Below is an official Press Release about the two WordPress workshops (hands-on) I’ll be teaching along with Russell Sparkman next Month at the Langley Center for New Media on Whidbey Island — about 45 minutes NorthWest of Seattle, WA, in the scenic Puget Sound.  This will be a great way to hone your WordPress skills and to relax in a very scenic location — click pics to enlarge them.  Looking forward to seeing you there.

WordPress 201 – Beyond the Basics, Hands on Training Workshops Offered at Langley Center for New Media

Media Contact:  Sherry Jennings – sherryj@whidbey.com

Entrepreneurs, bloggers, and new media students have an opportunity to take their WordPress skills to the next level at their choice of two WordPress 201 workshops available in October on either the 20th or the 21st.

This workshop is for those with some basic familiarity with WordPress, but want to take their skills beyond the basics to understand the stand-alone version of WordPress, related plugins, tactics that address SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and integration with Social Media platforms.

Center Director, Russell Sparkman, explained that the 201 level course comes both in direct response to their beginner WordPress clinic, and the growing popularity of WordPress as a blogging and business website platform.  ”This is a hands-on workshop with a low student to teacher ratio to insure a high degree of learning and knowledge retention,” Sparkman said.  Both workshops are limited to 12 participants. Sparkman has an extensive digital media background dating back to 1992, when he was one of the first photographers in the States to embrace digital photography. He has been a multimedia producer, consultant and trainer since 1999.

Sparkman will co-teach the workshop with Scott Frangos (see ScottLinkedIn.com), a career Advertising and Marketing professional with a specialty in Content Management Website development in WordPress, optimized for SEO and business outcome goals like lead gathering. He has taught Publishing, Photoshop, Programming (for the Web), and WebMaster college level courses in the Portland, Oregon area for over 20 years.

• Learn More/Register for 10/20 Session: http://www.langleynewmedia.com/programs/marketing-pr/workshops/wordpress-201-102011/
• Learn More/Register for 10/21 Session:  http://www.langleynewmedia.com/programs/marketing-pr/workshops/wordpress-201-10-21/
• About LCNM:  The Langley Center for New Media is located in Langley, Washington, on Whidbey Island, just one hour north of Seattle. The Center offers a year-around schedule of workshops and events, including an annual Retreat focused on Content Marketing in January, and more workshops and clinics throughout the year on WordPress, Publishing and Marketing with New Media.

I’ve found that many marketers are overlooking lesser known techniques for WordPress Content Marketing strategy.  We’ll examine three tactics in this post, and to keep it simple, I’ll narrow down desired on-site Content Marketing goals to two categories:  engagement (visitors view 3 or more pages), and lead generation for B2B.  We’ll leave ecommerce sales aside for now, and in this post look at 3 ways to use WordPress tools to increase engagement, and so lower your bounce rates.  In a future post, I’ll cover lead generation tactics using WordPress.

Above (click to enlarge) we have added several key post categories to our "Blog" menu item to elevate awareness of available content.

Remember to Add Important Categories to your WordPress Menus

Category archives are landing pages too.  Not only does Google index them, but they also provide a gateway to important content on your site, so your tactic here is to surface links to important categories in a highly visible position.  Most content marketers using WordPress do so using a sidebar widget — but there’s an easy, and more visible way to do this.  I’ll share it with you, but first… how do you know which categories are most important to your visitors?  Analytics.

Check Analytics first to see what categories visitors frequent, but since they are likely not being promoted a lot on your site, check also for what key phrases your visitors use before visiting your site — both answers are available in Analytics.  Then, your tactic is  to use the new WordPress 3.x menu system to add categories as selectable items on a pop-down menu.

Most people only think of showing links to pages, and sometimes posts — but why not promote categories of content that you know visitors are seeking on your site?  And, when you do make sure you write a keyword-rich description that appears at the top of your categories — good themes like our Thematic-MAX framework build in the ability to do this.
TIP:  You can reword the Category Title in the Link to something more compelling — then watch “in-page Analytics” to see if your click-through rate increases.

