The previous theme, from one of our favorite designers was great and it has worked well for us. But as part of our activities to try other themes and plugins for our clients, we are now experimenting with and , two WP themes by . As with previous themes, yes, we did some tweaking but not much. The Fervens theme may be viewed running at our affiliated site, .

Judging from inquiries we have been receiving lately, we will definitely be trying other themes if not for this site for our other sites. We have been requested to co-lead a series of workshops for a media group and we think there is an opportunity to use other designs for the participants prospective blogs.

Want to recommend other web designers? Leave us a message.

Some of the report findings are:

“Australians value the internet and see it as critical to their daily lives. Over 11 million Australians use the internet for a wide range of activities relating to communications, business and social activities. Twenty-seven per cent of Australian internet users trust the internet as a valued source of information and prefer it to traditional media, such as newspapers, radio and the television.

However, while Australians overwhelmingly see the internet as having affected their lives positively, they still have concerns about the potential for the internet to negatively affect their privacy and security.”

The full report is available at the .

How? We are still asking that question ourselves? Prior to this new ranking, . Yes, we know it is flawed. Unfortunately, Alexa still remains a site-popularity indicator in the eyes of advertisers. Until such time the industry comes up with an alternative solution, it would be prudent for us to live with Alexa without necessarily relying on it solely to measure site performances and popularity.

The only activity the site had so far was to play around with a few WordPress themes using a plugin called “Theme Test Drive” and experimented with WordPress plugins like Snazzy Archives and Syndication for prospective clients.

SHOWCASEpage.net activated the Syndication plugin to grab RSS feeds from other sites (including this site) which was later deactivated and also the resulting articles were “unpublished” from the site.

Today, we noted that this site has an Alexa ranking of 12,126,403 (see screenshot). Yes, only after 2 months and a few pages most of which were RSS feeds. Shouldn’t we be happy that this site achieved that ranking in only a short a time and with hardly any activity?

We don’t think so. We have other experimental sites which have not come close to this ranking. And some of the sites have been online for a while.

So what’s wrong with Alexa? Or, what’s wrong with the other sites we have been monitoring too?

We don’t know yet. We have read somewhere that the Alexa system is flawed. But without having a complete picture of how Alexa does its maths, we cannot comment on those statements.

But the situation we have at the SHOWCASEpage.net website certainly requires a closer look.

Is there really something in this site that is attracting traffic? We don’t know yet. We will install additional metrices in our pages and find out what’s causing this abnormality and see if the Alexa ratingsystem is giving us reliable measurement.

Your website is the first, and maybe the only, chance to make an impression on potential customers, so it has to have great content. Having a good-looking site is not enough. It needs to be organized well, it needs to be easy to read, and it has to contain relevant information.

Most of all, it has to be compatible with the attention spans of internet surfers who tend to skim content rather than reading every word. As you are creating content for your website, keep these 5 keys in mind:

1. Concise Writing. One of the greatest temptations of content creation is to include every single detail about your company. This is a natural tendency given your own excitement and passion about your business. But put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customer and think about what information you would like to glean from a business website, particularly how your product or service can help your customer solve a particular challenge or problem. And after you have finished writing, cut your word count in half!

2. Clean Layout. SEO professionals know that a potential customer reads only 20% of a website s content. Reach out and grab your website visitor by using catchy headings, writing in short paragraphs, using bullets to make your points, and bolding important words and phrases. Your headings should guide your visitors to your page s content so that they can easily find whatever they are looking for. Bullet points draw a reader s eye to short, easy-to-digest content that gives them pertinent information.

3. Keywords. Before you begin writing your content, research your keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases that web users type into search engines to find webpages related to the topics they are looking for. If you use the keywords on your webpage that your potential customers are typing into search engines, then your webpage will show up in the search engine results.

4. Easy-to-Read Language. One of the greatest pitfalls of content creation is using lingo only familiar to people within your niche. Have someone who knows nothing at all about your business read your content before you publish to make sure that the average reader will understand it. Avoid technical language at all costs.

5. Quality Content. Visitors to your website are looking for relevant, helpful, high-quality content. They are visiting because they have a problem to solve or a challenge to overcome, so make sure that your content delivers a solution. Remember that great content is not content that you find compelling, but content that your visitors find compelling. Start by writing an article that solves a problem that a potential customer might have. Then consider turning that article into an ebook that potential customers might be willing to download. You may consider starting a blog to share your ideas. Invite your friends and family to comment at the beginning until you get a larger following. Then consistently join in the conversation that takes place on your blog.
Above all, make sure that your content is free to your potential customers. If you start asking your visitors to leave their email addresses and other contact information, they are going to leave as quickly as they arrived.

