Jenn Mears Web Design

At a Salem Chamber of Commerce coffee connection last summer, I had the opportunity to meet Jennifer Bell, the manager of the Salem Main Streets Initiative, a non-profit focused on revitalizing the downtown area. She had mentioned that they were looking to develop a web site on their URL, salemmainstreets.org, and now, that plan has come to fruition!

It was a lot of fun to work on something that would reach into so many aspects of our community and there is so much going on in Salem that at times the committee wasn’t sure what the main focus of the site should be. Was it for visitors looking to find out about all there is to do here? Was it for new and current business owners to tap into all the resources available to them? Was it for residents to follow local business news and find out what’s happening in their town? Luckily, the idea of a Wordpress-driven site was approved and its flexibility and ease-of-use was a good fit for the task at hand. Welcome to the new Salem Main Streets site, where you can find information about local festivals, shopping, dining and new businesses. There is a section for local business owners and an interactive map, powered by Community Walk, to be your guide to everything this great community has to offer!

Now that you have your Pages in your WP site up and organized into their little families, it’s time to add your content! Yay!

So now what? Since Wordpress is free and open-source driven, one of the caveats is that one is given the files with a “Here you go, now run along.” kind of attitude which can send users to the codex and forums ad nauseum. Usually what happens on my end of things is that I create the “shell” of the website and my clients are given login info so they can open up the pages and add/change content on their own. If the idea of using the dashboard is a new one, then allow me to make introductions. (more…)