Small business SEO has come up while I’ve been talking with a couple new clients in the last few days. In one case, they totally got it and in the other case, not so much.
One client has told me exactly what words they want on the site and where to put them, then they change their minds a bit and want something else. I’m a paid servant doing my master’s bidding. That’s cool. I get paid for it and they are happy. Their site won’t be successful and they won’t have much traffic, but I get to pay my mortgage. Yes, master.
I think I'll call it Project Traffic Flood
My other client is concerned with the results. He wants customers to call him and order his stuff. He wants to make money. It’s all about the sales numbers. He is an expert in his business with over 25 years experience doing it. He doesn’t have time to learn how to be an SEO expert. He just wants to pay me to take care of it and tell him what to do.
He has one large competitor with a substantial sales force. They have a good web site. It comes up number one for one set of keywords that we want to own. Their page rank is a 0. They have 8 incoming links. Not sure what their traffic is, but we are going to crush them.
I feel like a lion on the prowl, hunting my prey. They are a weak animal and we are going to hunt them down and eat them.
It’s so easy for a small business to improve their search engines rankings. It’s not that hard folks. I guess brain surgery is easy if you know what you are doing, but I know what I am doing for small business SEO. Getting that last little bit might be hard, but in most cases, the competition is doing nothing. If you strike first, you will win.
I’ll keep you up to date with this client. We have to build him a better site first, then we’ll start laying down the SEO strategies on top of that. I think I’ll call it Project Traffic Flood.
It’s really easy to believe that everyone else is like you. They aren’t.
Everyone tends to do it. It takes a conscious effort to not do it. I mean, you are a rational person. You believe everything you believe and think everything that you think. Why wouldn’t everyone else think and believe the same way? What are they? Morons?
It's really easy to believe that everyone else is like you. They aren't.
As you grow up, you begin to realize that not everyone else is like you. There are other people in the room and they might think, believe, and feel differently than you do. Bigots never grow up.
When you are designing your site and writing your content, do it from the users point of view, not your own. They are the ones that you have created this magnificent new web site for, so honor them by talking in their language and answering their questions and meeting their needs.
The first step to do this is to define just who they are. Once you have them defined, forget everyone else. If you want to sell video games, your site will look much different then if you want to sell medical equipment.
It might be helpful to write down your definition of your users and tape it to your monitor, where you can remember them while you’re writing.
Their words, their needs, their solutions. That’s what you need to focus on.
I will attempt to explain how to convert an existing site into Wordpress. I wrote previously about converting a client’s site from old school tables to a CSS based Wordpress theme at http://www.flowerart.biz. I think this should work for Frontpage based sites as well as DreamWeaver or any other site that is reasonably coded, that is, if you “saved as HTML” from MS Word, you’re on your own.
A lot of people are looking for this information, so I figure I should expand on it and tell you exactly what I did and how you can convert any existing web site into a Wordpress themed site too.
How To Convert An Existing Site To Wordpress
Concept
The concept of a theme is that it will be the framework, the common template, that all of your content will be displayed inside of. Normally, you will use the same look and feel, the same template, on all of your pages. This usually contains the header, the sidebars, the footer, and the content goes in the middle and changes from page to page. We’ll want to take the existing HTML files and slice them up into Wordpress theme files, with a dynamic place in the middle to put all of the content.
Text Edit
Did I mention that you need a text editor to make Wordpress theme files? MS Word will not work. You MUST be able edit the files and save them as “text” files. They can not be formatted in any way. On Windows, look for WordPad. On a Mac, look for TextEdit. Do not make them RTF, or Rich Text Format. Just save the files as simple old text.
Quick shout out for BBEdit on a Mac. The ultimate text editor and if you’re going to be doing this, worth every penny. It does not suck. Says so right on the box.
Set Up Dev
Before we get any farther, you’ll need a development installation of Wordpress that you can play with and break. It can’t share the database with an existing installation, or the theme you pick here will be the theme that the existing site will get at the same time.
If you do not have an installation of Wordpress yet, install it and we’ll just play with it until we’re happy with the new theme. No one is looking. No one cares. Feel free to break it all you want.
If you do have an existing installation, you need to make another installation. It’s easy, but pay attention. You will have the existing site in your top level. You’ll probably have a “wordpress” folder with all of the files in it, in that top level. Make a copy, or upload a new copy, of Wordpress right next to that folder. Name the new folder “dev”. You will now have the existing Worpress in “wordpress” and the new one right next to it, named “dev”.
