My New Wordpress Blog and Ha Media

I have been blogging since sometime in 2006 and I have blogged on Active Rain and on a self made Typepad blog.  Over the past four years I constantly tweaked my blog and "redesigned" it myself which meant new headers, and moving stuff around and since I have done very well with this sort of basic do not know what I am doing blog I never made a change.  In fact I haven't posted to that blog in a year and I am still getting traffic.  I attribute that to not how good or professional that blog was but because of the lack of other bloggers in my area, I won by default.

Now I have move to a new community and while I set up the same blog I had in New York in New Orleans where I moved to I thought it might be a good time to have someone who knows what they are doing design a blog or website for me. But searching who to use, do I do a blog or a website? Who is going to give the most value and who knows the most about rankings and SEO and all of that stuff that professional web designers know how to do and I haven't really got a clue about.

It took me months and months.  I am not sure why it was such an enormous decision except that it was making a change and change can be difficult.  I talked to all of the major company's, Realty Pro, Advanced Access, Z57, etc and while each brought something to the table none of them cilcked with me.  For years I have been reading Active Rain posts about SEO and keywords and all of the stuff that is supposed to be behind a site but all I know in life is how to sell real estate and truthfully that is enough.

I finally decided that I would try a Wordpress blog and I would try to do it myself.  I can learn, take some time and read the boards that each Wordpress site offers, ha! I didn't have a clue and while feeling inadequate about why I couldn't figure it out, I just am not a designer of sites.  Lot's of people said it is simple, get Headway or Themes and just drag and drop stuff and there you have it, a self hosted Wordpress site.  WTF, drag and drop where?

Then NAR came to New Orleans and all of the vendors came and I spoke to all of them, and still nothing quite clicked.

Then I went to the Active Rain Rain Camp in New Orleans and went to lunch and at my table sat Debe Maxwell.  Who I knew from around the web but had never met and Debe Maxwell had the most innovative keychain business card that Inna and Jon Hardison of Ha Media had designed and something clicked.  Not only did I love the idea but the design was clean and classy.  Debe told me that Inna gets on the phone with her clients and that after an hour she is intuitive enough to understand who you are and what will work for you.  This I loved.

So, I contact Inna.  We chatted.  She reviewed my current site and asked me what it was?  She was blunt, she told the truth and most importantly she was right.  I like this.  No hedging, no niceties.  Okay, you're hired!  Inna doesn't design for everyone and I am glad she was willing to work with me.  I hired her the week before the holidays and once my descision had been made I wanted instant gratification and my site delivered the next day but had to wait out other sites being finished, the holidays and a week of the flu.  Finally I spotted a prototype of my site on Ha Media Shop's website and I just loved it.

The site was much more that I had expected.  The design is beautiful thanks in part to the very generous Teresa Boardman.  Teresa had come to the NAR meeting in November and took pictures of New Orleans and everyone who follows Teresa know how beautiful her pictures are.  I emailed Teresa and asked if she would give permission to me to use her pictures on my site and she said yes....Her pictures add a wonderful dimension to the site.

About two weeks ago the site went live, I have a lot of work to do adding community information, pictures and other stuff but having lived with the site I love it.  It is clean, stuff is easy to find for the consumers, there aren't too many categories, simple, organized and gorgeous to look at.  How happy am I?

Inna has also been checking up on me and making sure I am doing all of the things I am supposed to when I post, undoing bad habits and teaching me new stuff I need to know.  I couldn't be happier that I chose Inna, Jon and Ha Media. and if you can't tell I highly recommend them.  Please check out my site and theirs.  Maybe now I will feel secure enough to get rid of my 7 year old Number 1 Expert site!

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