I know that with every new level of WordPress there is always something pretty amazing that is added to the package, but, this time, for the life of me, I cannot find it! Why are so many people downloading it? (click image for current tally)

I know that there are tons of new features, but where are they? I have been playing with WP 3.0 since it was available for any kind of testing, using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin, set to the “cutting edge” option, and yes, I am aware of the new “menu” feature, but, I am not sure how this is helpful, If a special menu is needed, I build it. I understand that it now works for unlimited sites, I guess this is a BuddyPress or WPMU thing, it does nothing for me, I only have like 30 sites!  Oh, the now bolder “ENTER TITLE HERE” line when adding a new page or post is kinda neat, if you didn’t know where to put the title before because it was a bit hard to see, the white areas just blended in and new users had a tough time, so, this is a plus, but, where are all of the new goodies?

Ok, I am being a bit sarcastic here, yes, there are too many new things for me to list, but, most are not readily visible to the naked eye, these are the things that will help theme and plugin developers to add even more goodies, that can be seen, so, if you are new to WordPress, hang on to your shorts, this is going to get good! Watch the video, or read more here. Just so you can get a grasp on how fast the download process started, I just happened to be upgrading a plugin, and saw that 3.0 was available, when I looked to see how many had downloaded it, it was at only about 10,000, I got this screen-shot about 30 minutes later!

This video is fantastic, from WordCamp San Francisco, Matt Mullenweg is really a funny guy, the story of WordPress and the whole 3.0 release is very interesting too.

It is your business, but, does it stand out? When someone does a search for a plumber, be it in the phone book, newspaper, or online, what do they see? What catches their attention and urges them to call a specific plumber? Yes, there can be many things, a catchy logo, a really low price, a service guarantee, but, what it boils down to is the image of that business. If the business stands out, it will get noticed!

Looking at the picture, you notice that there really isn’t much difference between the figures, but, the yellow one with it’s hand up saying here I am, does your business do that? What Brand have you created for your business? Think os the branding of something we all know, McDonalds, when you see those arches you immediately know ehat it is. When people can associate an image with the business, it sticks and they can remember it.

When you are creating an image for your business, it needs to be something that is simple and carries through all of your marketing and advertising efforts, be it an ad, a business card, or a website, branding your business is very important and helps your advertising work better for you.

Always remember, a potential customer must see your ad a minimum of seven times, before they will remember it, and, that is if, you have created an effective brand, if you don’t stand out, they may never notice it!

BustinLooseMedia.com is not here to simply sell you a website or hosting, we are here to help you create an image, your own brand that will help your business stand out!

Our new office is open and ready to take care of your Internet Media needs. We can Design, Host, Market,  Manage and Maintain your online business website for you, thus leaving you time to run your business.

If you are familiar with Downtown Caldwell, then we are easy to find, across from the Courthouse you will find K’s Cafe, we are in the Towne Centre behind the cafe, at the corner of Echols and W Fox St. and are ready to help you take your business to the next level.

If you have a small business, and you do not have a website, there are many potential customers that won’t even know your business exists! This is not a good thing because in this fast paced high tech world we live in, people are not just using a coomputer to look for what they need, but even wireless phones, such as the iPhone, a very popular tool/toy, that today’s websites must be able to service, or, again, you miss out.

If we build your site, we add features that will make your site readable with the iPhone, and that alone can help your business, but, just as this site is built, you can add content or even remove it yourself, without the extra cost that you would normally have to pay a webdesigner, because our sites are built using the powerful WordPress Content Management System (CMS), no, WordPress is not just a blog, it can do just about anything you may need foor your business.

So, just drop me a note, or give ma a call, and I can answer any questions that you may have, and then get your business up and running online.

We have now completed (all but the fine tuning and content) our Hosting website, BustinLooseHosting.com.You will notice that BustinLooseMedia, BustinLooseHosting, and WildWebDesigner.com, all have the same black brick, background, this has been done for a reason, this brick signifies the barriers that can prevent some small business owners from setting up a quality, dynamic, database driven website, where they can add as many new content containing posts or pages as they desire, thus providing more opportunities for the search engines to bring them even more new customers!

Bustin’ Loose defines my philosophy on what it takes to break free from the old restrictive way of doing things, such as a business that needs to break free from the hassles that operating a website can bring.

While any website can be of some value, a properly designed WordPress based site can offer things that a plane jane, old fashioned .html site cannot. There are many services out there for these “easy” sites, and yes, they are “cheap”, but, you get what you pay for, or, at least you should. With a modern, Web 2.0, dynamic database driven site, that uses a custom .css stylesheet, that makes adding new pages easy, you no longer have to pay a web designer to add each page for you, it is as simple as sending an email, just type, add images, select a category, and hit publish and it is done. A dynamic site also allows for interaction with your sites visitors, they may leave a comment about your products or services, which will encourage later site visitors to do business with you. If you sell products, you can also add this feature to your site and have a new source of sales as well that way, and, with WordPress, you may be able to use a simple plugin, and not even need an expensive shopping cart.

