I'm doing a lot with Wordpress this week, and I thought I'd take a moment to share.

Did you know that baronesses like to blog?  And I've got 2 of 'em as clients.  Both want the Wordpress Thesis theme (if I can track down skins that are feminine-aristocratic enough...whatever that means.)  How in the world did I end up with blogging baronesses as clients?  Odesk.  The first one found me back last fall.  I've been doing small copy-editing jobs for her ever since, and she recently recommended me to another baroness she met at a function.  I think Baroness #2 is probably a born marketer...not sure if Baroness #1 will make it out of the starting gate, since she's quite the busy social butterly.  But whatever...it's a fun little gig. 

These women are not like the Baroness from The Sound of Music.  ("Oh, GE-org, your children are deLiiiiiGHTful.  Now how quickly can we pack them all off to a good Austrian boarding school?)  No, these are young American professional women whose genealogical study led them to discover their previously unknown aristocratic lineage.  Pretty cool, huh?  

So, back to the tools...

1.  Thesis theme for Wordpress.  It's not exactly a theme--more like a framework.  It makes everything about building and maintaining your site quicker, easier, and more "customizable."  One other nice thing to keep in mind about the Thesis theme is that there are outsourcing professionals who pretty much specialize in working with Thesis.

Oh, and it's also very fast-loading.  Some mighty cleeeeeaaaaaaan code there.

2.   iThemes FlexxSensation.  The runner-up for easy, monetization-ready Wordpress site "skinning."  Nowhere near as cool as Thesis, but really a very nice user experience.

3.   Free skins for Thesis.  (I particularly like the "naked" one.  But among the WA crowd, I suspect the free Affiliate skin will get some attention.)

http://www.shoutmeloud.com/19-best-and-free-thesis-skins-for-your-thesis-wordpress-theme.html

4.  That ShoutMeLoud website, which I believe is completely dedicated to awesome Thesis stuff.  Here, for example, is a post on smooth integration of Adsense into the Thesis theme.

http://www.shoutmeloud.com/adding-adsense-into-thesis-wordpress-theme.html

5.  A contextual submenu tool....Dusan (DABK) put me onto this.  What if you don't WANT every blessed menu option available from every part of your site?  What if you want to have one dropdown that shows each of the posts in just ONE particular series?  Check out the Flexipages widget.  Or this free bit of code to add in to a Thesis theme.

6.  Finally, a word about hosting companies.  For four years now I've been with Hostmonster.com.  I know you don't hear as much about that one, but now that I've had five or six clients sign up with them and have gotten plenty of feedback, I've got to tell you...Hostmonster ROCKS.  Their customer service is superb--and for $6.95/month you get tons of bandwidth and unlimited add-on domains.  Their script installers are topnotch as well.  (They offer both Fantastico and SimpleScripts--though they recommend SimpleScripts.).  They also throw in the first domain registration for free if you sign up for their 6-month subscription. 

Now that I've offered some interesting tools/resources, I'd like to ask you a question.  Well, more of a favor, I guess.  I've been considering moving my web content business to a model more like this one.  http://pressmojo.com/prices/  The goal is to standardize a whole lot more than I have been doing.  And to use the marketing knowhow I am gaining to promote to a niche that wants a clean, quality website package within 72 hours    Keeping the focus on content, growing my SEO skills, becoming a Wordpress Thesis Theme specialist.  I'd love feedback, guys.  Any and all perspectives welcomed.  What do you think of this sort of easy-to-use comparison table?  What do you think of having a site with a contact form that uses conditional logic to generate both a client package recommendation for the site visitor AND a set of info to streamline MY process?

And of course I can recommend Hostmonster to each client who needs a hosting plan. And I can offer the Thesis theme for free--since I own it in "developer's license" form.

Thanks for reading...looking forward to hearing your thoughts!