Archive for the ‘How To’ Category
Make sure to upgrade your Word Press
November 30th, 2009
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upgrade to 2.8.6
It is that time again. Word Press has come out with a new upgrade. You can upgrade your Word Press automatically by clicking at the top of your screen when you first log in to your blog.
- It is important to make sure you keep up to date on your upgrades to keep your blog from getting hacked. Many times, these upgrades are done to not only add more functions and features to your blog, but to update potential security issues that have surfaced.
- Always make sure to keep your word press blog updated and current as a first defense to keep from getting hacked.
What The Heck Is An RSS Feed?
October 1st, 2009
RSS – What The Heck Is An RSS Feed?
- RSS is an acronym for “Really Simple Syndication” or as I read recently on one bloggers blog “explained the Oprah Way” RSS stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”.
- If you are not familiar with RSS, it would be assumed you aren’t using RSS to keep track of your favorite websites. When you come across a website you want to keep track of, you most likely “bookmark it” with your Internet browser so that you can later return to that site and stay up to date on it. What if you didn’t have to return to the site until you KNEW there was new information of interest posted? With RSS technology there is no need to bookmark, you simply subscribe to the RSS feed offered on the website and updates are sent to you shortly after they are published! How cool is that?
- Another way to explain RSS is to think of it as a subscription to your favorite magazine, newspaper or periodical. When you have a subscription to any of these, they show up on your doorstep or in your home mailbox and you read them or possibly let them stack up in your bathroom! Maybe you read them while in the bathroom! RSS is basically the same, except it is an electronic subscription to your favorite websites, web content, web pages, or weblogs and it is delivered to you via your RSS Reader (I will get to RSS Readers, not to worry) . The other difference being that you receive updates via your RSS Reader anytime something is updated or changed on your favorite sites.
RSS Readers
Listed below are three easy to use RSS Feed Readers to help you get started with subscribing to your favorite websites.
- One of the most popular RSS Feed Readers is Google Reader, it is free and very user friendly.
- If you use Yahoo!, for email or frequent Yahoo! and have an account, Yahoo’s RSS Reader is also great and very easy to use. You will find the ability to add the feeds in “My Yahoo!”
- Microsoft Outlook also has an RSS Reader included that you have most likely not paid much attention to. If you have Microsoft Outlook, there is a folder that is automatically installed called RSS Feeds and has automatically subscribed you to receive updates from Microsoft. You can add other feeds to your Microsoft RSS reader that are of interest to you.
Subscribing To RSS Feeds:
You have most likely noticed when you visited some websites or blogs an icon in your browser address bar or on the site that looks like one of these:
- There are many different versions of RSS icons people use on their various websites, but this should give you a good idea of what they look like and what to look for.
- When you see this icon in your browser address bar at the top, if you click on it, you will receive a drop down menu asking you which type of feed you would like to subscribe to. Choose RSS Feed, which will then take you to a screen showing what the feed will look like in your RSS Reader. You will also see a drop down menu asking you where you would like your RSS to be fed to. Choose one of the options and that is it! If you choose Outlook, you will get an email in your inbox which will automatically be put in your RSS Feed folder. If you use My Yahoo!, you will see it listed in your custom “My Yahoo!” page. If you choose Google, it will display in your “iGoogle” page, this is my favorite method, all article headings in one place make it easy to choose what I want to read. All three are easy and I encourage you to get started on it right away!
- By subscribing to the RSS Feeds on your favorite websites, you will soon begin to understand the importance of having an RSS Feed on your own blog.
- Here is what the RSS subscription button looks like in the address bar. By clicking on the little orange icon, you can subscribe to your favorite sites.
- Sometimes websites also have something like this to make it easy to subscribe and you just click it and follow the prompts. Give it a whirl…it’s easy and you will be so glad you did. I didn’t include any links on this page directly to the RSS feed so you can practice by either clicking on the orange button at the top OR on the RSS feed on the left. Let me know how it goes.
How To Easily Create Your Own Word Press Theme
September 29th, 2009
With wonderful and easy to use tools like the Web Design Generator – Artisteer, anyone can create their own custom blog theme in a matter of minutes as you will see on the video below. You will need to download the software to do it and the video below will show you how easy it use to use once you have downloaded it. Click here to download the free trial of Web Design Generator – Artisteer
P.S. Money Saving Tip – when you purchase a license for Artisteer after seeing how easy it is, that the tutorials on this blog are all based on how to blog with Word Press. With that in mind, you won’t need to purchase the more expensive license needed for programs like Joomla. You can learn more about blogging with Joomla on my other site Online Business Academy.
To view the video in full-screen mode, click on the bottom right corner after it begins.