Above (click to enlarge) are some settings with a MaxRef Widget to reveal key content.

Use Sidebar Widgets to Reveal, Engage, and Reduce Bounces

Most WordPress users know about the “Recent Posts” widget that comes standard with WordPress, but what about promoting older posts that are equally important, and for which your Analytics reports show a high degree of interest?

WebFadds has produced a great Content Marketing plugin  after considering much the same questions — MaxRef Widgets (I’d also like to give thanks to Newt Barret, co-Author of “Get Content, Get Customers” who prompted some of these ideas, originally).  “MaxRef” stands for Maximum Reference to content, and the reason we added an “s” to Widget, is that you can use as many as you need in your sidebars and widget locations — we often place one in the footer area to re-engage visitors who have scrolled to the bottom of a page, and are thinking about leaving.

We’re pleased that MaxRef Widgets has a 5-Star rating with over 4,000 downloads at the WordPress plugin repository.  Our screenshot (click to enlarge) shows an example tactic to use its various settings to reveal posts about how Landing Page Optimization helps your ROI.  Of course you can use it for a different strategy, like rotating overall posts into view so visitors may engage with less recent, but equally valuable content.

Link to searches on your blog based on Analytics Key Phrases

WordPress automatically presents a dynamically updated lists based on keywords or phrases entered into its built-in search field(s).  So the next time you write a post, here are three steps to take:

• First check your Analytics for visitor patterns including what keywords/key phrases relating to your post are popular
• Do a search on your WordPress CMS for the phrase* you decide upon.  Copy the URL that results (in your browser).
• Past that into your post using relevant text.  Here are two examples:  Content Marketing  |  Landing Page Optimization

*TIP:  Research shows that Google users are frequently typing in 2-4 word phrases, rather than just a single keyword.

At WebFadds, we develop your custom CMS solutions on a WordPress theme framework called Thematic.  There are a number of features and advantages to this approach.  Plus, we’ve added more custom functionality — the WebFadds taking it to the “MAX” touch.   This is an overview of the features and benefits of our “Thematic-MAX” themes.  See our Gallery of Recent Sites produced with Thematic-MAX, below.

Recent Sites Built with Thematic-MAX

Links to some recent work: AssociaLiving.com | ContentMarketingInstitute.com | CoffeeNutHut.com  |  SocialTract.com  | BFGL.com  |  MagPub.com  |  Campiello Naples  |  Haisman Wealth Management

Advantage of Parent/Child Theme:

WordPress allows you to develop sites as a “child” (references main theme programming) of a parent theme, so Thematic takes this idea and runs with it building its “parent” theme into a robust framework designed to allow certain strengths for designers and developers of custom child themes.  One big win?  The parent theme is maintained and updated regularly to take advantage of new WordPress core features and to keep pace with security updates.  [Right -- click image to see a full size Guide to features of  the Thematic-MAX theme framework).

Thematic Framework (Parent Theme) Features & Benefits

• Robust Community of developers who upgrade the parent theme, “Thematic” regularly and in compliance with WordPress Standards
• 13 widget-ready areas where you can place hundreds of functional components into your theme
• Built-in ability to add custom category descriptions at top of categories
• Footer text editable in backend
• Built in templates including a Blog Archives template for SEO
• Modular CSS components optimized for final styling and build of themes

You can build absolutely any website design on this framework.  Below is a short gallery of some recent sites we’ve built on it, then we’ll conclude with a list of features we build into our themes — the “MAX” part of Thematic-MAX.

Child Theme (Thematic-MAX) Features from WebFadds

• Easily create two, three and four column layouts (click to enlarge example at right) with short codes (no CSS, no Tables)
• Quickly create and use five different colored professional buttons for any important links (we recommend you test colors and placements for important “calls to action)
• Two additional widget ready areas:  above the footer, and the “crown aside” that sits on top of your sidebars
• Three Custom Page Templates:  Landing Page, No Sidebar, and No Title (does not echo page title at top, so you can create a custom headline there) templates
• Installed Custom Function for Google Fonts:  now add over 30 (and growing) Google Fonts to your themes for great looking headlines that are SEO ready (see example in gallery above for ContentMarketingInstitute.com)
• Two additional Custom Functions:  Add Twitter and Facebook details to author profiles, Register second menu for secondary navigation
• NEW in 2011:  In first quarter, we will be adding a built-in “Directory” feature with custom pages in backend, and directory page template for public sites

F.A.Q.

