One of the things we do at mb/i is research WordPress functionality. We look for plugins that can be visually customized to match our designs, meet functionality specifications, and integrate smoothly with our other favored plugins and the current version of WordPress. While we can’t guarantee that a plugin you find would match our design process, you can use our research method to find a plugin that meets your own do it yourself specifications.

1) Define what you’re looking for

Some plugins, particularly low visibility ones like an SEO module, have a clear purpose and feature set which is dictated by their …

Let’s face it: the classic blog post is boring.

Barring the text and images, each one generally has the exact same layout. We see little originality from one post to the next. Of course, consistency and branding are extremely important to consider when designing a website or blog, but what about individuality? Does a blog post about kittens deserve the same layout as one about CSS hacks?

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That was one heck of an opening, and just the sort of thing mb/i has been looking for to explain the importance of building an engaging, well-branded WordPress presence.  Of course there’s a …

One of our clients recently approached us with an interesting problem. The email edition of their newsletter was too long. Readers who were interested in the side stories were giving up rather than reading or even scrolling past the lead story and subscribers who were interested in old articles would have to search issue by issue.

What the client needed was a website which would index and continue stories that began in their newsletter.

Enter WordPress.

WordPress.com is one of most popular blogging sites in the United States, and with some custom programming, it’s open source counterpart becomes …

What is CMS software in the first place?
CMS stands for Content Management System, and for the purposes of this article we will be discussing website content management systems. Web CMS software allows you to easily and efficiently manage a website and all of the associated text, images, and other files without having the technical knowledge of web programming. That being said, as a person who does possess the technical skills of a web developer, I wouldn’t even consider foregoing the great benefits of a CMS for the nostalgic joys of manually managing a website and its content. …

You know the Joneses, right? They’re the socialite/neighbor/competitor who always seems to have the newest version of everything. The newest car, the hottest handheld technology, even the most current version of WordPress.

Our culture constantly pushes us to keep up; to buy, newer, better, and faster whenever possible. This can place a great drain on our attention and resources. Eventually it becomes necessary to ask, “just how important is this latest update?”

This is especially true of software.  Programs like WordPress, can come out with updates as frequently as once a fortnight. Recently, one of our longtime clients …

Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, LinkedIn, Flikr, Photobucket, Ning, Xanga, WordPress, …. The list of social media platforms goes on and on.  Some overlap with each other, others have no channels of compatibility, and most of the services that would allow you to synchronize the content of multiple services are annoyingly piecemeal.

Enter Ping.fm.

Ping.fm has compiled a list of 40 blogging sites, social networks, online status recorders, social bookmarking services, and photo sharing sites - each and every one of which can be updated individually or in groups from within the Ping.fm interface.

See a service you don’t yet use?  Ping.fm will …

WordPress is a great tool to start getting your website optimized for the search engines. Here are some tried and true tips and plugins to seriously consider when optimizing your website or blog in WordPress.

Thesis Theme Benefits Designers and Internet Marketers

Our favorite Wordpress theme is definitely “Thesis”. For both design and SEO purposes we have found it to be the most flexible solution available. With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site.  For instance, you can change size of content areas, build in teasers and thumbnails, …

We have been writing about business blogs lately. We are focusing on using WordPress to produce branded business blogs or blog-sites, leveraging the inherit search engine optimization advantages WordPress provides.

I gave a presentation at the Partners In Success chapter of BNI on 3/17/10 on why blog for business and what MB/I brings to the table. Here’s the narrated version.

MB/I Presentation on Business Blogs
(9-minutes)

Are you already using a blog to market your business? Let us know how it’s working for you.

Are you interested on starting one? Attend our FREE webinar.

On Wednesday, March 31, I will be leading a 40-minute webinar on blogging.

Take a Tour of WordPress

For those of you who have not taken the leap into the world of blogging, we will spend the first 20-minutes touring the back-end of the world’s most popular blogging solution.  As part of this process you will see what goes into editing, scheduling, and publishing a blog entry as we ready the actual April 1 post for MB/I.

Get Some Tips on Content Creation

Scared of the time & brain-power commitment a successful blog requires? For the second half of the call, I will highlight …