I could go on and on about the benefits of using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS), but, the biggest, and best reasons are in it’s simplicity, affordability, and design, it just works better! Most plugins and themes are free, though donations are encouraged to help further development, and since WordPress is an active Open Source community, the future technologies are sure to be built in.

If you are a small business owner, you need a modern, customizable web-presence that can grow with your business, a Web Designer  and Host that is there for you, and will help you reach your goals, take a look at us, we are on your side and will help you Break Free!

BustinLooseMedia.com now has four sites that are dedicated to bringing the businesses that service our section of the Brazos Valley, to the local residents, for a more personal form of advertising.

These sites are still under development, and are directed to just one, until the theme revisions have been made, but don’t worry, they will be up and running soon!

These four sites are; BurlesonCountyBusiness.com, BrazosCountyBusiness.com, WashingtonCountyBusiness.com, and a broader site, BrazosValleyBusiness.com. All four domains are practically identical, and many may wonder what the reasoning is for having four separate domains, why not have one main domain and three subdomains? This is simple, to keep it local, yet provide broader content for the search engines, thus gaining more exposure for the advertisers!

The rural residents in each county are concerned about the businesses that will actually service their area, believe me, here in Burleson County, where I live, it is hard to get businesses from Brazos  or Washington Counties to come to your home to do any work!

My purpose in this is two-fold, first, to help others in these  areas, find businesses that are interested in getting their business, and second, to have articles that are more detailed than a newspaper ad, so the prospective customer can learn more about them. Customers can report businesses that, for the good of all, have done things right, or wrong, with a simple comment. Consumers, and business owners alike, may register, and post comments,  and hopefully, contribute to the content by posting their own articles. I have even set up discussion boards should the community get too active for just comments.

If you look at the sites as they are now, you will see sample ads all over the place, as these sites are still in developement, most of these are simply placeholders, the prices are not correct, at the time they were made, the whole concept, was but a test, so, if you are worried about the prices, many of them will be much less, others will not be.

Yes, we will also allow the bigger, regional or national advertisers, such as restaurant chains etc to purchase ads and even have a representitive write articles or comments for them, but the primary focus is on the consumer, to provide them as much information as possible, and to give them a place to voice their opinions, and just chat with their neighbors should they wish to. I hope that these sites will allow both the businesses and the consumers to get to know each other better, thus building relationships that will help both in the long run. Please feel free to post a comment and tell me what you think about my idea, offer suggestions, and even contact me if you wish to help out or advertise, I need all the help I can get!

Unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure that you have noticed that the Internet has changed since the old days of a “Dial-Up-Only” Internet. The Internet has morphed into something unimaginably huge and important and without which, many of the everyday things would not exist.

Everything from cell phones to television, even our home telephones can now be connected and used via the Internet at drastic savings. Unless you live in the sticks like me, where the telephone company still has a monopoly, you can get a service like Vonage for $24.95, for unlimited everything, which beats the heck out of the $90 I pay for a regular phone.  We can also save by paying our bills online, in fact, it is possible to save enough on postage to cover some of the cost of your ISP (Internet Service Provider). I know that when I check my snail mail, about 99.9% is trash, so, I only check it once a month, unless I am waiting on a package or something that I ordered online. Yes, the Internet provides plenty of junk mail of its own, known as SPAM, but it doesn’t fill up your trash can, you simply delete it!

Now, with the advances in wireless technologies,  not to mention all of the fun gadgets that go with it, the Internet has gotten even more popular, even movies and music are available, right on your cell phone, or iPod! I wonder, how did we ever get along without the Internet before?

If you own a small business, and don’t offer your customers anything online, maybe it is time to Bust Loose from the old and move into the new, contact us and we can help you get there!

Lets take a look at the basics of commerce, what is commerce? I define it quite simply as buying and selling, yes, you could get into more detail but lets keep it basic. So, if commerce is buying and selling, e-commerce is e-buying and e-selling, right? The letter e is just short for e-lectronic, meaning, computerized. So, e-commerce is basically electronic, or computerized buying and selling, right? You would probably be buying your inventory over the phone anyway, right? In fact, I bet that most vendors have websites where you can order!

I know, you are wondering where I am headed with this.  Lets assume that you have a retail business that that sells t-shirts, your brick and mortor store is located in the mall, where you pay an extraordinarilly high amount of rent, but have thousands of people walking past your store every day, you would have to sell a ton of shirts to pay the rent, right?

Now, since the objective is to sell t-shirts, how can you sell more and make that rent less of a headache? Easy, open a second store, one with practically zero overhead, that would make your profit margin go up quite a bit, wouldn’t it?

To do this, there are many options, but unless you are a big corporation, one that spends way too much for everything and then gets bailed out by the Feds, you need an affordable option. Yes, setting up and marketing an e-commerce website can be pricey, but it doesn’t have to be, if you use a WordPress CMS site, with an e-commerce plugin, and then use PayPal, or Google Checkout to get paid.