Take the existing wp-config.php file and download it to your hard drive, where you can edit it. Open it up and look for the line that says ” $table_prefix = ‘wp_’; “. That “wp_” is the prefix for all of the tables in the database that Wordpress uses. We don’t want to create a new database. We want to create new tables inside the existing database. We leave everything else in this file alone, but we change the “wp_” to “dev_”. Our new installation will see that and go create a new set of tables, all with names beginning with “dev_”.
Upload that wp-config.php file and upload it to our new “dev” installation. It should be next to all of the other “wp-”folders, at the top level.
Now, we’ll let Wordpress do it’s thing. This is where the Wordpress is so much better than any other Content Management System out there. We’ll finish the installation using your web browser.
Go to the home page of the new “dev” Wordpress installation. If you have a previous installation, type in that URL, followed by /dev/, which is the folder that we put the dev Wordpress. If this is a new installation, then you can go to the new home page. You should be looking at a new installation page that says “welcome”. You need to fill in the Name of the new site and your email address.
Click on the Install Wordpress button. Wait for a really long time while Wordpress goes out and updates the database and installs all of the information that it needs. This might take up 10 seconds on a slow day.
You will be looking at a Success! page. The user name is “admin” and the password is some totally obscure random string. Log into the new site and look around. You now have a development site that we can install themes on and break if we want to.
Lift and Separate
We want to go back to looking at the existing site that you want to convert. We want to lift the HTML from it and separate it into Wordpress theme files.
The basic task is to separate out the “theme” elements from the “content” elements. If you have a stack of HTML files on your server and you’re not sure how they all work, download them and look at them in a text editor.
You need to have some background in HTML to know what you are looking at. You’re going to have to read the HTML and figure out what it is doing. You’ll see a lot of stuff at the top, in the <head> section. The next should be the header area, all the stuff at the top. Somewhere down after that, will be what looks like content, the actual writing.
Your task, and this is the hardest part, is to figure out exactly where the “top” stuff stops and the “content” stuff starts. It could be a table cell. It could be a <div> tag. You need to find that point.
In the simplest form, there’s a bunch of HTML, then there’s content, then there’s a bunch more HTML. The goal is to slice that HTML into files named “header.php”, “sidebar.php”, “footer.php”, and most importantly, “index.php”. There could be others, but we’ll talk about that later.
Slice off the top stuff and put it in the “header.php” file. Figure out where the side bar stuff might come and copy it into that. You don’t really need a sidebar file if you don’t want to have one or you might want a couple, using sidebar-right.php and sidebar-left.php. You’ll have to go through your code and look at the layout of the page.
Take the bottom stuff and put it in the footer.php. You saw that coming, didn’t you?
You’re left with the content. You need to create an “index.php” file. At the top, you want to have the tag <?php get_header(); ?>. At the bottom, you want to have the <?php get_footer(); ?> tag. You can put your sidebars in where you want them, before or after the content, for left or right.
In the middle of the index page, you want to put in the magic PHP tags that display the content. Open up the default theme index.php file and look at it. Copy everything starting at the <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> tag down to the <?php endif; ?> tag. You’ll get a bunch of “class=entry” and “php_content()” tags.
Save all of these files into a new theme folder. You’re doing all of this on your hard drive. Name the new theme whatever you want. “MyNewTheme” sounds great. Copy the style sheet from the default theme into your new theme folder. If you already have a style sheet from your original site, use that instead.
Open the .css style sheet file. You want to have the new name so that it shows up in the Appearance page in Wordpress. At the top of the file, you need to have at least “/* Theme Name: MyNewTheme */”. The slash and asterisk means that it’s “commented out” so that it doesn’t interfere with the style sheet. Don’t use the quotes, just the slashes and asterisks. Look at the default theme style sheet or the codex for more info. This is minimum.
Upload and Look
Upload your theme folder to the “wp-content” themes folder, next to the default and classic themes. Go to your Themes page in Wordpress admin and see if your theme is there. If it is, select it and activate it. Hold your breathe and “View Site”.
Did it work? Did it break? If you have horrible text that displays PHP error messages, read what they say and try to figure out where the error is. It’s probably a missing closing tag or a missing semi-colon. I hate those.
Did it display something, but it’s all out of whack? You need to play with the style sheets and the theme files to get it to display correctly.
