Yet again, WordPress keeps harden the security for the benefit of all. WordPress is growing a like any other juvenile, it has growing pains. Only through pain, can someone grow and so goes the same for WordPress. The schedule release of WordPress 2.9 with many features that a web developer can use to increase ROI for customers. Also, some more tighten up of security since technology and techniques keep evolving. Rest assure that Mena Studios is on the leading edge with some of the biggest WordPress sites on the planet. Consulting and hacking away WordPress sites is our specialty.
WordPress has an important security upgrade that effects all installations. All my clients are being upgrade ASAP. If you have any issues with your WordPress site call, email or IM me. As always Mena Studios is on top of issues most web host providers don’t even know about.
Here is some more info about the exploit.
http://fullthrottledevelopment.com/wordpress-plugin-to-stop-trackback-dos-attacks
WordPress has released another upgrade because of an unexpected vulnerability. Clients’ of Mena Studios LLC are gonna be upgraded through out the week. If you experience any problems please email or call me ASAP.
I need a simple update done to my site but my web designer is not available.
I don’ have time to learn all this Internet stuff.
I just broke my website…
Business owners are not web designers or developers. A business person is usually focusing on their niche. Would you represent yourself in the court of law? Don’t answer that unless you have an attorney present. Only a fool outside the web development community would attempt developing and designing their own business web site. A business person needs a professional web designer to build their web site’s foundation. The foundation it is built upon is WordPress.
WordPress is open source blog publishing application that has transformed into a robust CMS. CMS stands for Content Management System which enable a user to control everything on their website. WordPress has grown up from merely being a blogging platform to a serious CMS for businesses across a wide spectrum. The “CMS” part of WordPress is what enable businesses to focus on their business instead of their website.
WordPress CMS enable you to manage your content using an Internet browser. You can easily update, edit, add pages and much more easily using WordPress CMS. A business can take advantage of updating their web site without their webmaster. The user interface of WordPress is as simple as writing a document in MS Word. A business can easily change their store hours, services, location, adding photos and much more. The need for a webmaster is reduced when having a WordPress CMS power your web site.
The ability for a business owner to update their own web site saves money. In the past, a business owner would have to pay a webmaster anywhere from $50 to $85 a hour to update their web site. Today, with WordPress CMS a business owner can save money by updating their own site easily. The reason to use WordPress for your business is simple. WordPress CMS saves you money.
I am starting to upgrade all my clients’ Wordpress installations. There may be some down time due to some WP plugins conflicts. Each installation is set up differently so upgrades may go smoothly for some but not for all. If you run into any problems please contact me.
Its that time again to upgrade to the latest release of Wordpress 2.7.1. Wordpress has develope beyond a mere blogging platform to a multi functional CMS for small, mid and large businesses. I am currently developing web sites with Wordpress and modifying exsisting premium themes for clients. If you have any question on how Wordpress can replace your current site please email me or IM me.
Sometimes you just can’t help stupid. – by some fella
I just don’t get it when a business does not have a website. In today’s business world, a web site is as important as having a phone. A web site is a direct reflection on your business. You should not hand off an important job to a family member who dabbles with computers. You should use a professional web developer for your web site needs. Here are 20 good reason why you should have a web site.
Originally authored by Net 101. I have updated a few numbers.
1. To Establish A Presence
According to the latest numbers there are 1,596,270, 108 Internet users(source). In North America there are 251,290,489 Internet users and growing. To ignore these numbers is ignoring potential business. If you don’t show an interest in serving them your competitor will.
2. To Network
A lot of what passes for business is simply nothing more than making connections with other people. Every smart business person knows, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Passing out your business card is part of every good meeting and every business person can tell more than one story how a chance meeting turned into the big deal. Well, what if you could pass out your business card to thousands, maybe millions of potential clients and partners, saying this is what I do and if you are ever in need of my services, this is how you can reach me. You can, 24 hours a day, inexpensively and simply, on the WWW.
3. To Make Business Information Available
What is basic business information? Think of a Yellow Pages ad. What are your hours? What do you do? How can someone contact you? What methods of payment do you take? Where are you located at? Now think of a Yellow Pages ad where you have instant communication. What is today’s special? Today’s interest rate? Next week’s parking lot sale information? If you could keep your customer informed of every reason why they should do business with you, don’t you think you could do more business? You can on the WWW.
4. To Serve Your Customers
Making business information available is one of the most important ways to serve your customers. But if you look at serving the customer, you’ll find even more ways to use WWW technology. How about making forms available to pre-qualify for loans, or have your staff do a search for that classic jazz record your customer is looking for, without tying up your staff on the phone to take down the information? Allow your customer to punch in sizes and check it against a database that tells him what color of jacket is available in your store? All this can be done, and more, on the WWW.
