» CMS With Wordpress – My Latest Endeavor
July 1st, 2010 Sammy RussoIf you haven’t noticed, but the blog here has been a little quiet. Couple of reason…
1. Very busy with work, family, life, etc..
2. I started a new blog dedicated to creating Wordpress CMS Websites, not blogs but regular content management system websites.
This new project is called CMS With Wordpress (http://cmswithwordpress.com). I’ll still blog about Wordpress related material here on my main business blog. CMS with Wordpress is being set up more as a tutorial website to configuring things to be a real CMS, not just a poorly constructed blog that is pretending to be CMS website.
Enjoy and Happy 4th of July!
» Bookmarklet to Reclaim Your Privacy On Facebook
May 24th, 2010 Sammy RussoIf you follow Social Media or are a Facebook user then I’m sure you’re familiar with the whole Facebook privacy controversy. I’m always concerned about my online privacy especially on Facebook. Read more…
» Does Your Business Need a Content Management System?
November 20th, 2009 Sammy RussoI recently posted an article that discusses what exactly a content management system is. The next topic regarding content management systems that I want to address is whether or not your small business needs a CMS. While I do think that content management systems are a great fit for most businesses, they don’t necessarily fit every small business.
Read more…
» What Exactly is a Content Management System?
November 6th, 2009 Sammy RussoToday, one of the big industry buzzwords is content management system. The funny thing is content management systems (CMS) have been around for years but its taken them a while to gain popularity and now it seems they are taking the web by storm.
Content management systems come in all shapes and sizes from large enterprise applications to free open source platforms. And in between those are the different types of content management systems for creating blogs, websites, e-commerce shopping sites, auction sites, directories and the list goes on.
» Collection of Twitter Articles & Tutorials
May 19th, 2009 Sammy RussoI’m fairly new Twitter myself… at least as an active user. I’ve known about Twitter for some time now and as you may already know Twitter is the hottest topic in the Social Media Sphere. So instead of regurgitating what’s already been said 10 times over I figure it would just be easier and more practical to share the articles I read to help get me on my Tweeting way.
So a great place to start with learning about Twitter. I suggest the following article by Tim Andren.. the Definitive Guide to Twitter. Its a great breakdown of what it is, what its used for and why. Along these same lines is another tutorial.. the Beginners Guide to Using Twitter.
Once you get the hang of what Twitter is all about and you have now started Twittering on your own.. this useful guide to ReTweets via Mashable is a quick and easy read and will take your Twitter to the next level.
So now we’ve got the basics down… you’re tweeting, retweeting. Now its time to link your website &/or blog to Twitter. Via Smashing Magazine… 15 Useful Twitter Hacks and Plugins for Wordpress. If you are just looking for a plugin recommendation for your Wordpress Blog… We use Twitter Tools and really like it.
Hope this helps… enjoy!
» Rounded Corners with CSS
May 8th, 2009 Sammy RussoSome good stuff on creating rounded corners with css for your website. Check out http://www.roundedcornr.com.
Use the RoundedCornr engine to generate the images and CSS code for…
- Basic Rounded Corners
- Rounded Corners with a Gradient
- Rounded Corners with a Border
- Single Rounded Corner Image
And here are a couple of great tutorials on rounded corners with CSS.
http://kalsey.com/2003/07/rounded_corners_in_css/
http://www.cssjuice.com/25-rounded-corners-techniques-with-css/
Enjoy
» Tips For Marketing & Growing Your Business Through a Recession
April 8th, 2009 Sammy RussoRecession marketing tips are all over the web. It seems there is a recession marketing topic that pops up each week. Fortunately, I’ve been so darn busy that I’ve yet to read most of the recession marketing posts out there. I found a little time the other day to gather my list of “Tips for Marketing & Growing Your Business Through A Recession.”
My hope is to provide a quick snippet on each recession marketing tip then come back later on and one by one, elaborate on them further.