Fix it
The simplest situation here is that you copied the code straight out of the original files and plopped it in here and it all works.
The issues could be style sheets, missing code, or badly written HTML. The more you change from original, the more you need to know what you are doing.
Pages
After you get it working and looking right, you want to create new pages for each page in the new site. Just create them and put some gibberish for now. You just want a place holder. Make sure that the menu points to the right places. Menus will be the next issue.
Existing Pages
If you have pages that you just don’t want to convert, you can put them into the Worpdress top folder, so that they act like normal pages. In my example, all of the portfolio pages are still hard coded PHP files. http://www.flowerart.biz/portfolio/ I needed to make sure the menus work, but those are hard coded pages. They are not visible in Wordpress, but they are visible to the user. Read “Put A Wordpress Menu In An External Page” to see how I made the menus dynamic on a hard coded page.
Menus
If you want to have dynamic menus, where pages are added to the menu when you create the pages, then you need to read through the codex about menu tags and their attributes. It’s possible to cut out the hard coded HTML menu that you had and replace it with a dynamic one. See where to cut out the old one and replace it with the new tags.
Different Templates
If you have different templates for different pages, you need to know what the differences are. If you need to create a new template for each page, you can do that. Go into each old HTML file, cut out the “contents” and replace it per the directions above. Now, create a new file that will act like that specific page’s index.php file. I like to name them all starting with “template_”, so you might have template_aboutus.php.
These new template pages need to have all of the tags of the others, header() and footer() and that stuff. It’s possible to have a template page that is entirely custom HTML and not even use the content() tags. You won’t be able to edit it, but it’ll show up on the site and be managed like other pages.
Each one of these new template pages needs to have the commented out lines at the top of the file that has the name in this format: “/* Template Name: About Us */”, again, without the quotes.
Upload this new file to the theme folder, next to the index.php file. Go back to the page that needs to use this template. On the right, there’s a “Template” drop down menu that should now list all of the template files that contain that “Template Name:” line in them. Select the one you want to use for that page and update.
Go look at it. You will have to customize and fix each template to make sure it works with the pages that you want.
Final Touches
You will have to go through each page and make sure that the menus work and that they look right. You can use the default theme as a guide. You can look up specific problems in the codex or the forums or you can ask me.
From here on out, it will be stylesheets and php tags to get it to look and work right. If you have a specific problem, let me know in the comments below and we can walk through it.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. How much it costs will depend on how optimized you want it to be. Nothing in SEO costs any money, only time. You should learn what the techniques are and then you should do them your self.
SEO just wants to be free. Don't pay for it.
A friend just told me recently “I have many people that do SEO for me already”. Really? He’s a friend, so I won’t tear him apart for that too much, but his site is found for the one thing that he’s interested in and it’s not found for his main products. I looked.
The first thing that you must do, MUST do, is to pick some keywords or phrases that you want to rank highly for. The best way to do this is to think about it from your users point of view. What problem are they trying to solve when they come to your site. Why should they be there? Wedding Flowers? Car Repair? Pizza? a TV Show? What are those words that they will type into Google to find you?
It’s good to get one main phrase that you was to own. That phrase will go everywhere on your site, so many times that’s annoying.
Now you need to pick 3-5 more phrases that you want to do well for. Maybe you won’t own these, but you still want traffic from them.
Remember, these phrases must be from the user’s point of view, not yours. You might think that you sell “water treatment systems”, but your users want to buy “water softeners”. You might think that you sell “hand made, one of a kind, jewelry”, but I’m looking for a “woman birthday gift”. You might think you sell “woman’s action wear”, but my wife’s looking for “woman sports clothes”.
Now that that has rolled around in your head for a while, you can write down the phrases that you want to rank well for and the one that you want to own.
Next, you can scatter those phrases around your site and ask for links from other sites. Make your title on every page contain that main phrase. Leave comments on other sites using those phrases. Do all of the other SEO stuff that you can find on the Internet and that I’ll talk about later.
I saw an article recently listing 10 free web site building tools. Most of them take a while to figure out. They won’t all let you do what you want to do. None were expandable to your own site if you ever wanted to take the next step, from “free” to “owning your own”.
The biggest cost is time.
It made me think about what the real costs of a web platform are. The biggest cost is time. How long does it take you to learn how to work it and make it do what you want it to do? How much is it going to frustrate you and make you figure out how to do something simple?