5. To Heighten Public Interest
You won’t get Newsweek magazine to write up your local store opening, but you might get them to write up your Web Page address if it is something new and interesting. Even if Newsweek would write about your local store opening, you wouldn’t benefit from someone in a distant city reading about it, unless of course, they were coming to your town sometime soon. With Web page information, anybody anywhere who can access the Web and hears about you is a potential visitor to your Web site and a potential customer for your information there.
6. To Release Time Sensitive Materials
What if your materials need to be released no earlier than midnight? The quarterly earnings statement, the grand prize winner, the press kit for the much anticipated film, the merger news? Well, you sent out the materials to the press with the ‘Do not release before such and such time” statement and hope for the best. Now the information can be made available at midnight or any time you specify, with all related materials such as photographs, bios, etc. released at exactly the same time. Imagine the anticipation of “All materials will be made available on our Web site at 12:01 AM”. The scoop goes to those that wait for the information to be posted, not the one who releases your information early.
7. To Sell Things
Many people think that this is the number 1 thing to do with the World Wide Web, but we made it number seven to make it clear that we think you should consider selling things on the Internet and the World Wide Web after you have done all the things above and maybe even after doing quite a few more things from this list. Why? Well, the answer is complex but the best way to put it is, do you consider the telephone the best place to sell things? Probably not. You probably consider the telephone a tool that allows you to communicate with your customer, which in turn helps you sell things. Well, that’s how we think you should consider the WWW. The technology is different, of course, but before people decide to become customers, they want to know about you, what you do and what you can do for them. Which you can do easily and inexpensively on the WWW. When you are ready to sell, make sure you have the information people need to help them decide available on your web site, without paying so much that you won’t make a profit until the next century. That’s smart business.
8. To make pictures, sound and film files available
What if your widget is great, but people would really love it if they could see it in action? The album is great but with no airplay, nobody knows that it sounds great? A picture is worth a thousand words, but you don’t have the space for a thousand words? The WWW allows you to add sound, pictures and short movie files to your company’s info if that will serve your potential customers. No brochure will do that.
9. To reach a highly desirable demographic market
The demographic of the WWW user is probably the highest mass-market demographic available. Usually college-educated or being college educated, making a high salary or soon to make a high salary, it’s no wonder that Wired magazine, the magazine of choice to the Internet community, has no problem getting Lexus and other high-end marketer’s advertising. Even with the addition of the commercial on-line community, the demographic will remain high for many years to come.
10. To Answer Frequently Asked questions
Whoever answers the phones in your organization can tell you, their time is usually spent answering the same questions over and over again. These are the questions customers and potential customers want to know the answer to before they deal with you. Post them on a WWW page and you will have removed another barrier to doing business with you and free up some time for that harried phone operator.
11. To Stay In Contact With Salespeople
Your employees on the road may need up-to-the-minute information that will help them make the sale or pull together the deal. If you know what that information is, you can keep it posted in complete privacy on the WWW. A quick local phone call can keep your staff supplied with the most detailed information, without long distance phone bills and tying up the staff at the home office.
12. To Open International Markets
You may not be able to make sense of the mail, phone and regulation systems in all your potential international markets, but with a Web page, you can open up a dialogue with international markets as easily as with the company across the street. As a matter-of-fact, before you go onto the Web, you should decide how you want to handle the international business that will come your way, because your postings are certain to bring international opportunities your way, whether it is part of your plan or not. Another added benefit; if your company has offices overseas, they can access the home offices information for the price of a local phone call. Plus, you can find out how many international customers can access you that could never reach you before at a reasonable cost.
13. To Create a 24 Hour Service
If you’ve ever remembered too late or too early to call the opposite coast, you know the hassle. We’re not all on the same schedule. Business is worldwide but your office hours aren’t. Trying to reach Asia or Europe is even more frustrating. But Web pages serve the client, customer and partner 24 hours a day, seven days a week. No overtime either. It can customize information to match needs and collect important information that will put you ahead of the competition, even before they get into the office.
14. To Make Changing Information Available Quickly
Sometimes, information changes before it gets off the press. Now you have a pile of expensive, worthless paper. Electronic publishing changes with your needs. No paper, no ink, no printer’s bill. You can even attach your web page to a database which customizes the page’s output to a specific need or customer, and you can change as many times in a day as you need. No printed piece can match that flexibility.