Don’t Cut Back On Marketing
Restructure your efforts but don’t stop or reduce marketing. If there were any time to spend more on marketing.. I would think now would be the time. As a store or business looking to grow you probably realize the competition is extremely fierce they’re probably just as hungry as you are. Everyone spending money is trying to be thrifty and get the best product for the best possible price. There are plenty of cost effective ways to trim the fat from your marketing strategies that might free up capital to focus on the marketing that is currently working.
Keep a Clean House
Take the extra effort to make sure the online marketing you have in place is clean and tidy.. no outdated content on the homepage, typos, broken images etc. As the adage goes.. “You only get one chance to make a first impression.” Take some time to read through your copy and freshen things up from time-to-time. The often you update, the more the search spiders will crawl your site look for more new c0ntent.
Be Proactive.. Engage the Social Network
Set up your Social Network Platforms.. Facebook & Twitter. Be active in them, I know its hard to engage all the platforms but at the very minimum these 2 mentioned need to be a priority. Why? Because this is where the world is.. your friends & family.. their friends and your clients. Most of my work has come to me word of mouth, so by staying connected and leveraging the social network sphere you have more word of mouth opportunities. You also don’t want to forget about about LinkedIn.
Don’t Forget About Your Analytics
I think a lot of website owners have analytics but don’t pay any attention to them. Analytics can tell you where you need to focus your efforts on item #2 “Keep A Clean House.” You can find where most people exit your site, what keywords are working best for you and which ones could be doing better and a whole lot more.
Don’t Price Yourself Out of the Market..
But don’t sell yourself short either. It’s important to stay competitive when you price your services. I have a colleague who raised his hourly rate a little bit and it seems he’s having a tougher time with work than others are. Fortunately I think he realized on his own that he may have priced himself out of some jobs.
» Don’t Be So Quick To Take Down A Blog
April 2nd, 2009 Sammy RussoMy wife and I have several blogs.. hobby sites really that we run some Google Adsense on and make a few bucks each year. Sure I wish it was more but we only have so much time and we also have 3 kids that require a lot of attention.
Since the birth of our 3rd child this past October its been very hard to blog about much of anything, let alone maintain what we have. This morning it finally dawned on me that I have a micro niche blog site that really has some potential. but also needs some love too. Even though I’m not into this site anymore because it pertains to a place we don’t even live… it still has some worth… it still helps pay for the annual web hosting fees.
So today I finally took a couple of hours and made the changes to Tehachapi Realtors that I’ve been wanting to make for over 6 months now. I added Recent Posts to the homepage template, I re-monitized the sidebar and added a new post.
I know 1 post every three months isn’t going to make anyone rich… but my motivation lies with how much this site makes per click from Google. I also have a few items that I’ll be ready to add in the coming weeks like Real Estate News RSS Feeds to try and keep some fresh content on the site when I don’t have the time to do it myself.
And to think.. just a few months ago I was thinking about selling off this site and domain because traffic was stagnating and I didn’t have time to maintain. But with recent news of an slowly improving economy and a 4.7% rise in the real estate market… my Tehachapi Realtors site is starting to show some signs of life.
The moral is don’t be to quick to quit. Realize that if a site is limping along but it still makes a little bit of money.. no matter how meager… it still has potential to make more. So give it one more good shot at it before you quit.
» Give Life to Your Comments with Intense Debate
March 6th, 2009 Sammy RussoGive Life to your blog comments and more with Intense Debate. I haven’t tried this out yet but I plan to very.. it looks rather interesting. And now they’ve added plugin support which I found out about via the Blog Herald.
» Changing the Color Of Your Visited Links
October 28th, 2008 Sammy RussoA client recently asked me…
I notice that on our website the colors change from blue to purple after clicked on. My question is When some one enters the site are all the category’s purple and then when clicked on they turn blue. However when some else enters the site are all the colors purple or are some blue some purple?
I started to answer his question then thought it best to go beyond answering it and to also explain why.
