I‘m very excited to announce the availability of the SmallBiz 3.0 WordPress Theme!
Thomas and I have been following each of the WordPress 3.0 beta drops, and attended WordCamp in San Francisco this April to make sure the SmallBiz theme shines on WordPress 3.0.

Along the way we discovered some of the cool new features in WordPress 3.0 and put our roadmap together for future releases of the SmallBiz WordPress Theme.

In this release, we’ve updated the theme to take advantage of many of the new capabilities in WordPress 3.0. We’ve also given the SmallBiz Options Panel a complete makeover, and made many other nice tweaks and changes to the style sheets.

New features in SmallBiz 3.0

Native WordPress Custom Menus

In this release, we’ve adopted the new WordPress Menus that are now part of the core in WordPress 3.0. Previously, sub-menus were implemented on a theme by theme basis. We put a lot of work and testing into that feature, and it’s nice to have that as part of the WordPress core now.

SmallBiz 3.0 supports WordPress 3.0 custom menus

Visual Font Color Choosers

Now we’ve added a color picker control for all of the color choices in the SmallBiz Options Panel. You can just point to the color you want and BAM! Now you’ve changed the color without having to know the color code.

Font color chooser

Redesigned Options Panel

We’ve completely revamped the SmallBiz Options panel; it’s organized into sections now, to make it easier to scan and it looks prettier too.

Redesigned WordPress Options Panel

Change background color and image

In SmallBiz 3.0, we fully support the WordPress 3.0 capabilities to change your background color, or background image.

Select Home Page

We’ve also included the ability to change the home page from the default that we provide, right in the options panel. This new drop-down makes it easy to change which page is displayed as the home page when someone visits your website.

WordPress Website Home Page Selector

Multisite Support

We’ve also made sure that the SmallBiz Theme works with the new Multisite support built into WordPress 3.0. In this latest version of WordPress, the ability to create a blog network has been rolled in. This capability was previously only available as part of WordPress Mu, and now it’s part of every WordPress install.

SmallBiz 3.0 supports WordPress 3.0 Multisite

SmallBiz 3.0 requires WordPress 3.0 – because it depends on many of the new features in that release it will not work on WordPress 2.9.2 or below.

Note: SmallBiz Themes v1.6x still work with WordPress 3.0; you don’t have to upgrade.

I’m super excited about WordPress 3.0, and SmallBiz 3.0. And they work together like a charm! Have you tried WordPress 3.0 yet? Let me know what you think!

On Tuesday night I was checking my email and got this really nice note from one of my clients. She took the time to make a great video testimonial for me and my SmallBiz WordPress Theme.

Thomas and I work really hard on this theme, and are constantly updating it based on things we learn working with clients, and based on customer feedback.

It’s awesome to get nice feedback like this! I can’t tell you how nice it feels to be surrounded by such thoughtful people.

Thank you Dannah!

Dannah and her husband run a Portland SEO firm specializing in video for small business. You can also check out her great YouTube Channel.

One of the things we get asked a lot is: “How can I show a different sidebar for each page on my website?”

For example, maybe you want to display an email newsletter opt-in form on your home page side bar, but a YouTube Video instead on the photos page sidebar?

The SmallBiz WordPress Theme allows you to specify different widget sidebars depending on the page that is being displayed. This is a pretty powerful way to customize your website without programming.

This video shows you how it’s done:

Let me what you think in the comments below!
-Don

Well it’s out. WordPress 3.0 is here and packed with a ton of exciting new features.

And I’m happy to say that our SmallBiz WordPress Theme works perfectly on it.

We’ve been testing all through the betas and the release candidates. We were even at WordCamp last month in San Francisco planning out which of the cool new features we can take advantage of in our SmallBiz theme.

New Feature Highlights

Some of my favorite WordPress 3.0 features are:

1. Run multiple blogs from one WordPress install. WordPress Mu is part of the core WordPress code now.
2. Customizable menus are now part of the core, instead of being dependent on themes
3. New default theme – Twenty Ten
4. Choose your username and password during the install, instead of the default admin userid. This makes for a more secure default installation since hackers won’t have a default admin userid to depend on
5. Custom background color is choose-able with a visual color picker
6. Custom post types allow you to make WordPress even more like a content management system. You can define different types of posts (video, audio, product, etc.) and have your theme display each differently

A Bumpy Ride

This is a huge release! In fact, there is so much in here that we ran into a lot of problems during testing. Thomas, (my lead developer) went through a lot of antacids on this one! In fact, we didn’t expect them to ship yet, because of the amount of changes in each RC.

