Blog – Choppr

Published in Blog
on April 6, 2020

If you are reading this, you are probably one of the million users that use WordPress.

What is WordPress?

Over the years, WordPress growth has been exponential, and even I can point out some downsides and pitfalls, we cannot deny how useful and straightforward it is to build and manage your websites within the WordPress platform.

Whether you use their premium version at WordPress.com or installed their open-source version from WordPress.org, it is everywhere. There are all different sites using it, small to mid-size companies and large corporations using the WordPress platform to host either their blogs or even their whole sites.

Your site management is easy with WordPress, without a doubt. Using their Posts, Pages, and Custom Posts built-in features is genius. But how about customization (design and functionalities) and making it fulfill your site’s individual needs? You might need some expert help or hire an in-house developer for that.

WordPress Customization

WordPress customization is done in a couple of different ways:

First, you don’t need any additional help or expertise to customize your site/blog via the WordPress admin panel. This is easy to learn, and within a week or two, new users get comfortable with WordPress’s way to management.

But most of the time, that’s not enough. It would be best to have some custom functionality not available within the core WordPress features. Or you want a custom look and feel for your site to match your company or corporation needs.

This is when you go and look for a theme or plugin to either change the look or add new functionality to your site. And here, you might get overwhelmed quickly because there are hundreds of thousands of themes and plugins available out there. How to choose the right one? Some are free, and some paid. Some are good, and most are not even close. This is a challenging task. Even if you go with the most popular out there, you might not hit the bullseye. How should you know that the specific theme/plugin used million will meet your unique business individual needs?

I would say that even some of the premium and most downloaded and user themes/plugins aren’t very well coded, and you may have a lot of headaches with many of them down the road.

You may ask why? How something that makes a profit and has support could be so wrong? Well, most of the themes and plugins providers try to offer so much and bundle everything in their product, so they meet the needs of all of the people that visit or download their site. You cannot believe how many themes and plugins are all over the place and want to cover many things in a single theme (aka multipurpose themes). Not going to add URLs or sites, but here major players for premium themes that have been pushing this agenda for years.

And that’s impossible. No matter what you do, especially in this context, you cannot meet and satisfy the needs of millions in a single theme or plugin.

But people continue buying them, and premium marketplaces flourish. 9/10 of these companies/people would go to a custom solution, either theme or plugin if their idea/business grows. And if you stick to it, it will most certainly will, sooner or later. And then it comes headache, you have worked on something for 2, 3 or more years and now realize you need to invest some much more start with the backbone of your business or site from scratch.

CTRLS, the GUI for WordPress customizer

The most important question is: Is there another way to approach the themes and plugins debacle? Well, there is, and WordPress has had it in its core since version 3.4. It is called the Customizer, and you can access it, and almost any theme out there uses it in one way or another.

But the issue is, sill, it’s not end-user friendly. You need to hire or have an in-house developer to extend the Customizer. Well, not anymore. Here comes the CTRLS. It’s a premium plugin that will help you extend any theme and modify the Customizer to meet your individual needs. It has GUI, which makes it available and accessible to any user level, it is user-friendly, and even people that face WordPress for the first time can quickly start using it.

Published in Blog
on April 6, 2013

In this article, we will be walking through how to convert your Photoshop documents (PSD) into HTML (HyperText Markup Language). You may find yourself wanting to do this if you have designed a specific design or layout in Photoshop and now are looking to use it for various web purposes such as newsletters, website design, or sending out attractive electronic mailings.

Slice and dice your website design into images

When you convert your document into HTML, the first step is to slice it into images. The purpose of doing this is to separate each graphic in your document into separate images instead of being one entire large image. You may have a header or logo at the top of your document and then want to insert text in the center that you can later easily edit without going into Photoshop constantly. Do this through the following steps:

Have your document ready.
Choose the move tool (V) and get your rulers out (Ctrl+R). Click and drag with your mouse on the ruler and pull it down in the spots you want to divide and slice your image in the next step.
Get your slice tool ( C ) and make slices around every separate region you want to be separate. For example, you have social icons to which you want to be linked and slice each one separately.
Code your website template pages with HTML and CSS

After you finish that, you will want to code your website template into an HTML file with a separate folder with images. This is easier than it sounds because Photoshop will do most of the work for you.

Go to File, then save for web and devices.
You can select each region and optimize it for the fastest load time. For example: if you have a simple background, you can set it as a low-quality JPEG or GIF; or if you have a complicated logo or graphic, you can set that as a PNG or high-quality JPEG to get the best results.
Press save, and in the format region at the bottom, select HTML and Images.
Cross-browser compatibility testing and code validation

Photoshop will give you a folder with all your images and your HTML-coded file. You can use the code by right-clicking the file and using Dreamweaver or Notepad to view the HTML text. Online websites can help you test compatibility and cross-browser ability with code validation. You can also download all the different browsers and open the file in each to see how your site is working.

Published in Blog
on April 6, 2008

Year: 2008
Website: animalgenl.com
Client: Miami Animal General Hospital
Testimony: Jason Reuter

We were looking for a way to make our Pet website look more inviting to visitors and to help draw more consumers to check it out and possibly buy our products. Only knowing the basics of HTML, we knew we needed help to jazz it up and make it look more pleasing. That’s when we came across the Choppr.

With their vast knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, they were able to turn our simple, boring website into a website that was pleasing to the eye and caught visitors’ attention.

We had things in the website, like certain graphics, that we still wanted to use, and they were able to incorporate those graphics and use their design experience to put it all together to make a great-looking and easy-to-navigate website. They were able to make it look warm, inviting, and professional, like a site you would like to visit again. They also made it easier to navigate. Everything is right there and labeled clearly, so visitors don’t need to get frustrated trying to find particular articles or products like they did before.

Not only were they able to make a great-looking site, but they also helped us with designing our plain text newsletter into a newsletter that you would expect to see from a professional site. They even helped us better set up our store where it looked more professional, and by using Shopify, we were able to move from just accepting payments through PayPal to having our shopping cart.

They did an excellent job with our site, and it didn’t take them that long. They stayed in contact with us the whole time they worked on the site, always answering emails and questions promptly. It was well worth the money we spent, and while we haven’t recuperated all that spent on it, we are well on our way. We recommend the Choppr to anyone who needs work done on their site. They do excellent work, are very responsive, and put the customer first. What more could you want.

Published in Blog
on April 6, 2008

Why do we need PSD to HTML service providers?

Present data of Internet users worldwide shown by internetworldstats.com is 1,802,330,457. Internet penetration is about 26.6% of the population, and on November 1st, 2006, CNN reported that the web reached a new milestone of 100 million sites.

With these rattling figures and deep Internet penetration, it becomes necessary to have a beautifully designed and widely accessible website. Frequent revision of browsers and their new versions makes the cross-browser compatibility features a necessity. There comes an equally important part of Web design with all these things: HTML/CSS conversion of the design.

What is PDF to HTML?

Since PSD to HTML is time-consuming and requires manual coding, no software help can be accessed to take off the pressure. Here comes the role of PSD to HTML service providers.

PSD to HTML service providing companies are the ones that are professionally sound and possess the expertise for this particular job. The parameters of which one can decide upon choosing a specific firm are:

• market reputation
• brand popularity
• quality of work (does it follow web standards and work on major browsers)
• turnaround time of project delivery
• competitive pricing