Posts Tagged ‘WordPress’
On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the fifth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the sixth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the seventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the eighth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the ninth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the tenth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the eleventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
On the twelfth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
I have always been a fan of WordPress. Okay, let me rephrase that. Since I discovered WordPress, I have always been a great fan. Similar to other people, I was hesitant at first. I thought it was simply a blogging application with limited capabilities. I equated it to Google’s Blogger and thought it was solely used for bloggers and it was much to limited for a real corporate website.
Thankfully, I was wrong. WordPress liberated me and it has liberated many website designers and business owners around the world. It is liberating because it is free and it is easy enough for normal – non website designers – people to use. WordPress is robust enough to create elaborate websites, while simple enough an in-house marketing person or business owner to add content and update.
A case in point is a client that just launched a WordPress website. The client is an ERP consulting company based out of Denver, Colorado. More importantly, the client had a limited website needed to upgrade because the company is rapidly growing. I proposed WordPress and the client agreed, then they jumped fully into design mode with me as we added plug-in upon plug-in to do such things as automated imports of news feeds, polls, quizzes, videos, events, live chat, and on and on. As a web designer I love this enthusiasm. It is great to offer a suggestion that your client not only likes, but that they build upon with their own ideas.
At the end of this project my client has a website that is robust, functional, and has solid growth potential. They can maintain it internally or hire a million different WordPress experts around the world to jump in at anytime. They are liberated and a little open source package called WordPress made this liberation possible.
The client and their transformation reminds me of a saying my Grandmother always said.
Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.
A normal website is a fish, but WordPress is the lesson of fishing.
If you’ve ever used WordPress, you know the mass of WordPress’ functionality resides in the plugins. Any high quality theme, blog, or website is loaded up with plugins. The problem is not the ability to locate plugins, but the plugin’s actual ability to work without the need for special coding.
Below is a list of my favorite plugins. These plugins are both functional and easy to use. The augment WordPress’ core functionality and require little or no coding.
Blogger is a Google application that is used by millions of people each month to produce and host personal and business-related blogs. Last month the application turned ten years old, which is rather old for Web2.0 applications. My first blog was hosted on Blogger and remnants of it still exist there today. While I’ve used Blogger in the past, I personally, have officially defected to WordPress, as I quickly outgrew Blogger’s functional capabilities.
This little birthday celebration led me to wonder if Blogger is as popular as it once was years ago. I also wonder how it fairs against the top competitors in recent years. The geek in me just could not go one wondering or let it go. I had to find out the answers to my burning questions. Well, maybe not burning, but questions nonetheless. I visited Compete to query traffic volumes for Blogger and competitor websites such as WordPress, Typepad, and Livejournal. I was actually surprised at what I discovered.
The chart represents traffic for all four sites and covers the time span of one year. Blogger is still the traffic leader with thirty million unique visitors per month. WordPress – my current darling – comes in close behind. The other sites are falling well behind at less than ten million unique visitors a month. While I don’t know if you can call ten million unique visitors per month “falling behind” in anything, there is certainly a difference in volume between the websites.
Blogger dominates because it is easy to use. I recently sent my mother-in-law to the website to host her personal blog. And it isn’t just easy and it is also free. Users can be completely clueless about website design and still create a blog because everything is drag and drop. My mother-in-law is a perfect example of why Blogger is still going strong after ten years. At age ten it is still cool because it isn’t scary, costly, or difficult for the average Internet user.
The moral of this exercise story is this – you don’t have to be young and fresh to dominate the Internet. You just have to provide value and be marketable to the masses. Blogger and WordPress have both discovered just how to do just that!
Ping list? What is a ping list and why do I need it? Website traffic is the answer!
A ping list is a list of websites that will be notified automatically each time your website posts a new blog entry. It is simple, effortless, and a critical aspect to obtaining website visitors. You post a new entry or update an existing entry and these websites will automatically be notified of this activity.
Now that I’ve told you about pinging, you may ask how do I know who to “ping”. A complete list of ping URL’s is provided below. If you are using WordPress, all you have to do is input these URL’s into the box labeled “Update Services” in the “Writing” section of your “Settings”. Next you post a blog entry and WordPress will do the rest.
Happy pinging my fellow bloggers!