I won’t say their names, because it really doesn’t matter. Unfortunately in a few months some other artists will be singing a similar song that says abuse is ok. This was the final straw in avoiding a calling I have had for years. I can no longer stand by and let the cycles of hate and abuse continue.

While that calling came almost 3 weeks ago, and I stated to myself that I would finish the Blog Challenge before leaving this blog behind. Although I nearly quit just 4 days before the challenge ended.

Each day, each post has become harder and harder to write. Some of you may know that I also write for 365 Online Tips. This is a daily success and motivational site. There is another motivational site in the works. I am actually looking for some women who are willing to make commitment to helping women.

But for those of you who are friends on my personal website, you probably have read that I am thinking of getting out of making websites and even out of WordPress. Well, the decisions were made as to what I was/am going to do as of almost 2 weeks ago.

Now it is time to confess….

Rockstar Guide to WordPress will soon no longer be available for sale as an ebook. I am working on getting it published. It will be sold on Amazon and hopefully on Kindle as well. It will be available at a much lower price and I am looking to get some other authors to add some chapters to help people with their websites. This is extremely important because half of the profits will be going towards special organizations and that new project mentioned earlier. It will need some funds for scholarships and such.

So…

• If you want to add a chapter to a WordPress book, please comment.
• If you are a woman and would like to participate in a special project to help others, please comment. (make certain that you use email box because it will be a private message)
• If you are a man, and would like to help get the project going, please comment.
• If you would like me to continue doing Freebie Fridays, please comment.

I still enjoy WordPress and very much enjoy tech stuff, I just won’t be able to do daily blogs or commit to WordPress projects.

Yesterday covered installing and setting up the Mingle Forum Plugin. Today is going to cover skins and how to add your forum to your website.

Adding to your website.

Create a new page. You will want to use a name that lets people know there is discussions, forums or talk on the page. On the page type [mingleforum] and then press publish. This will create a forum on that web page. With this you will have a great website forum on your WordPress website without the hassle other sites would create.

Changing Skins

Blue may not work with your theme. Or you may not like the default skin. While the colors of the Mingle Forum skins are still somewhat limited you do have choices other than blue. You can visit Get Forum Skins.

From There you can pick from the reds, blues, green, orange, blacks, and pink that they have available. You will need to download the skin, or skins you like.

Using your favorite method, (I prefer File Manager) you will upload the skins to /wp-content/mingle-forum-skins/ The advantage of this method is with changes and upgrades you will not need to reinstall several times.

IF YOU WANT TO BREAK IT

If you change the name of the folder, Mingle Forums will not work. If you delete the Default skin or change the name of it Mingle Forums will not work.

What if the folder does not exist.

Then you can create a folder using your file manager or FTP. You will want to create it exactly as the name as listed above.

Installing the skins

Go back to your WordPress Dashboard and activate the skin you want to use. Now you are ready to go with a forum that looks just as you need!

Good luck!!

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love

MJ Schrader

Perhaps you need a forum on your WordPress website. Fortunately there is a very nice Forum plugin that is fairly simple to use*. Note the star… Forums are not exactly the easiest things to set up, thus fairly simple does not necessarily mean simple.

This WordPress forum plugin is called Mingle Forum. If you are on Mingle, it works great with it or stands alone. It is highly customizable. There are skins, categories, rankings for users and much more.

How to Install

Simply go to WordPress plugins, click add new. Type Mingle forum in search, then install. You will see a new box appear called Mingle Forum. Scroll down to it and open for the sub categories.

Mingle Forum

This subcategory you can mostly leave alone. There is very little you will want to change, unless you want to change the name or number of posts that it takes for users to go to the next level.

Skins

Only a blue skin comes pre-installed. Other skins will have to be downloaded and installed in a particular file on your file manager. This is something you may want to leave to your tech person, unless you are the tech person.  It will be covered in more detail tomorrow.

Categories and Forums

This seems backwards to me. When you add new you create a category. Then once you have created a category you can “add forum” which will be basically a subcategory. You could conversely create another category. These will be the main boxes, and the “forums” will be the sub boxes.

Moderators

You can be a moderator. Once you have users you can set up individual users as moderators. You can set someone up for all forums or some.

User Groups

When you add new, you can give a name to groups of users. After you name the group you can add members or remove members.

About

Just like it says some information about the plugin.

Final Touches

That will be covered tomorrow

Single site development, this method means putting emphasis on the single site. This means developing social interaction with visitors. This one site means it is easier to share with others. Spending time to come up with beneficial posts and development of relationships is critical, which can be a disadvantage to some.

