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WordPress

Playing with WordPress 2.5

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

This guest post is written by Lara Kulpa, owner of Anubis Marketing. The company’s services include blog design and development, search engine optimization, and internet marketing.

Well it’s been a few weeks now and I’ve had the chance to play around with the new version of WordPress, 2.5. I have to say that so far I’m pretty pleased with it, but it definitely takes some getting used to.

For starters, let me assure you that as with any WordPress upgrade, it’s a simple process to do. You delete and reinstall a couple folders, overwrite the rest, and run the script. Quite the cake walk to be honest. That said, if you’re not familiar with all the WP files, or how to properly use an FTP program, it’s likely best to leave the upgrade process to your developer.

Once that’s done, you’ll have to get used to the fact that the administration interface is completely different than it was before. The links for tasks have been rearranged, but it’s not something that would take a rocket scientist to figure out. Things have simply “moved”.

WordPress 2.5 Dashboard UI

Some benefits you’ll find right off the bat are better widget handling (if your theme uses widgets) and a really great Flash-based uploader (via the new “Add Media” link) for photos, mp3 files, and videos. You can now see more of your uploads at once, sorting by type, and the interface for the uploader is simply much cooler and faster than the old one. The best part is that you can now upload multiple files at once.

You can also create custom-sized thumbnails yourself, rather than accept the default. That’s great news for people who have very large images that they only want “thumbnailed” down to something that won’t break their design, but still want to provide a way for the visitor to be able to see the image full size. (more…)

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Why WordPress? My First Podcast

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

word-sell-man-with-megaphone.JPG
Tuesday my first-ever podcast was released, an interview (about ten minutes long) with Ken Rayment at Better Process Podcast.

Our topic was why industrial firms should use WordPress as a platform for their websites, whether or not they have a blog.

The podcast was quite an experience, one that gave me a greater appreciation of how difficult it is to think on your feet when the microphone is on. Ken was easy to talk to, but I found myself wanting to say ten things at once. It’s sure a lot easier on a keyboard! I’ll probably look for more opportunities to do podcasts, only because many people would rather hear it than read it.

The most important podcasting lessons I learned -

  • The more focused the topic, the better.
  • Prepare thoroughly.
  • Don’t try to say too much.

About Better Process
Ken’s mission is to give American small and midsize manufacturing firms ideas to enable them to thrive in an economic climate that isn’t particularly friendly to manufacturing. He was in Chicago last night and we had dinner together. He’s a great guy. I wish we had recorded our dinner conversation.

One of the many interesting things we talked about was how engineers use the web pretty much exclusively to find suppliers and do research. Companies that sell to manufacturers need to be visible on the search engines, and they need to put out information that engineers can use. But isn’t risky to put detailed product specifications on a web page? We concluded that it is, but it’s even riskier to withhold information. Engineers will simply search online until they find what they want.

Not an ideal choice, but one that companies really need to make.

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Use WordPress for Your Company Web Site

Tuesday, September 4th, 2007

word-sell-lara-kulpa-anubis-marketing.jpgTransitioning from Blogger to WordPress would have been impossible for me without the help of Lara Kulpa, an incredibly talented WordPress developer I met through my blogging friend Liz Strauss. (Thank you, Liz!)

Lara and I are teaming up to help companies build Web sites and/or blogs in WordPress. From my point of view as a sales and marketing strategist, I can see enormous sales and marketing value in the WordPress approach. For a look at the technical benefits of WordPress, here are insights from Lara.

Interview with Lara Kulpa, Anubis Marketing.

1. How long have you been working with WordPress?
I discovered it back in 2005 when a friend of mine was using it for her
freelancing website. She showed me how to get it and where I could go for
help with it, and after playing with it for a weekend, I was hooked! I have
since built all my client websites with it, regardless of the nature of
their business.

