Our completely committed endorsement of WordPress is no secret, you’ll hear from us on this website and in our seminar that WordPress is the best content management system for a business owner building their site. It’s at home with techies just as much as it’s easy to use for people who have a casual relationship with the web.

However, this doesn’t mean we live in a vacuum; we keep an open mind to new and other currently existing web technologies, as well. If something even better than WordPress were to appear that made website creation and maintenance easy while keeping up with tech trends and searchability, we’d try to be the first to tell anyone about it. To this end, we continue to keep up our knowledge with other content management systems like Joomla and Drupal, among others. The rest of the web has generally trended towards what makes sense, too, which is why WordPress makes up nearly half of all websites. Take a look at the following stats we gleaned from BuiltWith:

With 2016 getting started, it doesn’t look like we’re in any rush to change our 10 years of web content: WordPress is here to stay. Better yet, usage is increasing. As for the other big players—Joomla and Drupal—they’ve continued on a downward trend which has been going on for years  (all 3 experienced a sharp increase in one month in 2015, likely a change in measurements).

Keep in mind that in these charts, WordPress is measured on a completely different scale than the other two, ten times larger in fact.

Going with the consensus is often a good thing in terms of tech adoption. In this instance, large scale adoption means more robust support, a much larger pool of plugins and themes to choose from, and much lower likelihood that your website will become obsolete anytime soon and require a complete rebuild from the ground up. How many sites do you still see built on Flash in 2016? Also consider that the site you’re reading right now has existed on WordPress more or less in the same state for over 10 years now. A website that has to be continually rebuilt from scratch is oftentimes treated as a completely new website in the eyes of Google’s indexing bots. Crawling through a website built on WordPress is like cutting open a tree and counting the rings inside: a more detailed history than you’d ever need.

Some people think that when they go to Google Shopping (formerly the much cooler named Froogle) and get a list of prices, that it is defacto, the lowest prices possible. Those of you who are Websitetologists, or just smart shoppers, know that Google isn’t omniscient.

To get listed in Google’s pricing matrix isn’t as simple as “build it and they will come”- there is a whole series of things to fill out, optimize and then, you wait.

Most serious ecommerce outlets spend considerable time working this- but, others opt out.

The two factors that can make the most difference are shipping and tax. Now that Amazon charges tax in Ohio- a little research can save you a lot of money.

So, when I first look at Amazon- I often check the “other sellers on Amazon” – and realize, they are paying Amazon at least 10% to list their stuff on Amazon’s site, so check out their site direct. Sometimes being fulfilled by Amazon now causes sales tax to be added in Ohio- and, going directly to their site will help you skip it.

There are also price comparison sites- Price Grabber being one of the oldest. But even these sites can have internal biases.

One of my favorite sites is Deal News, which started out as Deal Mac. Gotta love their tagline- “How to go broke saving money.” Often times, I go here and look at “expired deals” to find out what the best price has been as a good indication of what’s out there.

A new ecommerce clearing house, Jet, is trying to compete with Amazon- and to build that all essential “critical mass” are often losing money even more than Amazon used to. The membership fee they started out with- is now gone. Their gimmick- the more you buy- the more you save, and- if you decline “easy returns” they’ll deduct some more money from the cost.

There are browser plugins than can look up what you are browsing and tell you better prices, but I’m getting really wary of browser plugins spying these days- your CC info may be too easy to steal once you grant access to your browser. Plus, the prices weren’t always that great.

And, although it can be intimidating- for a lot of stuff that you know is made in some factory in China- you can try to go direct via Alibaba. The tough thing is sorting out the actual manufacturers from the many middle men- but if you are looking for quantity of any item- it’s the place to go.

Ebay is also another secret resource. Many manufacturers now have their own Ebay outlets, where they sell blemished, open box, refurbs or discontinued items. The stuff can be found with full warranty at a fraction of the price. And speaking of Ebay- if you bid any time other than the final split second, you are bidding against yourself. Look into a sniping application like eSnipe and always get what you want at the price you want.

And, of course, if you want to learn how to build a website that really works- don’t forget to take the www.websitetology.com seminar, now in it’s tenth year.

Social media can be confusing. There are so many different networks and tools your business can use that you have to carefully choose which ones are best for your business.

Snapchat reaches young people- this guide is written by a 22 year old. CNN, People, ESPN, Mashable, Vice and other major media outlets have snap stories available, some very highly produced compared to the snapstories of a teen.

But, right out of the box- figuring out snapchat (and the other similar apps- Fleek and Yeti) isn’t exactly intuitive- that’s why we like this simple guide.

Here are all the basics, as well as everything you never knew you could do on Snapchat. It’s easier than it seems.

Source: A 22-year-old made the ultimate guide on how to use Snapchat

If you are near a college campus and market to students- these apps, plus Yik Yak are where you want to be.