It’s been awfully quiet around here. The workers are clicking away at the computers and we now have a new blog dedicated to creating WordPress CMS Websites, not blogs, but true content management system websites.

This new project is called CMS With WordPress (http://cmswithwordpress.com). WordPress related news and information can still be found here on this site. CMS with WordPress is a tutorial website for configuring an effective CMS, not a poorly constructed blog that is a wanna-be CMS website.

Yet another WordPress security release!  However, this WordPress Security update can be skipped for many who are the sole bloggers on their site…

2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges. ~ WordPress.org

If your site has registered bloggers with posting privileges and need to upgrade, check out Upgrading WordPress Using Dreamweaver. Or check out this great plugin: WordPress Automatic Upgrade.

If you need help upgrading your WordPress installation contact us today.

I mentioned in my most recent blog post The Number 1 Rule of Blogging, that I hadn’t been following that very rule. I’ve been rather busy like the rest of us business people. But I am back on track now. This is what’s going on:

In the last 4 weeks I launched two websites for Divittorio Real Estate in El Dorado County, California. Along with their main website and blog, they also wanted a stand alone blog for El Dorado County Foreclosures. Search Friendly Web Design gave Divittorio Real Estate a custom theme that is shared between both sites and a fully optimized main site. Divitorrio provided a layout and color scheme that we followed to produce the current look and style.

Denise decided she needed to move out of Blogger and into WordPress. She asked me to convert her blogs and her old website into a new WordPress CMS using Thesis. This was my first Thesis project and I have a lot to say about the platform but that is for another day. For now, check out Rossetti Marketing to see the customized Thesis theme that Denise loves. The header image was supplied and we used some elements from the old site but gave the site a whole new look and feel. Now the site is more search engine friendly with the navigation converted from image links to text links.

The most recent finished project was a complete recode of a site template for Ink Image of Eugene. The site was built using iWeb originally and had JavaScript navigation, verbose css markup. Put simply, it was a mess. Now that it has been recoded using search friendly web design techniques and clean code, we’re watching anxiously for the site to start appearing in SERPS.

When we relocated to Eugene, OR in November 2009, I knew I needed to get active in my new local community so I visited Meetup.com and found a small-business networking group.  I made it to one meeting. Since, I’ve been so busy with work projects that taking 2 hours in the middle of my Friday is out of the question.

Two days ago a person I met at the Meetup.com group remembered me and called to invite me to the next BNI (Business Networking International) luncheon here in Eugene as the group was interested in inviting web designers.

I was honored to be invited and I’m look forward to mixing things up and getting out from behind the computer screens to meet some people face-to-face.

If you’re local to Eugene, this luncheon is visitors day. Here are the details:

Visitor’s Day meeting of the BNI Eugene Metro Chapter at the Boulevard Grill, located at 2123 Franklin Boulevard, Eugene, OR 97403, on Thursday, May 14, 2009, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. Cost is $20.00 and includes a light lunch.

I just launched another WordPress CMS creation. This content management system is for an executive search firm based in the Chicago area. Louis Anthony & Associates Executive Search, owned by Louis Dodaro.

Louis is one of my old college buddies and has been in the Executive Search Industry for 15 years. He finally decided to go out on his own! Congratulations Louis!

So, without further ado, allow me to introduce Louis Anthony and Associates Executive Search.

Mmmm. White.Water. I love the sound of that. And all winter long I have been working on California Whitewater, a new informational website on some of the most popular whitewater rafting & kayaking rivers in California. At first launch we compiled a 224 page website with tons of useful information both on and off the river.

A majority of my clients are in the adventure sports industry which makes web projects very fun. Out all the projects I’ve done, I think California Whitewater has been the most fun for a couple of reasons. The vast amounts of awesome pictures and videos that we got sift through and I love the crew I got to work with on the California Whitewater project.

Most website projects are worked by myself and maybe another person. But with California Whitewater I had the opportunity to work with the awesome in-house team; Malina Dunk, Tessa Sibbet and Deb Mason. Malina was the project coordinator, Tessa managed the content publishing and Deb deserves kudos for the fabulous design, cool maps and icon art.

Also a big thanks to All-Outdoors California Whitewater Rafting for allowing the use of their entire image library and video clips.

Check out California Whitewater and be sure to spend some time in the multimedia gallery.

Oh, almost forgot. California Whitewater is a WordPress CMS.

The relaunch for BTI Whitewater is finished! BTI is a river company in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Their original site was circa 1998.  BTI does a lot of site updating through out the season. Can you guess what we built their site in? Yup. WordPress.

We took the original 11 page website and transformed it into 28 pages plus added a blog.

About 6 weeks ago, I launched a project for Sea Kayaking Trips in Baja Mexico.  Initially I was going to build this site in WordPress but the owners of Sea Trek Baja are Dreamweaver Users and like to do their own edits. To meet their needs, this site was built using PHP Dreamweaver Templates.

The content used to live on their main kayaking website but it just wasn’t getting the exposure it needed from the search engines so we rebuilt the enitre site from the ground up and expanded it from 13 to 26 pages and re launched it on www.SeaTrekBaja.com.

Since we launched the site.. Google has indexed 25 of the 26 pages and they are starting see some SERPS beginning to appear for some of their long tail keyword terms.

For more website samples visit the Search Friendly Web Design Portfolio.

The long awaited WordPress 2.6.1 was released today. According to WordPress Development, 2.6.1 has over 60 fixes as well as some enhancements.

This is really exciting stuff! As I mentioned in my last WP 2.6.1 post, I usually wait for the first security update after a next generation release before I begin the upgrades.

Search Engine Land reported today that AdSense for feeds is now available to all Google publishers. Barry Schwartz, news editor at Search Engine Land, wrote:

I noted at the Search Engine Roundtable that many folks are buzzing about the new feature at several discussion forums. It appears to me that this beta offering, is now open to all, if not, most Google AdSense publishers.

Now Adsense publishers can run Ads in their RSS Feeds. Great news! I’m very excited about this new feature.

Current Feedburner users will need to migrate Feedburner Feeds to an existing Google Account for this feature to work. Migration documentation can be found here. Unfortunately, the migration from Feedburner to Google is manual so you need to contact Google Support and supply them some info. There is no turn-around time mentioned.