Celebrating more than a decade of covering the Seattle Internet landscape as the first-ever online business community in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle24x7.com has embarked on the new era of hyperlocal Internet coverage with a new Website launch. First Time Online tapped the power of the recently released WordPress 3.0 platform for the new site, adding a number of custom programmed plug-ins and widgets to bring the power of social connectivity to Seattle24x7.com readers.

Seattle24x7.com founder, Larry Sivitz sums it all up:  “Seattle24x7.com is about making connections,” said Sivitz. “Our new capabilities will reward our readers with the ability to bring Seattle24x7.com into their in-box, SmartPhone and news reader. Looking for a Seattle area Internet tech or business job? Subscribe to the Seattle24x7.com Jobs feed and be among the first to connect your resume with the job stream.”

This Is Why We Love WordPress!

This is why we love WordPress! We’re able to provide our clients with the ability to dive headfirst into 2010 with all the latest technologies and at a fraction of the cost of building a site from the ground up. You just can’t beat the price, timeline and overall support.

Full Press Release

I’ve taken the liberty of attaching the full original press release anouncing the re-launch, details and more. Read below…

Original Source: MarketWire – Sep 01, 2010 09:00 ET

Seattle’s Premier Online Business Community, Seattle24x7.com, Connects Seattle E-Biz, News, Jobs, Events and Commentary With the Puget Sound’s Only Geo-Local Company Directory

SEATTLE, WA–(Marketwire – September 1, 2010) – Celebrating more than a decade of covering the Seattle Internet landscape as the first-ever online business community in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle24x7.com has embarked on the new era of hyperlocal Internet coverage with a new Website launch that combines its Seattle Internet community directory, news, commentary, calendar and Seattle Internet jobs board with updates that are available to readers 24/7 via email, RSS feeds, personal alerts, the mobile web, and geo-local maps.

Since 2000, Seattle24x7 has listed hundreds of Seattle area e-business firms and associations, thousands of job openings and Puget Sound Internet industry events, dozens of interviews with online business leaders and innovators, and scores of advisory, tech and investment columns written by resident E-City experts. The site was founded by Larry Sivitz who won the SPJ Award for magazine reporting for his cover story in Seattle Magazine titled, “Who’s Building Our Dot.com Empire?” Mr. Sivitz is also the Internet editor of MARKETING, a 24-year-old business tabloid and Puget Sound staple from Coffman Publishing.

“Seattle24x7.com is about making connections,” said Sivitz. “Our new capabilities will reward our readers with the ability to bring Seattle24x7 into their in-box, SmartPhone and news reader. Looking for a Seattle area Internet tech or business job? Subscribe to the Seattle24x7 Jobs feed and be among the first to connect your resume with the job stream.” Synchronized site functions will let you add Seattle tech events to your desktop calendar and locate meeting venues and driving instructions on Google Maps.

As part of its regional coverage, Seattle24x7 includes departments spotlighting Seattle People, ShopTalk, Innovation (Pioneer Squared), Reviews (SiteCynic), Culture (E-City) and Expert Advice (Advisor-X). The Website will also be featuring breaking news from around the Northwest via a feed from Marketwire, a leading wire service serving many Northwest tech and Internet companies.

Seattle24x7 is affiliated with SearchWrite Search Marketing which specializes in geo-local search marketing and advertising helping companies integrate local search, mobile apps, and place-based marketing with overall search visibility.

Site producer, Joshua Russak, tapped the power of the recently released WordPress 3.0 platform for the new site, adding a number of custom programmed plug-ins and widgets to bring the power of social connectivity to Seattle24x7 readers. Russak serves as an on-ramp to the modern Web with his company, First Time Online, while tackling more advanced projects like Seattle24x7.

As the day was coming to a close, my phone began to ring.  It was Jeff Alhadeff of Boost eLearning.com, a site we re-did recently. What I’m about to tell you is exactly why I do what I do. This makes my day right here:

BoosteLearning Client Testimonial

Jeff was happy to report that they picked up a client 100% because of their website. He explained that the individual agreed to sign up as a reseller solely based on the site presentation alone. That’s a huge compliment to me, the designers who helped and to most importantly, to WordPress. The theme options, supports, technology and functionality that make this site work all tie back to WordPress. So today, this one goes out to WordPress. At the end of the call, the client wanted me to record his reaction to my work. Take a look at their raving testimonial:

“Joshua said that our old website wasn’t showing off our business in a good light. Since Joshua has worked with us to move our website to WordPress, not only is it easier to manage and update, it presents our business in a high quality & professional manner – so much so, that a reseller decided to sign an agreement with us solely based on the professionalism of our website. Thanks Josh!” – Jeff Alhadeff, Boost eLearning

I love my job!

