WordPress developers love changing things with several of their major version changes, but in this case, their WordPress 3 menu management system is built into the admin now. This is a very long overdue feature and it marks the beginning of making menus easier for the end-user and non-techy savy individuals.
Although, it’s best to have a WP 3 theme to take immediate advantage.

See How the Menu Management Area Functions

Simple enough, its mostly a drag and drop concept, almost like the widgets. But the most important aspect with the menus in WordPress is that it lets you create multiple menus and a variety of menu types – even custom menu items. To see more about this, you log into your admin and under the Appearance panel, you will find the Menu Manager there with a select set of mini-panels:

Theme Locations - This is basically predetermined coded theme locations for menus, should your theme have this already done for you

Custom Links - If you want to add your own menu items, this is where you do it. For example, creating external links to other sources.

Posts - This gives you a selection of posts you can add to the menu by checking each box next to the one you want (or more than one).

Pages - This gives you a list of pages you can also add to your menu.
Categories – This gives you a list of Categories you can add to your menu as well.

Somewhat simplified way of adding menu links to your main menu but also to any other menus you might be creating.

A Quick Look of Menu Items

Here is a quick example of a WordPress 3 menu I made on my local computer here. As you can see, there are two menus I made, one called footermenu and the other called mainmenu. The menu items you see in the screenshot below show parent menu items (the ones you see across the main navigation bar of a site) and the ones you see slightly indented are your submenus on the parent ones. The Templates main menu item now has a submenu custom link to Google. Also, if I decide I want to change it to the “About” parent menu item, I simply drag the Google one to it until it indents. You may also noticed there is a second sub-level menu on Google which I dragged it to that location. Now when I view the front-end of the site, I will have a main menu with submenus.

Great! What About Themes that Don’t Have this Ability?

There’s going to be a lot of upset people when they discover that their older themes do not support the menu system in WordPress 3.0. Unfortunately, you will need to make it compatible so you can take full advantage of the new menu function in the admin…otherwise it will be a pretty thing in your admin that you can only look at.

This might be scary but if you want to enable your theme to have this ability, you have to do a bit of coding
Adding Menu Code to Your Theme – Part 1

Open your theme’s function.php file and add this to to the bottom of the theme (to be safe) just before the ?> closing tag:

if (function_exists(‘add_theme_support’)) {
add_theme_support(‘nav-menus’);
}

The above code will also help prevent error messages in your admin to show “This theme does not support menus” in red letters. So basically what this function does, is looks at your theme and checks to see if it has the ability to use the new menu function.
Adding Menu Code to Your Theme – Part 2

Now that you added the above code to your function.php file, you still have one more to go, and for this you will need to open your theme’s file that contains the menu container – the part that already has menu coding in it. This will be a bit more tricky because all themes do different things for adding menus and it will greatly depend on what theme you are using. Some will be easily distinguishable while others could be complicated.

The code below is what you want to add to your theme by replacing the older code:

That is a basic version of code which contains the name of your menu you would make; but it can have more added to this line. For example, in my first version 3.0 theme, it has this, which is from the WordPress default theme called Twentyten:

‘menu-header’, ‘theme_location’
=> ‘primary’ ) ); ?>

You can go to the wordpress.org site for more documentation about the new WordPress 3 menu system. The quick tutorial that I wrote here is to give you a fast solution for any theme you have that originally doesn’t have 3.0 compatibility with menus.

Menu Styling

One last thing that may be required when converting or adding a WordPress 3.0 menu system to your older theme, styling may be an issue because it has a set combination of style names for it’s structure. The best way is to look at how the default WordPress 3.0 theme “twentyten” looks with it’s source code when viewed from the front-end but also check out its style.css file for the menu styling that was created for the menu.

You may need to customize your own styling or at least modify the twentyten theme’s own style for the menu to fit into your own theme concept being used. This won’t be a plug-n-play method of adding 3.0 menu support so keep in mind css may be required.

Later, I will do more indepth menu management tutorials to give you some additional tips and tricks of how to get a variety of menus within your web site or blog. Remember that this now lets you have more than one menu in your pages.

A simple hack from AWS CREATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC.

Content-Rich Web Sites
A content-rich Website is key to online marketing success. We look at your products, services, technical data, the industries you serve and more to determine the best way to use your content to create an effective website.

The Importance of Content
Good content is one of the main factors in a successful website.

Search engine rankings are effected by the amount and quality of a site’s content. To have a good conversion rate, visitors to your site need relevant content to make purchasing decisions. And existing customers can use your site as a resource for information if you have the content.

You also need a CALL TO ACTION! These could be greater details of your products and services.

Examples of Content
Detailed Product Information
Technical Specs
Material Safety Data Sheets
Online Product Catalogs
Downloadable Spec Sheets
Downloadable CAD files
Downloadable Product Information
And More

The format of the content is important as well. We’ll give your site the right blend of text, pdf, video, graphic animation etc. to give a balance to search engine saturation and conversion. For instance, Text in html format is much easier for search engines to index than a PDF file, especially if the pdf file is large.

We’ll put our technical experience together with our knowledge of the industrial marketplace to build a site that brings you business.