In my experience with Wordpress, and I’m coming at this from a developer point of view, it’s much easier and intuitive to learn to use Wordpress than with any other platform out there. When I build a site for a client using Wordpress, it’s much easier to train them and get them up to speed on Wordpress than other systems that I’ve tried.
Let’s look at the cost it would take to put a wordpress site on your own server and run it for a year. Domain name is $10. Don’t pay more than that for a domain name. Hosting packages can be had for less than $80 a year. Call the whole thing $100 for a year of hosting your own site.
If you use a good host, they would have an auto install version of Wordpress. Click, click, bang. It’s set up. Play with a theme. Spend too much time looking on line for a theme. Download, install. Play with plug ins. Download, install. Write a few posts. Create a few pages. Change the layout a bit. Call it 8 hours total, from start to having your own blog on line, working, with your own theme and content. You have added the plug-ins that you wanted, the theme that you wanted, the layout, the content, the menu. All of it is exactly what you want.
The cost in time is really because you have TOO MANY options. If you can be satisfied with what comes out of the box, then a Wordpress site can be set up in 20 minutes.
Compare that to another free host. Set up is quick and easy. Pick a theme. There are 20. Write a post. Change the layout? No. Can’t do that. Put the menu on the other side? No. Can’t do that. You want to post video? No. Can’t do that either. Podcast? Special functionality? Nope. None of that.
You’ve spent the same 8 hours trying to do stuff and not being able to that you would have on Wordpress. It’s $100 cheaper and maybe that’s the difference for you. It doesn’t look quite like you want it to and it doesn’t have quite the right functionality. It’s harder to use and takes longer to post than Wordpress. If it takes 3 minutes longer and you make 20 posts, that’s an hour. How many posts in a year?
This reminds me of the difference between Windows and a Mac. The Mac costs a bit more to start, but lasts twice a long, lets you work twice as fast, and makes it easier to do anything you want. Which is a better deal? How much is your time worth? How much money do you have?
It’s all up to you, but if you have $100 to spend on a web site for a year, spend it and build a Wordpress site. You’ll thank me at the end of the year.
I’ve been thinking about what I wrote about the Greenes. I think that it is possible and even probable, to make money clinging to your one, true, pure artistic vision.
But I’ve known a lot of starving artists. Some artists are just bad. Their vision is not worth making money. They need desk jobs instead.
I've known a lot of starving artists
I guess the answer is in the balance between the two. You need to pay the rent. You should hang on to your vision.
It’s the balance between the practical and the aesthetic. That should be the balance that you use to design your web site with also. You should make it interesting and artistic. You should have a point of view and make your statement.
On the other side, it should load quickly. It should not distract from your goal. It should communicate effectively. It should make the sale.
Art and Money are two sides to the same coin. You need both. I was wrong to say that you only need the art. You need to accomplish your goals as well, no matter what it takes.
Otherwise, you will have the most beautiful site in the world and no one will ever know.
I visited “The New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene and Greene” at the Huntington Library today. It was a rainy day, but the exhibit closes in 2 days, so this was our last chance. The rain kept the riff raff out, so it was not crowded and it was a pleasant experience.
Greene and Greene
I love the houses designed by Greene and Greene. They are two brothers who built amazing houses between 1900 and 1920 or so. They are the epitome of the California Arts and Crafts movement and are most famous for the Gamble house in Pasadena.
The thing that struck me about what I saw today was how their ideas and ideals were forced upon their clients. They had the audacity to believe that they were artists and that their clients should appreciate that. Is the customer always right? Uummm…yeah, kind of.
When they were building the Pratt house in Ojai, the owner complained about missed schedules and cost overruns. Anyone who’s built a web site knows how that works. Their response was that even though they appreciated the frustration of the owner, what he was getting was not just house, but a work of art, which takes time and effort to complete properly and would be well worth it in the end. I’ve seen the house and it’s magnificent. I’m not sure Mr Pratt was satisfied.
During the depression, they still made magnificent houses, but not as many. They still charged the same high prices. They were creating art and it could not be achieved with shortcuts.
The balance between the business and the creative process was a delicate one. In their case, the business suffered in service to the art, finally being dissolved in 1922. What they achieved has stood the test of critics and time and is as amazing today as it was then. They created a whole new way of building houses, with a new attitude behind how life should be lived in these houses.