You see, in addition to testing for compatibility, Thomas has been working hard to build in some killer new features based on WordPress 3.0. Stay tuned – we’ll be ready to ship within the next few days!

Watch the Video

Take a look at this tour of WordPress 3.0. I think you’ll like it!

What do you think – are you going to upgrade?

Local SEO features are built into the SmallBiz WordPress Theme to provide a solid foundation for great local search results.

Watch the video for a short tour:

I’ve worked with hundreds of small businesses to help them build a successful web presence, and designed this theme based on my experience working with them. We’re continuing to add more and more out-of-the-box SEO features in each new version.

SEO Features

Here are a few of the SEO features built-in to the latest version of the SmallBiz theme:

• Business Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) on each page
• Customize HTML Title tag, Meta Description and Meta Keywords for each page or post
• hCard Microformats built-in.
• Areas served for nearby cities and neighborhoods (in footer)
• ALT image text
• Map and directions page, with driving directions

With the addition of the SEO Details panel in SmallBiz v1.6, now you can SEO your WordPress website without installing any additional plugins!

SEO Details and Screen Shots

This screenshot of the home page outlines some of the visible features, including the business name, address and phone number in the header, ALT text for images, H2 header tags for titles, and areas served text in the footer.

The SEO Details panel is automatically added to the editing screen for every WordPress Post and Page. You can override your HTML Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords on a page-by-page basis, or take the defaults!

Your Business Address, Name and Phone Number (NAP) is the primary “key” that Google uses to identify that your website is related to your business listing. They are automatically displayed on every page, and easily updated in the SmallBiz Options panel.

Your business information is also encoded as hCard microformat and embedded in your web pages. Google and Yahoo are already crawling and looking for this information and it’s a best practice now to have it embedded on your pages.

We’re excited about this release, and hope you will give it a try!

Need a website? The Expand2Web SmallBiz Theme is a complete small business website theme for WordPress. Click here to watch the video!
 
 

Here is something I get asked a lot – how can I add an image to my WordPress sidebar?

This video shows you how:

In the video, I’ll show you how to upload the widget using the WordPress Media Library, grab the URL for the uploaded image, and then use a WordPress Text Widget to display your image in the sidebar.

In this case I’m using the Expand2Web SmallBiz WordPress theme, but this tip will work with any WordPress theme that is widget enabled.

Here is the code snippet I used in the video for the sidebar widget:

<a href="#"><img src=" " /></a>

Just put the URL of your image in between the quotes of the image source tag.

Note: You should resize the image to the width of your sidebar before uploading. In this case the image is 200px wide. The width of the sidebar will depend on your WordPress theme.

WordPress 2.9 was released this week and comes with a bunch of cool new features.

Here are a few highlights:

My Favorite New Features in WordPress 2.9

• Built-in image editor: crop, update, flip and scale right from within WordPress
• Batch plugin updates: update your plugins all at once instead of one at a time. I use too many plugins so this will be a godsend for me!
• Easy video embeds: Just paste your YouTube URL into your post or page and it will automatically embed it!
• Custom image galleries across posts.
• rel=canonical support (good for SEO)

This great post at Technosailor has a comprehensive review of the new features in WordPress 2.9.

A Break… And A Fix!

We test every new WordPress release with our theme. This time we found that WordPress 2.9 breaks the nav menu on the SmallBiz theme.

So we quickly fixed that, and added in a few more cool features for good measure!

New Features in SmallBiz Theme v1.6

Here’s what’s new in the SmallBiz WordPress Website theme v1.6:

• Update for WordPress 2.9 compatibility: fix for the nav menu issue, updates to the TinyMCE editor defaults since this was also updated in WordPress 2.9
• More SEO Features: In addition to the local SEO goodness in the SmallBiz theme like business address on every page, areas served, and automatic hCard embedding, I’ve added the ability to override the HTML Title tag, Meta Description tag, and Meta Keywords tag for any page or post. You’ll see this in the Options panel for the home page, and in the new SEO Details box below the editor box on your pages and posts. This gives you total control over every page on your site without the All-in-One SEO Plugin!
• Fix for broken preview in Themes panel: There was a problem previewing the SmallBiz theme in the Appearances section, and that is now fixed.

Screen shot of new SEO Details Box

If you purchased my SmallBiz theme you’ve already got an email from me with the new version attached!

