Tips on Adding Images to Your WordPress site
April 19th, 2007Is there a maximum or minimum size to use?
To keep the download time to a minimum and to have a good quality image, make sure that your image is no bigger than 500 pixels along the longest edge and no smaller than Here are some free software programs that we have used and find really good. You can use any of these to edit your images. Both require you to download software to your computer.
The Gimp – an Open Source software program that is available online and has many of the same features as Photoshop. Available for Windows, Unix and MacOS X systems.
Cost: Free
Picasa Photo Editing by Google – a free software from Google that allows you to locate and organize photos on your computer. Has simple editing tools to add effects and edit images. Gives you the option to share photos online. Available for Linux & Windows systems – no MacOS version yet.
Cost: Free
For more info on other editing tools visit the About site at Top 8 Free Photo Editors for Windows.
- Visit Blizzard University for an online tutorial about adding images to your WordPress site,
- or Download the pdf here Adding images to your wordpress site
Blogs Can Give You an Edge Over the Competition
April 19th, 2007In an industry like hospitality, how do you make yourself stand out from the crowd? Today the Internet is fully embraced by the lodging industry. At one time Travel was only second to searches on the Internet after Sex, which makes the market one of the most competitive.
If you are in a well-traveled area with lots of lodging options, such as Vale Colorado, the Napa Valley, New Orleans or any lodging saturated market, how do you stand out from the crowd? You already have a professional site, you are getting a good amount of traffic, but you would like more of the pie. A community site or Q & A site about the area might just be the competitive edge you are looking for.
Becoming the expert in your area is easy. You live there! You have been giving guests this information for years, “Where is the best restaurant?”, “Who should I go to for a fun white-water rafting trip?”, “What can we do with the kids today now that it is raining?” Read the rest of this entry »
Early Adopters of Business Blogs
April 17th, 2007
Early adopters of business blogs are really starting to see the results of their blogging efforts especially in the organic search results. This can be seen in a recent search on ‘Women’s Yoga Retreat’ in Google. The Home Ranch blog post is listed 4th in the results of about 807,000 matches.
The Home Ranch started blogging nearly a year ago and the recent upgrade of both the site and blog design really gives them an edge over other companies that offer the Colorado Dude Ranch experience.
Another site that is seeing the results pay off is the Winter Park Blog. Read the rest of this entry »
Asheville Cabins Blog, North Carolina
March 30th, 2007
The team at Asheville Cabins wanted to enhance their current site by adding the ability to post about events in the area. The current site is built on ColdFusion, an application program for dynamic web sites and they were happy with their current site, hosting company and provider. They decided that they wanted to keep the current site where it was but use the Blizzard team for promotion, tracking and SEO. The main site resides on the clients server while the blog resides on the Blizzard servers. The transition from the current site to the blog is seamless for the visitor to the site.
To make the transition seamless we created a customized WordPress template for the client that exactly matched their current site. Read the rest of this entry »
Mountain Property Management, Jackson Hole
March 12th, 2007
A new look and better navigation helped Mountain Property Management Jackson Hole increase organic search engine placement. The old website was looking it’s age and while they were getting OK traffic the visitors were not converting and they were dropping in the organic search results. Which meant there was much room for improvement.
We looked at different options to create the site and that they wanted to be able to easily change out photos and update the rates as well as add new properties. So we decided that the best option was to build out a site that used a content management database, which gave them control over the data on the site. Read the rest of this entry »
Skaneateles Suites, Skaneateles New York
March 2nd, 2007
Wanting to have some control over the data on the site is a common request from clients. Many want to be able to quickly make a change to rates, add a new amenity or simply edit a photo. We have created such a site for a client in Skaneateles New York.
Curt has been a client for some time and was experimenting with different blogging platforms such as as Blogger and WordPress.com. As good as they are, they were not getting great page ranking and he could not incorporate the blog into his current site, nor make changes to the design so it would be similar in appearance. He decided to go ahead and have some site design changes, included a blog and create a way for him to have some control over adding new property pages for new units.
So we had two main mandates:
1. Create a content management database where he could access the site to add and remove properties, promote specials and make changes to property information.
2. Create a Community Blog that gives out information about the Skaneateles area, such as events, restaurants, and things to do and see. Read the rest of this entry »
Web 2.0
January 25th, 2007What is Web 2.0?
Well depending on who you ask and what you read it can be many things. One answer is that is the way the Internet is changing to allow for ‘Social Networking’. It includes all the features of online sharing of video, photos, blogs, journals and so on…. While you may not be familiar with the terms Web 2.0 and Social Networking you have probably read other peoples comments on places like Trip Advisor or have accessed Wikipedia for information about a particular topic.
For a business it means a way for you to connect with your clients and potential clients in a way that you could only do via social networks such as the Chamber of Commerce, Trade Associations or Leads Groups. Now with the advancements in technology that allow a website to become more of a interactive site with the outside world, your leads group has become a much bigger network.
Blizzard Live! contains all the key elements of Web 2.0, but is targeted specifically towards the hospitality industry. Getting your property or management group involved with Blizz Live is crucial if you wish to stay ahead of your competitors and on the cutting edge of online marketing.
To read more visit the Blizzard Newsletter site.
Wordpress
January 24th, 2007The WordPress team recently announced a new version of Word Press Ella. In that last few weeks the versions were changing fast and furious as small bug fixes were done for security holes. Now we have a whole other version which looks just great.
I have added the new version to a test server and am currently testing it out locally before upgrading sites to the new version. I found a couple of bugs but it seems that already there is a 2.1 available so I will be upgrading to that to see if they were fixed.
The new version has a number of great features, the first thing you notice is the cleaner Dashboard and menu bar. Some of the other features which will be of great help are:
- Spell check on the WYSIWYG
- Auto Save
- Ability to save Pages as drafts - previouse editions you could only save posts
- A tabbed editor so you can easily switch from HTML to WYSIWYG
- Upload manager area so you can manage photos, video and audio better in one place
- Blogroll now supports Sub Categories
These are just some of my favorites, read the rest on the site at WordPress Ella
The next step is to test the new version with the various plugs-ins we use to make sure everything works as it should, then we can start to use the new version and upgrade those on the old version.
Blogging Tip #5 - Add year to dates in posts
January 10th, 2007Blogging Tip #5
When adding a date of an event in a post, remember to add the year so that if the post is found later there is no confusion as to when the event is taking place. So always create your date such as January 26th, 2007 or Jan 26th, 2007. Then when people find the post via the search engines they know it is not next week, but was last year.
Blogging Tip #4 - Image Sizes For Your Blog
December 12th, 2006Blogging Tip #4
Image Size Matters: Always resize images that you are using online to 72 dpi and a max length on the longest edge to 500 pixels. This will allow up to upload a nice sized image for people to view but will not eat up bandwidth in a download. Those people that are on DSL or even the few that are still on dial up will be very thankful and might just stick around on your site long enough to view the images.
