Wordpress as a Dynamic Web Management Solution
Friday, 2 January 2009
As this is a blog, and my intention here is to write about what I am doing in terms of online marketing and network building, I thought that it would make sense to start with something about blogging, why I blog, and best of all, what I use to do it. Which happens to be Wordpress.
Wordpress is an amazing piece of software. What started as a simple blogging platform has now turned into one of the most robust content management platforms available online today. You can blog, but you can also build complex websites with functionality that you could never dream of without programming skills of your own at the click of a button. Because of it’s long standing nature as an open source project, so many people have contributed amazing add ons that it is hard to find something these days that Wordpress can’t do.
Uses?
Wordpress as an SEO Tool
In the case of this blog, I am using Wordpress as a SEO tool. I have installed several plugins which make creating highly optimized pages easier, and I’ll review them in future posts. When dimension5 Labs was created and Narasopa.com no longer needed to be used to market my services, I decided I would instead turn it into a lead generation site for high end consulting. I’ll be doing that by.. you guessed it .. blogging. By writing posts on topics that other professionals find important, and making sure they are optimized to end up in the search engines, I’ve created a new, more personal way, for people to find out about my thoughts and my services.
Wordpress as a Content Management Service
Wordpress, although handy as a blog used for SEO purposes, is also great for beginner’s who don’t know too much about web design but want to put a nice site online. I recently put together Demon Frameworks website for a friend for Christmas. He is an excellent, excellent bike builder, but not a web designer. By using Wordpress, I was able to create a really nice looking site in about five hours that gave him the ability to add and update pages, run his own blog about his bike building process (therefore generating more SEO traffic as well), easily update and create new photo galleries and flash slide shows, and have a contact form where people could easily get in touch. To do this by hand would have taken days, but with the magic of Wordpress it came off in one evening!
Wordpress as A Social Platform
On LifeStyleZero.com I used a Wordpress MU (multi-user) installation to create a social platform for other people interested in moving towards a zero carbon footprint / zero waste lifestyle. Anyone on the planet who is interested can sign up and share their thoughts, ideas, and challenges on this topic, and can find and comment on other people’s posts to form a network of people and ideas around a topic.
These are only three of the hundreds of ways it is possible to use Wordpress. If you are interested in having a Wordpress site of your own, right now I am running an offer to set up a basic Wordpress installation for anyone who wants it absolutely free (the hosting costs $5.95 a month for a basic package that will support your blog until it grows out of control, but I can get you a three month free trial of that as well so you have plenty of time to see if it’s working for you). I’ll also be posting tons of free information on this blog on how to start and grow a profit stream using a simple Wordpress blog, so if you want to jump on the blogging bandwagon using what I think is the best software available today, post a comment below and I’ll set you up!