The days of low-quality websites are behind us. If you want to be competitive then you have to have a website that not only looks good, but offers relevant information to visitors. If your website does not have the answers that potential customers are looking for, they can quickly find the information they need somewhere else. Keep their attention on your website by following the above guidelines and you will find that your visitors keep coming back and eventually turn into loyal customers.

Source:

For those not familiar with computing, a content management system (CMS) is a document focused application for managing an organisation’s business documents including articles, pages and databases. A CMS is often web-based and often it is used as a method of managing web sites and web content.

No longer is WordPress the monopoly for blogging. In fact, a number of companies and businesses have implemented WordPress in their intranets and websites because of its versatility.

Making WordPress into a CMS simply involves customizing the theme and the Administration panels through the use of codes and plugins.

You don’t have to be an expert in XHTML, CSS, or PHP to change a WordPress blog to a CMS, but a knowledge of these languages helps. But you don’t have to build your CMS from ground up.

These days there are a number of WordPress developers and designers who can help. Some offer their CMS-like themes for free. Even a premium WordPress theme does not cost a lot these days. For $75, you can have basic shell of a WordPress CMS which you can customise to suit your preferences. The premium themes already have built in plugins to run the theme features.

You can try the and people for premium CMS themes. They have very functional and nicely designed themes.

“The Prime Minister’s National Security Statement recognised that e-security is one of the Government’s top national security priorities. New online threats are emerging and it’s imperative that we take steps to protect critical e-infrastructure,” Mr McClelland said.

The Review made a number of recommendations, including:

The development of closer relationships between the Commonwealth and the private sector in the area of e-security;

Improved engagement with Internet service providers (ISPs) to help create a “security culture” amongst Australian Internet users; and

Building international partnerships on e-security to promote awareness, marshal expertise, and eliminate safe havens for cyber criminals.

In response to the Review, the Australian Government Computer Emergency Readiness Team (GovCERT.au) will establish trusted information exchanges with the private sector.

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It does not matter whether your business caters only to local customers or to overseas market, these days a converter is a must. Consider especially that world currencies are volatile, and an information page with currency equivalents are important tools in the purchasing journey of your customers. Currency converters help provide answer price questions at that moment in time when your customers are ready to buy.

About 10 years ago when my company started emanila.com, there were only a handful of websites providing free currency converter service. One of them is which up to now, we are using in our . Like other currency converter services, XE rates are fed real-time. Design-wise, we did not have any issue at all. Once installed, we never touched it. XE automatically updates it using its live feed!

My other favourite online FX conversion service provider is Ozforex. I subscribed to its email service about three years and since then have received their daily (and sometimes twice a day) news and analysis on world currency market. Ozforex also provides an easy-to-install user interface.

Here is an of how an XE converter can be implemented in your pages taken straight from the XE interface. The converter can easily be customised to suit your preferences.

Following St George shareholders approval last 13 November to merge with Westpac, management of St George has started sending letters to its customers to say that the bank will continue with its current number of branches even if a Westpac and St George branch are side by side.

The letter also states that St George customers will not be levied an ATM fee should they use Westpac’s ATMs, and vice versa.

That’s nice.

But what the letter of course did not mention is that this arrangement is part of the conditions on which Treasurer Wayne Swan on behalf of the Commonwealth approved last 23 October the acquisition of St George by Westpac.

In fact, it is not only branches that had been mandated to be maintained in their existing numbers but remain but ATMs as well.

We understand of course that the conditions which apply for three years from approval date have been adopted to prevent the current economic crisis getting any worse.

From a strictly business viewpoint however, allowing the existing retail branches configuration network of the combined bank does not make sense.

If the intention of the merger is to strike “the right balance between enhancing the competitiveness and the strength of our banking system” as Treasurer Swan said, then I doubt very much if the merger would produce the desired effect.

Not that I like to see people in retail branches losing their job.

But over time, the merged entity would feel the burden of maintaining redundant branch network.

There may be cost savings from redundancy in back office operations and technology-based infrastructure, but all in all, the merged unit may not be able to produce the level of efficiency which in the first place is a primary reason in any merger scenario.

I would not be surprised if Westpac and St George will return to the negotiating table, this time with Commonwealth Treasury, and start looking at the economics of the merger.