Do you work with other themes? Yes, but we cannot guarantee they will stay current with WordPress standards, nor can we certify the quality of their code.  Often this route is more expensive than working with our Thematic-MAX theme development.

What about paid commercial themes? Some are good, but we always recommend you start with a custom design to meet your desired business outcomes.  This way, you fit your CMS (Content Management System) to your business needs, instead of trying to find a way to get desired business outcomes from a predesigned theme.  Form follows function.

Can I build any Design for my website on Thematic-MAX? Yes.

What is your CMS Development Philosophy? We stay true to the WordPress standards, and avoid extensive external programming. This means that you can expect to watch WordPress videos on best admin. and Content Management techniques and find everything set up to standard in the back-end of your CMS (Content Management System).  We also minimize and cut out expensive external programming that can add to your load time, and upgrade costs.

What do you think of Flash? Drop it.  You can find ways to do pretty much the same thing (see slideshows at sites above) without alienating millions of potential viewers on iPads and iPhones, plus all those who fail to upgrade Flash in their browsers.

What do you offer for Maintenance? We have a an “UpGrade and Service PAK” that includes upgrading the parent theme.  You should note that design changes to your custom Child Theme and related custom programming will be estimated and charged separately.

As of September of this year, if you insist on using flash based slideshows and presentations at your websites — 7.5 million viewers will not be able to see them. It’s November already, so make that closer to 9 million who cannot see any flash at your sites.  And that’s just iPads — add 73 million iPhone users who cannot see your flash presentations.

Fortunately there are a number of solutions for display on iPads for those with WordPress based CMS and blogs. First a quick comparison… I just bought an iPad (most fun I’ve had since the first computer I bought in 1985), and took this photo (using an Android phone of course — what a geek) of the homepage of WebFadds:

Above photo of our home page shows one slideshow in plain view at top, and another at lower left not working on the popular iPad (NextGEN Gallery plugin — removed now)

You’ll notice that the large slide show at top is indeed working — it’s not made with Flash, but the slideshow at bottom created with a popular WordPress plugin called “NextGEN Gallery” is not working because it uses Flash.  Now I know some people rave about Flash, but I have never liked it for a number of reasons including that it’s difficult to track visitor behavior in Analytics, and it requires everyone to get the latest Flash viewer, and all your prospects can’t be bothered with that.  Now, Mr. Jobs, at Apple, has wisely said no to Flash in favor of emerging HTML5 technologies that will do the same thing — and be open source.  Still another reason cited to avoid the Adobe made proprietary Flash is that it is security hole prone.  This is why Jobs said famously, that Adobe is “lazy.”

You can rail about the irony of Apple’s “closed garden” policy as it embraces new Open Source presentation and video technologies, but the basic fact is that you’re missing millions of potential eyes on your site if you insist on Flash galleries.

What to do?  Here are three solutions:

1. Use the Built in WordPress gallery to display your photos and portfolios when you need a simple solution. A lot of people don’t realize that WordPress has had a great little gallery built in since version 2.5.  At bottom of this post is a video to help you learn about the WordPress built in Gallery.  To show you an example, I decided to make a quick gallery here of some sites we built recently using the next solution detailed below:

   
   
   

2. Use a non-flash slide rotator like the “Easing Slider” plugin we used at above sites — it offers linking of slides to featured contents.  To see the sites in action go to:  CoffeeNutHut.com | ZSquaredMedia.com | IgnitionMSP.com
3. Consider placing your images in Flickr or Picassa Gallery — then embedding them in your site. This tactic gives you an additional “marketplace” for visibility on your

Short Video About Using WordPress Gallery…

Now you can take advantage of the new, simple — it’s drag and drop — menu system in WordPress 3.0 to reveal all types of content at your website. It’s a new CMS feature that lets you bring posts, categories, tags and more, directly to your navigation menu – great for content marketing strategy. This is important for “Visitor Behavior Optimization” (VBO) where you make adjustments to your dynamic site structure based on a review of Analytics and other testing reports (more on VBO in a future video).