NEED HELP? TALK TO US!

AWS CREATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC focuses on helping small and mid-sized businesses leverage the benefits of professional SEO services. In the past ten years, our SEO Professionals have helped hundreds of websites get first page rankings within reasonable budgets. Helping our clients’ websites increase web traffic, online business leads as well as sales and profits.

SEO solutions include a number of best practices and activities to help your website get first page rankings.

These include:
Keyword research
Search engine assessment
Keyword competition analysis
Webpage coding / website optimization assessment
Website optimization recommendations
SEO strategy definition
Meta tags analysis and rewriting
Define link building strategies and implement them
Monitor rankings and provide status reports

NEED HELP? TALK TO US!

Tools I use to track all of my Internet marketing campaigns. Of course it varies slightly from project to project but these are the basics that when used will give you a good idea of how you’re doing and where you need to improve.
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Google Analytics – Traffic, Visitor Trends, Funnel Visualization, Site Overlay, Goal Tracking and More…
Several years ago Google purchased the top premium web stats company, Urchin Software. Shortly after making this purchase they launched Google Analytics. What used to cost individuals and web hosting companies, $1000′s of dollars per year to license soon became available for free.

At first it was only by invitation but by 2006 anyone who wanted to could use this powerful web stats package.
Since that time it has gone through many changes and upgrades. The most recent happened only a few weeks before the time of this post.
Google Analytics, as it’s commonly referred to, is by far the easiest to use and learn from web stats package available. The data you can glean from Google Analytics is instrumental in running a successful online business.
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SEO Elite – Track Rankings and Backlinks
In addition to tracking web stats I like to monitor how my SEO, Article Marketing and Social Media campaigns are doing in helping me to achieve higher rankings and backlinks. SEO Elite is the perfect tool to do this quickly and almost effortlessly. Plus, SEO Elite does much more. Running link building campaigns and competition research are just two of the additional features of SEO Elite.
It comes with a comprehensive set of training videos and is very user friendly. While this is not a free program the time it saves you and the information it provides is well worth the price.
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Google Adwords – Conversion Tracking
If you’re running Google AdWords campaigns for your landing / sales pages and you’re not tracking conversions then you might as well be taking that money and flushing it down the toilet every month. Honestly, this is a major violation of not inspecting what you’re expecting. The information that is available to you as a pay-per-click advertiser is unprecedented compared to any other form of advertising. (e.g. Print Ads, Radio, TV, etc…) Take advantage of it.

I’ll give you an example… One of my clients came to me after having no success at all in running AdWords campaigns to a sales page for some software they had developed. When I asked them what their conversion rate was they had no idea. They weren’t tracking conversions. I immediately setup conversion tracking on their sales pages and began testing different combination’s of keywords, ad headlines / copy and sales page headlines / copy. Since we were tracking the results we could immediately see what was working and what wasn’t. We made the necessary adjustments and now they enjoy an 8-11% conversion rate.

Six months ago they would have told you Pay-Per-Click is a waste of money and doesn’t work. And they’re right if you don’t track and adjust accordingly. Today however, they’re selling software over the Internet and making a decent profit doing so.
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MyBlogLog – Blog Stats
This service is well known to many bloggers for it’s social networking features. I also enjoy the easy to view and constantly updated stats it provides. If you have a blog you should use this service in addition to Google Analytics. Use it not only for the web stats but most importantly for the social networking aspects.
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Feed Burner – RSS Subscribers and Feed Promotion
Another must have for all bloggers or anyone else publishing an RSS feed. Hint: If you have a web site then you probably should be using RSS. Simply put FeedBurner allows you to track the number of people who read your feed, as well as, offers some really cool feed promotion and troubleshooting tools.
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These are my most commonly used web tracking tools.
If you’re not tracking your web marketing efforts I encourage you to start today. It’s not always the easiest thing to do but the difference it makes could very well be the difference between success and failure.

NEED HELP? TALK TO US!

Unless you are ranking high with Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines, you are losing customers more than adding them.

Sites’ positions in Google search results are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. These factors are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.
This can be done by adding extra domains for your key words, building small landing pages that focus on that key word and then link back to your website for more information. Look at your market. Is there a banner or shield, your site could offer it as a free download to those what want to be connected to your business. Example, when I first built a site for the niche audience of pregnancy crisis centers. I created a 100% Prolife Award banner and sent an email to 400 centers to showcase their site as 100%. Instantly, my little site had 400 external links pointed to it. For more information about improving your site’s visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. They outline core concepts for maintaining a Google-friendly website.

Localized Search Place You Higher On the Page

If you’re like most small local business owners that build a website you probably got a big surprise. When you first posted your website you sat back and waited for the customers to start calling in. But, the phone didn’t ring. You expected to gain a higher position on Google, but you found yourself competing with the entire world. With over 255 million websites in 2010* on the internet, yours was more than just lost. It was “invisible”.

Most small businesses are very local in nature.
If you’re a local plumber, contractor, or an attorney, trying to attract customers from across the country or around the world won’t do you any good. Even if you try to market by email, you are competing in an market of 107 Trillion emails sent in 2010*.
And even if you can take customers from anywhere in the world, many businesses would rather deal locally because it’s so much easier and less costly.

