Posted by Pixelhead
I was doing a Dallas Mexican Restaurant Review on thegrubhound, for the Mexican Restaurant Mattito’s. Upon doing a ctrl+U shortcut to check out the code of their site, I discovered that the vibrant Mattitos Mexican restaurant site is using WordPress as its CMS.
Mattito's Screen Shot - Doesn't that Margarita Look tasty!
The Amazing WordPress CMS
I have been seeing more and more sites that are using WordPress for their Content Management System(CMS). At our SEO Company, Baldydog.com, we don’t normally build websites, but we refer potential clients to our select group of Web Designers like Newconceptsonline.com who designed the current Baldydog.com site or Liquid Interactive, a company that specializes in B to B sites for fortune 500 types of clients.
However, as a service to the local business community and many friends, I do occasionally build a site using WordPress as the CMS. These are usually small Mom and Pop types of sites that don’t have a huge budget, for a designer or a premium website. A few of these are the Limerick Barber.com, Cdsplace.com, Dierolfsupply.com, and EasyDesigns.
Several of these have static home pages, which are homepages that are not blogs.
How Do You Make a Static Home Page
Depending upon the Theme, you are using, you might be able to make a static(permanent) home page differently like EasyDesigns, which was made with a premium theme(not giving a link because I would not recommend or use the theme again). WordPress does however give you an easy way to make any page you chose to be a static home page.
Visit the previous link to get detailed directions on setting any page to be a static home page.
How Do I Design a Home Page
To let you know, I am not a designer. Baldydog.com does have an in-house graphic designer, who does our basic work, and as I mentioned before, we have partnered with web designers who we refer to for more elaborate designs. Unless you are a programer, and would like to slowly define your website design like Wayne, my suggestions as a non-designer, is to start with a good theme, and go from there. For many of the sites I have been building lately, I have been using the free Mystique Theme by DigitalNature that was recommended to me by my wife, the owner of Fatladysingz.com.
Mystique is an easy to use theme that allows for a multitude of adjustments that can be made, some easy, and some a little more tricky, which involve adding some code to the template such as these 40+ Mystque Theme modifications. Using any of these modifications as well as the many options available on the Mystique user panel, the web designs you can make with Mystique are unlimited. Mystique can be found in the WordPress themes directory.
I probably will not be creating any sites that look half way as nice as Mattito’s since my design abilities are so limited. But using WordPress as your CMS, allows you to create sites that can compete with large company websites .
7 Reasons to Use WordPress As Your CMS
- Its open source, so there are tons of pluggins that can enable it to do just about anything you could want a site to do, such as have a video or photo portfolio, do a fundraiser such as my Guatemala Trip Fundraiser and show how much you have earned.
- Its customizable. You don’t like the look of your site, its not difficult to change. Often times it can be done with one click, and a new theme.
- WordPress is SEO friendly. Search engines, especially Google love fresh, original content. Using WordPress, you will be able to make updates as easy as writing an email. Additionally, there are pluggins such as the TheAllinOneSEO Pack.
- In my opinion and many others, it is the best blogging platform on the web. This will enable you to make your website social, so you can make it the hub for all of your Social Media profiles.
- Easily integrates with Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
- WordPress is inexpensive to use as a CMS. Compared to some other CMS platforms, WordPress is relatively inexpensive to use for a business website.
- As I have discussed, its easy to make a static home page so your business site, does not look like a blog, yet it can easily incorporates a blog as well.( I highly recommend having a blog if you are using WP as your CMS).
What Do You Think?
Do you know of any good business sites that utilize WordPress as the CMS? What do you think about using WordPress as a CMS?
Written by Pixelhead on July 15th, 2011 with 111 comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Wordpress.
Local Search Sites – Add MapQuest.com to the Local Search ListGuatemala Mission Trip
business card printing
Posted by Pixelhead
A new addition to the sites to submit your local business to is the old time map site MapQuest.com which became a much less used map site due to Google Maps. MapQuest.com is the number two map site, behind Google, so it can’t hurt to submit your business to it for free. 
I just submitted a client’s business to Mapquest Local Business Center and was using Mozilla, and was having difficulty. So I openned up IE and it worked much better. (let me know if you notice a difference)
In addition to the free submission listing, Mapquest also has some premium listing services to include the $99/yr highlighted premium listing, and the multiple listing feature for $399 a year to a broad partner network:Yelp!, Yahoo!, SuperPages, CitySearch, White Pages, Yellowbook, YellowBot and LOCAL .