I can’t take credit for writing this, but man-o-man…I want to spread the word. Thank you “Blog Design Studio” for putting this together. WordPress is the holy grail of CMS’s and it’s all uphill from here. If you’re a web-designer, reading this is an investment. If you’re free-lancing for First Time online, I highly suggest you spread the word to your designer buddies. Enjoy…

Why Web Designers are becoming WordPress Designers?

Until late 90’s, online publishing wasn’t as easy as it is in current times, it was the evolution of Blogger that started to make this space easier for common person who are technically challenged. Although, it were CMSes like Drupal, WordPress, Joomla & various other open source systems that upped the game by giving more power in the hands of publishers at much lower cost as the whole platform is completely free, the only cost involved is customization of the platform and the way content is displayed which is nothing if we compare the power and flexibility we get using these content management systems.

It was the evolution of blogging that brought many significant changes in the web ecosystem and one of them is that there are far more webmasters now and hundreds of them are becoming professional webmasters every day. I personally believe that its WordPress that has contributed significantly in this space. Its user friendly, has great documentation and has awesome community around it. WordPress is fast becoming the first choice for every publisher, people are shifting on it and this increase in demand is making web design companies adopt WordPress and one of the reason why we see so many companies offering premium WordPress templates and companies offering WordPress design services.

With that, we thought of coming up with a resourceful post that’ll help the new Web designer turned WordPress designers in making their lives easy -

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are a WordPress user or looking for overall web-presence advice, here are 10 articles that are guaranteed to help. Put together by my friends over at Savvy WordPress, these articles are crucial for any business looking to improve their online experience.

1. How To Make Sure You Get the Right Hosting for Your WordPress Website or Blog
2. Should You Redesign Your Website?: 5 Signs That It May Be the Right Time
3. Where Are the Visitors?: 5 Ways to use Google Analytics to Increase Your Blog Traffic
4. Tips for choosing a host for your WordPress website or blog
5. 404 Error – Page Not Found (#@!*#)
6. WordPress 3.0 Released! How My “push the update button” Adventure Turned Out
7. Buying a Domain? Beware!
8. Warning Signs of the Wanna Be WordPress Expert
9. Ending the Confusion: WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
10. Protect your wp-content folder if using a CPanel hosting account

I used the Organic Themes – Bold Theme as a premium template for these projects. Originally, I intended on using this theme for 1 client, but I got 2 more calls from other non-profits that wanted the same theme. It wasn’t hard to sell it to them: The theme is only $69, installs within minutes, and easy to customize.

The turn-around time for these themes depended on the client, but overall, projects were completed in less than a week and clients walked away happy, educated and in full control of their site. Success!

3 Sites – 1 Theme

Site #1: GotHoney.org

Site #2: AllegriaHighHolidays.org

Site #3: SeattleNCSY.com

Conclusion

This theme is just an example of the 10,000+ that are available online. Check out Premium Themes links that I’ve listed to help clients find the one right for them.  Powered by WordPress and designed to your specifications, these sites are affordable, timely and most important of all these are sites that work for you and not the other way around.

Hopefully more people will begin to realize that a “pre-made template + powerful WordPress CMS” will be one of the best investments they’ll ever make. Give us 5 minutes of the phone with you and I’m confident you’ll see why! Looking forward to hearing from you.

This is why I do what I do! You see? Your Fist Time Online really doesn’t have to hurt.

Amazing Client Testimonial:

We recently went to First Time Online by a recommendation of someone I highly respect. Not only was this the best move I ever made, it has been the most pleasant as well. I am used to a “rigid” webmaster who was overly demanding on how things should be sent to him. After a while, you realize that you are paying and paying and getting grief in return. My old website was becoming dated and the costs to maintain was rediculous!

Since coming to FirstTimeOnline, we were treated with total respect and I can actually TALK to Joshua who put together the site. What is even better, is that I have total control of my own site and have been making remarkable additions to this site as we grow our business.

As Joshua aptly put to me when we started “Do you run the website or does the website run you!” That answer was crystal clear to me. And thanks to FirstTimeOnline we now run our own website and at a fraction of the cost that my old webmaster would have charged for virtually everything I wanted to do.

