WordPress despite being a fantastic CMS system and SEO powerhouse is notorious for slow load times of individual web pages.  Google is expected to start ranking slow loading websites below faster loading websites this year (2010).  So if you want to keep your site competitive even at an SEO level, you need to speed up load times.  Besides a faster loading web page will make your visitors happier!

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Tonight I’m checking out the new Artisteer 2.4 which just became available.  The new version (in beta still) supports to major feature advances:

Vertical Menus for WordPress or other CMS systems like Drupal, Joomla etc

You can essentially run two menu systems now (at first glance). 

In the image example above within the Artisteer design environment I have the option of both a horizontal menu and a (new) vertical menu. 

No idea yet how that will be managed in WordPress as I haven’t exported one of these puppies yet, but that’s coming up next!

Category Driven Menus

Update – I just heard through the forums that not only have vertical menus been added, but now category driven menus are possible.  There appear to be binary options for this.

• You can either have a Category based menu OR a Page based menu in the Horizontal menu or in the Vertical Menu.
• You can have a category in the horizontal and a Page based in the vertical or vice versa.
• You can NOT have a category AND a Page based menu in the vertical at the same time.
• You can NOT have a category AND a Page based menu in the horizontal at the same time.

All that said, this is just the post export (standard) options.  There are probably some easy ways to hack some additional combinations into a theme after the fact

Flash Header Support for WordPress Theme Design

There is also flash headers support for WordPress themes now.  I can add some very basic animation templates that Artisteer includes with the software, or if I have an .flv file I can import it into the theme header.

I haven’t tried that out yet, but I can’t wait to give it a go. 

Changing a Template from one System to Another (Ergo WordPress Theme to Blogger or Drupal)

Here’s a nice cool upgrade option.  If you have designed yourself a nice little template in say WordPress and you want to use the same exact design in Drupal or Blogger or Joomla or DotNetNuke or just an HTML page (for like a WP page template with modifications!) you can now do this with a click of the mouse (ok 2-3 clicks).

After you have the design you like, just change template type.  Then save file as something else if you don’t want to lose your original theme/template etc and you are off to the races. 

If you have a website powered by WordPress and you have a blog powered by Blogger, you could then easily cobrand the sites to look very similar as one working example.  Gonna have to ruminate on some additional practical applications.

Extending Free Upgrade License

For just over a year now, I have received free upgrades to Artisteer.  That’s part of the license.  Buy Artisteer and you get free upgrades for a year.  When I first picked up Artisteer in November of 2008, they were just moving to beta version 0.8 I believe.  1.6 versions later or from my perspective about 20 improvements, updates and upgrades later, it was now time for me to update my license.

For $59.95 I purchased another year of Artisteer upgrades, and now I’m cranking through the possibilities with 2.4.

In case you are wondering, it only took moments for my order to process and my old license became good for upgrades all over again.  There is a huge amount of value in this program, but every time I download another free upgrade (yeah I paid for it, but most software companies don’t give away free upgrades at all), it feels great and puts a smile on my face.  In total, I’ve invested just short of $200 in this software over the course of about 15 months, and I have earned a return on that investment of about 100x. 

You can check your own
upgrade subscription status here.

Artisteer Discount Code/Link

If you would like to get a 5% discount on a new Artisteer license (home/education or standard) feel free to use my referral link http://www.artisteer.com/?p=brett

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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After catching up on my sleep after traveling back all night from Boston from one of the largest wordcamps that I have attended to date, I finally got around to editing and uploading some basic video I took.  The first video is a quick presentation i gave during an unconference session, showing people how to design their first wordpress theme using the software that makes it easy, Artisteer.

Videos of the WP theme design presentation in 3 parts…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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This month I noticed a new service in Social Oomph a professional social media service that I have subscribed to at a cost of about $15 per month for the last year or so.  The service is called clout and it basically looks at your followers and identifies the top 50 people that follow you based on their own following/followers and number of updates.

I was surprised to see that of my top 50, I only talk on a semi-regular basis with Chris Brogan, typically when I run into him at a social media conference, which is ironic as he has a great message these days telling social media folks to get out and shake the bushes meeting people from other walks of life ‘Outside’ of Social Media. 