How to Upload Your Own Word Press Theme
September 29th, 2009
If you have followed the video tutorial on how to create your own Word Press theme in Artisteer, you may now be trying to figure out how to upload it, now that it is done. This was the question I received yesterday and the best way to answer it in my mind, was to create a video and walk you through it step by step. If you haven’t created your Word Press Template, here is a link to the article - “Creating a Word Press Template video tutorial”. It may be a good idea to watch this video tutorial as well.
It’s really easy to do and pictures/vidoes are worth a thousand words. Do let me know if you have further questions by posting them below. I do answer all questions I receive because I have to assume that if you have the question, so does someone else. This blog is all about YOU and teaching you what you need to know.
What To Do If Your Blog Is Attacked
September 5th, 2009
IMPORTANT!!!! You NEED To Back Up Your Blog
- Lesson I learned THE HARD WAY…BACK UP YOUR BLOG. My blog was hacked and completely down and frankly I wasn’t sure how the heck I was going to fix it! New experience…never been hacked before and hope it never happens again.
- Obviously we worked out the kinks and the blog is now back up and running, but there was some definite panic when I paid a visit to my site only to see a huge banner on the front of it “tagged” this site has been hacked…with a logo! The person who hacked the site, has their own logo saying they hacked it along with proud link to their website and blog…. Are you kidding me!
- Thank goodness, WordPress had an upgrade and this is what I did to get our site back up and figured I would share in the event this “special” person/bot pays a visit to your site.
- I upgraded our WordPress because there was a new release available. This is one of the many reasons I LOVE HOSTGATORS!! Hostgators makes everything so easy and automated. I went to Fantastico, clicked on WordPress, it showed there was an upgrade available, I click it and upgraded. It automatically created a back up for me as well…which is highly recommended.
- I found that most hackers attack your wp-blog-header.php, which I checked and nothing obvious there. I am no “technical wizard” so if there was something there, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have noticed it anyway….probably the case!
- I read that you should immediately change your user name and password as the friendly hacker who tagged your site may have created an additional account as well, which is what happened in my site.
- Make sure to check your User Administrator Accounts. My friendly hacker, was kind enough to set up his own administrator account. Wasn’t that nice of him??? Delete the user account immediately…obviously.
- I then went to my handy dandy “artisteer” program, which I ABSOLUTELY LOVE for creating my own templates and exported a new template thinking that if the hacker did something in the CSS or the HTML template file, deleting the old and replacing with a new one may do the trick! It worked and it only took about five minutes because the program is so easy to use!
Posted in How To | 
Tags: cyber attack, hacked site, hacked site help, how to blog, how to upgrade, upgrading word press, what if site is attacked, word press attack | 
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How To Upgrade Your WordPress
September 5th, 2009
Twitter is a “buzz” today because it appears cyber attacks are out in full force and Word Press users MUST upgrade their Word Press version to 2.8.4 to keep their blogs from getting “hacked”.
Upgrading and finding out if you need to upgrade is really easy and here is how you do it. Images are at the bottom so you have visuals as well.
- Log in to your WordPress account
- On the left side of your screen, click on Tools
- Click on Upgrade
- If you need to upgrade, you will have the option to do so, if you are running the most current version, this is what it will look like. I had already upgraded mine a month or so ago after I did experience a “cyber attack”.
If your site has already been hacked, visit the post I created on how I recovered pretty quickly from my own personal attack. I really wasn’t that difficult to do and I hope it helps you if indeed your site has been hacked by some jerk!!!
Time Saving Tips for Blogging and Affiliate Marketing
September 1st, 2009
RoboForm – I use Roboform all day, every day and it saves me so0 much time and frustration! With RoboForm, I am able to keep track of all my passwords, website links, affiliate sites I belong to and so much more. Click here to check it out!
I keep all of my information on a flash drive that is with me at all times. I also keep a back up of it in my Drop Box in the event I loose my drive and then I always have access to my website addresses, log ins and passwords from anywhere in the world.
Drop Box - Can I tell you how many times I have been saved by my faithful dropbox, which costs me all of about $9/mo? Dropbox keeps a copy of files on your hard drive out on the Internet and available from anywhere in the world! At a seminar yesterday, we needed a Power Point Presentation that wasn’t with us badly. No Problem! Pulled up Drop Box, opened the file and was editing it within about 1 minute. If my hard drive were to crash, while it would SUCK big time…I wouldn’t have the stress of having lost all of my data, because there is an exact copy of it out on the Internet in my Drop Box account. I also love that it is fully automated! Click here to check it out and save your data from being lost!
