Top Didj & Art Gallery has a story to tell, and like many tourism operators some of its audience speaks a language other than English.

Petrena & Alex Ariston included clickable links to transalations in German, Italian and French. They have also added a Testimonial video from a French-speaking visitor.

Working with Webnoise and OM4, the Aristons now have a website that shares their story with a much wider audience.

Topdidj Cultural Translation

Over night WordPress 3.1.4 was released.

WordPress 3.1.4 is a maintenance and security update, which fixes an issue that could allow a malicious Editor-level user to gain further access to the website.

It also incorporates several other security fixes and hardening measures.

OM4 clients will be happy to know that as part of their hosting, administration and support service all of their websites have already been updated to WordPress 3.1.4. See the OM4 Change History page for more details.

WordPress 3.1.4 Security Release

We have recently updated the OM4 platform to include the latest WordPress (3.1) features, bug fixes and improvements.

There are quite a few improvements, including:

• Internal Linking, which makes it much easier to create a link to your existing posts and pages. See screenshot below.
• Admin Bar, which means you’re only ever one click away from the most common Dashboard features.
• Simplified Writing Interface, with the post and page editor now display fewer options (metaboxes) by default. Visit Screen Options in the top right to get old panels back.
• Sortable Dashboard List Screens, making it easier to find information in your Dashboard.
• Improved Importer/Exporter, which allows you to export just post or pages (instead of everything), as well as only exporting certain date ranges, categories, authors, statuses, and more.
• Internet Explorer 9 Compatibility – the Visual Editor should now work as expected with IE9.
• and many more

The full list of over 800 new features, bug fixes and improvements can be found here.

We hope these improvements make administering and using your OM4 website a much more enjoyable task.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or post your question on our support desk.

WordPress 3.1: Internal Linking, Admin Bar, IE9 and More

Our open source WordPress plugins have been updated to ensure they work with WordPress 3.1. The plugins are:

• AWeber Integration version 2.1
• Typekit Fonts for WordPress version 1.1
• WeatherZone Embed version 1.1

If you’re already using these plugins, be sure to update to the latest versions.

These plugins have had over 32,000 downloads (combined), and we’re looking at releasing a few new plugins in the near future.

OM4 WordPress Plugins and WordPress 3.1

I noticed an article in this morning’s Australian Financial Review about Dropbox being ‘the new Facebook’.

Looks like paying to have a local file server will come to be seen as one of those quirks of history.

Dropbox.com now mainstream

Since WordPress 2.9 there has been a super easy way to embed a YouTube video in your WordPress site – simply paste the YouTube URL directly into your web page.

The same approach works for a wide variety of other shareable content:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• DailyMotion
• blip.tv
• Flickr (both videos and images)
• Viddler
• Hulu
• Qik
• Revision3
• Scribd
• Photobucket
• PollDaddy
• Google Video
• WordPress.tv (only VideoPress-type videos for the time being)
• SmugMug
• FunnyOrDie.com

Reference: WordPress Codex

How to Embed a YouTube Video in your WordPress page

Aaron Wall is an expert on search. And Google.

If you want to understand how Google search works, go through this diagram in detail.
This is the introductory post on Aaron’s SEOBook.com blog: How Does Google Work

And the diagram (follow link to diagram at bottom of diagram if you want to link to it yourself).

Infographic by PPC Blog

How Google Search works

This morning I was sitting with a client chatting about their business when she uttered a sentence that really struck me.

She quite casually explained,

“You know I really pay attention to websites now. I’ve decided that you really can tell what people are about.

We’re planning a house, and I’ve noticed that if I get a uneasy vibe from a website that is how the meeting with the prospective builder will go as well.”

Now it could be that this is just an isolated comment but I really don’t think so. I think there are an enormous number of people out there who are hitting a new maturity as online consumers.

I am reminded of Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of The Tipping Point. He explores “the magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold.”

I think we are hitting that threshold in online marketing. Our customers are getting much more confident in framing their own expectations of us and how our website should be.

They want to know who we are. They want to deal with real people rather than bland company shop fronts. They are wanting us to make it easy for them to trust us with their business.

There is a lot that can be a achieved with a well designed website that presents your branding and a sound search engine marketing strategy to get you in front of web traffic.

Once there that customer is going to want to see who you are and how much you care about your customers. This is where a well written business blog is a powerful asset to an online business.

If you are passionate and committed to what you do this will show and your online customers will feel more confident to give you their business.

For those of you already blogging hang in there. If you haven’t started I really think you should consider it. Ask yourself, if someone came to my website what would they learn about me?

Is Your Website Really Telling Your Story?

Yesterday afternoon a hail storm hit Perth. From a humid day, it went all Scott-of-the-Antarctic in a real hurry. This video shows the view from our balcony and front door.

Under the weather

We have recently upgraded the OM4 platform to include the latest WordPress (2.9 and 2.9.1) features.

There are quite a few improvements, including:

• Undo/trash feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash).
• Built-in image editor, which allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images.
• Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv.
• Improved visual editor
• Create custom galleries with the new include and exclude attributes that allow you to pull attachments from any post, not just the current one.
• and many more

The full list of over 500 new features, changes upgrades and improvements can be found here.

We hope these performance improvements make administering your website a much more enjoyable task.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask below or post your question on our forums.

WordPress 2.9 Upgrade: Image Editing, Undo/Trash, Improved Video Embeds