Is it worth it to sacrifice business for art? I don’t know. I need to pay the mortgage and eat, but beyond that, maybe art is the greater calling. Were they self indulgent, self centered, and egomaniacal? Maybe. So is Steve Jobs and I love my iPhone. He’s a billionaire.
As much as our users need to be considered in our web design, we, as the developers, the creators of the web site, need to instill our passion, our vision, our knowledge of how things SHOULD be into every web site. As much as I love SEO and Wordpress and AdSense and marketing, our one true goal, our pure artistic vision, needs to be embodied in our web sites. Maybe there’s art in SEO. Maybe marketing is an art too.
Gamble House, Pasadena, CA
I think that as we lose the need for money, as we let that go and accept being poor, in the pursuit of artistic vision, in the pursuit of our passion, of what we love and know is the best, I think that then, and only then, does the money seem to come back in response. As we push it away and turn towards the artistic ideal, somehow, the money seems to be attracted back to that ideal. Maybe that’s a little too idealistic, too simplistic, I mean there’s always the lottery, but it does seem to be a tendency in life.
Don’t let the pursuit of money ruin your passion. Don’t let worry cloud your vision. Be who you are and the money will follow.
In 1943, in retirement, Charles Sumner Greene said “I did not always give them what they wanted, but always what they liked.
Really? Is it really time for Twitter? They have clearly captured the platform and will be the way to the future of microblogging or whatever you want to call it, but I’m just not sure that the numbers are there yet. You need to have people to make it valuable. There are still too many pastors that don’t quite get why they need a web site.
I had a client ask me about “social media” this week. The joke is that every one is a social media expert, but the reality is that it’s not there yet. I think it will be in a year. I think it’s time to get your user name staked out for the future. Yes, I am at /conradwalton, but I don’t ever tweet. I don’t think it’s a fad, but I don’t think that it’s mature yet.
Facebook has everyone and their brother on it now. I’ve met more people from my past in the last two months than I knew that I knew. It’s what’s happening now. Twitter is what will happen next year.
Do you use Twitter? Do you use it often? For what purpose? Do you follow more than you tweet? Please leave a comment.
The Reasons Your Church Must TwitterAnthony Coppedge recently released a $5 e-book entitled The Reason Your Church Must Twitter.
It covers everything from what in the world a Twitter is to how your church can make maximum use of Twitter in various flavors–from simply having public conversations to using Twitter as a devotional tool.
Yet the recent image makeover of churches is unpalatable for some. In 2006, Pastor John MacArthur published a popular article (“Grunge Christianity?”) condemning modern churches that trade sanctity for “cultural relevancy.” MacArthur and his supporters disagree with so-called pragmatists who seek bigger, more worldly congregations. Nathan Smith (GodBit.com) counters, “we are naive if we try to take an isolationist approach. God wants a direct relationship with each person, so we—as facilitators of that calling—have to meet people through what they know, and if that is pop culture, then so be it.”
How many congregations identify with dark, gritty imagery?
From a design perspective, applying a pop culture flavor to a place of worship can mean many things, but comes down to doing what’s appropriate on a church-by-church basis. Says Chris Merritt (Pixel Light Creative), “If the church is a traditional conservative church, then I’m probably not going to use an abundance of grunge brushes and ragged textures. Every once in a while there’s a church who wants to launch a new image and use the web site as a launching pad. Even in that case, moderation is important; otherwise you may end up alienating those who are comfortable with the original image.”
So what about the multitude of recent church web sites designed around ragged, dark, asymmetrical elements—what does this communicate about the church? How many congregations identify with dark, gritty imagery?
I was walking a client through his Analytics stats yesterday, explaining what each page, each section meant. I asked him if he ever looked at these since we set them up. He looks at them as much as you do, which is never.
What traffic are you missing?
He didn’t connect the value of what these numbers and charts mean to how he can improve his site and make more money with it, as well as make it a better experience for his users.
As we drilled into the content part of it, I saw that no one, as in not one person, was looking through his portfolio pages. I realized that these pages have a smaller menu over to the side that people could easily miss.
Also, when I redesigned his site by bringing it into Wordpress (of course), the top, main menu now has a different look and action than the original small portfolio menu. I used to just put a glow around the highlighted menu item and now I was doing the whole colored div background, which is much more apparent.
Now we have a menu that looks and functions differently and no one who ever clicks on them. HHHmmmm. What to do?
Next step, I put in the same style menu as the top, so they highlight the same. That should improve the click on those. We’ll be watching his stats to see what happens.
