Making a Machine – Ways to Use Free Software to Build Your Website

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Commentary by Israel Rothman

RISMEDIA, May 12, 2008-You have heard me say many times that the best things on the Web are either free, or so inexpensive that anybody can afford them. Now, here is proof. The four-color theme choices shown are an example of the new version of MU (multi-user) Wordpress. These colors can be chosen like turning on a light switch in WordPress, with two clicks, instantly.

We have built a custom theme in four colors for our real estate clients, where the website is only a small part of a Social Media Marketing system.

Wordpress is free and so is MU (multi-user) WordPress. Multi-user Wordpress adds another whole blog for each user so that a real estate office could, for instance, give away or sell a free website for each agent by simply adding a user internally. This is especially helpful for keeping valuable marketing dollars for other expenses, like off-site promotion, and syndication of the RSS feeds (really-simple-syndication) that Wordpress makes possible from each blog, and each category within those blogs.

We encourage our clients to use these MU Social Media Communities to reach out into the community, and add local businesses to participate in community portals, sponsored by the Realtor.

Like WordPress.com, and WordPress.org, Wordpress MU can be a blog-style social community website builder-and it’s free. You could even give away free websites with this software, like Wordpress, Typepad, and others.

I should tell you, as a seller of a bundled service that includes custom configuration of Wordpress, design, promotion, and training, that getting free software and configuring it to do what you want it to do are two completely different challenges, since the documentation is written by developers who speak their own language. This and other open-source software, however, are actually free to those who are tech-savvy enough to benefit from it, and there are many free resources at the Wordpress sites, our blog and all over the Internet’s huge, free knowledge-base: like on Google.

For more information, visit http://socialmediasystems.com/blog

Israel Rothman is an Internet advertising consultant. Mr. Rothman has been a pioneer in Social Media Marketing as a method of intentional search engine placement for over 800 companies during the last ten years. He is CEO and founder of SocialMediaSystems.com LLC.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.

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