A spreadsheet – if you don’t have Roboform - If you get tired of logging in to my affiliate sites to get the same link codes over and over, keep them in a spreadsheet, and make sure to save it in your Drop Box.
I personally use the “safe notes” feature in Roboform, because my Roboform is always up and then I don’t have to keep opening files. When I get a new link code that I know I will want to use again, I copy and paste it in to my Roboform. All the links are all in one place and I just copy and paste from there. My recommendation would be to use Microsoft Works, because every windows machine comes with it and you can open it anywhere, even when using a computer that doesn’t have MS Office. Make sure to note the expiration dates of any of your link codes so you can update them when necessary.
Artisteer - Generate Your Own Word Press themes in Artisteer. I have mentioned this blogging tool several times
because I use it so frequently. I can create a custom theme in less than 5 minutes if I am in a hurry. I can also get really creative and spend as much time as needed to get it just perfect. You need absolutely NO PREVIOUS DESIGN EXPERIENCE to use this tool and it is super user friendly and easy to learn. I have created videos to help you learn even faster – click here to see how fast and easy it is.
Quick Press - Have you read a great article or had a great thought, but didn’t have the time to write a complete blog? I use the Quickpress feature in Word Press to make notes to myself about blogs I want to write. I write some notes, save it as a draft and come back it to later so I don’t loose my thought or idea. If it is going to be a good blog post, it will still be a good blog post two days later! I wrote this particular blog post as a draft that I came back to later when I had the time to complete my thoughts on it.
Ring Central Phone and Fax- Ring Central is a time saver for bloggers or any small business owner. This is the service that we use for PrinterBees that makes it “appear” we are in an office location vs. working from a home office. You have the ability to create extensions for different departments that can all ring to one number, you can accept all of your faxes through Ring Central, to the same number. All faxes come in through your email and they come through on a PDF so you don’t even have to worry about misplacing pieces of paper and they are very easy to forward to the person who needs to deal with it. We are very happy customers of Ring Central.
Posted in How To, Uncategorized |
Tags: blogging 101, how to blog, save time blogging, time saving tips |
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How To Participate in Follow Friday
August 27th, 2009
First of all, what the heck is #followfriday? Follow Friday is when you help other people on Twitter find interesting people to follow. The # makes it searchable in Twitter Search.
If you watch the trending topics, which you should, you will notice every Friday includes #followfriday.
This is how to participate.
In your post include #followfriday to suggest people to follow on Twitter. You would suggest other people you find interesting to help others find them too! Add “#followfriday” anywhere in the Tweet so it is searchable. The “#” is very important – don’t forget it! Learn about twitter lingo here.
Here is an example and you should feel free to copy ad paste this in to your post.
#followfriday I find the tweets from @nadineblogs interesting.
you can also list several people you find interesting by placing @ in front of their user name in to one post AND including #followfriday anywhere in the post.
You can find Follow Friday suggestion on Twitter Search or by clicking on #followfriday in the trending topics on the right side of your home page.
Have fun!
Posted in How To, Social Media Networking, Twitter |
Tags: social media, Twitter, twitter lingo |
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Getting Found on Google Part 4
August 27th, 2009
Lesson Six:
Naming your pages: How you choose to name your HTML web page files and blog posts is very important. Every clue you can offer Google helps “your cause”. For your Word Press blog, make sure take advantage of your ability to use the “permalink” editing option, right below where you title your article to make sure it matches your content OR gives Google the proper hints about what you website or blog is.
For your HTML pages, use all lower case letters to name your pages AND used a “-” between any words.
Example using Keller Williams Business Cards.html, should be named keller-Williams-business-cards.html. When you have spaces instead of dashes in-between any file name that has multiple words, each space will become a % on the Internet. Examples would be Keller Williams Business Cards.html would become Keller%Williams%Business%Cards.html. It’s not clean and it doesn’t help your cause.
I have had make many repairs to the names of my own files from making this mistake many times. Remember, always in lower case AND no spaces in your files name, always dashes. Same goes for naming your images or anything else which will find its way to the Internet on your website.
Lesson seven:
Proper tagging: When creating your website or blog, it is important to have proper “title tags”, .“meta description tags”, “meta key word tags”, and “Robot. Tags”. I know it sounds overwhelming, but with blogging it is super easy and very helpful if you wish to rank. Again, it gives Google the clues it needs to know where to “index” you.
This is what they all mean:
“Title Tags” – The title of the page within the site or blog. Make your title tags relative using the information above. It is also what shows up as the title of your page or site on the search engine listing. While putting your company name may seem important, you may consider leaving it out if it won’t encourage someone to “click”.
