In the early 80′s I finally had a few bucks with a marketing sales job and decided to by a personal computer. But I spent hours agonizing which computer to buy. Should I buy a Compaq portable or a Macintosh? My left  brain said to buy the PC. So I bought the “boat anchor”, the IBM clone thinking I would use a spreadsheet program Lotus  123 program more than a GUI drawing program. So I spent the rest of the almost 3 decades as a DOS/Window user not knowing I was a Gates versus Jobs dude.

My curiosity got me thinking about an Apple although my family had all Windows running machines. My lovely wife, that most Fort Milians (people who live in the Fort Mill Township) know as the Popular Realtor Carmen Miller,  decided to treat me to a iMac for Christmas.

I have to be honest, it was a hard physiologically to convert.  I like to tinker and look under the hood sort of speak but most of the transition process was easy. Too easy.  Is it Apple’s marketing that draws you in or just great products? I knew I was a goner to Apple when my youngest son said to me recently, why are you buying so many Apple products?

Although I still use both Window and Apple operating systems , I am definitely a Apple convert.

Something so simple recently dazzled me. I have been loading my albums on to iTunes via the iMac and now can remotely control my music using my  iPad while playing the music to my stereo receiver via using an Airport Express. OK maybe I am too easy to please… or maybe just a true gadget guy.

What are your thoughts on Apple?

At the BacinTyme Café you’ll find nicely decorated rooms to unwind, meeting rooms to socialize or conference, local artists work displayed and sold thought the café, live entertainment events inside and outside the cafe, and of course great coffee and food.  With many things to do and see at BacinTyme, their website needed a way to communicate the café’s mutli-faceted offerings.

A WordPress based website seemed the logical choice to convert their current website into a living, easily updated website.  There aren’t many days at BacinTyme without a meeting or entertainment event, so the most significant feature of the new site is promoting daily events as posts in the WordPress based software platform. Best of all, anyone of the BacinTyme’s staff can easily update and add events as often as needed.

Website Vantage is proud to have been selected to redesign and covert BacinTyme’s website and web marketing program.  Their new website went live the middle of March 2010.  All reports from Georgia have been positive since the changeover.

2. WordPress Users Aren’t All Young Geeks.
Well maybe a few!

I wondered on my way to the WordCamp conference if I would look and feel out a place having a few years under my belt. The mix of attending WordCamp developers and users was balanced between young and old, men and women, and in various stages of their careers. Some attendees where fresh out of high school or maybe still in high school working on their second or third web based business venture (Dave Moyer I am not talking about you, well maybe.). Some were deep into their tech careers making a living around WordPress and other up and coming applications. Some were retired, changing careers, or staring a business on the side in either web development or blogging. I am not alone picking WordPress as a main web business tool/strategy.

3. Free and for Profit Can Work Together
Well sort of! WordPress is free open source software. Some attendees and sponsors are making some sort of living using a free opened source software. Good right! There has been talk in the community about whether certain companies are misusing or not properly following the GNU GPL license when selling there add on tools, templates, or services. But the WordPress foundation seems to be taking some corrective steps centered around WordCamp sponsorships, to name a few, to try and educate or protect the software’s license and brand. Automattic’s Master of Suggestion Jane Wells gave a end of conference “state of the WordPress union” address, OK more like an interview, and discussed the Foundation’s position on future WordCamp changes. Limiting WordCamp sponsorships to businesses following the GNU GPL guidelines is one of the corrective actions by the Foundation.

OK so I really have 4 things I learned… I enjoyed meeting and talking to fellow WordPress enthusiast. Their hard work and love for WordPress reinforces my choice I made sometime ago to use WordPress to develop interactive, living websites for my customers.

Putting on a conference is hard work. I know after chairing a committee many years ago for a retail specialty conference. The WordCamp conference organizers and speakers are hard working people and I enjoyed meeting and socializing with them like Craig Tuller, Brad Williams, Aaron Brazell, Steve Mortiboy, and Lisa Sabin-Wilson just to name a few. I specially enjoyed getting to know Jeff Chandler, host of the WP Tavern, and insight into his passion to blog/podcast everything about WordPress. Cheers to all of you and keep up the good WordPress community work!

The plan includes forming a athletic board and implement a pay to play program. The booster leaders asked me to quickly create a website for the proposed board and program. You can see their new website at www.fortmillathletics.org. Help support their program.

Website Vantage designed a website for the lacrosse tournament. The tournament is called the Catawba Classic.  The site is built on WordPress and primarily a static site except for the news page.

You can visit the site at catawbaclassic.com.

Update May 2010 – The tournament campaign has been rewarding so far. Over 49 teams have registered for the Catawba Classic almost doubling their registration exception for the first year of the tournament.

Website Vantage has recently finished creating Photoartsshop.com. The site is simple and easy to navigate.  The site uses Next Gen Gallery to feature Steve’s photos. In addition,  WP estore has been set up inconjunction with Next Gen Gallery to sell the photos via an online shopping cart.

