Design Portfolio: Local Green Sierra

Posted on December 15, 2009 by CScholz

Local Green Sierra is a new business directory (powered by WordPress) initiated by Lorily Lachman (Alpine Green Living Magazine).  The byline for the site is “A directory of businesses in the Northern Sierra that are making an effort at being green.”  This website’s design and functionality are both still under development, but I thought you might like to know about it – especially if you have a “green” business or want to “go green” with your business.

If you have any ideas to share, please feel free to leave me a comment.

May all your wishes come true this holiday season!

-Catherine

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Sync your blog with your Facebook Page with Networked Blogs

Posted on December 9, 2009 by CScholz

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Winter has arrived in the Sierra Foothills and being snowed/iced-in at my place has fostered a wonderful sense of stillness.  Between winter-wonderland walks, I have been working on my new music album and this valuable blog post on how to sync your blog with your Facebook Page.

Networked Blogs is an application developed for Facebook that pulls your RSS Feed from your blog on a regular basis, then posts a thumbnail image (if you’ve included one in your post) and an excerpt from your blog onto your Facebook Page Wall for all of your fans to see in their News Feed.  With this application, you can also follow other blogs on Facebook and invite people to follow yours.  It’s a great way to share your content with your Facebook fans and to drive traffic back to your website/blog. Continue reading →

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Embed your YouTube Channel

Posted on December 2, 2009 by CScholz

Picture 12Embedding your YouTube Channel on your WordPress page or post is easy if you know how to do it.  Let me save you the time it takes to figure it out by giving you these simple steps:

Modify this code: <script src=”http://www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube.xml&amp;up_channel=YourChannelName&amp;synd=open&amp;w=320&amp;h=390&amp;title=&amp;border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&amp;output=js”></script>

and place the code with your Channel Name inside of it into the HTML editor of your WordPress page or post editor.

That’s it! Easy! All of the colors you set up in your Channel from within YouTube will show.

You can also grab the embed code from your channel page to alter width and height. Make sure you are logged in. See this page: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138346

Posted in General How-To, YouTube | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Add a Facebook fan box to your WordPress site

Posted on November 18, 2009 by CScholz

Hi there -

Here is a short video that teaches you how to add a Facebook fan box to your WordPress site.  You can watch the video on my website (and folks with Mac’s Mail program may even be able to watch it in their email!) and you can also subscribe to my YouTube Channel.

How is your WordPress website/blog coming along? Would love to hear from you.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

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Comparing WordPress to Joomla

Posted on November 10, 2009 by CScholz

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Although most of my experience building websites has been with WordPress, I have also used Joomla and I have a few things to say about my experience with it that convinced me that I strongly prefer WordPress.

1) Ease of use

I started working with computers at a pretty young age – copying code out of PC Magazine and writing programs on our family’s Commodore-64.  Navigating the Joomla system was counter-intuitive.  I had to consult with a developer in the Netherlands to learn how to use it.  With WordPress, I figured it out on my own.

2) Visual/HTML editor

The greatest beauty of WordPress (and deep gratitude to all the PHP developers across the world who collaborated to develop the software) is that users don’t need to know html – not a wink of it.  Of course, it can be helpful in certain situations, but it is not needed.  You can copy html code into WordPress’s html editor window and then go into the visual editor to see what it will look like where you can align and adjust.  This is the golden jewel of WordPress.  Though I do know basic html, many of the people I serve have no interest in learning it.

3) WordPress can be just a website or a website with blog

WordPress does not have to be used for blogging – it can be a stand-alone website.  Blogging just happens to be a great tool for internet marketing, so using the blog component of your WordPress site is a huge bonus.

4) Google-friendly

Google finds WordPress sites much faster than regular websites due to the way the permalinks are structured.  Google loves WordPress sites.

What has your experience been with Joomla compared with WordPress?  Leave me a comment.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

Related Articles:

http://dukecarico.com/index.php/Technology/Joomla-Vs.-WordPress.html

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/wordpress-vs-joomla-a-handy-guide

http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/technology-technical-skills/3915-wordpress-joomla-desicion.html

http://www.miracletutorials.com/wordpress-vs-joomla-review/

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Design Portfolio: Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain

Posted on November 9, 2009 by CScholz

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Patt Lind-Kyle has created a book and companion CD set to support people in changing their lives for the better.

Her WordPress website incorporates the following features:

  • Blog
  • YouTube Channel
  • Social Media Icons linked to Social Media sites
  • Free MP3 incentive for joining email list
  • WordPress as fully-functioning website/CMS
  • Custom graphic design and layout to match product branding
  • Embedded audio players for interviews and samples of work
  • SEO techniques
  • Re-sizable fluid width for different screen sizes
  • Facebook Fan box
  • Dark background with light text color (to match product)
  • AWeber email marketing with Blog Broadcast feature
  • Blog sync with Facebook Page and Twitter account
  • Google Analytics reports within WP dashboard and by email
  • Automatic weekly Database backups
  • Plugins: Spamblocker, Security, Super Cache (for faster load time)
  • Feedburner RSS feed optimization
  • Teleseminar Registration possibilities for the future

What do you think of Patt’s website?  Leave me a comment.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

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Manage Your Reputation

Posted on November 4, 2009 by CScholz

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You can help people find you on the internet by managing your Google profile.  It’s kind of fun, actually – you can add photos from a photo sharing service you use, add your Google voice phone number (or any phone number), your website/s, your superpowers and details about where you grew up and where you have lived.  With this tool you can also make sure people have the information (as little or as much) about you that you want them to have.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

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Free alternative to BrowserCam: Browser Shots

Posted on November 3, 2009 by CScholz

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BrowserShots is a free, open-source program created by Johann C. Rocholl that allows you to see how your website looks in dozens of different browsers on different operating systems including Linux, Mac and Windows.  It works by making screenshots of your web design from different browsers and sending those screenshots to a results page on the BrowserShots server where you can see them all.

If you design WordPress websites, this is a very important tool considering that, although in my opinion, many WordPress sites look better in Firefox or Safari, the majority of people are still using Internet Explorer on Windows machines.  And for someone like me, who works primarily on an iMac, this is the only way I can see what my sites look like in Windows browsers because Microsoft does not support Internet Explorer for Macs anymore.

Check your site out at BrowserShots and leave me a comment with your experience.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

Posted in General How-To, General Information, Open Source | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Green Web Hosting: Dreamhost PS

Posted on October 30, 2009 by CScholz

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For the most part, I have really enjoyed my unlimited green web hosting service with Dreamhost – mostly because I have unlimited file space for my websites.   The time has come, however, to move my client’s sites over to a private server.  They were using up too much RAM, and it was causing sites to load slower and have internal server problems.  Moving to Dreamhost PS (private server) will increase the stability of my sites and it will also increase my overhead slightly and I will need to re-adjust my prices to account for it.  This price increase will only affect new clients, so for those of you who I’ve already setup, this move will be included.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

Posted in General Information | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Google Local Business Center

Posted on October 29, 2009 by CScholz

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Here is another way you can increase your visibility on Google – register your business at Google’s Local Business Center.  It will put you on Google Maps for your business and help people locate you.  If you work from home or just want some privacy about your actual location, use a PO Box as your address so folks can at least see where your city is located in your country.

Also, see Coryon Redd’s article in the Union about this topic.

Here to help you make your finest dreams come true,

-Catherine

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