Read your Analytics pages today. What traffic are you missing?
Wow. Things got busy and my Wordpress blog gets forgotten. I think I’m back. I’ll try to make up for lost time. The weather has been in the 80s for the last week or so, so I may have been a bit distracted.
Knocked Off The Horse
In the last week, I’ve also been busy with, and learned a lot from, clients and would be clients, about what people want, what they know, what they don’t know, and what they need. I’ll go into depth on some of these later, but I’m shocked, SHOCKED! I say, that there are actually people in the world who don’t have the same knowledge and beliefs and understanding that I do.
People don’t seem to understand that Wordpress is free and powerful. I am an old school, hand coder, who would rather do it all myself, so I can have total control, but I cranked out a complete web site, including a custom design, including an image gallery, and including all the fixin’s, in two hours. That’s two hours folks, to build a site that would have taken me two weeks in the old days.
Wordpress rocks. No way around it. Wordpress just freakin’ rocks.
It also seems that SEO is the buzz of the day. Either people want it or they don’t know yet that they want it. I’m finding that the common thread, with everyone that I talk to, is that they just don’t know much about how to effectively do SEO, even though it’s relatively easy.
A client told me this morning, after I gave them an outline of what to do, that it’s not hard to do, they just didn’t know what needed to be done. It’s like I gave them the map and now they are driving the car across the country.
I’ll be talking more about Wordpress SEO and SEO in general. It is really not difficult, once you get a few ideas figured out. I’m surprised that people charge so much for it, but it does give results and most people are not doing anything, so it’s easy to beat most other sites out there.
I ran into an old friend recently. The usual questions were asked about what’s happened in the 20 years since we’ve seen each other. Yes, I do web sites.
They said they were about to update their web site. Their spouse had created it and they wanted to add some features and update the look. I suggested that they use Wordpress. I sounded like the fan boy that I am.
They were pleasant, but said they already had hosting with GoDaddy and they would just use the web blog application that they provided as part of the hosting package. They had heard of Wordpress and that it was good, but they would use what they had.
I continued on about how cool Wordpress is. They were very nice, but had decided that they didn’t want to pay anything extra when they already had a blogging application included in their hosting package.
I checked it out on my own GoDaddy account. It sucked! It had a tenth of the functionality and the interface was horrible.
Did I mention that it's free?
I told them again that they should use Wordpress. I told them that it is free. You can install it anywhere. It’s got features, and blah blah blah, and IT’S FREE!
Oh. That’s quite different. It’s free you say? You don’t have to buy it?
No! It’s FREE. You can download it, install it, pick a theme, put in some plug ins and have a complete, professional web site FOR FREE.
They said they would check it out. They thanked me profusely. Told me that I had motivated them to get going on their web site.
I have no idea if they will do anything on it at all, but I guess I was shocked that not everyone has the same understanding and knowledge and beliefs that I do. Silly me.
People seem to think that to get cool software, you have to spend money. If you don’t spend money, then you can have cool software. People can’t wrap their heads around the whole “open source” thing.
If you happen to not be aware, Wordpress is free. There is no cost. You can download it and install it on any web server that’s running MySQL and Apache (which is almost every web server these days). You can control all aspects of it. You can build your own theme if you want. You can do anything with it.
I’m offended by the “greasy hair” stereotype, but other than that, this article has some true things to say. I came from the web development world, where a budget of $30,000 was average. I worked at a company that developed a web site and sold it for $580 million bucks.
You don’t need that. From the article: ” Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page.” That’s what I advocate, a simple, professional web site for FREE!.
Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page.
But gee, many of the business owners I know — those incredible, pathetic, dismal, wretched losers who so shock the turtleneck-and-vest-wearing, greasy-haired crowd — don’t necessarily have those needs. They are gas station owners, restaurateurs, insurance agents, shopkeepers. They’re CPAs, architects, landscapers, plumbers, and electricians. They’re not selling books online or running auctions. They’re not distributing software or hosting phone services. They’re not complex. They’re investing elsewhere. They’re O.K. with no Web site.
A Vested Interest in the Debate
When was the last time I visited the site for the corner Exxon guy or the sub shop across from my office? To see the price of gas? To get nutrition info on ham on rye?
