tracerichardson

Have you ever purchased a domain name? Are you looking to purchase one in the future for your real estate or mortgage website? If so, do not use networksolutions.com. There are two primary reasons: 1) They are gougers, they will charge you $35 to register a name, plus $12 per year to forward that name 2) they will front run you on any searches you do on their website for available domain names.  What this means is that if you search for a domain name such as exampledomain.com and it is not taken then they will offer it for purchase. Let’s say you decide you want to compare prices at godaddy.com because you know that paying $35 for a domain name registration is out of line, so you go to godaddy and do a search for exampledomain.com. You will find that it has been registered…. but by who you wonder, it was just available a minute ago at networksolutions.com. You guessed it, networksolutions registers all domains that are searched for at its website which prohibits you from attempting to purchase the domain name elsewhere. They are able to keep registered domains for 5 days without paying if they choose, so they register all domains that are searched for on their site and then dump them within the alloted 5 day grace period. In short, they create a monopoly so that unknowing visitors to their site are forced to purchase domains from them.  These visitors are usually not aware that if they wait 5 days the name will become available again, so they often purchase the over priced domain name as they are not aware they have any other option, other than choosing a new domain name and registering it elsewhere.

Network Solution’s anti competitive practices are finally catching up to them as they are being sued by Kabateck Brown Kellner in a Federal class action lawsuit, ICANN is also named in the suit. This action is overdue and there seems to be a general consensus that Network Solutions has been taking advantage of consumers for quite some time, with their front running actions being the latest in a series of un-consumer friendly actions. Grade = FAIL

(via NetworkWorld)

Author: Trace Richardson builds Mortgage Marketing Websites at Ipagio.com

For months, I have been hard at work hard day in and out to complete LeadPress, our next generation lead generation website / mortgage publishing platform. LeadPress offers unparalleled content creation, control, and SEO opportunities by leveraging WordPress and the large community of developers at large that are constantly building out the platform and plugin capabilites. With the LeadPress release imminent in the coming weeks, we were looking into delaying our release until WP 2.5 is released on March 10th. If you are not familiar with WP, Wordpress is the preeminent blogging platform used by countless online blogs and websites including Lenderama.

Curious about what the new dashboard looks like, I came across a demo. You can view a demo here with login: admin / password: demo. Caveat: this is an alpha release the final release may be worlds away from where this version is at. While there are reportedly new features including full RSS feeds that do not cut off where you have a “more” tag, dashboard widgets, and other added functionalities, I’m addressing the dashboard specifically.

At first I liked the new colors and more 2.0 ish feel until I looked at the write page. The page has been stripped of most of its functionality by removing all the right column objects such as categories, discussion, password, post slug, post timestamp, etc. These are now moved to the bottom of the page, where you have to scroll down to get to them, making the new design not only less efficient, but a pain in the a$$ as well. As I played around with the dashboard, I realized that overall, it is far from being as intuitive as the current dashboard. The overall light hues and soft tones give the dashboard an indecisive feel and there are no strong borders or object delineation to emphasize the various components. In short, the new dashboard is not only aesthetically less desirable, but more importantly, it loses significant ground in user functionality and efficiency.

That being said, the final release may not be anything like what we are seeing thus far. More importantly, I think the WordPress crew are arguably some of the smartest and most talented people out there (to me they’re nothing short of rock stars) and that being the case, I have to give them the benefit of the doubt that I’m simply looking at a premature version of 2.5.

If for some reason 2.5 ends up not being much different than the current alpha, this may or may not create user outcry depending on whether or not there is funcitonality enabled to let users defer to the “Classic” WordPress theme. If there is, there is no issue. If there is not, then this may be WordPress’s version of “new coke“, the reason being that WordPress has raised the bar so high, has done such an outstanding job thus far, that we (I) are spoiled and have come to expect much better execution than what 2.5 alpha is showing……. I’m all for change so let’s hope this is a premature assessment and I am wrong!

Author: Trace Richardson offers No Closing Cost Mortgage Refinancing Rates and No Closing Cost Home Loans at TraceCapital.com.

Brokerlab.com is proud to announce its new alliance with internet experts, Max and Gabe. This video is the first in a series of blogging / internet educational videos. We welcome Max and Gabe to the Brokerlab.com team!

While Realtors have done a great job of building communities and leveraging blogs to market, learn and connect, mortgage bloggers seem to exist in much smaller numbers. I’m proud to announce the launch of Brokerlab.com beta, the first in a handful of launches that I will be announcing in the coming months, with the goal of providing tools, education, and networking opportunities for mortgage and industry professionals. Please take a look around and give us any feedback you have, we are still in beta, so if you see any bugs, let us know!

From Brokerlab.com: “Brokerlab.com is a free blog hosting service that enables Mortgage, Real Estate, and Financial Professionals to easily set up their own blogs in minutes with no technical know how of any kind! With hundreds of themes and the versatility that only Wordpress can provide, Brokerlab makes blogging easy, even if you are a beginner! Blogging creates “unique content” that is LOVED by the search engines and enables searchers to find you. The more you you blog and the more content you create, the more leads you can generate!”

 Author: Trace Richardson is the CEO of Brokerlab.com which provides Free Real Estate Blogs.