If you have a store at the mall, you already take credit cards, and are used to paying the discount points, and setting that up with a regular shopping cart could be the better option, but, just for this example, PayPal is not a bad thing.

Yes, there are still a lot of people that are afraid the boogie man will get them if they buy something online, but their numbers are getting smaller, and many, if not most people buy on the Internet regularly.

Back to our store at the mall, the goal is to sell more, so we have built a website and set it all up, how do we market it? Simple, just add your web address to your regular ads! Maybe put a sign up, with your website URL, so that the thousands that just walk past your store can see it. Many of these people walking by, or seeing your ad in the paper, are potential website e-commerce customers! So, by adding this second store, you can potentially increase your sales, what, two fold? No, the number can grow exponentially. How many people see your ads, but don’t have time to go to the mall? The same word of mouth that can bring them into your store, can bring them to your website!

Todays technology is great, digital cameras have made taking and sharing photos and videos, much easuier, but how can you share them with your ustomers? Simple, if you have a CMS (Content Management System) website, just post it!

There are many different options when it comes to CMS, but, almost all of them are difficult for the user to modify, I have worked with many of them, but now, there is only one for me, WordPress! Using WordPress is simple for the end user as well as the designer because many of the functions you may want to add are as simple as a plugin, yes, major modifications or customizations take knowledge of how WordPress works as well as the plugins, but, overall, it just works better!

Many of the old static html sites take a lot more time to design and create, not to mention adding content down the road, with WordPress, the business owner can post an article about that days jobsite or current project, post pictures, even video in just a few minutes! That is my whole focus, BustinLooseMedia.com, is here to help small business owners “Bust Loose” from the old, and move up to the new!

Using Real Estate as an example, there is a plugin the makes posting a new listing as simple as writing a regular article post, just add the pictures and you are done. I even had a dedicated Real Estate Theme that I use, that requires no plugin! In Houston, HAR (Houston Association of Realtors) even provides IDX solutions for its members, maybe the other Real Estate Associations do to?  Using WordPress allows the agent to keep their potential clients up to date on what is happening in their area in a more personal way. Your customers can even sign up for subscriptions and get an email everytime you post something new!

Maybe you have a retail business, you can add an entirely new storefront, just by having a website! Now your customers can order from you online and not have to use up their gasoline and spare time, and using WordPress, you can keep them up-to-date on anything new, special sales, or just say hello at any time, so, contact us now for a BustinLooseMedia Solution for your small business!

I have known many small business owners that are of the mindset that they don’t want or need a website, yet they spend hundreds of dollars on yellow page ads, business cards and news paper ads. I ask them, “what happens when a potential customer sees your ad in a newspaper”, do you know what I hear the most? They say quite simply, “nothing”, or “I don’t know”, and these are both true, if they are not interested at all, but what if they happen to want or need your product or service,  what if there are 2 or 3 ads selling the same thing? I have to tell these friends, “times are changing”, and almost every household has a computer and the Internet, or they at least know someone that does, so, when they see 3 ads, and only one has a website, which one do you think will get another chance to convince them that their off is the best?

The point here is simple, a website is just another tool, like a business card, or yellow page ad, and the more lines you have in the water, the better chance you have of catching a fish!

Today’s websites are different from those of even a couple of years ago, they are dynamic, they use high quality images and video as well, to show, exactly what the visitor needs to see. With fuel prices going up and down, and thecurrent economic situation, many people are searching for what they need on the Internet, before they get in their car, it saves time and money, so, do you want to be the business owner that has a high quality website, or do you want to be the business owner sitting there waiting for customers to just magically show up?

BustinLooseMedia.com, providing media solutions to small business owners that are looking for an affordable means to establish, manage and promote an offline business, online. BustinLooseMedia.com is the parent company of WildWebDesigner.com, where we offer affordable Website design, using the WordPress Content Management System, and custom designed, professional and funtional, website themes. WildWebDesigner.com can register, design, build, host, and manage your website for you, so that you can run your business, and not worry about the website! Using the WordPress engine makes it simple to add content, and easy to maintain, and modify through plugins, should you decide to manage your new domain yourself.

BustinLooseMedia.com can setup your online website marketing and promotion using Google, Yahoo, or MSN, depending on your needs, and budget. We can guarantee traffic to your site through another of our companies, TrafficComplex.com, this is a traffic exchange site, that brings thousands of visitors to your website, so that your website is not just sitting there!

BustinLooseMedia.com can also advertise your business on our network of other websites, such as BurlesonCountyBusiness.com, a website designed to promote businesses that service the Burleson County area, at the same time making it easier for the residents of Burleson County to find the goods and services that they want and need.

We specialize in real estate websites, so, if you are a real estate professional, we can also help promote your real estate website, through various real estate directories such as Trulia.com, Zillow.com and even MySpace.com.

BustinLooseMedia.com, here to help your small business, Bust Loose from the brick and mortor restraints of the past, and into the world wide media resource called the Internet.