CU*Answers Web Services » wordpress

Financial Literacy Videos launch on New Website

David Damstra — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:48:50 +0000

We believe financial literacy is more than just book learning. It comes from the interactions Board members have with each other and with credit union teams. It comes with the confidence you gain from experience, education, and perseverance as a volunteer. That’s why we put together this video series on Financial Literacy.

The Financial Literacy for Credit Union Board Directors videos recently launched on a new website built with WordPress.

ExamShare launches in Beta

David Damstra — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:43:35 +0000

One of the common complaints we hear from our clients is the difficulty in preparing for regulatory examinations. If you had an idea of what to expect, we believe you would be much more effective and score higher on your next assessment. ExamShare is a website where you and your peers will provide feedback through a survey regarding your examination experience.

ExamShare is currently available in beta release meaning we are looking for credit unions to sign up, try it out and report feedback.

ExamShare is built with WordPress.

PolicySwap launches in Beta

David Damstra — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:35:36 +0000

Have a policy? Leave a policy. Need a policy? Take a policy.

That’s the idea behind PolicySwap. PolicySwap is a collaborative website where CU*Answers clients can share policies and procedures with each other. Not sure what your BSA policy needs to say? Browse here and select a policy from your peers. Each policy is reviewed by the CU*Answers team for quality, to ensure you are receiving the best possible value for your time.

PolicySwap is currently available in a beta release, meaning we are looking for credit unions to actively participate and kick the tires.

PolicySwap is built with WordPress.

Asking the Right Questions Launches

David Damstra — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:25:30 +0000

Board meetings serve many purposes, but one of the most important is the role it plays in creating an atmosphere that challenges the insider perspective of the credit union management team. That’s why CU*Answers created Asking the Right Questions.

Asking the Right Questions is a compilation of questions to challenge the credit union CEOs and board members to get engaged. You are encouraged to use this site during your next board meeting and limited edition print copies of the questions are available. If you have favorite questions for your credit union, please add them to the network.

Visit Asking the Right Questions, one of our new websites built with WordPress.

cuatv launches with Cooperative Score

David Damstra — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:16:26 +0000

Web Services recently updated our cuatv.com website for the Cooperative Score initiative. cuatv.com is a collaboration between CU*Answers and FulVew Productions to provide the credit union industry with premium professional quality video for use in your branches and websites.

All the videos on cuatv.com are available for you to use free of charge. For a small fee, FulVew will customize the video with your credit union brand.

Check out the updated site built on WordPress.

New Cooperative Score Site

David Damstra — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 13:10:53 +0000

2012 is the United Nation’s International Year of the Cooperative. CU*Answers wants to highlight all the cooperative initiatives we have with our cuasterisk.com network and our clients. Cooperative Score is a one stop location for many of the different web sites that encourage participation in the network.

Check out the site, and also all the sites that it links to.

To learn more about Cooperative Score, watch the video.

Cooperative Score is built with WordPress.

SEO Tip: Don’t Bother with Meta Keywords

David Damstra — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:32:32 +0000

Here’s a tip from Joost de Valk, author of the WordPress SEO Plugin we use on several WordPress with SiteControl sites. Back in the early days of search engines to get ranked you added keywords to each page to tell the search engine what your website was about. As you can imagine, this quickly got abused and search engines began ignoring them, since they were essentially useless.

None of the big three search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo!) put much weight behind the meta keywords, so in Joost’s opinion, and Web Services, it’s just not worth the time to fill out, and then manage. Instead, spend your time writing good content. Good content that talks about the search terms you want to be found for. If you want your website to be indexed for “best loan rates in Kalamazoo, Michigan” then you need to have a story (not an image banner) explaining that you do in fact have the best loan rates in Kalamazoo, Michigan. If you don’t write it in your content, the search engines won’t know it, and can’t point people to your site.

Read the article on Joost’s site.

For more tips from Google on getting your site indexed, check out the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

WordPress sites top 50 million

David Damstra — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:17:52 +0000

Over the past weekend WordPress passed the 50 million mark. That’s right, there are over 50 million websites on the web that are powered by WordPress. That’s nearly 20% of the entire web. WordPress powers such heavyweight sites like TechCrunch, TED, CNN, and the National Football League, and also many of your Credit Union websites.

Rest assured your are in good company, and CU*Answers Web Services is right here with you.

How to Upload Videos to YouTube

David Damstra — Wed, 25 May 2011 14:01:48 +0000

More and more websites are including video on them. We often get questions on how to publish a video on your website. Web Services’ recommended solution is to upload the video to YouTube or Vimeo and use their embedded browser.

Here’s why:

They’ve built a business on it. Their servers are set up to stream video.
They have the bandwidth. Instead of using CU*Answers’ hosting bandwidth, use theirs and send it directly to your visitor.
They’ve already done all the hardwork to make an embeddable video player.
It’s easy.

Lifehacker has put together a simple set of instruction on how to upload a video to YouTube. Once it’s up on YouTube you can then embed it on your website. If you are using WordPress with SiteControl, there is even a simple code you can use.

New Site for CU*South

David Damstra — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:41:31 +0000

Last week, right before the CU*Answers Leadership Conference, Web Services launched a new website for our cuasterisk.com partner CU*South. This new site takes a radical break from their previous website strategy in that with this new site they are going to manage their own content locally. Because this new site is built using WordPress, they can simply log in and publish new content as needed.

The entire site is dynamically controlled through the WordPress dashboard including some of the newer features of WordPress 3.0 such as custom background images.