A lot of the accounting functions of my business I handle with software, and when it comes to tax time, I visit a certified accountant to deal with my filings. I use project management software to keep tabs on my client work and to track changes and shifts in each deal as they occur. As for insurance, I use a local agent who has always had my best interests in mind and has constantly found me good rates.

The video below is a promotional one from the folks at Mavenlink who offer some of the services for small businesses I mentioned above. The goal at Mavenlink is to consolidate all of your small business needs into one easy to use destination. Check out the video to learn more.

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With high speed mobile broadband I was able to check my mail, look up directions and even get a little bit of work done while walking the streets of Chicago. I was able to keep up with my favorite team’s scores (even some play-by-play) as we hopped from restaurant to restaurant and to the various tourist attractions around town.

This would have never been possible with my old cell phone. I would have had to carry around with me paper maps and notes or, even worse, had to look like a lost tourist and ask the locals for directions everywhere. Having access to broadband was also a huge money saver. I didn’t have to pay for Internet access in our snooty downtown hotel or pay for cabs to destinations I found out were within walking distance.

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Most of my tinier clients are small business owners without the expertise or budgets for a large and elaborate site that might be, quite frankly, a little over the top for their needs anyway. With a program like WebStudio, these clients can build and maintain their own sites without having the professional knowledge or skills that I have. At the same time, the quality of site they can offer to their customers and people interested in learning more about their business is of a high enough quality to pass as a professionally done web site.

And, thankfully, WebStudio also offers ecommerce solutions. This is especially important to me as many of the potential clients I steer in the direction of programs like WebStudio are very interested in selling things online but don’t have the slightest idea where to start with the process. By simplifying ecommerce, NetIDNow has put together an excellent web site creation suite for many businesses looking to get started on the web.

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So what’s the easiest way to work on the search engine optimisation of your blog? Well, if you’re using WordPress (and that’s most likely true if you’re reading this blog right now) than you have a good start right out of the gate. WordPress is built with an underlying framework that makes it easy for themes to be search engine efficient. The coding and order of the site’s elements are typically fashioned in such a manner to make it easy for search engines to crawl and index your site.

Aside from your blogging software, much of the onus is on you as a writer to help get your blog high in the search results. Write with your keywords in mind and use them throughout your posts. If you’re interested in ranking in Google for the term “paper airplanes” than make sure that phrase appears in your blog frequently. Another tip is to try and get links back to your blog from other sites related to paper airplanes. A combination of high quality back links and well written content will help raise your blog in the search engines.

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This theme comes in a variety of pre-selected color patterns that make it good to go right after installation. In addition, it’s one of the most flexible and easy to modify free WordPress themes I’ve ever come across. I’m using it for a World of Warcraft site I run called Alterac Volley and, as you can tell if you visit the site, I’ve heavily modified the original Typebased theme and I did it with ease and very little trouble.

If you’re looking for a clean and simple WordPress theme that gives you a lot of flexibility than I recommend you give Typebased a try.

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Here’s a breakdown of the WordPress.com premium features:

Your Own Domain – You can have your WordPress.com blog run by their service but using your own domain for $10/year. That’s the same fee for that same price by yourself or you can use WordPress.com’s domain register for an extra $15/year.

Extra Storage – All WordPress.com accounts come with 3GB of storage but you can expand that storage in blocks of 5GB. So for an extra 5G you’d pay $20/year, 15GB for $50/year and 25GB for $90/year. Any web host worth their weight can offer you similar space options for equal or lower prices.

Custom CSS – You can gain the ability to customize your own CSS on your blog for $15/year. With WordPress.org this is obviously free.

Go Ad-Free – For $30/year, WordPress.com will stop running their ads on your blog. Let’s think about this for a second. A small blog probably doesn’t even generate $30/year in revenue for WordPress.com when the ads run normally. This is a huge win for WordPress.com in most cases.

Final Verdict

If you host a blog on WordPress.com and are considering upgrading to any of these premium features I strongly, strongly suggest you think twice. For much less money you can find quality web hosting that will give you even more benefits than what WordPress.com can offer you.

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This is without a doubt the greatest new feature in the 2.7 version of the WordPress software. Previous versions has the ability to automatically upgrade plugins from within the admin but the ability to upgrade the core software was missing. This meant each time there was a new release people with multiple WordPress blogs had to FTP up the new files to each of their sites.

Automatic updating of the WordPress core has saved bloggers a ton of time in keeping their software current. This ease of upgrading also does great things for WordPress security because any means to make patching holes in the code easier helps prevent the spread of security leaks and problems.

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Overall I really, really like 2.7. I was a huge fan of the previous update to the admin but the newer version in 2.7 even blows that one away. Things were stepping in the right direction before but now the admin for WordPress makes it all feel like real, professional software and not some user interface monstrosity that is so common in the Open Source scene.

The other big improvement, and one I haven’t even had a chance to try yet, is the ability to update the WordPress install without using FTP. This has been available for updating plugins for quite some time but updating the core software was never an option. This will be a huge feature for people like myself who have multiple blogs and found it to be a pain to update their WordPress install after each major release.

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Since this is a blog about design and development I thought I’d take a look at their web application services a little more closely. 9th sphere offers a multitude of web application types for their clients. They have a strong focus on ecommerce (a topic near and dear to our hearts here) and offer shopping cart and catalog web apps. The shopping carts and catalogs run on custom-built content management systems and, in the case of the cart, come with standard security layers and credit card processing integration.

Canadian businesses looking to build a new website utilizing best practices or expand upon their current one should consider contacting 9th sphere and seeing what they can do to help. From simple website design to more elaborate web applications and Internet Marketing, 9th sphere has the tools and abilities necessary to make your project a reality.

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