So recently I have been getting bandwidth warnings on two of my top reaching websites. Why? Well, it is because of WordPress plug ins. Not all are optimized and not all features are enabled on the websites that could make them optimal. So lets find out what can help. Continue reading →

I found a great article and tool to get started, but it took many attempts to finally move or relocate WordPress website or folder from http://elbsolutions.com/chadtest to the almost final position of http://smartcar.websitewelcome.com/~wccogca . Since it was quite frustrating, I thought I would blog about it for other people who can benefit. Steps were:

1. get temp website running moved over to final home (from http://www.elbsolutions.com/chadtest to http://smartcar.websitewelcome.com/~wccogca its temporary home before DNS change over)
2. switch website completely to another (DNS change) and
3. finalize the website at it’s new home in proper place (proper www address).  but the address will be http://www.wccog.ca – but the files in 2. are in the correct spot already.

With these ideas, I hope you can move your site over as well. Read the comments in the article by Rachel below – I think there are some even easier tools, but this one has some plugins and a theme that made this a bit of a pain.

If there is a typo, please comment so others can benefit from the corrections. It takes a second 🙂 Good luck.

So, first Continue reading →

Publishing Paypal buttons or other HTML code into your wordpress blog works great the first time, but upon subsequent saves, it can be downright frustrating because the HTML you pasted into the HTML view gets changed. With a simple abstraction using a snippet tool/plugin like HTML Snippet (XYZ Html), the code you intended can stay right in the article each time.

Watch this Youtube Video – it was written for one of my customers. But the basics are:

1. In Paypal, make a paypal button & copy the button’s HTML code
2. In you wordpress blog’s HTML Snippet (aka XYZ Html), copy the code and give the snippet a unique name
3. Paste into your blog or article, the snippet tag/line/code (copy and paste it from the list of snippets)
4. Publish your blog or article

Adding to the sidebar? See the first set of instructions. Adding to a post (article) or a page? See the 2nd set of instructions.

Common info

For you – simply insert a normal weblink for a youtube video. For example, an seminar promo video for a seminar called “IMPRESSION” has a youtube link of :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5jIMphTm9w

Where it says below to change http to httpv – there are MORE options and they are listed at the following link – scroll down about 1/2 way cause the stuff at the top is promo fluff.

http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/smart-youtube

First – what NOT to click on or change – I warned you

One of my customers clicked on the obvious link – Smart Youtube Settings  on the left of the wordpress admin section. Don’t do it – you will be sorry (you have been warned 😉 )! This is for geeks only … but then why do they make it so tempting to click on? I don’t know – one of life’s ironies. Simply do follow the instructions below and you will be better off – get a geek to fiddle with the Smart Youtube Settings area. 🙂

Sidebar additions:

To add a Smart Youtube link to your sidebar or long vertical area on the right of all your pages (“Primary Sidebar”) you would do the steps below. Remember – you might have a few sidebars (like a blog sidebar) you want to add the video to – do these steps for all sidebars.

1. log into your site’s admin or back end http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin
2. on the far left, click the menu Appearance->Widgets
3. using find, or your eyes, look for “Smart Youtube”. You have scroll down a bit
4. click “Add”
5. it now brings you to a place that you have to paste the link like in the email bel
   1. add a title that appears ABOVE the video in the sidebar
   2. THE TRICKY BIT & MAGIC BIT – CHANGE THE http to httpv – so your link will be httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5jIMphTm9w (you have to edit/force it to be this)
   3. Choose the radio button (round check mark like thing) beside “Leadershift Blog, Category”
   4. on the right of this text, use the pulldown marked –Select– and choose the order in which you want it to appear – I think you want #1 (top) so your visitors will see it.
6. click “Save Widget” at the bottom
7. If you want finer control over things – go to the webpage below, scroll down to “Installation and Usage” and look at the options that this plugin has. You can control the size, the quality etc. of what is shown. Click this link (same link as given above) to see more options (scroll 1/2 way down first)

ALWAYS preview your work – check it out on all pages that have that sidebar (remeber not all links/menus etc. have the same sidebar).

NOTE – TEACHING MOMENT: – you can have different sidebars for different parts of your site. So when you get into teaching mode, and have blogs/categories for them, you could provide special links for your students – which you would NOT include for your main visitors whom you are trying to get hooked.

Adding to an article (post or page)

1. log into your back end of your website http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin
2. go to the article where you want to insert it
3. add a link to the video
   1. so first, type some text like “IMPRESSION Video” (You won’t see this text anyways)
   2. next highlight the above phrase
   3. click the chain links button to make a link
4. paste your youtube link above into the box labelled “URL”
5. THE TRICKY BIT & MAGIC BIT – CHANGE THE http to httpv – so your link will be httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5jIMphTm9w
6. click Link button at the bottom
7. If you want finer control over things – go to the webpage below, scroll down to “Installation and Usage” and look at the options that this plugin has. You can control the size, the quality etc. of what is shown. Click this link (same link as given above) to see more options (scroll 1/2 way down first)

We often write email addresses into our email articles online whether it is our blog, comments or website pages we build. Web-bots (Robots) scour web pages and those that link to them 24/7 looking for email addresses and use them to spam us and others. That is the main reason.

Other reasons are if you put a link to your email and people click on it – what if they are hotmail or yahoo or gmail users? On a PC, it will by default start up Outlook Express (older computers) or Outlook which usually isn’t set up for these types of users. Mac will start up “Mail” which again might not be set up for our all-online friends. Will these customers figure it is not worth contacting you because it is too much hassle or they don’t have time right ow to log in to their online service? Having a link to a page/link called “Contact Us” instead of your email address allows seamless integration and natural navigation to people contacting you.

For the same reasons – do not include other people’s email addresses either (the ‘golden rule’ applies for you and your friends). Their spam count will go up as well.

So what do we do instead?

a) make a Contact Me or Contact Us page with an online form (continued below)

b) if you HAVE TO (like you should on your linked in summary) use me.at.mycompany.com or me – at – mycompany.com form of your email address. Yes, it can be simply scraped but using ~ or # or * as the symbols, it is less likely to get picked up

Make a contact me page on your website (all webpage makers, Joomla or WordPress have this pre-installed), and link to that. Always put a link with “Contact Us” which is the standard for almost all websites. For example, all my customers who fill their own content in online, all have been set up with a contact-us page. That is a form in which you can enter your information / email / request with all the reasons for your customers to contact you. If you have your local web-geek doing this for you or you are doing it yourself, please ensure (s)he puts a CAPTCHA on the page as well so the computer knows it is a human and not a computer. I have one on my site with random simple math the person has to do, others have a word phrase that has to be entered etc.

How do get the link to this Contact Us page to copy/paste in? The easy way is to open a new internet tab or window, click on the contact us link on that page and copy the link all the way from http to the end. Then paste it into your article using the link button. It is that simple. If you have WordPress or Joomla there is a search box – just type in “contact” (assuming your link/article has the word ‘contact’ in it) and wait … up it comes in the list. Click on it and you are linked.

Always test any pages that have links so you stay looking professional.

I am always looking out for your best interest – keep these things in mind and avoid a little less spam and a few more contacts from customers or friends.