What other sites to you list your local businesses?
Written by Pixelhead on July 6th, 2011 with 25 comments.
Read more articles on SEO.
Directory Submission Fundraiser7 Reasons to Use WordPress as Your CMS
Posted by Pixelhead
As part of the fundraising for our FromHousestoHomes Guatemala trip, we are donating 100% of our directory submission review fees to the following directories until July15th.
In addition to the directory submissions other advertising options are available as well. See the Guatemala Fund Raising Advertising post for more info.
Of Course if you just want to make a donation, that is always appreciated too. $10 donations will receive a link on our Guatemala donors page. Via You can now donate via my Guatemala fundraiser on Crowdwise if you don’t or can’t use Paypal. If you prefer Paypal, you can use that as well, just visit the first link on this post, and click on Paypal button in that post.
Written by Pixelhead on May 14th, 2011 with 54 comments.
Read more articles on Directory Submissions and Uncategorized.
Building Homes for Poor Families of GuatemalaLocal Search Sites – Add MapQuest.com to the Local Search List
Posted by Pixelhead
Since my last blog post back in 2008 about the Guatemalan organization, FromHousestoHomes.org that makes houses for poor families of Guatemala, I signed up to go to Guatemala this summer (2011) with the non-profit, to pitch in and build a cinder block houses.
From July 28th to August 7th, a group of 5 from my church, which includes my friend Dave who was in the video on the older post, and his two oldest kids along with my step-daughter and I, will be building a cinder block house for a family that previously had a corn stalk house.
Corn stalk houses vs Cinder Block Houses
Corn stalk houses are not very secure and can be easily destroyed by the tropical weather. The cinder block houses can not be easily destroyed, and have a tin roof that keeps out mother nature.
The corn stalk houses also are easily broken into by animals and other unwanted guests. The cinder block houses have doors and windows that can be secured. Additionally, each house is equipped with bunk beds, a stove, and some shelves.
The cinder block houses we are building are not very luxurious compared to our homes in the States, but compared to the corn stalk houses, they are a huge improvement.
Fund-raising for Guatemala
My daughter and I need to raise $3777.00 for the trip, so we are ramping up my fund-raising efforts. I would like you the reader to to donate $10 usd to help me with our trip. For your donation, not only will I be grateful, but I will add you and your site url to the donors page that I will have on this site as well as All-Travel-sites.com Guatemala Donation page.
In addition to donating, I also have some advertising specials available which will result in up to 100% of the proceeds going to the trip. Check out the advertising for Guatemala post for info about the advertising options. If you are interested in some other advertising that is not included, or if you have suggestions, please let me know in a comment.
Additionally, until July 15th, all directory submission review fees will be applied to the trip 100%. This includes submissions to the following directories:
Will you donate and help poor families in Guatemala?
UPDATE: I deleted the Paypal button after we got a donation several months later. However, if you would like to donate, please feel free to visit the Fromhousestohomes.org site and donate.
Written by Pixelhead on May 3rd, 2011 with 55 comments.
Read more articles on Charitable Organizations and Uncategorized.
Foodbank App Needed for Food InsecurityDirectory Submission Fundraiser
Posted by Pixelhead
I had an idea that kept me from sleeping..well if that darn cat had not woke me up at 415am to be let out, I probably would not have had the idea.
The idea was spurned by the morning news yesterday when I heard an actor(oh, Lizzie says it was Al Roker of the Today Show) talking about a campaign to reduce “food insecurity“ and hunger.
What is Food Insecurity?
If you go to the previous link and check out the page on Frac.org (Food Research and Action Center) you can find out more about the political terms used to describe hunger in countries such as the United States.
In the United States and other developed countries, people generally don’t starve death, but homes that are food insecure, where there is just not enough to eat, do exist. This isn’t like I didn’t have enough time to get to the store, its more like, I don’t have enough money for the bills on a regular basis, and my family is frequently with out food.
Who are the Hungry?
- kids
- elderly
- homeless
- the continually growing number of unemployed.
Being with out food, and having to skip meals on a regular basis, can seriously affect a persons emotional and mental well being. Don’t believe it, why don’t you fast for a day, and see how you feel?
