Tag Archive for: blogs

NEW “Wonderful Web” ENews: “New is New Again”

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The new edition of our “It’s a Wonderful Web” enewsletter is out. It includes the follow short stories:

  • It’s All About YOU (including Paul Simon quote)
  • New Marketing in Another New Era
  • Whipping Up Lower Cost Websites (fresh offer)
  • Make Your Marketing More Effective
  • New Custom-Designed Client WordPress Websites
  • Is Your WordPress Website Safe? (new services)
  • New News About NewMarU (update on our educational site)
  • Luscious Links: More Useful Info, Just a Click Away (valuable!)
  • Quick Hits: About the New Enews Format

If you’re not already a subscriber, you can read it online by clicking this link.

WordPress Has Become My “Standard” for Blog Websites (thanks in part to Google’s Matt Cutts)

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One of the most interesting moments at Webmaster World was the endorsement of WordPress by none other than Google’s Matt Cutts. For those who may not know, Matt has become the wonderfully laid-back and articulate “voice” of Google at Webmaster World. (photo by Andy Beal used under Creative Commons license.) As detailed in the video interview linked below, Cutts unexpectedly told the PubCon audience that by designing and producing a website in WordPress you, in essence, make it defacto search engine friendly. Especially with the latest version 2.3.

I was very pleased to hear this because I’ve recently upgraded my golf blog, TheJoyofGolfing.com to WordPress 2.3; and then in the same week, ComBridges has also recently taken over site updates for a client who has a more static page (non-blog) website that was already produced in WordPress. Our company is also currently using it to add an integrated blog to a pre-existing design. These are options that, frankly, I didn’t realize existed with a “blogging” platform previously.

Bottom line, I have become increasingly impressed with the WordPress website publishing platform. In addition to a well-thoughtout and feature rich back-end interface, there are options for everything from Google AdSense to static pages that make it more than just a blogging tool. And the real capper is the excellent array of third-party plug-in tools which have been written for the open source WordPress platform. For example, as a search engine marketer, I was thrilled to find out about the “all-in-one seo” plug-in for search engine optimization. I’ve gotta believe that WordPress is now the state-of-the-art website publishing platform. Personally, I feel empowered by its features, stability and extensibility.

And then today, I got word that Yahoo has written a very impressive plug-in of their own which helps website and blog authors to almost extemporaneously add links and pictures. Yahoo’s is kind of a “smart” plug-in that has the capability to suggest links as well as pictures (via Yahoo-owned, Flickr). Click here to watch a video demo of the Yahoo Shortcuts for WordPress.

Below, you will find that interview with Matt Cutts. It includes similar comments about WordPress’ search engine friendly “nature” as well as other sage search marketing advise. Note, this endorsement is particularly interesting (as one commenter to this video points out) given that Google owns a competing blog platform (which I am using here), Blogger.

Note, as mentioned, WordPress can also do “flat” pages so it isn’t necessarily just a blogging platform. It’s really a website development platform or even a lightweight CMS (content management system) as well as a blogging platform, or some combination of the above, depending on your needs.

The only trouble is that now I’m going to have to convert this blog over to WordPress. Fortunately, I don’t think that’s too tough…

Cool Convergence & Browsing Bonus: Great TechCrunch-NetVibes Mashup

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For your browsing pleasure…

In announcing the new NetVibes roll-out of the ability to create public personalized pages, the marvelous Michael Arrington also offered his own personalized, customized TechCrunch NetVibes page “featuring many of my favorite news feeds and a few widgets.”

I offer this to you because it is a cool convergence. From my limited experience, NetVibes is my favorite customizable “home page;” but more importantly TechCrunch is my favorite source of information about the bleeding edge of Web 2.0. Scroll down on this TechCruch/NetVibes page to see, for example, the Alexa Widget showing TechCrunch ahead of Business Week and CNet in online viewership; or enjoy the build-in video references; and on and on.

If you’re reading this, you’ll probably find things of interest on the Netvibes.com/TechCrunch page. If nothing else, it’s a great demo of the plug-and-play nature of the ever-expanding Web 2.0 socially-networked Internet.

Enjoy!

Understanding Blogging 101

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This dude, ChrisG, is getting some well-deserved viral buzz. He’s doing the blog thing well; and he’s explaining what, why and how he’s doing this blog thing well, all along the way.

I know many folks out there are scratching their heads trying to understand the whole blogosphere and viral marketing phenom. Well, Chris’ latest post, The Three Dimensions of Blogging: The Vital Combination Every Blog Must Have is as good an introductory summary, explanation and orientation as I’ve seen.

And since Chris is something of a blogging “guru” his site also offers many other resources as well. Most of all, check out how he walks his talk, the free e-book only after subscribing, etc etc.

Thanks, Chris. Great work.

Blogumentary, Video & Article Show Why WE ARE the Internet

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I guess it was just a natural progression… Blogs, to viral movies about blogs, to blog posts about bloggie videos… The Lulu.TV video site is not bad either. And there’s more!

But if you really want to understand why we are the Internet, I highly recommend Kevin Kelly’s We Are the Web from Wired, August 2005. Seriously.

Simple AllYouCanUpload Site Does Blog & EBay Photos Right!

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Here’s another great pick from Michael Arrington at TechCruch, a simple site that let’s you post images for linking from your blog or EBay or whatever web page you like. It also will resize the images automatically if you wish. This saves the necessity of having server space and using FTP. And as the name implies, AllYouCanUpload is without limits in terms of disk space or bandwidth usage. Wow! As the site says: “1. Upload Your Images 2. Copy the Links 3. Post!” Simpler really is better. Arrington explains it well.

Oh yeah, did I say that it’s totally FREE? And you don’t even need to create an account (neither a user name nor a password is required). Just do it. (Really.)

Simpler is Still Better: One-Page Sites

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The champions of the cause of simplicity, 37 signals, who deliver online web services that are by their own proclamation, “the best web-based software products possible with the least number of features necessary” have made an interesting blog post, visually, of one-page websites. For when you don’t really need more than one (page). The most interesting part of this post is the comments. Evidence of a good (maybe great) blog… Cruise the commentaries…