2. What are 3 or 4 standout features of WordPress?
Only 3 or 4? (laugh) What I love about WordPress is the customization
capabilities that can be done with it. It can be a standard website, it can
be just a blog. It can be both. It’s easy to create fluid, clean websites
with super easy manageability for the client. If you can write an email, you
can use the administrative back-end of the software. There’s pretty much a
plugin (extention) that can be used to just about anything, like for
monetizing the site (showing ads), giving readers a chance to subscribe to
posts and comments, and other ways of organizing the layout of the site. To
summarize, it’s nice, clean software with great functionality, potential,
and support from the community.

3. Why would a business want to build its Web site on WordPress?
WordPress creates search engine friendly sites pretty much out of the box.
If you have a knowledgeable developer working on it, you’ll be up and
running in no time with a site that YOU will be in control of once the
initial build is done. Business owners are busy people, and no longer have
to pay an in-house person to hold the sole job of working on the site. It
requires little to no knowledge of programming or code to use once your site
is built, and makes it super easy to make changes to the site in seconds.

4. Is WordPress practical for companies with 500+ page sites and interactive
applications?
It depends on the applications, but in terms of pages, the capabilities are
pretty enormous. I think the largest site I’ve seen in terms of pages
reached over 3000. Shopping carts exist for WordPress in the form of
plugins, and you can run podcasts, video, and pretty much any other type of
interactive thing you can think of. One of the things I love about WordPress
is that it’s not too friendly with flash. (Flash is bad for SEO!)

5. How does WordPress compare with other platforms for SEO?
Well as I said, it’s search engine friendly out of the box. It offers
customized URLs, where you can use your page titles or other keywords
instead of things like “?p=137″, the navigation is pretty basic but
well-structured and easy to follow, pages load quickly because they’re
stored on a database and not in your files, and there are tons of great
plugins out there to maximize your SEO efforts.

6. How does WordPress compare with other platforms in terms of design?
Well in terms of the backend design, it’s gorgeous! Nice and clean, easy for
any level user to navigate, and very straightforward. You want to write a
new page? You click on “Write” and then on “Page”. Want to add a new link?
Click on “Links” and then on “Add New”. Can’t get much simpler than that! In
terms of the visible site, the design capabilities are nearly limitless.
It’s entirely possible to take an existing website’s design and clean it up
for WordPress. By it’s general nature, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have
a site that’s fluid and looks “connected” across the pages, since you only
have to do the design work once and not every time you create a new page.

7. How do you see WordPress changing over the next 12-24 months?
I can only see it becoming more powerful and more in demand. There is a
large number of people who devote their time to continuing to develop the
software, the plugins, and showing off the design capabilities of the
program for free, every day, and that number is growing! I feel it will
always remain the least complicated to use and the best performing site
creation software out there.

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Word Sell Waiting for WordPress

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

We were hoping to transfer my Web site and this blog to their new WordPress home today, but due to technical difficulties we have to wait, hopefully not long.

I’m beginning to think WordPress would be an excellent platform for many small and midsize company Web sites, whether a blog is involved or not.

1. Easy to set up.
2. Reasonable cost.
3. Incredible flexibility to add and change Web pages.
4. And for us habitual tweakers, fast and cost-free editing.

Those are some pretty big benefits, especially for a company that’s growing and evolving, like Word Sell, Inc.

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Word Sell Likes WordPress

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

So far, so good with rebuilding my website and blog in WordPress. The more I see of WordPress, the better I like it.

1. Back end navigation is intuitive.

2. With a seemingly endless supply of plug-ins, a website can become about as robust as you want it to be.

3. Having the ability to create new web pages and tweak current web pages without having to go through a professional (and often expensive) programmer saves time and money.

4. Making my blog part of my overall site makes all the sense in the world. It makes it easy for the reader to browse and to get a sense of who I am and what my business is all about.

5. The WordPress community seems very active, innovative and passionate. That’s reassuring, because it makes me think WordPress will continue to add new capabilities and stay current with or ahead of technology. Nobody wants a website that’s technologically out of date one or two years after launch.

What’s your experience been with WordPress? What features do you like most? Any Blogger converts out there with success stories/horror stories? (I hope none of the latter.)

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