Fellow Local Search Expert Dev Basu presented at Search Engine Strategies Chicago yesterday. Dev is a local search expert based in Toronto Canada, and a contributor to the Local Search Ranking Factors report.

His presentation, entitled “Local Search On a Dime” provided a nice step-by-step guide for small business owners showing them how to build a presence for their business in the search engines.

And I’m very excited that in Step 1: Optimize Your Website, he gives a shout out to our SmallBiz WordPress Theme!

Local Search On a Dime

Here is his presentation:

In the presentation:

Learn how to Optimize for Local Search rankings for low or no cost. Steps discussed include:

• Website Localization + Optimization
• Business Listing Claiming Procedures
• Citations and Local Link Building
• Getting Customer Reviews
• Offering Local Business Coupons

This presentation was delivered by Dev Basu at the Search Engine Strategies Chicago conference in December 2009.

He also includes some great tips for small business owners to claim their local listings with GetListed.org and Universal Business Listings.

Thanks Dev!

Need a website? The Expand2Web SmallBiz Theme is a complete small business website theme for WordPress. Click here to watch the video!
 
 

Watch this video to see how to add cool looking Twitter, YouTube and Facebook icons that link to your social media profiles to your WordPress Website sidebar:

In this video I’m using version 1.5 of the Expand2Web SmallBiz WordPress Theme, which comes with a default sidebar with social media icons for Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. I show you how to replace this default sidebar with one that links to your own social media profiles.

Note: The steps that show adding widgets to your sidebar in this video will work with any Widget-enabled WordPress Theme.

Here is the code

Just copy this code and paste it into a WordPress Text Widget. Then replace the # in the hrefs with links to your social media profiles like I show in the video:

<br>
<p align="center"><a href="#" target="_blank"><img src="./wp-content/themes/smallbiz/images/twitter_link.gif" class="frame" alt="Expand2Web Twitter Feed"/></a></p>

<p align="center"><a href="#" target="_blank"><img src="./wp-content/themes/smallbiz/images/youtube_link.gif" class="frame" alt="Expand2Web YouTube Link"/></a></p>

<p align="center"><a href="#" target="_blank"><img src="./wp-content/themes/smallbiz/images/facebook_link.gif" class="frame" alt="Expand2Web Facebook Link"/></a></p>

<p align="center">I hope you'll join the conversation with us!</p>

A note on the images

Depending on where you have your WordPress installed, the image icons might break when you navigate to sub directories. This is because I can’t predict whether your WordPress install is in the root of your domain or in a sub directory.

But it’s an easy fix though. All you have to do is replace the relative image path:

img src="./wp-content/themes/smallbiz/images/twitter_link.gif

with an absolute one like this:

img src="http://www.localsearchtips.com/smallbizdemo/wp-content/themes/smallbiz/images/twitter_link.gif

Notice how I replaced the . at the beginning of the image path with the complete URL of where your WordPress is installed.

Here are the icons

If you are not using my SmallBiz WordPress Theme then you will need to upload the images to WordPress yourself. I’ve included them below in case you need them. Just right click and Save them to your desktop, then upload to your WordPress media area.

Note: The SmallBiz Theme allows you to set different sidebars per page. This video tutorial shows you how to do that.

Let me know what you think in the comments below – I’d love to hear from you!

We just completed a few changes to the Expand2Web SmallBiz WordPress Theme that I think you will really like.

First, I thought it would be cool to be able to preview new header graphics that you upload in the SmallBiz Options panel.

Visual Header Image Chooser

So we added a preview feature where you can see a preview of all the headers you’ve uploaded and choose the one you want. I’ve also included a few new header images that you can use if you would like.

Rich Text Editing on Home Page

Second, we’ve added a rich text editor for the home page. Previously, you could edit the content on the default home page in the SmallBiz Options panel, but you had to do a little basic HTML formatting. Now you can just edit it like you were using Microsoft Word. You can still edit it in HTML if you want, of course.

Feature Box Toggle

Third, a lot of SmallBiz customers wanted control over the “Feature Box” at the bottom of the page. Now you can turn it on or off simply by checking a box in the SmallBiz Options panel.

Upgrading from previous versions

If you already have a version of the Expand2Web SmallBiz Theme installed, you can update to the new version by copying the theme files into your wp-content/themes/smallbiz/ directory over top of the existing files using your FTP program.

I hope you like these new features – we had fun making them!

Find out how to build WordPress Websites with the SmallBiz WordPress theme!