CU*Answers Web Services » 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.

WordPress with SiteControl Webconference Recording

Tony Muka — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:46:26 +0000

Good news for those of you who missed our two online training presentations last month. We have made the webex recordings available for streaming for your viewing pleasure. We cover a variety of topics pertaining to the way we use WordPress as a CMS. Let us know what you think in the comments.

4.90 Introduction to WordPress with SiteControl (60 minutes)
4.91 Advanced WordPress with SiteControl (60 minutes)

WordPress with SiteControl Training Web Conferences

David Damstra — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:03:35 +0000

Next week Web Services is hosting 2 web conferences reviewing what WordPress with SiteControl is and how to use it.

If you are already using our WordPress with SiteControl hosting, these classes will give you some insight into how to fully utilize the capabilities. If you are considering a redesign with us, these classes will be a nice introduction into the power of WordPress.

Read more to learn about the specific classes being offered.

4.90 Introduction to WordPress with SiteControl

Helping you gain the most from your website investment is a major goal of this class and your instructors will facilitate that achievement. you will learn the basics of WordPress, the open-source platform that utilizes our SiteControl plug-in. this software delivers a powerful website you can maintain with no html or code knowledge required.

This course covers basic WordPress-based website management along with cu-specific features of our SiteControl plug-in and basic steps you can take to keep your site updated, well organized and visually appealing.

4.91 Advanced WordPress with SiteControl

This course builds on the introduction to WordPress with sitecontrol and provides in-depth examples of and tips for maintaining your website. You may take the intro class first, but it’s not a requirement before attending this second level. If you have been managing your website with WordPress and want to dig deeper into features and tools available in SiteControl, this of course is for you!

For those who want to get the most out of their WordPress site, advanced WordPress with SiteControl will cover a broad set of topics suck as user administration, analytics, popular social media plug-ins, and more.

SiteControl update to WordPress 2.7 Imminent

Tony Muka — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:18:36 +0000

We are in the process of merging the new release of WordPress 2.7 into our SiteControl package. The new release brings a major overhaul to the look and feel of the administrative backend. The new backend requires less clicks to get around, and is also faster than previous versions. For more info on what’s new, check out the wordpress blog. We’ll be rolling the new changes out to your sites this week.

SiteControl Upcoming Features

Tony Muka — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:53:14 +0000

Our SiteControl platform is based on WordPress, which means there are some exciting new features in the works. Lead developer Ryan has announced some of the features to look forward to in next months release. Post Revision tracking will save old versions of posts so you can see what was there last week, or get back that paragraph you accidentally deleted. Better image management controls, post word count, and overall performance improvements are just a few other highlights to look forward to this summer.