WebProNews is reporting that some A$$hat is trying to trademark “SEO”, ostensibly for the purpose of standardizing the “process”. Yeah, right. And if it’s granted, how much you wanna bet he takes down all his competition’s domain names???

There is a process to object to his application, and if there is enough of a flood of objections, to the point where he misses answering one, then his trademark will be denied. The catch is it costs $300 to file an objection, but I would bet all SEO folks who make a living from this will be coming out of the woodwork to defend their right to use the term. Watch the video for the details.

I don’t know how he can say the term was first used in 2007. It’s been in use for YEARS by others. This is not what trademarks are for. They’re so you can brand an unusual term and have it be yours, they’re not to give someone the exclusive right to use a COMMON term.

Technorati Tags: SEO, SEO Trademark

Fancy of Cactus Creek already had a design in mind when she came to me. She just needed her web design idea coded into a Custom WordPress Theme. And what a fabulous design it is! This site is as much fun as a Rodeo, done in Western Style with a capital W. Cactus Creek features home decor for the Western or Rustic style home, and the design suits its subject to a T.

Because this is a news site, we went with a straight blog presentation for the front page of the site, but there is heavy use of Pages and SubPages, which are accessible from the top horizontal links. SubPage navigation is coded to only show up on Pages, so that more photos can be shown on the blog and on the front page of the site in the lefthand column. The theme is fully widgetized so that Fancy can add/change/rearrange to her heart’s content.

As you can see, this site is already chock full of fun photos and ideas for decorating. Fancy is making full use of the ImageManager Plugin for sure!

Do you have an idea for a great WordPress website but don’t know how to do the code bits? Kickass can help! Just tell me what you need.

Technorati Tags: Custom WordPress Theme, WordPress Web Design, Western Web Design

Though I know the theory is that everyone loves new shiny things, this insane upgrade schedule that WordPress has set is nuts. Plugins are breaking all over the place (despite the assurances on the 2.5 announcement post that that wouldn’t happen) and people need to know their site is going to WORK. Especially now that WordPress has hit the mainstream and is used for BUSINESS sites.

Some of the plugins my clients depend on haven’t yet caught up to two versions ago. And it isn’t the plugin people’s fault. There have been twelve versions of WordPress released in the last twelve months. We all have other stuff we DO. I’m sure, if the plugin people do this stuff in their spare time, that they are not happy with this situation any more than my clients are. And clients who are luddites and have trouble uploading a file via ftp cannot do these upgrades, and resent that it’s upgrade time again (”Didn’t we just DO this???” they say to me, complaining about that notice in their admin area.) And I’d rather be designing. I hate doing upgrades. Everyone does.

The 2.5 release looks like it’s addressed issues we’ve been yelling about for a long time, and I’m not complaining about what’s been done, it actually looks pretty cool. I hope that once the shakeout happens (WP never seems to be released in TRUE final form, always in what they refuse to call beta even if it is, another gripe I have) that they sit back and work on other stuff for awhile. Like BBPress or something. Or maybe WikiPress. Or AdPress. Or something. Anything other than yet another new version of WordPress which leads to another round of broken plugins and stripped down functionality just to get a site working after the supposedly necessary upgrade.

And someday I might actually get around to upgrading my own installations . . . after I finish a couple hundred client upgrades. Hopefully I’ll be done with this round before the next damn release.