is a solid individual and his talent is apparent the second you hire him! We would highly recommend Witness Web Design to everyone looking for a professional solution for their business.”

– Kelsie Medel

TSheets.com

Kimberly Cannedy“Thank you for providing such a GREAT service! I am sure you will be very successful as your gifts and love go before you!!!”

– Kimberly Cannedy

Lilla Rose Consultant

Can I See Some of Your Work?

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The gallery below lists some of my favorite projects to work on.  Some of them I designed myself.  Others I worked alongside a different designer and I developed the site and some I took direction from the talented minds that just created the logo.

My development from some talented designers:

site-chec

site-foc site-rmscf

Snip20150526_44Snip20150526_45

 

Development from logo designs:

site-trolley-haus site-jcmr site-half-corked

Some of my own designs and creations:

The HouseHermann Family DentalHermann Trolley

 

My Best Work So Far:

Experience Hermann opening screen  After gaining all the knowledge of the marketing world including SEO, design, development, Social Media, etc., I wanted to make a difference in the town I currently live, Hermann Missouri.  Please take some time and see what a beautiful city it is as well as some of the great things we have to offer.

Where Do You Live?

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I live in the most beautiful city in Missouri.  Hermann is a town of less than 2,500 people.  We’ve lived here since 2008 and moved here to be close to family.  My amazing wife and 3 kids enjoy this city so much because of the small-town feel and the great people that live here as well.

In fact, there is so much to share about the town, the people and the businesses here that I took everything I know about web design and development and created a website specifically for the people that visit.  You can see it by clicking on the link below:

Experience Hermann

The site has great details about events that happen all year round like Oktoberfest and Maifest.  There are business listings for the local restaurants, shopping locations and even some local residents who contribute so much to the community.  You’ll find local wineries, breweries and spirit locations and we have some amazing bed and breakfast and lodging locations to stay throughout the year.

What is Your Biggest Strength?

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Over the years through high school, college and into my professional career I have had many different jobs.  From flipping burgers to managing large amounts of data for a production home builder, I’ve found that my greatest strength is creating order out of chaos.  Couple that with setting up processes and procedures to maintain that order and you will understand my biggest strength, but also my passion.

After years of teaching myself HTML, Javascript, PHP, CSS and so on, I use that strength to help my clients get what they want from their websites.  I used to work with a manager that wanted me to produce reports for him to make decisions.  The first several times I helped him, he would tell me exactly what he wanted … so I would give it to him.  After taking one look at it he would say, “This isn’t what I wanted.  To which I would reply, “But it’s what you asked for.”  From then on I started increasing my skills of asking questions to get to the heart of the issue and then producing something that would solve it.

Your website is an extension of your business.  It is the 24-hour greeter that allows your clients to see what you offer and then interact with you on their own schedule.  My mission is to create an orderly solution for your business to interact with customers and keep them engaged with your business.

What’s With the Name “Witness?”

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Back in 2013, I was winding down my marketing firm in Grand Junction, CO.  I knew God was taking me to a different place, but I had no idea where that was.  I was frustrated, scared, hopeful, and a barrage of other emotions.

I was parked a couple streets from our office and needed some quiet.  My family and I were getting ready to leave on a new adventure and return to our home in Hermann, MO.  Needless to say I was looking for some encouragement.  Luckily, I had my iPhone on me so I opened up the Blue Letter Bible App and went to the devotional section.  The verse for that very day was Acts 1:8 – “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

That was when I knew what my overall mission was … to be a witness.  I am not perfect but I do my very best to be a witness for Jesus Christ in whatever situation I’m in.  God had led me to acquire some very unique skills of which they get honed everyday.  My hope through this business is to accurately represent the love that Christ has shown to me and to show that to others.

I usually want to say that I’ve been in the Witness Protection Program before but I don’t think anyone believes me.  =)

Dynamic Text vs. Static Text

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As developers we always try to give the customer what they want, but sometimes we need to decipher which is more important: simplicity or budget.  If a client is on a low budget constraint then that will decrease the amount of customized options we can implement into their site.  However, if a client must have simplicity of maintaining their site after the final product is done, then we, as developers, make it a point to produce a website that is as easy as possible to navigate and maintain.

Here’s the difference between dynamic text and static text. Let’s say the client has different products they sell on their site.  Obviously each product has a title and a description and if you have a widget that displays that product on their home page and they change the title in the post itself, WordPress automatically changes that information on the homepage. That’s dynamic text!

Now let’s say they want a tagline for each product. Better than that, they want that tagline to be styled on the homepage in a certain way inside that widget. Now, you might be able to find a plugin that will allow you to type your own tagline for the product, but that would mean that each time the product changed on the homepage, you would have to change the tagline too. That’s static text!!!

To make matters simpler we can use a plugin like Advanced Custom Fields and code in the functionality to do all this automatically, but how do you know when to use which solution: dynamic text or static text?

There’s two ways to determine that: budget and frequency. If a client is going to be changing information on their site regularly and has the budget … dynamic wins every time. If they update infrequently and don’t have the budget, then go for static and train them how to make the changes themselves.

Example of Dynamic Text and customized widget for the client.

Either choice is acceptable, but give them the option and set their expectations. An informed client is a happy client. =)

Anchors Away and Cat Nap Dual Site

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Working as a web designer in Hermann MO, I love having repeat business.  Especially with the managers of the Cat Nap Inn.  They contacted me a while back and said that preparations were beginning to go underway to get ready for a new Hermann MO lodging location right next door to the Cat Nap Inn.  [Read more…]