As a former teacher, I know that kids who don’t get the proper nutrition, are prone to lower academic achievement, not to mention affects on their physical growth milestones.
So….
What can I do about hunger and Food Insecurity?
I was thinking of some ways that I could raise funds or food that could be donated to the local food bank. These include:
- weekly donations to the food bank at church.
- when we have a party or get together, have guests bring a can of food to donate, this will be brought to either the local food bank, or to church the following week to be added to my weekly food donation.
- Here is where my idea starts..When we go out to eat(Thegrubhound and FatladySingz eat out a lot) I will start donating either a fixed amount like 5-10$ or a fixed percent like 10% of the bill. If I can give a wait staff 20% then, why not add 10% for the hungry?
So how do I go about getting the money to the food bank. Sure I can keep a tally of the amounts on my phone, and then purchase a grocery store shopping card for the amount next week. Or….
An App to Make Donating to Food Banks Simple
What if there was an app that let me donate a designated amount to the local food bank. The Food Bank App would be like a directory of all the food banks across this globe. When I pay my bill, I can send the 10% right to the account of a local participating food bank.
The App could be made social, maybe even partner with Social Sites like FourSquare, Facebook, Twitter, and the like.
So I when I donate, a tweet or post could go out that a patron of Joe’s Tavern, made a donation to the abc food bank…Possible App Customizations:
- The app could be customized to update social sites or to not update them.
- Users could set it up to donate via a set amount or a percent.
- Restaurants could have pages and the total amounts that were donated by patrons could be listed.
- Users could also keep track of their donations, and donation receipts for tax purposes could be issued from it as well.
- Like FourSquare, users could earn awards or badges for how much they donate.
- Those wishing to donate anonymously could opt to not get rewards and to not check in on social sites.
- Lizzie and others have said an option to enable restaurants to match donations could be added.
So what do you think about the Food Bank App idea? How do I proceed?
Written by Pixelhead on March 20th, 2011 with 75 comments.
Read more articles on Charitable Organizations.
Gowalla & FourSquare not Gowalla Vs FourSquareBuilding Homes for Poor Families of Guatemala
Posted by Pixelhead
Last week I started using the GeoLocation Based Social Media site Gowalla to check in while out and about and I like its features that allow me to update not only my Gowalla profile, but also Facebook places, Twitter, and my Tumblr. I also like the feature of being able to post pictures to my profile and add the pics to the spot that I am visiting as well as posting to my Twitter and Facebook profiles if I desire.
Gowalla and FourSquare
Gowalla and FourSquare are not the only players in the GeoLocation Based Social Media game, but they are the two major players. FourSquare being the bigger of the two, but Gowalla, which was established in 2007, is the older of the two.
Who Uses GeoLocation Social Media sites?
Users of these GeoLocation social services tend to be tech savy, young people who have disposable income. If I had a business that relied upon foot traffic, I would strive to get these users of both Gowalla and FourSquare into my establishment.
For more info on using GeoBased Location Social Media for Business check out the following SlideShare presentations:(I will be doing a post on this subject in the near future)
- GeoBased Location Social Media for Brands
- Proof that GeoLocation Marketing Can Succeed
Gowalla VS FourSquare Features
- Gowalla Items vs FourSquare Badges
- Checking in on both is easy
- Gowalla allows you to check in on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr..
- Gowalla top ten list vs FourSquare Mayor..ten users recognized vs one..
- FourSquare Specials for Business Promotion..Gowalla (forthcoming)
- Gowalla is into the Geocaching Game vs the Social aspect of FourSquare
- Both now allow posting of pictures.
- Choosing not to update followers for a particular check-in on Gowalla requires up to four taps on my iPhone vs FourSquare which it can be done with one tap.
- Design wise I think they are about equal, both are pretty easy to navigate.
- FourSquare has a larger user base – according to a somewhat dated TechCrunch article, Foursquare is 5 times larger and growing at a rate of 75% faster every day.
I am not going to go into any more detail in this post. I encourage you to check out both GeoLocation Social Media sites and compare the two. I myself, will be keeping an eye on both, and will be looking for ways that I can use them to enable my local Search clients to drive foot traffic to their businesses.
Are You Using FourSquare and/or Gowalla?
Written by Pixelhead on February 10th, 2011 with 34 comments.
Read more articles on FourSquare and SMO and Uncategorized.
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