314media is the only Official WordPress consultant in the St Louis area. We are listed on CodePoet.com and have completed hundreds of WordPress websites for our clients in the Chesterfield, Saint Louis, and surrounding areas. We have completed projects for clients World Wide…

Contact us to learn how 314media will help to grow your business and to help your business to succeed with WordPress as a CMS. We offer affordable rates for WordPress service hours and WordPress web design. We look forward to learning how we can help you.

I want to say Thanks to everyone to make our first quarter of 2010 a huge success. We had a wonderful March and are looking to do it again in April. A few sites went live this month and here’s the lowdown:

http://www.bewellspringhill.com – Designed by Rob Hutti, this masterpiece was developed exclusively in WordPress and has a few bells and whistles included using jQuery for the home slideshow; custom Widgets for the sidebars, some blogging and social media integration, and a couple other tricks. This was a fun project to work on! A whole lot of custom web development on this one!

http://www.jillyscupcakebar.com – Jenn Carter with an impressive design (she does all of Jilly’s prints too! (Jensdaybyday.blogspot.com)). Custom JQuery slideshow; simple paypal integration with a custom shipping calculator (coming real soon) and many custom queries and custom templates. This one was an excellent example of using WordPress as a CMS; incoporating eCommerce into WordPress and developing a super-custom WordPress theme. Now, to finish my delicious cupcakes. Super custom web development and shopping cart integration .. Fun stuff!!

We did some custom logos for a few clients and also a few media conversion projects (Hi Alison – Your DVD’s are coming along nicely!).

April is shaping up to be a fun month starting with the Pet Lovers Companion site, building a custom site for MSG, Michelle Potter has a project in the pipeline, and much, much, more.. Also, don’t count out the WordPress pre-release of Version 3.0. Slated for May, but you know how anxious we get (I’m beta testing the nightly builds and you guys are gonna love the light grey admin area) ..

Keep checking back as we complete Julie’s Christian Archives PHP to WordPress conversion and membership integration and more during the month of April.

-Chris

St Louis Businesses Need SEO Web Services

When you start a new web company or create a new website or start a new business, one of your first questions will be “how do I get traffic?” After all, traffic means more sales, more clients, more advertisers… and more money. And while you can implement Adwords campaigns and other paid methods, the most valuable traffic is that which comes organically and directly from the search engines. Natural, organic traffic from Google, Yahoo, and the others is free, it is specific, and is already partially pre sold. Which makes good search engine optimization a key part of building and improving your website.

Looking around the web for ways to improve your traffic and rankings, you probably came across plenty of offers for SEO services. But if you have never contracted an SEO company before, you may not know if it is worth it. Do you even want an SEO professional for your site? The answer is a resounding yes. For five very important reasons.

1. In depth SEO knowledge. As a webmaster, you have access the limitless material about SEO. There are webmaster and SEO forums to look at, and lots of paid courses, “tricks,” and materials. But no matter what you read, you will never be able to amass the knowledge that an SEO services professional has. And why? Because you have to focus on other elements of your website. An SEO professional can focus 100 percent on SEO… because it is what they do, and they do it exclusively.

2. Professionalism. An SEO services company works only with search engine optimization, and so must always keep up with new methods and ideas. They are SEO professionals. And a big part of doing SEO as a profession is using little known methods that webmasters cannot implement on their own. Among these methods are things like the analyzing the psychology of your visitors, the usability of your site, etc.

3. Results. You can learn elements of search engine optimization and put them into use yourself. You can submit articles, try to use social media, and do you best to optimize your pages for the search engines. Even so, your results will not be as good as those you would get using SEO services. Why is that? Because SEO professionals not only know and use all of the methods that you do, they also have a wide range of alternative SEO methods. SEO services get the kind of results that you cannot… and they do it quickly.

4. Time Savings. Working on the search engine optimization of your site takes time. Sometimes a lot of it. You have to read up on new SEO news and methods, write content and articles, and build links. This does not just mean work… it means time. If you hire SEO services to do this sort of work for you, you will have more free time to focus on your own areas of expertise.