I have also talked with Depeche Mode a couple times on Facebook, but not on Twitter.  There are also a couple people like Rob McNealy, whom I know and have had some great conversations with in the past, but despite the power of social media, haven’t talked with him lately.  But the larger number of the people with the most clout, that follow me, don’t talk to me.    I’ve met Jeff Pulver at one of his Social Media Jungle events in Las Vegas and he gave me the impression that he’s the type of guy that brings interesting people together to do interesting things.  I’ve tried to engage Guy Kawasaki a couple times but the conversations did not go well, I’m sure more my fault on that than Guy’s.…

Note: Originally published at Maven Mapper’s Information.

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Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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This week Softduit Media is working with graphic designer Jennifer Slagle in Urbandale, Iowa (near Des Moines, IA) to migrate her website from a static Apple MobileMe platform to a WordPress as a CMS (content management system) setup.

Jennifer runs the graphic design firm, Design 26.  She has an extensive portfolio of graphic design work for customers in Iowa and the midwest.  Her former website successfully incorporated examples of her portfolio, but the site lacked the flexibility of a CMS in both communicating with potential and existing clients as well as simply attaining decent listings and rankings through the primary search engines.…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Note: Cross posted from TOP 10 TECH.

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While Twitter is not all that new, marketing on twitter is still in its infancy. Sponsored Tweets in general are brand new and these quick tips will help you maintain your tweet quality. (Boy isn’t that a silly concept, tweet quality) Note: Cross posted from TOP 10 TECH.

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Brett Bumeter is presenting today at WordCamp Birmingham teaching people how to design their first theme in minutes.

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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I’ll make more more materials available later today, but here is my initial slide presentation for WordCamp Birmingham.  This is just the opening remarks for the actual mentored demonstration.  Hoping to add video of the meat and potatoes of this presentation after its done.

The main goal of this presentation is to help everyone give this a try, and if possible design their own theme, while I guide the audience through the process.

If you want to follow along during the presentation, I recommend downloading the free trial software from Artisteer or Cnet

1. Go to Artisteer & follow the instructions to download the free trial via Cnet (Mac users navigate to the News tab, scroll down and download the Mac OSx version of Artisteer)

*If you are using a Mac with Snow Leopard 10.6, there is a early beta (download trial beta) that is workable for most users so far, that early release by Apple has the team at Artisteer working over time like so many other companies I suspect.

2.  Install the free trial software (works on PCs or Macs) & generate your theme.

For more information on the Theme Design Contest . . . see ->

Enter the WordPress ‘License to Design’ Theme Contest 2.0

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Between now and the end of BlogWorld in mid October, we are going to run a WordPress Theme design contest for new designers or people that want to learn how to design a WordPress theme for the first time.…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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A friend of mine that is learning how to use both WordPress and Artisteer, the theme design software, sent me a question about what appeared to be a broken sidebar option within WordPress. 

John of TransformativeLifeCoaches.com asks

I am wanting to install an Aweber autoresponder Sign Up Box (for a Giveaway report and a series of autoresponder emails) on our site. 

I believe the best way to do that is to put the Sign Up box in Sidebar 2 which doesn’t appear to be activated on our TLCoaches site. 

I went  to Widgets on the WP control panel to drag the "text/HTML" widget onto Sidebar 2 but it wouldn’t drag nor do any other widgets. 
Can you tell me the best way to get the autoresponder box on every page of our site?

In reality, WordPress and the sidebars on the site were not broken.  Here’s a quick snapshot of the site as of the date of the question.

This particular site only has 1 sidebar programmed into the theme.  With Artisteer (as of Sept 2009) at most you can design themes with 2 sidebars.  You can add more than 2 sidebars to the themes after export but that is another topic for a different day.…

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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Here’s a very good video that shares some insights in where social media is at today, where its been, and likely where its going.

This is probably one of those videos that you will want to watch a couple times, just to make sure you understand the insights and information within. 

Note: Cross posted from Softduit Media.

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