A couple weeks ago on PrairieCast, Geoff and I got the chance to visit with Andy Stoll before he departed on The World Tri with Des Moines’ adventurer and lawyer Charlie Wittmack.
Social Entrepreneurship With Guest Andy Stoll
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Here is how Josh Braaten and I used Google Wave to collaborate on a blog post (WordPress vs Squarespace).
We got word today that we’ve been accepted into Microsoft BizSpark.
You must have wished us good luck 
So what? why? how? huh? Microsoft?
What is BizSpark?
BizSpark is Microsoft’s way of helping startups. Essentially, they provide “Software, Support, and Visibility” to startups using Microsoft technologies to build their products. Check it out.
Microsoft? Really?
Yep – among other things I’m an ASP.Net web developer and I don’t care if you make fun of me for not using the “cool” web frameworks like Rails or Django. ASP.Net, MVC, C#, and Visual Studio are awesome tools for building web applications.
We’re going to be doing some cool things with HTML 5, ASP.Net MVC, jQuery, and AJAX while testing some new technologies like MongoDB.
Wait – I thought you loved WordPress
Yes – we very much do love WordPress. And yes, we’ll still be developing websites for clients with WordPress since there really is no better way. We will continue building awesome things with it and contributing to the community. That won’t change at all
Questions? Let us know in the comments!
It’s been a couple years since we refreshed the dmTweetup.org site. We built it in the same style as the DsmStartupDrinks.com and CentralIowaBloggers.com WordPress sites.
![[Click To Enlarge] WordPress Design Twitter](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1206/4727707570_30e853fdcc.jpg "WordPress Design Twitter")
Questions? Let us know in the comments!
Want one? Get in touch!
This is our latest WordPress development for CollectorMentor.com. We went for a magazine style layout and heavily customized the Hello theme from Templatic. We used our standard plugin library for SEO, Analytics, and more. Also – due to it’s heavy use of images and potential traffic load we went with the WP-Super Cache plugin (see last screenshot below) which dramatically increased our page load time.
![[Click To Enlarge] WordPress Design](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1061/4726971731_b5afc46ecd.jpg "WordPress Design")
![[Click To Enlarge] WordPress Design](http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1008/4726971513_2d171d3415.jpg "WordPress Design")
Do you have any questions about this site? Let us know in the comments!
Want one for yourself? Get in touch!
Our colleague from up north Josh Braaten asked me to collaborate on a blog post for a Content Management System showdown: WordPress vs. Squarespace.
Topics covered include…
- Cost
- Search Engine Friendliness (SEO)
- Security
- Features
- Customization
- Ease Of Use
- Hosting
- Support and Maintenance
Conclusion?
Ultimately, both Squarespace and WordPress are great web publishing tools and can most likely meet the needs of your blog or website. Andy and I hope this post has given you the perspective you need to make your choice based on your own personal goals, skills and resources.
Read our comparison. What do you think?
For last week’s Prairiecast (our podcast about midwest entrepreneurs) we got the opportunity to interview serial entrepreneur Brian Kaldenberg about several profitable niche businesses that he’s started over the years. We cover his NCAA Football video game rosters business, his proofreading service business, and his consulting company – among other things.
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This is not…
Dropping 100+ keywords into the bottom of your website (or even in your META keywords) does not work for SEO. A better solution?
- Create content that targets the keywords for which you want to be found
- Get people to link to you (likely from good content :0)
Also – best practice…. Start by targeting a few keywords you really really want to own. Then branch out to the long tail.
Also also – this website will never rank for the keywords “Businesses, Commercial, Residential, Restoration, Floor Care, Sanding, Remodelers, Finished, etc”. So why include them? I’ll answer that for you – don’t include them. Once again – focus on a few geographic based terms then branch out to the long tail but don’t try for generic terms like “Sanding”.
A couple weeks ago Kenny Younger and I got the chance to preach all things WordPress at Iowa Code Camp.
Here is the live stream I recorded along with the slides from the presentation!
Video
Slides
On the 12th prairiecast (our podcast about entrepreneurs in Iowa) Geoff Wood and I got the opportunity to talk to Brad Dwyer who founded social gaming startup Hatchlings while still a student at Iowa State University (go clones!).
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