No more hassles, no more waiting … I now have FREEDOM to do what “I” know is best and it is done immediately because I am doing it.

Oh, and one more thing, I had ZERO blogging hits with my old site. That has gone up about 30 fold with FirstTimeOnline.com

Thank you for giving me back my business freedom on the web, Josh! WowTowel highly recommends you!

Todd Moore
CEO, WowTowel

I am pleased to announce WordPress Seattle has finally organized a meetup! (original posting here) Organized by WordCamp organizer Josh Harrison, the goal was simple…WordPress users coming together to collaborate and network.

Meetup Agenda

I’m not going to lie…it felt a little like a first date, but once we started the introductions, the room started to relax and open up. Josh started off by doing a review of his love for WordPress 3.0 and it was immediately apparent that everyone had something good to say about it. We all agree, “WordPress 3.0 Rocks!”.

WordCamp Seattle followers, good news is on the way. Josh announced that WordCamp Seattle looks like it will be between January and March in 2011. The venue is looking like UW. They definitely need help with setting up and executing the event. If you are interested, they could definitely use the help. (Other help includes, Food, Shirts, Sponsors, Speakers, Website Help, etc.). Contact Josh via his website or WordCamp for more information.

Following that announcement, Mark McLaren of McBuzz Communications went on to give us an introduction to WordPress and SEO. His company McBuzz makes does just that, so if you’re on WordPress and SEO help…contact Mark.

Plugins to use:

• All-In-One-SEO
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Google Analyticator
• WordPress.com Stats
• Scribe SEO (premium)

Conclusion

It’s 100% obvious that Seattle’s WordPress community is hungry for something like this. This is a great start for WordPress Seattle and I’m excited to see what we come up with. The next event is in the works and they’re already looking for sponsored location. In terms of food, I’m proud to announce (pending their acceptance) that First Time Online will be sponsoring Pizza the next time around.

Future date to-be-announced!

I just found this great post by Blog Design Studio. Titled “The 35 Best WordPress Design Websites“, this article is great for clients and observers interested in WordPress. Originally built as a blogging platform, “the popularity of WordPress is clear in its own way, however it becomes crystal clear when we see small businesses, professionals or even big corporations are giving preference to WordPress over other CMSes. WordPress as a CMS has evolved and is used to build beautiful and professional websites. Lets check out the following 35 websites that are powered by WordPress, BuddyPress, WordPress MU and aren’t used just as blog.” (BDS)

Here are the 35 designs with write ups done by Blog Design Studio. though I don’t particularly agree with the order, the fact that WordPress has got what it takes to take on the big boys…is clear! Here are a just a few. Check out the rest here.

WSJ Magazine

Wall Street Journal is one of the most reputed media houses and they’ve selected WordPress as CMS for their website. WSJ’s skin is pretty neat and is a wonderful example of magazine theme applied on WordPress to achieve this result. The site is heavily customized to give it the look of an online magazine.

Kodingen

Kodingen is a cloud development environment, code editor, hosting service, database administration program, and collaboration platform. It includes web-based access to file systems and web-based FTP and SVN. This whole application has been developed as a BuddyPress plugin. It’s a fantastic presentation of what can be achieved by combining power of WordPress, Programming and Design.

Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t write this one myself, but feel it’s necessary to share with my clients. Posted by Noupe, this is the first article in a 3 part series. This article focus’s on many WordPress Theme hacks, ideas, tips and useful tutorials you need to have ready in hand when developing WordPress websites.

Why Should You Read This?

The 1st article reviews some technical stuff that most companies creating a WordPress website have to do. Most of these are useful techniques that I encourage my clients to attempt for themselves if they are looking to “bootstrap” and handle legwork themselves. Each section of the article presents a suggestion and provides an explanation of the solution for each suggestion.

If you’re looking to save money and rock out your wordpress theme, then these articles are simply a “MUST READ”.

The Comprehensive Guide for a Powerful CMS using WordPress – Part one: 101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress

So you’ve decided to re-do your website? Great! This is an easy, step-by-step guide for those of you brave enough to do a lot of the grunt-work on your own. This will save you the hourly fee we would otherwise charge you. On the other hand, you can see how we do things here at First Time Online. (aka: Solid proof we’re not ripping you off.) You’re more than welcome to ask us to do any or all of the steps for you, but that wouldn’t be as fun.