“meta description tag” - This is a SHORT, did I mention “short” description of what the web page is about and should include your keywords. If you make your description too long, it could end up counting against you (I will explain this part in future lesions), so use your words wisely and this can end up being the description that shows under the page title in the Google search results so it should also be a good “heading” that captures the persons attention who is reading it when they find your site in the Google Index. Also, make sure it includes your most important keywords.
“meta key words tags” - this is a list of words that best describe the subject of your website to the search engine. The list should not be too long. Did you hear me??? The list should NOT include too many words. Keep your code clean and precise, it works in your favor.
“Robot tags” - Your robot tags tell the search engine if the search engine spiders should crawl the page or NOT crawl a particular page. You are probably asking yourself why you would have Google NOT crawl one of your pages. Well, the answer is simple, the fast Google can crawl your site, the relevant pages of your site, the better. There is no reason to have Google “follow” your companies “Contact Us” page for instance. That particular page most likely has nothing on it that will improve your chance with Google, so why have the spiders crawl that page. You want them in and out as past as possible. To have the spiders crawl the page, use the word “follow”, to keep the spiders from crawling a page, use the tag “no follow”. You will see this option in Word Press, for HTML pages, you need to manually add them in.
Proper tagging: creating your website or blog, it is important to have proper “title tags”, .“meta description tags”, “meta key word tags”, “Robot. Tags”. I know it sounds overwhelming, but with blogging it is super easy and very helpful if you wish to get any ranking. Again, it gives Google the clues it needs to where to “index” you. This is what they all mean:
“Title Tags” – The title of the page within the site or blog. Make it relative using the information above. It is also what shows up as the title of your page or site on the search engine listing. While putting your company name may seem important, you may consider leaving it out if it won’t encourage someone to “click”.
“meta description tag” – This is a SHORT, did I mention “short” description of what the web page is about and should include your keywords. If you make your description too long, it could end up counting against you (I will explain this part in future lesions), so use your words wisely and this can end up being the description that shows under the page title in the Google search results so it should also be a good “heading” that captures the persons attention who is reading it when they find your site in the Google Index. Also, make sure it includes your most important keywords.
“meta key words tags” – this is a list of words that best describe the subject of your website to the search engine. The list should not be too long. Did you hear me??? The list should NOT include too many words. Keep your code clean and precise, it works in your favor.
“Robot tags” – Your robot tags tell the search engine if the search engine spiders should crawl the page or NOT crawl a particular page. You are probably asking yourself why you would have Google NOT crawl one of your pages. Well, the answer is simple, the fast Google can crawl your site, the relevant pages of your site, the better. There is no reason to have Google “follow” your companies “Contact Us” page for instance. That particular page most likely has nothing on it that will improve your chance with Google, so why have the spiders crawl that page. You want them in and out as past as possible. To have the spiders crawl the page, use the word “follow”, to keep the spiders from crawling a page, use the tag “no follow”. You will see this option in Word Press, for HTML pages, you need to manually add them in.
Posted in Get found on Google, How To, Social Media Networking |
Tags: creating tags for your blog, Get found on Google, SEO, using keywords |
1 Comment »
One bloggers big blogging MISTAKE
August 26th, 2009
Don’t hide content from your visitors
I love visiting the sites of other bloggers who really offer great content and sometimes what I read, really sticks with me in a way that I want to return again and again to re-read it. I may mention it to other people in conversation, retweet it, or simply want to refer back to it because it was a great lesson!
One of my favorite bloggers, who shall remain nameless, because he really is a GREAT blogger who offers great content. I visit his blog daily to see what other little tid bits of information he has for me today in the world of blogging. His tid bits are “gold nuggets” and I so appreciate them.
I recently read a post on his blog about the importance of your headline. He mentioned in his post that the heading of your post is as important than the blog itself. So important that you should invest as much time in the heading as in the blog post itself.
He also offered GREAT tips on what a good heading includes, buzz words that are important, etc. I was having a conversation with a friend regarding some issues she was having getting people to open her email blasts and I thought about this post! This post included just what she needed to improve her open rate!
I have since then, visited this blog no less than 6 times to try and find this “golden post”, but can’t find it because he has no “search box” on his blog that I can find. He offers related articles, which I was fortunate to read while “hunting” for the one article I really wanted, but after six visits…still can’t find that one post! Gosh Darnit!
Lesson Learned – MAKE SURE YOUR BLOG HAS A SEARCH on it, so people who return and want to find a past article CAN find it. It is the simple things that we often forget.
Happy blogging. And…because what this particular blogger talked about, read this article about writing headlines and good “copy”.
Posted in Blogging 101 - the basics, Blogging Mistakes, How To |
Tags: blogging, blogging 101, blogging tips, blogging widgets, how to blog |
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