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Beautiful morning for an early morning run. 

I have one major problem with the way South African businesses are being tricked by our local designers who claim to provide services (SEO in this case) when they clearly have no clue about it. I decided that the next time I see such a claim I will record a video to see if their claims are true. 

Disclaimer: I am not a web designer and I do not generally design websites for clients unless I know them personally or if I can be part of a joint venture. I am not trying to “win business” by badmouthing my competitors since we don’t provide the same services – I would have declined their client’s business if they approached me directly in any way. I am however a full time internet marketing business owner (over 8 years experience), and I do know a thing or two about SEO, etc.

Speeding Up Your WordPress Website: 11 Ways to Improve Your Load Time
http://wpmu.org/speeding-up-your-wordpress-website-11-ways-to-improve-your-load-time/

One of the questions that comes up fairly regularly in my weekly WPMU DEV chats is “how can I speed up my WordPress website?” It’s an important question, particularly for businesses who want to scale their website. Of course, the procedures necessary for speeding up your website are going to differ depending on whether you have a site the size of something like WPMU.org or a lamoid little homepage like my own.

(via Instapaper)

Here’s a good article on optimising WordPress websites I’d like to share. These days all my new websites are built with WordPress and this will come in handy. Remember that Google also takes into account your page load speed when ranking websites…

I just got myself a membership at WPMU Dev where they offer premium wordpress plugins (over 100 of them) and WordPress themes.

I was interested in their ecommerce plugin (MarketPress) initially, but found that there are other great plugins that I can use more often. 

Here is what I found when I joined:

Once I joined WPMU Dev, I learned how to set up a MultiSite WordPress installation with step-by-step instructions. This may not sound like much, but if you think installing WordPress using Fantastico was easy … this is even better. By using some plugins (listed below) I can setup a new site in seconds.

They offer a domain mapping and multiple domain plugin so that any domain pointed at the original site can automatically load the correct site on a multisite setup. No additional hosting accounts, etc. Just create a new WPMU site, map the domain and you’re ready to go.

With the blog templates plugin, I can create a template of my basic affiliate site complete with theme settings, legal disclaimers, contact forms and the actual squeeze page with headers and sales copy. Once I clone the site I simply need to edit my sales page to insert new headlines and graphics, all the boring disclaimers, css styles etc are already there.

To make the whole process run smoothly, they also offer a Multi-database option so that you can be sure of a super-fast wordpress installation that does not become cripled under heavy loads.

There are many more such as plugins to manage membership websites, theme split-testing, Advanced SEO, WordPress Directory and Classifieds scripts, etc. Be sure to go and have a look.

SUPPORT

As I mentioned before, I wanted to use the ecommerce plugin on my site. Whenever I had a problem, they were always very fast with either an answer or a workaround. I submitted a bug that I found once, and within hours there was a new version of the plugin released with the bug fixed – super!

If you use WordPress to maintain websites, and you run more than one site, go and have a look at what they have to offer. One plugin on another site could easily cost more that you would need to pay for hundreds of plugins. My membership will pay for itself many times over because of the time saved each day.

For more info, visit http://premium.wpmudev.org/

Six reasons iPad is a productivity tool
http://blogs.computerworld.com/16776/six_reasons_ipad_is_a_productivity_tool

There’s a lot of folks who say the iPad isn’t proper competition for netbooks because it isn’t a ‘productivity tool’. They’re all wrong. Take the visual arts, for example, and you’ll find a growing army of examples of artists using the Apple device to create stunning pieces of art, here’s six stories to illustrate this. Clearly this illustrates why netbook sales have cramped up and why Apple’s iPad is such a success, because it unlocks imagination for users, developers, old and new media.

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I have to say that I am also using the iPad to maintain numerous websites and blogs. This post for example was sent from my iPad.

Some of the ways I use my iPad are:

1. Keep up to date on industry news (not productivity, but very convenient)

2. Brainstorming and mindmapping ideas

3. Taking notes at meetings which automatically sync to my desktop computer.

4. Managing projects

5. Sketching ideas for websites and layouts for staff and outsourcers

6. Updating multiple websites and blogs.

7. Working with documents and spreadsheets while away from the iMac. Documents are stored on Google Docs or in Dropbox.

I am even more productive now that I have the iPad compared to using a normal laptop because it is more convenient and portable with excellent battery life. 

Three Ways to Create a Better Performing Website (Using One Sneaky Tactic)
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/create-a-better-performing-website-using-one-sneaky-tactic

In case you’ve not come across the concept before, it’s probably best exemplified by the site Start Panic – just hit the ‘Let’s start!’ button to watch it trawl through your browser history, and start listing sites that even you forgot you’d visited.
 
StartPanic uses Javascript to do the dirty work, but it’s also possible to do this completely using CSS, and without Javascript. (There’s advice about implementing the technical side of this in a popular post by Niall Kennedy.)
 
I wanted to show how you can use this to help your website perform better – let’s begin with the least controversial, and work on from there

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Great ideas when thinking outside the box. Just shows you how advanced internet marketing can be and what is possible.