5. Value of investment. Some SEO services cost more than others, and sometimes they seem too expensive. But only when you do not take a closer look. The truth is, cost goes in the opposite direction… it is too expensive not to get SEO help. Because doing your own optimization involves spending money, too… and you end up spending more than you should on wasteful “tricks” and resources that cannot help you. Though using an SEO company means spending money, it is a much more efficient use of your investment.

Contact 314media to learn how we can optimize your web site for a better organic search placement. We are a St. Louis based web design, WordPress, and SEO consulting company and we have a proven track record for increasing page rank and search engine placement. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business become more visible.

Inbound Marketing – Is It for your business?

Inbound Marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers.

In traditional marketing (outbound marketing) companies focus on finding customers. They use techniques that are poorly targeted and that interrupt people. They use cold-calling, print advertising, T.V. advertising, junk mail, spam and trade shows.

Technology is making these techniques less effective and more expensive. Caller ID blocks cold calls, TiVo makes T.V. advertising less effective, spam filters block mass emails and tools like RSS are making print and display advertising less effective. It’s still possible to get a message out via these channels, but it costs more.

Inbound Marketers flip this old marketing stereotype and bring clients (inbound) to you!

Instead of interrupting people with television ads, they create videos that potential customers want to see. Instead of buying display ads in print publications, they create their own blog that people subscribe to and look forward to reading. Instead of cold calling, they create useful content and tools so that people call them looking for more information.

Instead of driving their message into a crowd over and over again like a sledgehammer, they attract highly qualified customers to their business like a magnet.

The most successful Inbound Marketing campaigns have three key components:

Content – Content is the substance of any Inbound Marketing campaign. It is the information or tool that attracts potential customers to your site or your business.
Search Engine Optimization – SEO makes it easier for potential customers to find your content. It is the practice of building your site and inbound links to your site to maximize your ranking in search engines, where most of your customers begin their buying process.
Social Media – Social media amplifies the impact of your content. When your content is distributed across and discussed on networks of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic and nuanced, and is more likely to draw qualified customers to your site.

314media can provide a solution for your business that brings together blogging, social media, and search engine optimization. Contact us for a risk-free quote to learn how your business can benefit from inbound marketing and get started today.

WordPress Missouri

314media can take your website and make it as easy to edit as a Word document. We are official WordPress consultants and we are located in Missouri. If your WordPress website needs some attention; or you are looking to move to the World’s best personal publishing platform, contact 314media today for more information! Conveniently located in Saint Louis Missouri, 314media has the tools and processes in place to handle your web design and WordPress project in a quick and efficient manner.

We build custom Content Management Systems using WordPress, a web-based software that allows you to add, edit, and manage the content of your website using only your web browser.

Some of our services include:

WordPress Integration

If you already have a website, 314media will convert it to WordPress. Your site will look exactly the same to visitors, but you’ll have a Content Management System to simplify the editing process. This will allow you to edit the content of your website without needing to know how to code HTML.

WordPress Theme Development

I can take a design created by your inhouse or preferred designer, mark it up with XHTML/CSS and turn it into a functioning WordPress theme. All of our WordPress themes are cross-browser compatable, are built with SEO in mind, and use the strictest markup.

Custom Website Development

If you’re looking for a new website, 314media can design, develop, and implement your new solution. Custom designed web applications, static html brochure sites, integrated payment and ordering systems and much more. Contact us for more information.

WordPress Consulting and Support

As your focus shifts or new opportunities arise, 314media can repair, add on to, or rebuild your WordPress powered website or blog. 314media can provide the necessary support and consulting services for these types of requests.

WordPress Hosting

314media can run your web site on our servers and keep it updated to the latest version of WordPress. Providing support is also easier (and cheaper) when it is on our servers, as spending time troubleshooting with another host usually causes increased client-billed time.

Ready to get started? Contact us for more information.

WordPress – It’s Not Just For Blogging Anymore!

