We will be upgrading all WordPress sites hosted by Kephart + Associates to today’s 3.0.3 release this afternoon. Downtime for each site will be less than 5 minutes.

…WordPress won the Open Source Content Management System Hall of Fame award this week, beating out Drupal and Joomla. Having used all three successfully (I progressed from Joomla to Drupal to WordPress), it comes as no surprise to me. WordPress continues to dominate the open source CMS field, even though many still consider it to be primarily a blog-only platform. Those of us who use it regularly know better, though its creator Matt Mullenweg sorta wants us to keep it quiet.

Congratulations to Matt and the WordPress team, and thanks for continuing to build the best web platform available at any price.

Our new web magazine covering the performing and visual arts in the Blue Water Area of Michigan and Ontario launched today. Pen and Stage will cover upcoming performances and events of local theater, music, dance and visual arts organizations, and will also examine and discuss the challenges of running arts organizations in the current economic climate in the U.S. and Canada.

I updated our “quick guide” to creating a WordPress post today. It’s intended for anyone who’s new to using WordPress 3.0, and anyone who only occasionally posts content to a WordPress-based site and would like a memory jogger to keep near the computer for those times. Eight steps and you have a new post!

Feel free to download a PDF copy today and redistribute as you like.

I had the pepper steak combo (with eggroll and wonton soup) at my local Chinese restaurant a few days ago. After lunch, my fortune was “Slow but steady wins the race.” I smiled when I read that because I’d just been thinking about the many “get rich quick” methods of internet marketing that are being promoted today. Do a search on Google for “SEO” and you’ll find some of them. They may promise to “guarantee” top listings on Google or Yahoo, or suggest they have a special relationship with the search engines that can rocket your website to that coveted number one position.

Just as in the “offline” world, there’s no shortcut to long-term success, and search engine optimization isn’t any different. There’s no easy way to trick Google and Yahoo into listing your site higher. Take it from the folks at Google themselves. So how do you get your website noticed by prospective customers?

The one thing all search engines seem to love is fresh, quality content. Oddly enough, that’s exactly what your website’s visitors are looking for. They want to see that your business or organization is alive and well, and they want to know enough about you to make a decision whether to buy from you, or join your cause, or take a job at your company.

So here are four basic tips on how to improve your online presence, and in turn improve your rankings in the search engines:

• When writing content for your business or organization website, tell the whole story. Don’t skimp on the details. Tell your visitors what you would want to know about your company if you knew nothing about it. Give them the information to make a decision right then.
• Keep the website updated. Think about the many websites we visit in a week that haven’t been updated in months or even years. How confident are you about the current status of that company? They might be doing so well that they’re too busy to update their website, but aren’t we more likely to assume they’ve gone out of business?
• Consider starting a blog. Search engines love blogs because there are usually many legitimate links coming in and out of the website, as you link to other interesting content and the media and other websites link to your compelling content.
• Use social media and networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to connect with potential visitors to your site. The more you get the web address out there, the more likely people with find you and pay your site a visit.

There have always been temporary ways to game a system, including search engine rankings. Usually those loopholes are closed fairly quickly, as Google and Yahoo change their methods to keep their rankings accurate. The methods I describe above, however, while they won’t bring overnight success, will in the long run build viewership to your website and improve your appearance in the search engines.

Slow but steady wins the race. Don’t take shortcuts, invest the time and money needed to create a great online presence, and the rest will follow.