There’s no catch. When you get to the final stage, you’ll probably want to call us to say “Thank you…now can you help me customize a few things”.  This is our way of helping companies save even more money on their website costs. Enjoy!

STEP 1: DOMAIN NAME ($15.34)

Before you can get started, you need to purchase a domain name. (IF YOU ALREADY HAVE A DOMAIN NAME SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE) I prefer GoDaddy , simply because I use promotional codes from LiveCodes.BlogSpot, which makes the domain names cheaper. Self promoted as the Largest Godaddy promo code/coupon list, they guarantee to check them manually at least three days. I’m not here to help you decide which domain name to choose, but please, avoid the following: Long Names, Hard To Spell Names, “-”, and most importantly, keep it relevant to your business.

*TIP: Purchase the domain name for 2 years and it will help with SEO. Apparently Google likes to see sites purchased with longevity in mind. A 1 year purchase, to them, may be spam.

STEP 2: PURCHASE HOSTING ($83.40)

There are hundreds of thousands of web hosts out there, the vast majority of which meet the WordPress minimum requirements, and choosing one from the crowd can be a chore. First Time Online has dealt with more hosts than you can imagine, and in our opinion, the hosts below represent some of the best and brightest of the hosting world. If you do decide to go with one of the hosts below and click through from this page, some will donate a portion of your fee back— so you can have a great host and support WordPress at the same time. We 100% recommend Blue Host. Installing WordPress is a few clicks away and  they’re affordable, scalable and tons of perks. Their IT support picks up within minutes and unlimited e-mails and unlimited bandwidth is just way too hard to pass up.

[*Note for those of you hosting on go-daddy, click here to see how to Install WordPress on GoDaddy. Then Skip to Step #5.]

STEP 3: POINT THE DOMAIN NAME TO YOUR SERVER & ASSIGN IT

PART 1 - Log-In to GoDaddy (or wherever you purchased your Domain Name) and go to the Domain Manager. Find the Name Servers (DNS), and decide to point them to a custom name server. If you went with BlueHost, then type in the following 2 servers:

• NS1.BLUEHOST.COM
• NS2.BLUEHOST.COM

Once you click save, it should take up to 24 hours to propagate (but between you and me, it’s more like 30 seconds.

PART 2 – Log-in to BlueHost and go to the Domain Manager. Select “Assign a domain to your cPanel account”. The instructions are all there. If you did PART 1 correctly, it should go smoothly.

Simply refresh your browser and BAM, go to your domain name. For more assistance, contact your server IT support.

STEP 4: INSTALL WORDPRESS

Within BlueHost, you’re just a few simple clicks away from installing WordPress. Watch the BlueHost WordPress Installation Tutorial.

STEP 5: DECIDE ON A THEME ($0-$100+)

The #1 benefit to using WordPress? You don’t have to pay $1,000 for a custom theme. There are developers/designers building themes for you that cost $0-$150. Skip that boring, annoying, frustrating design stage and simply choose a theme that closely represents what you want and install it. Check out the Free WordPress Themes directory. If you’re looking for “Premium Themes”, check out our Premium WordPress Theme list.

Once you’ve decided on a theme, log in to WordPress (www.yourdomainname.com/wp-admin), go to Appearance>Themes>Install Themes and upload the .zip file. It’s just that easy!

STEP 6: CUSTOMIZATION & OPTIMIZATION

Customize…Optimize…and go live! Okay, so it’s not that easy, but that’s why we’re here. If you’ve made it this far, contact-us for more information regarding the final stages in perfecting your website.

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*DEVELOP ON A TEMPORARY DOMAIN:

You already have a domain name and want to develop on a temporary domain? This is easy to set up, but be warned, this is advanced. All pictures and link URL’s done using the temporary domain name URL will need to be changed once you go live. For more information, contact-us.

1. Get your Domain Name “Authorization Code”. It’s on the Domain Manager, in your domain name. (Click Here For A Picture)
2. Locate the code in your e-mail
3. Log-in to BlueHost and go to the Domain Manager.
4. Select “Assign a domain to your cPanel account”.
5. Enter the Domain Name you want to use
6. Under “Verify Ownership”, the 3rd option is as follows: “You may also verify ownership of the domain “your domain” by entering the EPP authorization code, which must be obtained from your current registrar.” This is where you put the activation code.
7. Add Domain and proceed to STEP 4 (above).

Once you’re ready to finally point the domain to your server, refer to STEP 3 – PART 1. and skip PART 2. For further assistance contact your server IT support.