But until the last few years, limiting your online marketing to your local community has been very difficult. There was no way to tell the search engines that your focus is a specific geographic area. But that has all changed! Today, Google Places (used to be called Google Local Business Center), Yahoo! Local, and Bing Local all that has changed. Now, you can define a trade area, a radius, or even specific zip codes to market to without trying to compete with anyone else except those that also advertise in those areas.

Localizing does not stop worldwide access to your site. It simply helps focus your online marketing to your immediate, local market.
Here is what localization does for you. When someone in your service area that searches Google (or the other search engines) for your product or service will show up ranked much higher with no additional effort. And, because of the lower number of “competitors” in the search, it is significantly easier to get ranked on page 1 of Google and even at the top of page 1. Your business will be listed in the local search results which show up before the natural search results.

THINK LOCALIZATION

Your local online marketing efforts should focus on four distinct areas:

Step 1: Identify your ideal customer and develop customer profiles for them.
Who are they? What are they looking for? When are they likely to look? How much will they pay?
Develop a customer profile. Such profiles include demographic information like gender, neighborhood, number of children, their job, how much they earn, etc. Profiles should also include what your customer wants when and why they purchase from you. Are they trying to relieve stress, solve a problem? Are they dealing with a fear, or are they trying to reach a particular goal? The more you know about who your ideal customer is and why they buy, the better you’ll be prepared to have a solid online marketing program.
There are a number of good demographic databases available that can help you define and analyze your customer. And, why not use the power of the internet to help? You will be amazed at the amount of free information and data there is available on line.

Step 2: Build a specific niche website that solicits a specific response,
A single focus website works far better when it is focused on your customer’s every needs and desires. Trying to show everything to everyone will work against visitor conversion. Your website should have a very clear goal and fit what your niche is expecting.

Step 3: Gain trust with your visitors
Localized listings will help you build loyal followers by offering content and products or services that serves your ideal customer’s needs and desires. Become the “local expert” in the niche you choose and provide free advice and information. A great blog or Twitter or FaceBook can help you feed that information to your visitors. However, The more you can get potential customers to return to your site for the “free stuff”, the more likely you will be that they will click through to your services and products when they need them. Try to capture as many visitors to your site as possible to build a strong list of candidates that you can provide information and ideas to them with occasional opt-in Email campaigns.

Step 4: Get found by your potential customers.
It’s often referred to as driving traffic. I prefer to call it Local Business Market Dominance. This is the lifeline of any online marketing strategy. Local online marketing has advantages over national or worldwide online marketing. You can utilize the local search engines like Google Places (used to be Google Local Business Center), Yahoo! Local, and Bing Local and place content in strategic places all over the internet. It will help you rank at the top of both Google local listings and their regular (organic) listings. The more people that find you, the more customers you will get. It’s all about numbers. Remember, 80% of all people searching for something on line choose from a business on page 1. 70% of buyers purchase from a business in the top 5 listings.

Localized SEO can help your business connect with more customers.

TALK TO US!

* Internet 2010 in Numbers http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/

FREE HELP DESK SUPPORT – all active clients have access to free help desk support whether it is for hosting issues or web site issues such as broken links or broken apps. Normal response to help desk support tickets is within 2 hours. All help desk communication is limited to ticket responses. To start a new ticket,CLICK HERE!

LIVE TELEPHONE SUPPORT – Initial consultation with a new client: (up to 30 minutes is free.) All technical consultation and support, repair of your site, researching a solution for your site or “holding your hand” and “how to” training: $25 per 15 minutes or $50 per hour. All live support appointments must be requested and confirmed – through the Help Desk CLICK HERE!

SITE MAKEOVER PRICING – AWS CREATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC has packaged new pricing plans for site makeovers using a powerful CMS tool that gives your site an amazing ability to auto configure to IPhones and IPads or Andoids. A very interactive social media embedded setup with a customized theme gives your site a powerful tool for communicating, engaging, and converting your clients. All new sites come with free hosting built in.

COMMERCIAL/MEDICAL/RETAIL

CUSTOM PACKAGES INCLUDING HOSTING:
5 page site makeover $39.95 month
10 page site makeover $59.95 month
25 page site makeover $99.95 month
Extra pages $49.00 per finished page for the first 10 pages.
$39.00 per finished page for extra pages over 10 pages.
Or flat fee complete sites will be built starting at $1000 for small sites up to 25 pages, $2000 for medium sites up to 100 pages, $4000 for major sites over 100 pages.
Custom audio, video production: $350 per day

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NON-PROFIT

CUSTOM PACKAGES INCLUDING HOSTING:
5 page site makeover $29.95 month
10 page site makeover $49.95 month
25 page site makeover $79.95 month
Extra pages $35.00 per finished page for the first 10 pages.
$25.00 per finished page for extra pages over 10 pages.
Or flat fee complete sites will be built starting at $850 for small sites up to 25 pages, $1750 for medium sites up to 100 pages, $3500 for major sites over 100 pages.
Custom audio, video production: $250 per day plus travel

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Get your free quote: http://myfastquote.com

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