Site Launch: PRBeam.com for $99 Press Releases

Yesterday, I launched my newest Web site, the first HTML/CSS based site I’ve designed in several years. I decided not to use WordPress as my content management system for PRBeam.com, my $99 press release promotional Web site, due in part to some recent hackings that have taken place with WP.

Those problems are now behind me, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Besides, with HTML I can keep my six static pages in place and leave it at that. No temptation to add a blog post and dilute my freelance writing message found here. I’m still tweaking the site to make it render nearly the same to viewers across major browser platforms; it actually looks better in Chrome and IE than it does in Firefox. Go figure.

Of course, PRBeam.com is not an end to itself. I’m hoping that it translates into new business for me while allowing small business operators to find an experienced press release copywriter who can give them what they need for less. Under my current arrangement, customers will receive a newsworthy press release for up to 400 words and distribute it themselves.

And I’m advising these same customers to use a quality distributor and to disseminate their news carefully. SEO is certainly important as is targeting your news release to the right people. Print newspapers are fading fast, but many journalists have transferred what they do to the Internet. Those people may be interested in your news too, using your release as a jumping-off place for a fresh article.

So where is my own press release announcing my press release service? I’m actually going to wait until June to publish it so that I can tend to the needs of my customers first. Besides, if PRBeam.com is a raging success, I might want to tweak that $99 offer or add a distribution option. Stay tuned!

WordPress 2.6 Offers Significant Changes

Don’t you hate it when people gush over WordPress? Well, I’m okay with that as it is a very strong and capable blogging platform. I can put up with the accolades as WP is deserving of such praise.

WordPress users jump for joy upon learning about all of the action packed features in recently released v. 2.6.

One thing that users of this free weblog software tool know is that WordPress is updated on a regular basis, usually several times each year. If you manage one blog, that isn’t a problem, but if you manage a bunch of blogs, you can spend plenty of time backing up files, updating to the latest version and making sure that all of your plug-ins are working correctly. I currently manage nine WP blogs, so my work is cut out for me every time a revision is rolled out!

WordPress 2.6 was released yesterday and I’m in the process of making my updates. I’ve completed four blogs today (including this one) and will get to the remaining five over the next two days.

This latest version has some very useful features added, options which can help make blogging easier and your work more professional. As always, before doing any WP update, backup your files first.

What’s Notable:

Theme Previewer — Now an integrated part of WordPress, the new theme previewer allows you to look at your blog before you switch themes. This is tremendously useful for someone like me who has downloaded a theme, switched over to the new one, only to not like how it looked when in use. Undoing what I did doesn’t take long, but those are extra steps I certainly can do without.

Google Gears — Pre-caching pages and speeding up your site is now possible thanks to Google Gears a nifty program that make your WP blog snap into place faster. I have one blog with about one thousand articles on it and an older theme that has been dragging of late. With Google Gears pages load faster — just what your readers want and deserve!

Press This! — I’ll have to take a look at this function closely as it is something that could be used for good or for evil. Specifically, if you are visiting a website and you want to copy the text, a photograph, or something else found on that site, Press This! will let you do that with ease. I just hope that it doesn’t make lifting material off of my sites too much of a temptation for dishonest people.

Compare Post Versions — Have you ever wished you could compare various versions of a post that you wrote? Now you can, with WP’s wiki-style post versioning tool. This is particularly helpful if you collaborate on posts and need to compare revisions. If you decide to go with an earlier copy, you can click on the appropriate link and select that one. It might also be useful if you are running a contest and want to turn that post from an announcement of the contest to announcing the winner of that contest.

Avatar Choices — You get to select different avatar options with WP 2.6 by choosing Gravatars, MonsterID, Identicons, Wavatars, etc.

Improved Plug-In Management — Up until now, I wasn’t too happy with WP’s plug-in management panel. Now, plugins can be activated in one batch, deactivated at the same time, or even deleted en masse. I also like the little number flag that pops up by the Plugins tab alerting me to when an updated copy is ready to download.

Image Captions — I’ve been waiting for this tool to be integrated into WP for some time. I just could never find a plugin that I liked, so being able to put a brief note below a photograph is very helpful. I will say that this feature doesn’t always work well with every theme; one site that I manage forces the text to the left, but I’m sure that this is something that can be remedied with some minor coding work.

Lots of other smaller changes are included with WP 2.6 including full SSL support in the core, reordering of galleries through a drag and drop feature, security updates, and the fixing of almost 200 bugs.

Nope, WordPress isn’t perfect, but as a content management system it is packed with many good functions and can be extended much further with various plugins. Happy updating!

Photo Credit: Sanja Gjenero