If you search the Web you’ll find lots of people writing about how small business owners must have a Web site. Dig a little further and guess what? Many of the people shouting how absolutely critical it is for a small business to have a Web site are — drum roll, please — in the business of helping small businesses create Web sites. Surprise! Despite what all the business experts — including the turtleneck-and-vest-wearing classes — may say, Web sites are not an absolute necessity.
Good business owners invest wisely and for the most return. They’re not in business to run a site just because it’s cool or hip. Many people I know are fine with a simple and professional Web page. Let the turtleneck-and-vest-wearing, greasy-haired geeks suck their fees from someone else.
The Sermon Browser Wordpress Plugin allows churches to simply upload sermons to their Wordpress website, where they can be searched, listened to, and downloaded. It is easy to use with comprehensive help and tutorials. Features include:
1. Sermons can be searched by topic, preacher, bible passage or date.
2. Full podcasting capabilities, including custom podcasts for individual users.
3. Sermons uploaded in mp3 format can be played directly on your website using the 1PixelOut Audio Player.
4. An optional sidebar widget displays sermons on all of your posts or pages.
5. Embed videos from sites such as YouTube or Google Video.
6. Other file types can also be uploaded, including PDF, Powerpoint, Word, text and RTF. Multiple files can be attached to single sermons.
7. The full Bible text of the passage being preached on can be included on each sermon page (seven different versions, including ESV).
8. Files can be uploaded to your own site through the browser or via FTP. Alternatively you can use other free audio hosting sites such as Odeo.
9. Powerful templating function allows complete customisation to complement the look of your site.
10. Simple statistics show how often each sermon has been listened to.
11. Compatible with Wordpress MU.
12. Extensive help and tutorial screencasts.
There is something to be said about Shakespeare’s oft-quoted assertion from Hamlet:
‘… brevity is the soul of wit …‘
Or as usability expert Jakob Nielsen writes his 1997 post entitled “how people read the web:”
People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.
There’s a new product out today, from Remarkablogger, that will teach you about Wordpress SEO. I will have a review of it up on the site as soon as I can.
I’ve always liked Penn Jillette. He’s my age and I’ve liked his sense of irony and wit in his stage shows and in interviews. He’s always stuck me as someone who is very intelligent and thoughtful, which is a rare combination. Usually, intelligent people are very close minded and not thoughtful.
Penn Jillete is an atheist. Even though I’m a Christian, I really respect people who are thoughtful atheists. At least they thought about something, even if the conclusion is wrong. Most people, probably 90%, have a vague belief in God, but have never really thought about it much.
This is an amazing video. Penn has some very thoughtful things to say about how much Christians must hate everyone else.
Half of all churches in America today do NOT have a web site. Half! What excuse is there for that? This article below is quoting a Duke University survey to make the point that the church has caught up with the times, that only a fifth of them had a web site in 1998. But the glass is not half full here. It’s half empty.
If you are involved with a church that does not have a web site, I can show you how to get one for free, using Wordpress.com. All it takes is a little initiative on your part and you can have a web site. You don’t need a $300 site. You don’t need a $500 site. You can have a free web site for your church. Go to www.worpdress.com and follow the instructions.
For example, local churches have caught up with the secular society in their use of computers and technology. In 1998, fewer than one in five U.S. congregations hosted Web sites; today, close to half of the churches offer Web pages to their members and local community. A friend of mine who ministers to a large Washington, D.C. Baptist congregation has a frequently updated interactive Web site whose volunteer editor works from India.
A good church website needs to be informative, visually appealing and have a bit of interaction with the visitor. After all shouldn’t your church’s website inspire people to visit your church physically? It can be easy to forget that people not in your local community may be searching for a church to attend a worship service. What features do you look for when you are looking at a church website?
How do you get there? Sure an address is great, but a map or written directions would be better.
Driving Directions
How do you get there? Sure an address is great, but a map or written directions would be better. Make it as easy as possible for the website visitor to locate your church.
Service Times
When do you worship? Often more times than not the service times are not listed on most church websites. Be sure to place your worship times prominently on the homepage of the site.
Sunday School
Let’s say that your visitors have children. What do you suppose they would like to know about your church? Make it well known that you offer a Sunday school service to avoid any confusion with new guests to your church.
Events Calendar
What if a member of your congregation misses a Sunday, but would like to know about the youth soccer game in the park? By having an up-to-date events calendar you can let your church members know what is going on.
Pictures
Sure stock photography is great in some cases, but what about those great pictures from your church’s mission trip? Be sure to include real pictures of your church and congregation. This will give your site a more realistic and personal touch.
