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Rob Merlino Dot Com

Blogger, Entrepreneur, Raconteur

Suncoast Fishing Piers

June 22, 2016 By Rob

suncoast fishing piers

suncoast fishing piersSuncoast Fishing Piers is LIVE! After setting the shell site up on WP Engine with my daughter, we got the domain name SuncoastFishingPiers.com. We decided on the “Brunch Theme” from the Studiopress Genesis Framework (my daughter’s choice) and began designing the site. I have the “Pro Plan” from Genesis which gives me every theme they produce for life. When you plan on building out multiple sites – like I do – it’s the best way to go.

All Studiopress themes are solid templates and there’s an excellent forum community that can help with tweaks to the HTML. Most of the sites are mobile ready, so there aren’t any display issues with mobile devices. I’ve used Studiopress for years and I use the Focus Theme on Rob Merlino.com. It was the best investment in my web business I ever made.

What is Suncoast Fishing Piers?

The site is going to be a resource for fishing from piers in our area. We plan on visiting each pier, putting some lines in the water, taking pictures and video, and providing information on amenities the area near the pier provides. We’ll also have “fishing tips with Tori” videos on the site.

Going forward, I will still chronicle each stage of development here – there are several videos in the works about that – and I’ll get into a discussion about site structure, SEO, monetization, etc.

In addition to creating a (hopefully) money-making website, the entire exercise is a good educational opportunity fo my daughter. She’s learning about creating a website from the ground up. She’s already started to find her way around the WordPress CMS and about HTML codes. The best part is, we get to do a lot of fishing and spend some quality time together.

It’s still in the very beginning stages, but we already started our “research.”

Filed Under: Wordpress Tagged With: fishing piers, make money online

What Blog Host is Best? Or Seven Bucks and a free host

July 14, 2010 By Rob

There are literally hundreds of blog platforms out there. There are free hosts and paid hosts. Which is best for the newbie blogger? While I don’t intend to review every single host out there, I intend to deal with the “biggies.”

Blogger and WordPress are the two most used blogging platforms out there. I have used Blogger since day one and I remain loyal to the platform for several reasons.

First of all, I am used to it and I have all my blogs hosted on Blogger. To change now would require moving everything over to another host and that’s not something I have the time or patience for. I can point custom domains to my Blogger sites and, best of all, the hosting is free.

Blogger’s interface is easy to use too, particularly for a newbie. I have learned many Blogger Tips and Tricks over the years to “tweak” my sites, but even without learning how to manipulate code, you can have a pretty snazzy looking site that’s ready to go in a few minutes. Over the years, Blogger has made many enhancements to their platform to make it easier to use. They also have new template styles that make a blog look more professional (guess where this blog is hosted).

Another great thing about Blogger is you can easily put Adsense ads on your site with one click. We’ll talk more about Adsense later…

Word press is the other “biggie” out there in the blogging world. When I first started out, I tried WordPress. I didn’t like it. It took too long to set up, I couldn’t host on their site for free, Adsense wasn’t allowed (it is now), and I needed to use a “.wordpress” address (unless I wanted to pay to host my blog elsewhere). There were just too many added steps for my tastes. There are many millions of Worpress enthusiasts out there and if WordPress works for them, that’s great. The important thing is to use what works for you.

Blogger works for me, so here I am!

For a good comparison of the Blogger vs. Worpress features, this article on Pulsed says it better than I ever could.

Good luck setting up your blog!

Filed Under: Blogger, Blogger Tips and Tricks, Pulsed, Wordpress

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