There are several different ways to cover a niche.

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love

MJ Schrader

How about a whole suite of tools?

You may know Mozilla as the creators of Firefox, but they have other programs as well. They actually a suite of creative applications that can be added to your Firefox or used as is in your browser. Just by visiting Aviary.com you can see the 8 tools together.

Phoenix allows you to edit images.

Roc can help you create music and can be used with Myna

Talon is a screen capture program. Capture web pages, then edit, crop, resize or mark the image.

Myna is an audio editor. Remix music or audio tracks. Record your voice and instruments or apply sound effects.

Raven conquers vectors, allowing to edit vector images online.

Falcon can quickly capture images and web pages from brower or desktop.

Peacock changes things as you see fit. This effects editor works just by pulling the effect into the mix.

Toucan allows you to use or create color swatches and palettes.

As you can guess with this many tools in one place, you could do a lot of different things. They have video tutorials and quick guides to help you get started. Knowing that you might feel overwhelmed, they also offer Frequently Asked Questions and site instructions not just instructions on the individual tools.

You can even set up and save your files online Aviary. This allows you to share and use your images and creations in more ways.

If you have found your niche, congratulations!  Now that you have, do you know what the next steps are? Finding your niche is just the first step in the niche business success blueprint.

What are you going to offer?

Have you researched to find products that fit your niche? What problems do people have? If you are going to provide a service or a product, even a digital product, have you studied the market to see if you can fill that problem or problems?

Are they willing to pay?

For a niche business, earning money is essential. While you may have the very best solution to a problem, it will not matter if the people will not pay. Even if there are some buyers, you need enough to make your niche business work.

Your niche business blueprint

A business is as unique as you are. There are no rules that are guaranteed to work or not work, these are guidelines to help you succeed. You need to consider if your market is big enough to have buyers and small enough to have a target market. Finding buyers and something to sell is the goal that is an absolute must.

This blog post was by request.   NextGen Gallery is one of the most popular and highly recommended of the WordPress Photo Gallery Plugins.  You install via Plugins and add new. Scroll down your dashboard a bit.

Add a Gallery

Click on add a gallery. Type in your new gallery’s name in the add new gallery box. Then choose Upload images to upload images off your computer. When you upload images make certain you choose a gallery. If you have several images in a Zip File you can choose that. Another option is import image folder if you know the server path. (Importing requires the images be some place online and accessible.)

Manage Gallery will let you change the name of a gallery or add a description. Here you can also link the gallery to a specific page. The images in the gallery will be below. Click on them to change their name, description or tags.

Manage Albums will allow you to create an album and add one or more galleries to it. Tags will let you add, change or delete tags you use in the photo albums.

Options

Options gives you several options to change or create. You can change the maximum size of thumbnails and other images. You can choose the quality that of images Next Gen will set up for quality resizing. You can choose to backup images or automatically resize. You can set up features in the gallery, such as how the images display and much more. You can also add effects to how your images show. Next is the watermark, use an image or your website name or other text. You can choose the font, color and size. Finally the last option is what you want the slideshow to look like.

The next buttons under gallery.

After options is style. This requires knowing and understanding css code. If you have other users on your blog, you will want to set up Roles, as to who can manage, edit or make changes to the albums. About is the credits and the final one, you do not need to mess with unless you actually want to start over, or uninstall Next Gen.

On posts and pages

Make certain you have TinyMCE loaded. If you do you will have a button appear that looks like a little album with photos. Click this and you will be able to add images to your post. You can choose to add images, galleries, or albums. Whatever you need for that blog post.

There you have it!  Next Gen Photo Gallery plugin is great for photographers or those in need of many pictures.

Live  ♥ Laugh ♥ Love

MJ Schrader

Many people ask me about WordPress plugins. What scares me is how often “Do you know all the plugins?” Currently there are over 10,000 available on WordPress.org. There are others sold by individuals and business. Some plugins are only available to members of certain websites, and many more options.

The other thing people think is more plugins means better. Yes, I do have about 8 to 12 on each of my websites. But if you have played Tetris, you know that there are multiple shapes of blocks. The same is true with plugins, they are not all the same shape. They do not always fit neatly together. The more plugins you have it’s like the more blocks on Tetris you have, you start having holes, and suddenly the end of the game starts coming because pieces are not fitting right.

The same is true with plugins. They don’t always fit together quite right and with more plugins the more likely you are to have problems. The reason I went with Disqus is because it did the job of 3 or 4 plugins. That’s why Platinum SEO is better than All in One, it does the job of two plugins.