Learn more about using WordPress 3.0 Menus in this 3.5 minute video…

If you find yourself squinting — watch in a larger window at Screencast.com.

Video Production & Distribution Note:  We use Jing Pro by TechSmith to produce our videos, then upload them both to the Jing Site and also to YouTube.com for a double marketing reach.  So far we like the quality that Jing delivers better than the standard compression delivered at YouTube.

There are a lot of short overview videos about using your WordPress CMS at WordPress.tv. We’ve also done a few that include some strategic tips about optimizing your CMS. Below is a good overview video about WordPress — it’s getting older, but you can still get some good tips. For newer videos from WebFadds bookmark our new Videos Category.

Optimization Tip: As I say in the video below, you’re not optimizing a website — you’re optimizing how visitors think about your website and the actions they take including completing key business goals at your site. I recommend you take a good look in Analytics at the new “on page Analytics” that shows you “hot-spot” activity on your pages — where visitors click. Make sure those clicks are tied to goals you’ve set, like submitting a lead form. At right is a thumbnail you may click to review how this looks for our own site. Note that you not only see where visitors click but also get key insights to how those clicks may lead to goal completions, and other visitor behavior including what they do after scrolling down the page, “beneath the fold”. Contact us for an estimate to take your Google Analytics to the MAX with actionable advice.

Video: Overview of Using WordPress as your CMS:

Web Engagement, Social Marketing Tip, and Visual Optimization

On today’s web, it’s all about Engagement and Connection.  In fact, Connection now trumps Content (see why in Why Content is King No More)  as the most important part of your marketing tactics.  Connection to who?  Prospects, leads, and customers.  One on one.  Think of this like what your sales people do at a tradeshow.  They engage booth visitors and get to know them.  People buy from those they know.  That’s the promise of Social Media, and many national brands have already proven this — two times in a row, SouthWest Air has had its highest ticket sales ever, from promotions that only happened on Twitter.  So… what is your “1:1″ marketing strategy?  In this post, I’ll give you some tips, tactics and techniques to help you. One big key — insights into your potential customers. Learn more about 1:1 marketing strategies and tactics from Marketing Experiments (highly recommended) – One To One Marketing.

Another new TLA — W.E.M., Web Engagement Management

Ok… so how do we engage and learn more about our prospects?  How about yet another TLA — Three Letter Acronym.  Tired as I am of TLAs, I like what this one is about… WEM — Web Engagement Management.  In a great post on the “5 Pillars of W.E.M.”, writing at CMSWire, Barb Mosher identifies them as:

1. Content Optimization
2. Multi-Channel Management
3. Conversational Engagement
4. Demand Generation
5. Sales & Relationship Automation

More on each point in future posts, but the key is that all five are required for an effective Web Engagement strategy.  Read the source article here:   5 Pillars of Web Engagement Management

Social Marketing Tip with HootSuite

So, let’s look at a tactic to address two WEM “pillars”:  Multi-Channel Management, and Conversational Engagement.  Time is a scarce commodity in most MarCom departments, and especially during this time of rapid social technology change.  That’s why I like HootSuite for its team workflow and cross platform engagement automation features.  So, my tip of the week is show below — use HootSuite’s “hidden” ability to profile tweeters:

Above (click for larger view), using Hootsuite to first monitor important business conversations, we can then learn more about a prospect by clicking on their photo/logo, then clicking on “view more tweets from…”.  Use this tactic to find out how influential the prospect is, and what their major interest focus might be.  Contact us to explore ways to use this engagement tool in your 1:1 marketing strategy.

