Honey Bee Buzz Marketing Blog

I’m the Imelda Marcos of WordPress Plugins

I just realized that I collect WordPress plugins the way some women collect shoes or purses.

Does that mean I’m a Geek? Dang, I think it’s official. I’ve been skirting this issue for a long time. I like shoes and purses, too! Well, not so much purses, but now that I have a fabulous Omnia cell phone, that I loooove, but which is too More »

Wait on Your WordPress Upgrade

We love WordPress.  Totally.  And really believe in the structure and benefits of Open Source programming.  But like any complex undertaking, WordPress upgrades usually need some tweaking, even after hundreds (thousands?) of beta testers have run through a version.  Beta Testers are usually advanced users who really know what they’re doing and have the time, ability, and desire to play around with software, looking for problems and suggesting ways to fix them.  The upside is that they usually know more about how to do this than the regular user.  The downside is that the regular user has neither the time nor patience nor ability nor resources to recover from glitches that power users automatically avoid by using the very best procedures (which regular users generally don’t even know exist), and power users are able to quickly diagnose and recover from pitfalls, should they not have seen them coming.

And come they do.

Glitches occur with almost every WordPress upgrade.  They’re par for the course.  And for the average user, they’re easy to avoid.

Just don’t do any 2.x upgrades.  Wait until they come out with More »

The Market Theme – Tour

Here’s a paid alternative to WordPress eCommerce.  Sounds like

some of the speed bumps people hit with WPeC are addressed, including good support.  We have not checked it ourselves. Looks

like more of an out-of-the-box ecommerce solution.  Themes (the look and feel of a WordPress blog site) are included/built in, in addition to the shopping cart system.

Any Market Theme users out there?  What do you think of it?

The Market Theme – Tour.

eShop for WordPress

Create an ecommerce site quickly and relatively easily on WordPress with the eShop plugin by Rich Pedley at Quirm.net.  This is a viable competitor to Instinct’s WP eCommerce, but it does not have a donation setting/capability.  This is too bad, because it’s an otherwise great plugin, and a great way to get one’s online store up and running.  The benefit to having a donation setting is that people can pay for your services online, as you can with this blog.  Anybody who’s already doing business online or likes eBay probably already has a PayPal account, and making it super easy for them to pay you in a secure, reliable, and familiar environment.  For instance, one of our HoneyBeeBuzz Marketing clients is using our online shop to buy a banner ad we are designing for them.

Rich at eShop provides excellent support, which you can find in his WordPress plugins support forum.  This is in great contrast to the WPeC support forum which is full of frustrated people whose questions can languish unanswered for months.  Also in contrast, Rich seems to have a very positive, mature and constructive attitude.  WPeC is steadily getting better and better, however, both in terms of response time and style and the features are hard to beat.

eShop has the support of a number of key and highly respected WordPress players, including Mike Cherim.

Here are some sample eShops:

http://greenmethods.com/site/shop/

http://thecabinetofcuriosities.co.uk/shop/

Here are some sample WPeC shops:

HoneyBeeBuzz Marketing Services and Products

GreenBuyDesign Store

Do you have an online store already?  What shopping cart system are you using?  What types of products or services do you  sell?

Buzzinar Tomorrow – Sign Up!

Hello All,

We’re holding another of our famous free HoneyBeeBuzz teleseminars tomorrow at 11:30 am Eastern Time.  Last month’s Buzzinar included companies ranging from holistic service providers to music non-profits to eco-consultants.  The Buzzinar will fly by in the 30 minutes we have, but it gives everyone on the call an opportunity to get free targeted internet marketing questions answered.  We look at each person’s site and explain what they need to do or change in order to meet their goals.  It’s fun, fast, and will leave you with a marketing action plan.

We cover SEO, SEM, web design, copy, blogs, how to build more traffic, increase sales, and more.

Use our contact form today to send us your phone number, website address, and top 2 or 3 questions, and you will be included in tomorrow’s call.

Can’t make it tomorrow but would like to be notified for the next call?  Please sign up for our newsletter – it’s how we keep in touch with everyone – and we’ll pop off an invitation to you when the next call rolls around.

Need a one-on-one marketing consultation?  Get a BuzzBlast.

HoneyBeeBuzz