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WordPress as Website

Great Line Up of Speakers at WordCamp Savannah

The WordCamp Savannah is happening next weekend August 20-22, and it includes ME! I was already excited about taking the New Tricks Team to their first WordCamp experience. This will be my fourth WordCamp but the first one where I am a speaker. Here is the line up of speakers:

Speakers

WordCamp Savannah will bring together a variety of speakers including both visiting WordPress experts and local WordPress practitioners. We’ll be posting speaker bios shortly, but so far, here are some of the confirmed speakers:

  • Matt Thomas, SCAD alumni and designer for Automattic.
  • Caila Brown, SCAD Radio General Manager & District Print Art Director.
  • Mark Jaquith, lead core developer of WordPress and independent consultant.
  • Andrew Nacin, committing core developer of WordPress and Google Summer of Code participant.
  • Jane Wells, user experience designer for WordPress.
  • Daryl Koopersmith, contributing core developer of WordPress and Google Summer of Code participant.
  • Ptah Dunbar, contributing core developer of WordPress.
  • Sheri Bigelow, Happiness Engineer for wordpress.com.
  • Anthony Bubel, Happiness Engineer for wordpress.com.
  • Matt Mullenweg, co-founder and benevolent dictator for life of WordPress.
  • Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress for Dummies and BuddyPress for Dummies.
  • Sara Cannon
  • Dan Cannon
  • Judi Knight ( Here is a link to the presentation)

I will be speaking on using Social Media Plugins that you can use on Websites to help you with using your site as the hub of your Social Media Marketing. In the meantime here are some things you can do to get your social media game rolling.

This is a smaller WordCamp and offers a chance to really have some face time with a lot of well known people in the WordPress Community and to meet and mingle with others. It is only 25.00. How can you lose?

Your Site Visitors Should Be Able to Know Like and Trust Your Website

When someone comes to your website, you have about 3-5 seconds for them to “get” whether they want to stay or leave. I  believe that part of their assessment is whether or not they can ” know, like and trust ” you  through your website.  I have found that several factors go into building this first impression with your potential and your current clients. [click to continue…]

Why Re-Design Your Website?

I  just read a great post called Why Redesign Your Website? by HubSpot which is a SEO marketing Company that is pretty darn on target. I really liked what they said. One of the main points is that sure you have to have a well done site that is polished and put together, but…. the point is getting more visitors and leads, So you do a redesign if you are not on a Content Management Site (CMS) platform, not because you are bored with the design or because your CEO wants a new logo design.

Marketing guru, Seth Godin says,

“I’m going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? …Your car isn’t unique, and your house might not be either”.

The founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweig once said to me ( I love that he actually, in person,  said this to me)

“I wonder why any developer would build a theme from scratch for a client when there are over 5000 themes to customize and save them time and money”

Great content is a most important activity on your website and adding the content on a regular basis drives people to your site. Which is most easily done with a Content Management Site such as WordPress and they should absolutely include a blog, RSS and landing pages.

Any website built today should include these basics.  They are not expensive, and they work.  A blog is a great way to create content on an ongoing basis, and to start to converse with your customers and prospects and RSS allows some content from your website to be automatically pushed out to other websites and people, increasing the reach of your content.

So take these words to heart and when you find yourself spending too much time with what the banner should look like. Yes, it should look sharp, but it really matters more that you get your content out there with the right technology, the right navigation, and a way to start and keep adding more content on a regular basis.

I am talking to a woman today who had her site redesigned over a year ago and it still has not gone live because she was paralyzed over the design the technology choices and her wording. I agree, for someone new to all of this it can be daunting. And there is a lot of competing information out there. There is a lot of OLD school information out there. Like selling people SEO services around key words and metatags, or people still building static, non-owner friendly sites that the site owner has to pay the developer every time they want it updated! At New Tricks, we really try and make it easy for you. Yes, of course we believe in good design, but it is important not to let your obsession on perfection stop you from doing it now.

Stromquist Control Trends

Stromquist Control Trends Screen Print

Project Highlights :

Stromquist & Company has an existing website for product information and online ordering. They asked New Tricks to help create a complementary new site to share information with their colleagues in the commercial and industrial control community. [click to continue…]

Using WordPress as CMS, the Musical

We have written before about the evolution of WordPress’s use as a website development platform rather than, what most people think, as just a blogging program. Using WordPress for websites is cutting edge Web 2.0 and takes advantage of WordPress’s use of a My SQL database. It then becomes a content management system, otherwise referred to as a CMS, which offers much more to a business than a traditional old skool static or Flash website.

Today, I want to bring you what I imagine must be the first song in history about using WordPress as a CMS. I know it is a little rough and I understand there is a new version coming out with much improved production quality. In the meantime, I bring you a performance by Charles Williams from the Dallas WordPress Camp:

Using WordPress as a CMS from Charles Williams on Vimeo.

You really need a great Website When the Economy is Lousy

We came across a post today called, Lousy Economy, Awesome Website. I loved this post. I completely agree that this is the time, with our economy so precarious, that it is most important to put your best out on the Internet for your business to thrive. I think it is  just as important to have a website if you are marketing yourself in a job search.

With the ever increasing use of the Internet and new web 2.0 technology, people have higher expectations for what a website should look like and how it should behave. Shoddy, poorly organized sites with bad graphics will not be well received. People don’t use the Yellow Pages anymore. They just Google your or your business to get your number. You better show up.

I went to look up my son’s doctor’s office number and she showed up number one in Google as living and working in Michigan. Her current practice here in Atlanta has a website that one of the doctors put together. The graphics were bad, the navigation poor, and the photos of the physicians were scary. What a waste of an opportunity to make a professional impression. I am not talking about spending an arm and a leg. Good web design does not have to be expensive, and it will pay for itself.

We just got a new intern here at New Tricks. We were immediately impressed by this young man because he had an awesome on-line resume portfolio. No flimsy ass business card for him. he was the first applicant I looked at and so I thought they all would have comparably designed web-based portfolios. Not so. I say bring it on people. Get it together NOW. Our New Tricks motto is It’s never too late….but of course you have to remember that its the early bird that catches the worm!

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