Free Web Hosting

There are free web hosts that are available and it may seem like a way to save. The biggest problem with free web hosts is that they must make their money somewhere. Their course of action is to add advertisements to your website. While you may think it is worth it to get free web hosting, it is not that expensive.

Web hosting is cheap.

Quality web hosting can be had for under $8 a month. You can put your own advertisements, banner ads and products on your website. Some of the free web hosts do not allow you to run any ads, some may not allow you to sell products on your website.

But in any case their ads can pull people off your website and send them elsewhere. You want your readers to stay on your website or visit the places you want them to visit. This helps you build the reputation of your website or helps you make money by getting your readers to buy things you suggest.

~ MJ Schrader

One Click Upgrade Plugins

If you have several plugins, you know how often you see the little tab that says upgrades are available. You know the process of upgrading each one. You may even check the bulk actions tab wishing there was a way to upgrade all your plugins in one click. No more, there it is! Check the plugins that need upgrading, look under bulk actions and click upgrade and upgrade up to 15 plugins with one click.

Upgrade Themes

Yes, you can now upgrade themes. WordPress 3.0 will tell you that you have themes that need upgrading. It will create a “child theme” which should save most of your changes to your theme while upgrading the majority of the theme. This is a great feature, because WordPress 3.0 is going to require some major theme upgrades.

Short Links

If you use Twitter or FriendFeed you know using a short link is almost always a requirement. Now underneath your post title you can choose to edit the title, view your post or get shortlink. The link starts with WP.me and then a short code like other services. Currently you can not change the code, but you may be able to soon.

SEE WORDPRESS 3.0 ROCKS!!

~ MJ Schrader

Want 25% off my products?

save 25% off any product this special page.  You have until July 17th!

During Check Out use Coupon Code: PatSpecial610

This is sixth in the Planning the Unexpected series.  Each day is a products, person or service I recommend. Please again note that attached links are affiliate links. This helps me make some money to pay for last minute travel and emergency things during my grandmother’s funeral. Today is about Autoresponders  and Aweber…

Stay in Touch with an Email Autoresponder

An email autoresponder is an online service that sends emails to your subscribers. While it is not an actual requirement to being online, it is something that keeps you, your readers, and potential customers connected. The biggest advantage is being able to send an email and earn money.

What can I email them?

As part of your agreement with the email autoresponder company, you agreed to send email subscribers only things related to why they joined. While you may have an email or two that vary over the course of the year the focus needs to be on why they joined.

You can email monthly newsletters, coupons, or special discounts. Many people like to email with tips and advice related to the topic. The big advantage of an email autoresponder is that you can email with each new product or when you find a new product you think they will like. This is how people send emails and make money.

Set Up is Easy

I strongly suggest Aweber. It has one of the highest deliver rates, meaning more of your emails get to subscribers than the others. With the set up wizard you are walked through each step quickly and easily.

Now they have a variety of forms to fit almost any niche and ability to change the colors to fit your needs. They also have an easy cut and paste code that you simply copy from their site and paste it where you want on your website.

This service is low cost and can really help your business, because you can email your readers when my latest products come out, that’s why I have an affiliate program. Ok, when YOUR latest products come out. You can make money by staying in touch and providing your readers with valuable information.

~ MJ Schrader

PS Want to save 25% off my products?

In honor of Pat’s Unseminar 8, you can save 25% off any product this special page.  You have until July 17th!

WordPress.com

The biggest advantage of WordPress.com is that WordPress.com hosts your blog. It is completely free to use with you only needing to set up the blog, because you do not need to pay for hosting.  There is no installation and your blog is automatically backed up. You also get cross traffic from other blogs.

The disadvantage is that a you are limited to their themes.  You are also limited to the plugins they use, which are not many. You are going to get a blog name set up as blogname.wordpress.com or similar.  They do not allow advertisements or selling on their blogs. If they decide that your blog is not in line with their standards they could block or even delete your blog.

WordPress.org

If you are using WordPress.org then you have a self-hosted blog. This means you or someone uploaded the application to a server. Your web host offers you space on their servers.   The program is free but it does cost $5 to $12 a month for web hosting. You are responsible for backing up your website, and updating your WordPress when newer versions become available.