15. To Allow Feedback From Customers
You pass out the brochure, the catalog, the booklet. But it doesn’t work. No sales, no calls, no leads. What went wrong? Wrong color, wrong price, wrong market? Keep testing, the marketing books say, and you’ll eventually find out went wrong. That’s great for the big boys with deep pockets, but who is paying the bills? You are and you don’t have the time nor the money to wait for the answer. With a Web page, you can ask for feedback and get it instantaneously with no extra cost. An instant e-mail response can be built into Web pages and can get the answer while its fresh in your customers mind, without the cost and lack of response of business reply mail.
16. To Test Market New Services and Products
Tied into the reason above, we all know the cost of rolling out a new product. Advertising, advertising, advertising, PR and advertising. Expensive, expensive, expensive. Once you have been on the Web and know what to expect from those who are seeing your page, they are the least expensive market for you to reach. They will also let you know what they think of your product faster, easier and much less expensively than any other market you may reach. For the cost of a page or two of Web programming, you can have a crystal ball into where to position your product or service in the marketplace. Amazing.
17. To Reach The Media
Every kind of business needs the exposure that the media can bring, as we touched on in reason #5 “To Heighten Public Interest”, but what if your business is reaching the media, as a news wire, a publicist or a public policy group. The media is the most wired profession today, since their main product is information and they can get it more quickly, cheaply and easily on-line. On-line press kits are becoming more and more common, since they work with the digital environment of more and more press rooms. Digital images can be put in place without the stripping and shooting of the old press rooms and digital text can be edited and output on tight deadlines. All the these can be made available on a Web page.
18. To Reach The Education and Youth Market
If your market is education, consider that most universities already offer Internet access to their students and most K-12’s will be on the Internet within the next few years. Books, athletic shoes, study courses, youth fashion and anything else that would want to reach these overlapping markets needs to be on the Web. Even with the coming of the commercial on-line services and their somewhat older populations there will be nothing but growth in the percentage of the under 25 market that will be on-line.
19. To Reach The Specialized Market
Selling a very specialized product? You may think that the Internet is not a good place to be. Well, think again. The Internet isn’t just computer science students anymore. With the 1,596,270, 108 Internet users and growing users of the WWW, even the most narrowly defined interest group will be represented in large numbers. Since the Web has several very good search programs, your interest group will be able to find you, or your competitors.
20. To Serve Your Local Market
We’ve talked about the power to serve the world with a Web page. How about your neighborhood? If you are located in Long Beach Island, the Jersey Shore area, Manahawkin or Little Egg Harbor, there is probably enough local customers with Web access to make it worth your while to consider Web marketing. A local Tuckerton, NJ restaurant even takes lunch orders through the Internet! But no matter where you are, if the big client has Web access, you should be there too. You can make the Web a part of your sales team no matter where your market is.
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. – Albert Einstein
Focus your message when marketing your web site.
- What do you do?
- What distinguishes you from your competition?
Focusing your message should be the first thing your consider even before your site goes live. Your focus should be no more than one sentence long. In person you have the opportunity to size up your potential client and tailor fit your message. Online you don’t have that opportunity, so you have to start from the beginning. Famous football coach Vince Lombardi always started the season with “This is a football”. Reminding rookies and veterans alike about the basics. Vince Lombardi focused on the main objective which translated to success. Focusing your message on your web site should be simple and basic.
Focusing your message on your web site will make it easier for search engines to list you higher. A better listing on search engines will help potential customers find you. All the search engines will love your site because it is “focused”.
Your site should have only one subject to focus on. If your site has multiple subjects you should categorize it appropriately. If your subject is to broad, cut it down to a few categories within that subject. Keep it simple.
Looking for some new theme for your Wordpress site? There are literally thousands of free themes to browse through. If you are looking for a custom solution or need some modification contact me for some consultation. I highly recommend not to mess with an exsisting Wordpress site that has been already modified. You can potentially mess up your site.
Wordpress Themes.
Viral marketing is its simplist form is just word of mouth. Done right, viral marketing encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. To understand viral marketing and how it is done on the Internet I am going to use the Subservient Chicken example. In 2004 a web site appeared featuring a person in a chicken custume who would take commands online. The subservient chicken would do the bidding of what you commanded. The web site got circulated through email, social networks like MySpace and word of mouth. The site received tons of hits from all over the world. Everybody in the world who had a computer and Internet connection knew about the subservient chicken. The viral marketing was a success for Burger King in promoting their new Chicken Crisp sandwich. Also, the motto “have it your way” made sense for Burger King to offer “chicken the way you want it”. The viral marketing techniques used were creative and basic at the same time. Creative because of the subservient chicken and basic because of the subtle marketing message. There are many forms of viral marketing that can help your site and business. Viral marketing done right should boost exposure to your business.
