I have had the pleasure of traveling to San Francisco to attend the 2010 WordCamp SF. It is a conference dedicated to WordPress, Blizzard’s preferred platform to use for both a Content Management System (CMS) and Blogging.

There are WordCamp’s held all around the world, in 2009 there were 48 WordCamps, but San Francisco is historically the largest gathering as it is the headquarters of Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.

The presentation I was looking forward to the most was the “State of the Word” speech by WordPress co-founder and lead developer Matt Mullenweg.  Matt has a great way of connecting with the audience, sharing a lot of information, and managing to bring in some comedy.

The biggest item on everyone’s mind, including Matt’s, is the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0.  There is a lot for developers to look forward to in 3.0.

Some highlight of 3.0 include:

1. Menus
2. Custom post types
3. WPMU Code Merger
4. Bulk upgrade of plug-ins (yay!)

Matt was smart and wouldn’t promise any official 3.0 release date since it originally was scheduled for April.  I’d be surprised if (more…)

Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc is proud to unveil a newly designed and developed website for Corolla Classic Vacations of the Northern Outer Banks.

Corolla Classic Vacations’ business mantra and goal is to be “Deliberately and Selectively Smaller,” only managing Northern Outer Banks vacation homes that meet their high standard of luxury and quality.

The company selected Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc. to redesign their website based on Blizzard Internet’s longstanding reputation of successfully designing and marketing websites that rank well in search engines, attract quality traffic in competitive markets, and drive more traffic through the booking process.

The new website is designed using WordPress; a design platform that is naturally search engine friendly, easy to update, and compliments Corolla Classic Vacations’ brand. Corolla Classic Vacations’ vision for the new website design is to reflect that of their business: for guests to experience a personal level of service, laid back simplicity, and to enjoy the uniqueness and quality that each of their Northern Outer Banks vacation homes offer. (more…)

The worst way to get inspiration for your own web design is your competitors!

Here are some great websites to turn to for inspiration:

24 Beautiful Hotel Website Designs to Get Inspired

Checking in Hotel Web Design: 50 Cosy Hotel Websites and Trends

90+ Remarkable Examples Of Bold Colors In Web Design

50 Excellent Corporate Website Designs

35 Beautiful Water-themed Web Designs for Inspiration

30 Beautifully Textured Web Designs

Web Design Trends: Testimonials Design

20 Super Creative Website Menus

Web Design – Pricing Tables (more…)

Worried that your new website is missing a few important details? Learn about 5 “invisible” best practices that will help your new website.

Before you roll out your new website design, talk to your website designer about each of these.  Make sure you have implemented the following 5 best practices:

404 Page Setup – A 404 error page is a “whoops” page that your website visitors see when they go to a malformed or non-existent web-page.  Make sure you have 404 page that fits the character of your website and shepherds all those lost visitors back into your website.  With a new website, you are bound to get a few “whoops” visitors.

• Tip: consider monitoring this page to see if there are any major sources of traffic that need accounted for.
• Benefit: it is easier to keep a visitor than get a new one!
• Learn More about 404 pages

301 Redirects - When you build your new website, your page names change (ie from www.yourdomain.com/oldpage.htm to www.yourdomain.com/newpage.php).

This confuses the heck out of search engines and can cause lower rankings and lost visitors.  Make sure you set up a 301 redirect for each old page of your website to a new page. (more…)

At Blizzard Internet, we really love using WordPress to build hospitality websites. It is arguably the most popular content management system (CMS) in the wide world and it has several advantages.

There is a large world of developers who are creating upgrades, plug-ins and furthering the usability platform. Our favorite WordPress features are that it is easy for our clients to update and it is search engine friendly.

Trent Blizzard and Lindy Norris, our Director of Web Development, have created a video to walk though the dashboard and the backend of a WordPress system to help you get the most out of your website.

Get the video: An Introduction to Managing the Content on Your Website with WordPress

If you are looking for a new website platform, watch our webinar on-demand: 10 Reasons to Use WordPress to Manage Your Website

WordPress TShirt Photo by  Titanas

Now that you know the top 10 Site Map Do’s and Don’ts and the basics about site maps, we will answer a few questions that we often get about creation and size.

How many links SHOULD I have on my site map?
In our research, we have found that Google allows up to 50,000 URL’s on one site map!  But remember, the Google site map is not intended for human visitors but for the Googlebot that indexes your XML site map to see all of your pages.
For an HTML site map, usually fewer than 100 links is acceptable.  Any more than that Google considers to be a “link farm” and your site could be penalized.

How do you create a Site Map for a large site? (more…)

A Content Management System (CMS) is the platform on which a modern hotel’s website is typically built.  Just a few years ago, programs like Dreamweaver, Contribute, FrontPage and Adobe GoLive were more commonly used tools to update a website.  Now, a whole new generation of content management systems allows multiple individuals to share in the care and feeding of a website: designers, programmers, administrators, clients, SEO specialists and bloggers.

Choosing a new CMS is a big decision – a CMS that is a good fit can put you in hotel heaven or a bad fit into hotel hell.  Here are Blizzard Internet’s top 9 tips to consider when choosing a new Content Management system for a hotel or resort.

1. Easy management of special features ~ prioritized by use. A CMS system needs to accommodate the most frequently made changes with grace.   Beyond general content updates, tourism websites may need:
   1. An event calendar that is easy to manage
   2. Image management and photo upload tool
   3. A packages or special management tool
   4. A banner ad or graphic rotator to feature specials or partners
   5. A full-featured blog is always a nice addition to any website (more…)