Choosing your theme or adding a plugin can easily be done by a few clicks of the mouse. For specialty themes or plugins you need to load via your file manager, which does take a few more steps. Being able to add specialty plugins and themes is part of what gives self-hosted WordPress. You can also modify the source code if you know programming.

The greatest thing is that you do not have to worry about WordPress deciding your blog goes against their standards. You do not have to worry about your content being controversial. Running an advertisement or not is entirely up to you. If you want to sell something you can.

Why WordPress.org is recommended

While it is more maintenance, the advantages of the hosted WordPress are very worth it. The cost of a web host can easily be recovered by the ability to host multiple blogs on one account and the ability to advertizing to monetize each. You can also add donation boxes or other a product to sell. This means your blog could earn potentially a lot more than the monthly hosting fees.

~ MJ Schrader

History

Originally WordPress had categories. But after a while a category would start to get too many articles and bloggers broke down the categories further. This started creating long lists of Categories. Thus tags were born.

Molina's Green Enchiladas

Categories

Categories are the broad term, they help categorize your posts. You can have long keyword phrases; which is a three or four word phrase, as a category. Create unique to your blog phrase for a category name. A category name could be “Dallas Mexican Restaurants” which is a long keyword phrase or “Mex-Food that Rocks” for something unique. But you can also have sub-categories. This great for “Dallas Restaurants” and the sub-category of “Mexican” or “Italian.”

Tags

You use tags to identify terms related to your blog post. These are terms that help readers of your blog and first time visitors identify the content. Unlike the above categories, you only want to use one or two words as tags. Tags related to the post above could be things like “tortillas, margaritas, live mariachis, green enchiladas, chicken tacos” and other related terms.

Getting an avatar

Most blogs especially WordPress blogs use a Gravatar image, which is a Global Recognized Avatar. Other sites and forums have other ways of getting an image. Their methods vary, however Gravatar is recognized on WordPress sites, Google sites and many more.

Avatar Image Advantages

Once you set up an avatar image on sites that use Gravatar, your smiling face will show up when you use your email related to your Gravatar image. You can even set up different avatar images with different emails. This means you can use a different email to have a different picture show.

Gravatar set up

Gravatar.com

You may have already set one up. Gravatar has become very popular, so you may have set one up on a Google or WordPress website already. But having an avatar is important so you can learn how to set up a Gravatar image, and how to change your avatar image if you already have an image on Gravatar.

Visit Gravatar.com  From here, they explain the setup very well.  If not you can click the video.  You can also watch the video below.  This video will explain some of what you need to know to set up your account.

HINT: You can add multiple emails, and use different emails to get different pictures to show.

YOU ARE GRAVATAR READY!

This means you are ready for making comments on all these blogs, including mine!  Now if you just set up a Gravatar, please comment below.  Here is a great place to test your new avatar.  Or if you just want to comment please do, seeing your avatar would be nice!

~ MJ Schrader

Well, after all the discussion about website content, someone asked me a question.  “How do you know what to write?”    Like anyone else I sometimes get writer’s block.  There are days when I do not have a clue to write, but I do know where to look.

Where to look for web site content ideas.

The easiest way to find free website content is by asking questions. When you start asking and looking for questions you can find all the content you need to fill your blog. By changing your perspective from finding content to finding questions, ideas will be plentiful. Each post or article can be an answer to a question.

Question:  How do I know what questions to answer?

When you started in your niche, you did not know a lot about the topic. It probably was quite a while later you started your website after you had learned quite a few lessons about the niche and gained a bit of experience. Yet, you can remember when you started. When you started in your niche what questions did you have? What do you wish someone what had told you?

Finding more questions and TRAFFIC!

Look on forums. See where people are having problems, what questions people are asking. When you write your website content you might even use that question or one very similar. You can even build your traffic by answering that question on your website and going back to the forum and recommending your blog post.   This works with any question, when some asks something related to your post, point the way!

You have content and visitors! WIN-WIN!

~ MJ Schrader

Tomorrow:  Turn One Question Into MORE Web Site Content.

Unfortunately I was out of town so my series on backing up your WordPress site had a minor break. I did schedule some posts to appear but did not have time to write the posts that needed to follow the back up.