Visual Media Optimization for Your WordPress CMS

With millions of smartphones, and now over 2 million iPads sold with more “tablets” on the way, now is the right time to consider your visual media methods of engagement and persuasion on your site.  We develop successful CMS solutions on the WordPress platform and are always looking for good ways to do this, so I’m pleased to recommend a versatile way to do that — with one note of caution.  Slideshows are great visual ways to explain B2B technical concepts in a persuasive and easy to understand way.  Consider the slides we did for a recent client, Lopez Research (click small image at right to see site).  This is a simple and effective way to present what you do in a way that engages emotions.  Remember — everyone makes a buy decision based on emotion.  What’s the caution?  Well, right now Apple has said they will not use Flash on their platforms, and most slideshows are done using Flash to drive them.  We look for new emerging standards in HTML 5.0 to break through this wall soon.

Above, a new plugin offers you the ability to show images that zoom and pan, while text explains the concept pictured and gives a link deeper into your site content.

Have a Web Engagement Management challenge you’d like us to review?  Great — contact us today and we’ll do a free review.

WebFadds is an Agency specializing in CMS Websites and Business Blogs, plus Marketing techniques optimized for Connection Cycle Marketing — CCM. We focus on delivering SEO savvy, Content Management System solutions on the market-leading WordPress platform, then provide Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Landing Page Optimization services to ensure you get maximum visitors converting to prospects, leads, and customers.

How do you capture key prospect information on your site? Until recently many using a CMS simply installed a forms processing plugin and enjoyed the convenience of an automatic contact form entry to their email. But now there are new options that include cloud computing solutions for better Customer Relationship Management (CRM). We’ll examine the relative merits of three ways to process lead forms in this post.  These solutions are key to what happens AFTER your landing page is optimized to increase conversions… more visitors converting to leads is great, but you have to “nurture” those leads in an efficient and effective way.

Three ways to process your lead forms

1. Old School CMS Forms Plugins (that’s so 2008): Content Management Systems (CMS) made a big splash in the last 4-5 years as excellent ways to efficiently manage content and operate on the web.  Part of their allure is the array of “plugins” available — mini-programs that help you get things done.  For example, we build sites exclusively on the WordPress CMS platform, winner of Best Open Source CMS for 2009 (PACKT Publishing), and there are a number of free open source plugins available for it, including our preferred “cForms II”, a very robust and extensively featured solution that includes the ability to develop multi-page forms.

• Advantage:  Automatic forms processing sent to one or more Admin. emails, plus a variety of features depending on plugin used.  Free, if you are using an Open-Source program, though we always recommend you donate to plugin programmers.
• Weaknesses:  Does not provide lead nurturing (sales focus and follow-up) features — requires manual entry into a corporate CRM, or custom programming for same.  Does not include other features including survey and poll reporting, the ability to collect payments for seminar sign-ups (etc.).  Mainly — no easy integration with an emerging set of business mission tools including CRM systems, and eMail Newsletter software.  Your IT group is forced to focus on maintaining a free plugin and to rely on the plugin programmer to keep it in compliance without professional and timely support.

2. Forms Processing Providers – More Integration & Features:  Recently a number of good forms processing companies like WuFoo.com, and FormStack.com (we’ve used both — compare pricing and features at those sites).  This is a smarter way to collect data, for several reasons including range of features, and ease of integration with other services like CRMs, Payment Providers (PayPal), and eNewsletter providers (MailChimp, etc.).

• Advantage:  Better integration with key business systems.  More features including the ability to collect and assess surveys, and the ability to accept payments for events.  Good prompt technical support.  Easy interface for creating forms.
• Weaknesses:  Does not provide lead nurturing (sales focus and follow-up) features, although most service providers automate import into CRMs.  It’s not free — but then nothing really is.  Even “free” open source plugins require configuration work and may be in conflict with other plugins.

3. CRM Form on Your Site For Direct Capture of Prospect Details:  All major cloud Customer Relationship Manager systems like SalesForce.com (larger companies), and BatchBook.com (for smaller businesses — we use them) offer the ability to plugin forms and collect prospect data directly from  your site right into the CRM.