PhotoartsShop.com is targeting designers, home and business owners, and decorators around the globe to see and purchase his photos. See Steve’s work at PhotoArtsShop.com

Heatherspeerphotography.com was created by Website Vantage to fulfill her website needs. With the direction of Heather, the website has been designed to be simple as not to distract or take away featuring her work.  Next Gen Gallery is used to feature Heather’s art work and photographs via slide shows and image thumbs.

The website has a blog to allow Heather the ability to info her clients and fans where her next show or gallery showing will be.

Heather Speer is a artist and Photographer loacted in the Charlotte Metro area specifically in the Fort Mill and Rock Hill SC arera. Visit her site at HeatherSpeerPhotography.com

Pepsi has decided not to run an ad during the Super Bowl like 2009 Super Bowl Ad below.

Pepsi has been running Super Bowl ads for 23 straight years and has decided to invest in other forms of advertising like cause-oriented marketing campaign most likely promoted in part via the internet.

Has the recession affected TV advertising or has the internet? I found several articles with headlines like:

Internet Advertising is gaining momentum over Television Advertising

Is the Game Over for TV Advertising?

Internet Advertising Robust Even in Recesssion

I saw another article claiming TV advertising will continue to grow and be a large share of advertising expenditures but the growth will come from internet delivered programming. Sounds like internet advertising to me.

My point is the internet is and continues to be the “medium” to invest in advertising and promoting your business or product. Contact me if you want a website or blog for your business or product.

Scott Miller

Are you a smoothie lover? If so Debbie Smoothies in Charlotte NC has over 28 fruit flavor combinations to choice from.

There are two distinct things that make Debbie’s Smoothies special. One, Debbie Smoothies are delicious. Two, Debbie’s Smoothies are delivered to your home, business, event, etc.

Debbie Johnson created Debbie’s Smoothies after trying to create an extra special treat for her friends and family. Her family and friends loved the smoothies. Due to the phenomenal success of her passion, as well as the tireless support of her husband Michael, Debbie prayerfully decided to expand her business and offer her smoothies to the public.

Debbie’s Smoothies has been in business over 2 years and Debbie decided she wanted to improve her website’s internet marketing. So Website Vanatge has designed an all new website for Debbie’s Smoothies including two new domain names charlottesmoothies.com and carolinabestsmoothie.com. Within a few days after the launch of her new website, charlottesmoothie.com quickly landed on the first page search results for Charlotte smoothie and Charlotte catering search combinations.

If you have used WordPress to blog for a while you have most likely run into the duplicate content problem I have had with Google post rankings. When I first started experimenting with WordPress I could not understand why I was not seeing better Google search placement of my posts. After reading many posts about duplicate content issues with WordPress and taking the appropriate action I saw better search engine ranking results of my posts.

Let me explain what I mean by duplicate content issues with WordPress. When you publish a post, depending upon the way you have set up your WordPress website, your post can be found on many different pages within your site. Some examples of where your post will be found are:

• Front page if your use the default home page setting or your post home page.
• Categories
• Tags (even the more tag)
• Authors
• Archives
• etc.

No there is not an error in the design of WordPress. WordPress is designed to be flexible and set up in many different ways.

What Is Duplicate Content According To Google?

“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”

Why Does Google Care About Duplicate Content?

“Our users typically want to see a diverse cross-section of unique content when they do searches. In contrast, they’re understandably annoyed when they see substantially the same content within a set of search results.”

What does Google do when it recognizes duplicate content? Google will try and index the page with “distinct information” and not index the duplicate content pages. But Google may take the duplicate content one step further. If Google perceives the duplicate content may have the intent to manipulate the rankings, Google we’ll make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the site.

Ways To Fix WordPress Duplicate Content

There are many ways to prevent Google or any search engine from trying to determine on their own which page to index and which page to not index. The one tip I will focus on in this WordPress tip is using the “more tag” when you write and publish a post.

When you place the more tag in a post, lets say after the first 3 sentences, it will cut off the rest of the post on the front page or the post home page and insert a “read more” link at the spot you inserted the more tag. Its like a short teaser. Your readers can click on the read more link and go to the post page to see and read all of your post. This will reduce Google from seeing the same content on the post home page and the post page, in this case the same exact post word for word.

There are two ways to add the more tag when writing your post. If you are in the visual edit mode when writing a post, put your cursor where you want to insert the tag and click on the more tag button (see picture below).

If you use the HTML mode click on the more button or type in the tag < !–more– >.

I would suggest to modify or enhance your “read more” text that actually prints out on the post home page to something that supports your sites keyword strategy instead of just “read more”.

Are There Other Ways To Reduce Duplicate Content On My Word Press Site?

Yes there are many other ways to reduce duplicate content. Using the excerpt function of WordPress is somewhat similar to the more tag depending upon your theme template.  Installing All in One SEO Pack plug-in is another way of reducing duplicate content. And you can use robots.txt to stop Google from indexing certain pages or URL’s. And search engines now recognizes the use of canonical tags

Here is a link to other search engine optimization (SEO Tips) suggestions for WordPress.