Eileen Lonergan

A while back my friend Thomas, developer of the SmallBiz theme for WordPress told me that he was building a responsive theme.  Because I love to be on trend I could not wait to get started with the theme and build a site, which I did for the Cherry Building in historic downtown New Bedford, MA.

The homepage has lots of flexibility for layouts, as it is all based on widgets.  I had some really beautiful images (thank you to my photographer mother), so I really wanted to use those in a rotating slide show.  I love using large rotating slides and back in the day I would have to login via FTP and modify the theme files if I wanted a slideshow this large. With the new responsive theme I don’t have to do any FTP work (which I know was daunting to some of you out there).

The widget dashboard has some super easy to use options:

• An Appointment Request Widget (this is great because it doesn’t actually schedule, so you don’t have to connect your site to a scheduling service).
• Image Widget (in case you don’t want to write a string of code)
• Slideshow Widget (love)
• Visual Editor Text Widget (again, non coders, this is so great!!)
• Email Opt in Form
• YouTube Widget
• Blog Style Widget

It is all very simple to use and you just drag and drop widgets to suit your design.

Using the responsive theme also saved on time because I didn’t need to create a separate mobile theme.  My content is automatically transposed into a format that is appropriate for the iPad and a smart phone.  I have loads of tutorials on the SmallBiz theme on my blog, but if you need some help, or have any questions, please feel free to send me a note.