• Advantage:  Eliminates manual entry into CRM.  Provides immediate sales and lead nurturing focus, a very important strategic objective for every business.  Good integration with other business systems including eNewsletter providers (MailChimp), and forms processors listed above.
• Weaknesses:  Does not provide some features of Forms Processors including payment acceptance, and poll and survey processing.  It costs money — most good business services do.  Initial learning curve for sales and marketing team, though we see this as a net gain and a real strength after everyone comes up to speed.  Why?  Done correctly, you should close more sales.

A couple of FAQ’s

Why Would You Ever Need Both a CRM and a Forms Processing Solution in Addition to Your CMS?

First of all, CMS options are limited and picking from the healthy field of both CRM solutions and Forms Processors gives you an excellent selection of features, beyond what a CMS can provide.  Next, recall that open source plugins are “free” and so do not provide professional support options.  Most CRMs currently do not provide the same out of the box features of Forms Processors including payment processing, and survey/poll management.  We’ve been asked, “shouldn’t the CMS do it all?”  No.  A CMS is a complex system on it’s own with a primary focus on delivering site content dynamically, not Forms Processing, or Customer Relationship Management.  To do Forms Processing and CRM well, requires a sophisticated system which is best maintained, updated, and supported separately from your CMS.

What is Your Recommended CMS/CRM System?

At this time we always recommend a good CRM for the focus it brings to the sales process.  It is not just about content — authentic connections are what it takes to get the sales you need.  Your CMS is for web content management, not lead nurturing.  Then, we recommend an integrated eNewsletter provider like MailChimp.  This is our “solution set #1″:

CMS –> CRM –> eNewsletter Provider (ie. We use WordPress –> Batchbook.com –> MailChimp.com)

When you need direct payment processing, or survey management, we then add a Forms Processor that will integrate with the first set, and seamlessly inport data into your preferred CRM.  You may only need this option seasonally.  It is our “solution set #2″:

CMS –> Forms Processor  –> CRM –> eNewsletter Provider (ie. We use WordPress –> WuFoo.com –> Batchbook.com –> MailChimp.com)

Contact us at WebFadds.com for a 1-page proposal with more details geared to your operation.

In this Post:

How can you get the most out of your CMS plus stay on top of the opportunities to engage prospects on social networks? Well one tool I really recommend — Hootsuite — is busily combining all the major social networks on one dashboard, plus blogging on WordPress.com.  This collision creates a mashup that points to where we’re headed in the next five years, I think.  If you’re still asking, “is social media a business tool,” you’re missing the train. And our CMS of choice, WordPress, has added even more great Content Management features in version 3.0, due out in a couple of wees, so we’ll take a look at those.

Social Media Tip: Now, use Google to find out what people are chatting about in your city. Go there and type in “location *portland” (substitute your city). On the left choose “Discussions”, then “past week.” Note that you can also choose “blogs.” You can also choose further search refinements at left. Click here to see what I found.

A Social Suite to the Max

Hootsuite is taking the word “suite” seriously.  In the last few months they’ve added up and coming social network FourSquare, the ability to reach Fan Pages on Facebook (standard Facebook was already built in), LinkedIN, plus greatly extended the networks you can reach by adding Ping.FM, itself a network aggregator that reaches another 30 or so second tier media sites.  They’ve created an iPhone application.  They’ve beefed up team collaboration features — great for corporate MarCom departments.  Kudos to Hootsuite.

From one dashboard, I can now handle all the essental social media tasks — and automate a number of them.  In order to stay on top of all of this for our clients, I am attending “Hootsuite University” — several hours of training and testing on using Hootsuite, and best practices at the major social networks.  I’ll report on that in upcoming posts.  Contact us for Social Media training and campaign options.

Above, you see the tool to add a Social Network in HootSuite, with Ping.fm showing.  TIP:  Ping.fm is a stealth tool that extends your reach greatly via 30 networks, mobile messaging, chat, and a growing number of 3rd party applications. It seems like a lot to come up on, but with our help you can set it all up once, automate 80% of the work, and greatly increase visibility for your strategic Marketing Communication.

