There is nothing that defines your web presence and online brand more than your domain name. You NEED to own it. The Good When you own your own domain name, you can leave anytime. You can go to a new designer, a new company. You can use another email system. You can login to your domain registrar account and in a matter of minutes do whatever you need to do with it. More than anything... you will own your name, your brand, the center of your online presence. If you "bought" your domain name through your web design company and you don't know how to access or transfer it without asking their customer support, you don't own your domain. You are merely renting. At the first chance possible, you should transfer your domain to an account outside of the site itself so that you can own it. The Bad & The Ugly I have had way too many

Posted In: Branding Tips.

Tags: Web Presence

There are a lot of ways to get online quickly and inexpensively these days. But you are doing yourself and your business a disservice if you do not own a custom domain name. Does your blog or website address look like any of these? myname.wordpress.com mycompany.blogspot.com johnsmith.squarespace.com For $10/year you can own a custom domain name. nyname.com mycompany.com Doesn't that sound better? Plus you can get email at that domain name now. Using an email like info@mydomain.com sounds so much more professional than myname@yahoo.com or mycoolnickname@aol.com. Don't laugh. I still see people using AOL email addresses. Whether it is your personal blog or your company, spend $10 on a domain name and increase your brand recognition and the impression people will have when they visit your site or send you an email. Some places to buy a domain name: NameCheap.com Dotster.com eNom.com Register.com

Posted In: Branding Tips.

Tags: domain names, Web Presence

We are so pleased to announce new homepage options to all our themes. Add Sliding Panels and a Welcome Message, a Video, a Slideshow, or Featured Links. Add them in any combination, or all at once. Now you can COMPLETELY customize your site! You can easily create an online presence that cohesively matches your brand and the UNIQUE way you market your business. Now with Homepage Options, Blog Options, Font Options, Fonts Sizing, Color Options, and New Style Options you can truly create an online brand that is unlike anyone else. You can't do that with a template website! You can turn on and off the sections you want to be public. You can change your site daily, adding feature sections for different times and promotions. Market your studio the way you want instead of trying to fit a cookie cutter site. As you can see the possibilities are endless! Sliding Panels, Welcome

Posted In: New Features.

Tags: customization, features, fonts, home page, Web Presence, wordpress

Last night we found a great resource for WordPress tutorial videos. So great that we had to immediately add them to the site. Every site now has more than 30 screen sharing tutorials for every basic tool in a WordPress site right from their admin area! There is also a text version that can be clicked though. It was even built with a menu that resembles the standard WordPress menu to keep things working consistently. We also made a small change to the menu, moving the Support menu right up top near the dashboard menu for easier access. You can still find the FAQ's, links to our Getting Started Guide and forums there as well. And of course if you find anything that needs fixing or just have a suggestion for us, use the support tickets to let us know.

Posted In: New Features.

Tags: support, wordpress

Once you have your website up and running, you set up an account with Google's Webmaster Tools. You can use it to: Monitor broken links See what keywords people are using to find you. See what sites google has found that are linking to you Submit a sitemap so Google can crawl your site and more... Here is a great overview of using WebMaster tools. How it can be used to help improve your SEO. A video tutorial of how to add your site to Webmaster Tools. However, if you are a PhotographyBlogSites user, we have made the process even easier. No editing code or downloading files. Just visit "Settings->All in one Webmaster" and give it your webmaster tools verification code and your done.

Posted In: SEO Tips.

Tags: google, search results, SEO, Web Presence