Research every plugin. The other problem is knowing if a plugin is a good one. Some plugins are not worth it. Some plugins will cause your site problems. Some plugins do not perform as stated, some plugins may not do what you really need. Know what your plugins are and if they will do what you need.

Just because a plugin gets a great rating and does what you want it may not work with your theme or plugins that you simply “must have.”  Decide what is more valuable and go with that.   If a plugin does not work or you no longer need a plugin, deactivate it, then delete it. Keep your WordPress website like your desk. Keep what you need, throw away the rest and don’t over load it.

Hope you are having a grand and glorious day!!

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love,

MJ Schrader

Today’s post was going to focus on blogging and in the world apart from social media and web-centric life. While this was the goal, a tweet showed up on my stream:

Apparently Wired announced the The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet. Well, it does not take reading that article at all to announce the web is far from dead. But let’s continue with this argument for the sake of beginners and people who worry about the future.

Wired argues that apps (meaning applications) are taking over the world. And while the internet is available on more things; think of your phone, your game console, even the DVR that streams Netflix; people are not actually on the web.

Well, first off the number of people on the web has grown substantially over the last 15 years. Then few people had dial up internet, waiting forever for the whir and pop that your connection actually reached an open line and connected. Then came broadband and cable. All 3 I got when these were fairly new and geeky phenomena.

Photo by Todd Huffman WiFi in Afghanistan

Yet now these are common and growing, as more and more people join the online community. This means that the graphics of people doing this or that on WIRED is total bunk! People AROUND THE WORLD expect to have these  connections and even better to have WiFi so we can connect where ever we are with whatever piece of technology we have with us at the time.

In this aspect, I am behind. The last job and then lack there of have kept my personal technology behind. My cell phone recently died, and I finally got a Blackberry. Since I  send daily pictures to Facebook and Posterous, I quickly got the Facebook app. “It makes Facebook easier” and takes your Blackberry from quick, back to dial up days of Internet and computing speed.

Let me assure you, I got that off  my Blackberry quicker than… well,  my boyfriend’s favorite quote. Do I really think that apps are going to take over? NO. Some people will always value quality over convenience.

Another thing is that this goes back to the fallacy pointed out in the DoFollow myth with people making certain everything they do is Google friendly. Did I find that article by visiting Wired or Nieman Journalism Lab?

No, I had never even heard of Nieman Journalism Lab. I found the article because Bill tweeted it. Since I trust Bill’s judgment and the title seemed interesting I read it. How did I find the other articles? I clicked the links included the first article.

With many articles I would read some comments to see various arguments. Someone with good points I would click their name to see their blog. Then read their articles, and comments and continue this post on for days as I again and again point out that social networking is going to keep the web growing for years to come.

And yet as I do want to continue to have posts for the rest of the week I shall end my argument here.

Speaking of social networking, join my fan page Facebook.com/LoveRockstar and Twitter Twitter.com/Loverockstar and while we are being social, visit Bill Hibbler.Com

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love

MJ Schrader

Bill Hibbler is a wonderful expert, who helped me create the quote I use as part of my branding.   “Making your inner rockstar shine in business and life.”    This brief sentence encapsulates who I am and what I do for you in 30 seconds.  You want to be a rockstar at least in spirit and that is my job.

The advantage is this gives you more exposure which can increase your blog followers

Today is going to cover some steps to implement.

Add the NetworkedBlogs app to your Facebook.

From the new page, click the Add a new blog.

You will need to verify your blog. There are 2 ways to verify your blog. One get friends to say you are the blog author, which has the advantage of getting friends to subscribe and get you started towards the 20 followers. When you have 20 followers you will be listed as blog on networked blogs.

The alternative is that you copy the html code they give you and paste it somewhere on your blog. You can paste in a text widget on your blog.

If you have a fan page, visit your fan page and click the + sign. This will allow you to add a new tab, from the drop down select Networked blogs.

You can also repeat the above step on your profile.

Now your blogs will automatically post to your wall.

If you want to add a specific post to your wall click the Networked Blogs button under the status box. Then select the post you want.

To add the widget, just click widget on your blog profile page.  Select the widget you want, you have two choices.  Then select all of the code in the box.  Then go back your blog and choose widgets under appearance.    Then pull a text box over to your sidebar and paste the code into the text box.  Your widget should appear.

This will help you get more website traffic which will help grow your business.

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love

MJ Schrader