WordPress

3 posts

Schedule Posts In WordPress

WordPress

Wordpress post schedulingTame the rollercoaster. Do you create a flurry of articles as you nurture your creative process? Some of us must have the time and focus to sit down and develop a series of articles, optimized for our websites and totally congruent with our overall message.

Although many writers discipline themselves to write an article on Tuesday and Friday mornings, the norm seems to be the creative rollercoaster. You can tame the rollercoaster by scheduling your articles to post using the WordPress post scheduling. Here’s how:

pub1If you use the native WordPress posts authoring interface, select the “Edit” link next to “Publish Immediately” It will open to a dialog to give you the option to post in the future. Select the date and time to publish and then select “OK”. Hit the "Publish" button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date.

You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date posts. Change the settings to the desired time and date and select “OK”.

If you use a local client like Microsoft’s Live Writer to create and post your articles, select “Set post date” to schedule. That’s all there is to it.

Paying It Forward With WordPress MU

Marketing WordPress

If you arrived here from pumprecord.com, you are at the right place. Please read on. Several months ago, WordPress MU, most famous for being the power behind wordpress.com and a host of other premium websites on the web, became my software choice for a multi user, multi site product offering designed for me to give back something to an industry that I grew up in.

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I love the WordPress “Freemium” model used to capture an amazingly large user base at wordpress.com, so much so that I used the model for pumprecord.com, a multi user site devoted to offering free web space to owners and managers of concrete pumping equipment. The intention was to provide a mechanism to store documents

My value proposition although simple and clearly stated on the main page of the site, apparently was no match for the current state of the construction industry in the US and other parts of the world.

“pumprecord.com makes insurance, sales and equipment records easily available to your present and future customers by providing a Secure Documents Site, where your customers can download your documents. Not only is our service free, but you also control the look, feel, location and security of your unique site. If you were to add secure document sharing to your own website, you would spend thousands of dollars on new website development and increased hosting charges.

My motivation for building the enterprise was to promote safety and transparency in the concrete pumping industry. I was hopeful to gain enough advertising income to cover the investment of time and resources into the project. However, I had no illusions about the difficulty of obtaining advertisers.

I’m thankful for the the support of  Todd Bullis, the pioneer of the “webification” of concrete pumping, who graciously offered to provide some exposure for pumprecord.com early on. To be fair, there was quite a bit of interest, primarily from the UK and Australia; but, I did not anticipate the terrible toll that the economic crisis was and still is taking on the very people that might use pumprecord.com

So, I’m reallocating my resources. However, if you found your way here from pumprecord.com. please know that the offer still stands. I am interested in helping out anyone that wants to make their records available online to their customers and potential customers, without charge. Just contact me and we can talk.

If you are considering a similar endeavor, look no further than WordPress MU. It operated flawlessly. I would not hesitate to use WordPress MU in my next multi site project. And now a screenshot for old times sake.

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Web Design

Business Systems Support WordPress

The biggest thing today in Website Design is Content Management and WordPress is the biggest thing in Content Management. I often hear the question, “How much does a web site cost.” NAI Multimedia, a top quality design studio in Austin has a great answer on their website.

Many clients are unaware of the amount of time involved in designing a professional, search engine friendly website. From initial consultation to content and search engine optimization often runs 30 – 40 hours fairly easily. When coding for PHP, ASP or CMS or when adding additional scripts or multimedia applications it could grow exponentially from there.

Novice designers generally saturate the Austin Web Design market with flat fees of $400 to $500 for an entire website. While this may initially look appealing, it is good to remember that you get what you pay for.

A lack of understanding when it comes to layout, originality and product design leaves you with a template with your logo on it. None of your specific needs were addressed and your “designer” is nowhere to be found to update or fix problems for you once the site is done. I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times.

On the opposite end of the design spectrum is the downtown design firms. You usually get quality but the minimum some Austin TX design firms and studios want from you is $3000 to $5000, and that is just to get things started. A completed business site can easily reach $15,000 in no time.

As you think about your new business website, consider your business operational goals and related processes, then think about using WordPress to serve as the foundation of your site. A DIY business person, with a bit of luck and a desire to express some artistic flair, might save that $15,000.

I do very unconventional strategic web design, either as a business intranet used for work-flow process management purposes or as a turnkey business that I sell. I also do eCommerce websites integrated with QuickBooks. You can see some of my work in the Web Design section on the right.

Most of my strategic web design work remains undisclosed either as courtesy to or by contract to my clients, who own the intellectual property rights to their business processes and control the competitive edge derived from my consulting work with them.

The first place I start with a client involves consolidating and transferring owners domain names to a single domain registrar. Seems that some owners have domain names across several domain registrars as well as several hosting accounts. I consolidate them, document them, then plan for the future.