In the recent debate on how evil Network Solutions is, I neglected to give you the non-evil alternatives.
JumpDomain Whois
The easiest thing to do is go to an old registrar that quit answering my emails so I moved all of my domain names away from them. They had non-existant customer support, so I’m sure they won’t mind us using their tools.
Go to the URL above and put in your domain name. Hit Submit Query. It will also return all of the DNS info. Bookmark that page. I use it all the time. It’s by far the easiest and fastest way to look up available domain names without getting into trouble.
Whois?
Network Utility on a Mac
First, if you are a Mac user (and I won’t get into that religious debate now), if you go into your utilities folder, there is an application called “Network Utility”. If you open that up, you’ll see all of the tools listed across the top. Click on “Whois”.
You can type in the domain name you want to check on and click on the “Whois” button. It will return all of the DNS info for that domain name or it will say “No match for…” the domain name you are looking for.
Terminal Whois on a Mac
If you are brave, you can open the Terminal application and type in “whois” followed by the domain name. That will also give you the DNS info.
Find out how my site beat Wikipedia in Google. Even if you don't know anything about any of this web stuff, you can learn how to improve the ranking of your web site in the search engines.
This book is targeted at the very beginner, people who are not savvy about the web or the Internet. It explains it all, from the very basic, so you won't feel like you're in over your head.
The world has changed. The Internet is becoming a normal part of everyday life for a majority of people. With every new change in technology, comes the rise and fall of businesses as they try to adapt, from railroads to airplanes, from buggies to cars, from radio to TV, from vinyl records to CDs to MP3s.
If you need a web site that is attractive, easy to use, and it's easy to maintain, we can build that for you. Multiple features can be built in, including a shopping basket if you want to sell your products on the web. Read about our design services.
If you want Google to list your site as close to the top of the first page as possible, we can show methods to make that happen. These methods are called "SEO", Search Engine Optimization. Higher page rank means more customers. Do you want more customers? Read about our SEO services.
Comments
Ken commented on How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love to Blog:
Thanks for the push, just what I needed. I've been suffering from paralysis by analysis. I'm trying to get a blog started but keep putting it off for one reason or another. I'm doing it today!
Karen commented on How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love to Blog:
Hey Conrad,
I just found your blog via Third Tribe, and downloaded your AWESOME Seo book. I've been wanting to learn about it, and am overwhelmed with all of the info out there for my non-technically inclined self.
I completely agree with this post about blogging... I've fallen in love with it since starting last year.
Jill Brock commented on New Promotion Page for Free SEO Book:
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. "The Care and Feeding of SEOs" is wonderful. It all seemed like Greek to me until now. Not that there's anything wrong with that but I don't speak Greek. I'm a neophyte at this so was feeling totally overwelmed but now feel empowered. P.S. Love the
Ed Roach commented on The Secret To Selling Stuff Online (How To Avoid The Crash And Burn):
"...keep your head down and move forward." is great advice. I've been blogging almost four years now and the first year was the most frustrating. But since then, I've picked up numerous opportunities and strengthened my expert profile. Everything in your article is spot on from my perspective.
Thanks for sharing.
AcesLucky commented on The Most Amazing Wordpress theme – Headway 1.5:
Okay, after having written what I did about version 1.5.6, I downloaded their "legacy" version (1.1). It's a piece of cake to work with! I've been very productive and admit I haven't needed to consult any documentation or view any tutorials (yet)! And that says a lot.
I like the functionality even though there is a
AcesLucky commented on The Most Amazing Wordpress theme – Headway 1.5:
You might be an affiliate so this might not show, but...
I recently purchased Headway 1.5.6 and let me tell you, I have had great frustration trying to figure things out.
The documentation assumes you already know the previous version and all the video tutorials are for the older versions and this version's visual editor doesn't resemble
Deborah Leon commented on How do I get more readers for my blog?:
Thanks Conrad...still trying to figure this question out. I love the concept, what can I give as a gift each time. Great perspective. What would you want to know about Sea Glass? Fair Winds and Calm Seas.
Andrew commented on The Most Amazing Wordpress theme – Headway 1.5:
Hey Conrad,
I checked out the headway site and then read a few reviews (one of them yours). The promo vid they have made 'says' a lot of the things it can do but only demonstrates the VERY basic stuff.
Do you know of any great sites that have been built with headway?
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