After briefly browsing the WordPress showcase, it dawned on me that more and more huge industries and media outlets are using WordPress to power their corporate sites. WordPress has gained the reputation of just another blogging platform. I think that it’s safe to say that this myth has been “busted”!

Not only is WordPress powerful enough to power some of the worlds largest websites; it does it with style and ease of use. WordPress may still be considered a blogging platform to many, but the platform is so scalable and robust; it can power some of the largest sites on the planet.

Here’s a rundown of some of the sites using WordPress that you would make you think that WordPress is “not just a blogging platform”.

Personal Favorites:

“I can’t believe that it’s WordPress” Category:

So as you can see, WordPress is becoming a viable platform to run just about any website on and it is so jammed packed with features, it’s the platform of choice for some of the worlds largest website.

If you’re looking for a better way to manage your content, contact 314media to learn how WordPress can work for you!

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Website to Facebook!

314media can develop a solution to automatically post from your Website to your FaceBook fan page! Talk about integrating social media! This has to be one of the coolest API integrations that’s available right now. Publishing your own content on the web not only allows you you to take control of your websitel it can also update your Facebook fan page with timely information; keeping all of your content in sync.

Contact 314media for more information about integrating FaceBook with your website.

WordPress is Popular!

A new study has found WordPress to be the most popular blogging platform among users who like to share content online.
Research conducted by SocialTwist found that 45 per cent of social media users prefer the open source publishing application to its main rivals. Blogger was the most popular alternative to the program – which was first developed in 2003 – followed by LiveJournal. Other programs including TypePad, MoveableType and Xanga are all infrequently used by social media sharers, the study indicated.

When it comes to blogging services, WordPress with 45 percent and Blogger with 42 percent are the most popular platforms for social media content sharing. The surprise element in this space is Typepad, which is never used.

You can read more of the study here: Sharing Trends 2009

314media can provide your orginazation with the tools to effectively share your message to your target audience. Contact us today for more information. Not only is WordPress the most popular blogging platform, it is becoming one of the fastest growing CMS systems because of it’s fast development time and ease of use. 314media is one of the most revered WordPress consultants and we look forward to discussing your WordPress project.

Top Twitter Tools for WordPress

Due to the size and scale of Twitter, it’s silly not to integrate your WordPress website with Twitter integration. Twitter seems to be gaining ground in the online community and for the most part will only be growing in 2010. Here is a run down of the best that Twitter and WordPress combined have to offer.

TweetSuite – a Twitter-WordPress integration plugin that includes server-side TweetBacks, ReTweet-This buttons, digg-like Tweet-This Button, automatic tweeting of new posts and some widgets.
Tweet This – A plugin that adds a Twitter icon to every post and page, so your readers can share your blog entries on their Twitter accounts with ease.
TweetMeme button – easily allows your blog posts to be retweeted.
Simple Twitter Link – simply returns a URL, which is a link to Twitter with your post/page URL within it.
WP Twitip ID – Plugin adds an extra field to the comment form for user to enter their twitter username
Twitter Badge – Official javascript codes that display badges showing what you are posting on Twitter.
The Twitter Updater – a WordPress plugin that automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post. You can specify the text for the updates, and also have the option to turn the auto update on/off for the different post actions in the admin panel.
TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.
Twitter Tools – This WordPress plugin creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. Pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.
Twitter WordPress Sidebar Widget – Customise the number of updates shown in your sidebar, individual links to each status update on Twitter, style your Twitterings using CSS, choose whether to display your Twitter name before each post and customise text between the post text and the relative time.
Twitter Feed – Posts your blog updates to your twitter account. Login to twitterfeed using your OpenID, provide the URL for your blog RSS feed, and how often to post to Twitter.
Twitt-Twoo – is a simple little plugin that will allow you to update your Twitter status right from your blogs sidebar. It is AJAX powered and allows for quick and easy status updates.

As you can see, integration with your WordPress website with Twitter can be done hundreds of different ways. Not only do these tools help to spread your brands awareness, they integrate Twitter with your WordPress website. Contact 314media for more information on how we can help to integrate Twitter and WordPress to make your twice as productive