Why Use WordPress For Your Website?

Wait a second… Isn’t WordPress just a blog?

Well yes, and no. While WordPress started off exclusively as a blogging platform, it now has almost as much functionality as any “normal” website out there today. There is almost nothing you can’t do with WordPress, and it has a lot of benefits for the beginner.

Let’s take a look at the biggest benefit of using WordPress for your first website. It is EASY to learn, and no programming knowledge is required to get set up!

In almost all aspects, WordPress does most of the work for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. A few clicks and you’re done. Let’s take a quick look at the two main features you might worry about.

Easy Design:
Now, a lot of us don’t have time to take out of our days to come up with a site design. With WordPress that is taken care of for you! Simply browse around for a template you like, right from the WordPress Dashboard, click install, and she’s done! Of course, you will probably need to do some tweaking, but the backbone is done for you.

SEO:
For many people, especially those just getting started, SEO can be a really frightening subject. Unlike conventional websites (AKA made the old fashioned way), WordPress does its best to help the beginner perform at least the basic SEO steps needed to be properly formatted and seen by the search engines.
You don’t need any special knowledge, or any programming skills. Simply hop into your WordPress Dashboard, go to plugins, and search for SEO. You will see a mountain of plugins for your SEO needs. And the best part? Click it, install it, and forget it! Don’t worry yourself with slugs, or meta tags, or post optimization, you can worry about that later, for most new bloggers and site owners, the important thing is to get started!

So the next time you consider starting a new site or blog, consider WordPress, it is easy to install, easy to learn, is free, and will save you a bundle of time in the end.

Social Icons – What The Heck Are Those Thingys?

I recently set up a new computer for my friend’s mom.  It was her first “in home” computer and her first time using the internet in her home.

Hard to imagine right?!

Oh she had used the internet before at a friend’s house and the library but she had never had a home computer and never really used the internet for any length of time.  To her this was a new frontier.  It was a thrill to watch her as she explored the web.  It was also a very rare opportunity to gain insight from this point of view.  There were so many things that I take for granted while surfing that seemed so foreign to her.  It became very apparent of how ‘trained’ I was by the internet and how I expected things to be in certain places on a page or within a site.  If they were not where I expected them to be I grew frustrated rather quickly as I was attempting to show my newbie where to look for information.  This was, to say the least,  a great learning experience.

As we went to one particular site my friend’s mom inquired about the Orange RSS feed button.  “What the heck are those thingys?”, she asked.

I began to explain what the symbols meant and how they were mostly universal across the web.  I further explained how she could set up a reader and centralize her information (I used a newspaper analogy to make it easier) to save her from going back and forth between favorite sites.  After I explained this to her she told me that I should write an article about the icons so that other new users would know what they were as well.  So as promised, here it is!

WHAT ARE THOSE LITTLE THINGYS ANYWAY?

Those bright shiny buttons you often see on web pages, more often blogs, are called Social Icons.  Website owners use them as a way for readers to connect to other accounts that the website owner may have.  You may also see icons that allow readers to subscribe to the sites content.  These are commonly referred to as RSS Feeds. Although there are various designs for these Icons, they generally have the same recognizable look based on the sites they represent.  Below I have outlined some of the most commonly used Icons and what they are for.

FEED ICON

This symbol represents a link to the RSS Feed for that site or blog.  It allows you to subscribe to the content on the site through a reader. You can read more about RSS FEEDS here. You can find a READER here.

TWITTER ICON

This is a link to a site called Twitter. Twitter is one of many Social Networking sites which are common and growing rapidly on the web today. Twitter itself is a micro blogging site that is used to update information about yourself or your company to others in your network of followers. You will also see many people use various types of little blue birds (Twitter’s well known symbol) to represent Twitter. You can learn more about TWITTER here.

FACEBOOK ICON

Facebook is another Social Networking site that is commonly used by websites and individuals. It is extremely interactive and one of the biggest. You can learn more about FACEBOOK here.

MYSPACE ICON

MySpace is yet another Social Networking site which is similar to Facebook but most commonly used by the teen age group. If you know a 12-17 year old I almost guarantee they are on MySpace. You can learn more about MYSPACE here.

YOUTUBE ICON

YouTube has become the single most popular Video Sharing sites on the planet! It allows users to upload and share their videos with the world. It also allows anyone to view some of the millions of videos available from the web. Learn more abut YOUTUBE here.

DELICIOUS ICON

Delicious is a Social Bookmarking site. It allows users to ‘bookmark’ pages they find while surfing the web and “tag” them according to topic. This allows the user access to all of their favorite websites in one centralized location. You can learn more about DELICIOUS and how it works here.

There are just a few of the more common Icons you will see but the complete list is huge and changing all the time. Sometimes you will see these at the top of webpages, othertimes they will be at the end of articles so that users can share the information on their social network sites.

So now you know.

Keep Learning!

Twitter Tutorial II

Getting Things Done (GTD) with Mindmaps

Thank you to the guys over at Internet Business Mastery for this great video “How To” on using midmaps.

Twitter Tutorial I

Terrific Podcast With Lynn Terry

The more you read from my blog, the more you will come to realize that I am an avid podcast listener.  I still commute and hour each way to my (soon to be gone) day job and I love to use this time to catch up on what is happening in the Internet Business and Marketing world via my iPod.  There are some really good podcasts available all over the net but I recently found a great new podcast that I am so excited to tell you about.

MasonWorld Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast

MW as hosted by Mark Mason, a “self-proclaimed computer geek” and Internet Marketing enthusiast.  Both his blog and his podcast offer great Internet Marketing tools, tips, and information that I find have found to be very useful to Internet Business Newbies like myself.

In Mark’s latest podcast he interviewed Internet Marketing expert Lynn Terry of ClickNewz.com.  Lynn happens to be one of my favorite Internet/Affiliate Marketers so I was thrilled to get a chance to hear her interviewed again. In this episode Mark and Lynn discussed some key points that every newbie Internet Marketer should know. Her insight was, as always, remarkable and I am so happy I caught this podcast.

Lynn, I want you to know I walked into my office and grabbed my legal pad! Thank you!

Mark, thank you for a great podcast. I am a subscriber and I look forward to the next episode!

You can read more about Mark on his personal blog at MasonWorld.com. You can subscribe to his podcast through iTunes or you can stream it direct from his site HEREwhere he also offers a full transcript of the podcast.

I do hope you will check it out.

WELCOME GUESTS

I thought long and hard about what I would include in my first post but it seemed the more I thought about it the more irrelevant I felt it might be say….a year or even two from now.  So, I stopped thinking about it and decided to just offer a simple WELCOME and THANK YOU to my Internet Business Newbie site.

I hope you will find some helpful information here.  I would suggest searching by topic and not by date as many of my posts, at least in the beginning, will be entered in masses from my previous blog.

Please leave me your comments and questions.  I will always be looking for ideas and suggestions to improve the site.  Your input, as the reader, is vital!

Ancora Imparo!