WordPress 3.0 adds Great CMS Features

Here are some top new features to be thinking about using in the forthcoming update of WordPress to version 3.0:

• Control of Menus: Called “Menu Management” in WP 3.0, this new feature gives you a simple drag and drop interface to add links to categories, posts, external sites… plus package “custom menus” as sidebar widgets where your theme allows.  Wow — Kudos to the WordPress core team.  Note that WebFadds builds custom themes for CMS solutions with 13 widget-ready areas, and these menus could be available in any of them.
  Above – the new Menu Manager in WordPress 3.0 is powerful, but easy to use.
• Custom Post Types:  Right now you may only choose between a post and a page, but in WordPress 3.0, you can define your own post types and select attributes.  Think Directory.  For example, you could set-up a business directory, a set of photo galleries or portfolio pages, a set for case studies, etc.  Then you can assign special tags and categories just for this post type.  Then, modify your theme design so the user interface helps your visitors navigate through your new sections.
• Multiple Customized Blogs: We have been using customized categories to set up more than one blog for larger clients.  This works ok because each category has its own RSS feed in WordPress, and its index page may be styled uniquely.  But now, the WordPress team has combined “WordPress MU” (Multi-user), formerly a separate project and download, into the core WordPress program.  So, you may now host a collection of separate blogs, each with their own custom theme, from one hosting plan and WordPress administration area.  This should be great for universities, companies with satellite offices, news organizations — any group with the need for “departments” with their own identity.

Your themes will require modifications to accommodate these new features — contact us for details.

WebFadds has added a Mobile Readiness PAK for WordPress CMS installations based on installation, configuration and testing methods reviewed here. Cost ranges between $399 and $999 depending on the complexity of your theme, configuration, and features required. Below you can learn more about how it works. Contact us for a quote today.

As most people have noticed, mobile device use is exploding, and with the high-successful launch of the iPad, now is a great time to consider your Mobile Readiness strategy for your website.  Is it ready for web visitors with tiny smartphone screens, and also for site admins working on the road?

Smartphone Trends = Mobile Browsing:

• The top three smartphone makers sold 800 million units last year — all carrying web browsers that do better with sites optimized for their small screens
• Apple is on target to sell around 5 million iPads (close to 3 million already) — just in 2010 — and sold 25 million iPhones in 2009 (a 100% increase over the previous year)
• Flash is not supported by the majority of mobile phones. Steve Jobs has said the iPad will not support Flash. Flash looks to be sunsetting in favor of HTML5 video standards.

Solutions to Make Your WordPress CMS Website Mobile Ready:

There are two sides to the site mobile readiness game, both involving simplifying delivery of site content and functions for a smaller screen — for site visitors, and site administrators.  And, the solution technology is emerging and evolving quickly.  At last count there were  eleven plugins for WordPress with mobile solution features, and more than one online service designed for same.  We’ve tested several and believe the following three solutions are flexible enough to accommodate just about any WordPress CMS set-up.

Above, the Wapple plugin for your WordPress CMS aims to make on the road editing easy for administrators using a smartphone.

For Administrators, Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress: This plugin helps you write posts and manage your site from mobile devices. WordPress Mobile Admin is a WordPress control panel for your mobile. It works on every device and is fully featured. You can write and edit posts, moderate and reply to comments, update and manage tags, categories and pages.  Learn more here.

For Visitors to your Sites - WordPress Mobile Pack: The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to your iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini mobile, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm visitors without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme. The theme also includes the ability for your visitors to easily switch between the WPtouch view and your site’s regular theme.   Learn more here.

Above, Mobify is a one source solution for mobile design, analytics, mobile advertising, and integration with Social Media.

Combine mobile design and ads with Analytics with Mobify: Mobify is an interesting service play offering extended styling to design a mobile layout for your website, the ability to capture mobile traffic from Twitter & Google, and a platform to manage mobile analytics & advertising. They have their own WordPress plugin for smooth integration in to your WordPress CMS.  Take a tour at Mobify.

We believe that the best solution will involve a couple of the technologies profiled here, and selected to best meet your website mobile mission objectives.  Contact us today for a no obligation consultation.