Why BackUp Your Blog?

As discussed in the previous posts, you want to back up your posts regularly. This protects you should anything happen to your blog. You also want to back it up when you make major changes as they may cause the system to crash. While a crash should not occur, things do unfortunately happen.

Are you using the Back Up Plugin?

After our discussion last week I hope you are using the automatic backup program. If not go back to WordPress Plugin for Gmail Backup post. With it, your blog will be automatically backed up as frequently as you like. You will need to visit your email account and download your backup file onto your computer. Note where it saves.

Finding phpMyAdmin

Ok, so you have your backup but now you need to restore it. Log into your cPanel. This is your back office assigned by your webhost. Look for a box labeled databases. In it you should see phpMyAdmin. Click it, and you will be taken to a strange looking place.

Time To Find Your DataBase

From the main menu, underneath My SQL or localhost, pick Databases. You will then see your database(s) depending on how many you have. Click the one you need to restore.

Importing Your Data

Across the top of the screen will be a row of tabs. You need to click the Import tab. The next screen will have a “Location of Text File” box and a Browse button. Click Browse and find your backup file. Make certain you have the SQL radio button checked and press Go. If you need more information visit Codex WordPress.

Time to check your Blog!

Your blog should be restored. You will probably need to make some adjustments on your WordPress blog to get it back to your previous settings.

When is my blog vulnerable?

While changing themes is very often a minor thing, it can cause problems. As long as you get your theme from WordPress you should be safe, same with plugins. However you could overload your blog with plugins or have two that conflict which could crash your blog. In addition if you do not upgrade your WordPress to the latest version at least somewhat frequently, then an upgrade could lock you out of your own blog.

What can I do?

If you are planning a change to your blog, add a few extra steps. Most people do not want to add extra unnecessary work, however this can mean the difference between having a blog or not. Just like saving a document on your computer gives you a backup for later use, exporting your blog gives you a backup should you need it.

Is it hard to export WordPress?

This is an amazingly simple task. Simply go to your WordPress dashboard. On the left you should see a box called tools, click it and in the new menu you will see export. Then you can decide to export all authors or just one. For most uses you want to export all. Click the Download export file. A window will appear that asks if you want to save. Note where your file saves. Now you can make changes to your blog, because you have a backup if needed.

How do I import WordPress?

If you upgraded, or made changes or something happened that made you need to start over, then you will need to use the import tool. Right above the export button is the import. Click there and suddenly you have a list of places to import from and at the bottom, WordPress. After you click there, you will use the browse button to find the file you exported earlier. If you have multiple users you will want to make certain they are in place before you do this. Now you should have all your posts from before!

~ MJ Schrader

Is there a way to change the type of font?

These are the 2 most common questions people ask  me about WordPress.  Well, if you must know, I go into the code in the style sheet and change the font size directly.   It only requires a wee bit of programming knowledge and knowing how and where those codes go.

WHAT?

You want simplier than that?

Ok, here’s what you do.

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Go to your dashboard, scroll down to Plugins. Hit the down arrow on the right side of Plugins if the box doesn’t have anything under it. Go to “Add New” Type “TinyMCE Advanced”  click search The list will have several plugins.  You want “TinyMCE Advanced” Click install on the right In the popup, click the red Install, Activate. Scroll down to settings. Click and drag the features you want on the grey toolbar.  Click Save. Go to Posts or Pages, and there is your new toolbar.

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Badda Bing…

You will want to make certain the “Kitchen Sink” button is pressed.  That’s the button with a colorful keyboard.  But now you have new features with your WordPress.   If you want to add tables to your WordPress, you will need a program that works with TinyMCE.  Go back to step 4 and type “Tiny Tables” the repeat the remaining steps.

If you need to install the plugins on your server you will want to read Chapter 8 from Rockstar Guide to WordPress.  The Rockstar Guide to WordPress is an easy to use instructional manual that will help you give your site a Rockstar shine.  The easy step by step instructions will help you get going without knowing any programming or coding.

Click here to join the ranks of people who are happy to have learned have a Rockstar WordPress site. Or click Products or videos above, because I want to  “help make your inner rockstar shine both in your online business and in your life.”

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love

♥ MJ Schrader