The long awaited release of WordPress Version 3.0, named for Thelonious, was released to the public on June 17, 2010. First looks at the new version reveal some very exciting developments for our clients.

Highlights

• WordPress now allows for the management of multiple sites from one WordPress installation.
• New custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
• Custom header and theme background customization via APIs.
• Ability to set a custom admin username and password during installation.
• Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the upgrade process.
• Bulk updates of plugins so you can upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click
• Support for shortlinks – but still requires a plugin or theme support to fully realize this feature.
• Improved Custom post types and custom taxonomies including hierarchical (category-style) support.
• Allow “No role for this blog” to be chosen in Users->Add New panel
• Help text on every screen

Naturally, as with any major software upgrade, a number of upgrade issues have been encountered by users of various themes and certain plugins including the podcasting plugin by TSG, HeadSpace2, and Event Calendar. WordPress has a sticky post detailing answers to most problems. It would be advised to wait to upgrade your installation until plugin developers have time to provide updates for the new version and the majority of bugs that are encountered by early adapters are resolved.

The WordPress development team will not be starting work on the next version for at least three months, instead they are delving into updating the showcase, Codex, forums, profiles, update and compatibility APIs, theme directory, plugin directory, mailing lists, core plugins, wordcamp.org and so on. These supporting pieces have been longing for attention!

As always, our Small- to Mid-Sized Business Solutions staff is here to assist you with upgrading your WordPress installation, plugins, and theme. Please contact Chuck Snyder at 402-391-9200 to discuss your needs!

If you have found yourself trying to improve your customer service by preventing important things, such as orders, inquires and special requests from slipping through the cracks as information and accountability flows from person to person within your business, you’re not alone.  As businesses grow, processes become more complicated.  You go from having one or two people handling orders and requests, to having multiple people each doing a piece, making it difficult to monitor the quality and efficiency of the complete process.  So I offer my congratulations!  Your business is maturing, which is very exciting.  Now it’s time to look at taking control of your processes to keep your customers happy.

The formal name for taking control of business processes is Business Process Management. When we think of Business Process Management, the first things that generally come to mind are the reductions in costs and risks, improvements in productivity, increased compliance, and enhanced business agility that result from making improvements in your processes. There’s a critical one missing from this list though – improvements in customer service.  Formalizing and automating processes enables business to put an end to lost or misplaced customer orders and requests, provides a trackable path of processing through the business so you can let the customer know where their order or request is within the process.  This can also alert staff to any hold-ups in the process, and allows the business to save information about each instance of process in their company database for future analysis and access.  Whether your business processes customer orders for physical goods or you’re in charge of approving requests for the use of assets, implementing Business Process Management with Agility BPM™ can help you improve your customer service.

Agility BPM™ offers a simple and efficient way to establish, operate, manage, and monitor business processes in a web environment and/or as a Windows desktop application. It takes you from a graphical process map to a working application so you can get up and running in weeks, not months. Plus, it gives you the ability to make changes to the processes you are controlling as needed using its “edit and execute” capabilities and without having to start from scratch.  Best of all, Agility BPM™ will keep pace with your growing business.  It is designed for use in all sizes of businesses, so if you have enterprise size goals, it will be there with you every step of the way.

Want to know more?  Let’s talk!