Here’s how to get started with Simpl.

Download the Simpl App from the App Store in your iPad. You can also click on the App Store icon and search for “Simpl.” To get started, click the gear in the upper left hand corner, if you are not already on the Settings screen. Then add some information about your website. There is even space to add a description and keywords for SEO.

Simpl Settings Screen

Next you choose your theme. There are currently five themes each with three different color schemes. The themes are very simple, clean, and beautiful. There are options to add your social media connections, just Twitter and Facebook. These icons appear at the bottom of every page.

Simple Themes Screen

Then you click the Simpl icon in the upper left corner to add your pages. There are five page types — Home, Photos for a gallery, Contact, About which is really a quotes or mission statement page, and News which is a mini blog. Right now your website can only be five pages, and it seems only one of each type, even though the FAQ says that all your pages can be of one type. They also say you will be able to add extra pages on the next release.

Simpl Edit Screen

Here are screen shots of my Simpl website design, in case my account is not active.

The Home page can is text-only right now, but they say they will be adding image capability as a top priority. There are only four buttons for styling text — bold, italic, add a link, or remove a link.

Amethyst Home Page

The About or quotes page has large text; I use mine as a mission statement.

Amethyst Mission Statement

The photos page can have up to twelve photos; the first one appears when the page is first loaded. The photos are easy to add from your iPad Camera Roll; you can add captions too.

Amethyst Website Design Portfolio

The News or blog page looks like this for the theme I used. Again there is not an option to add images to your news items.

Amethyst News Page

And the Contact page has room for name, phone, email, and street address.

You can see other themes and websites on the Simpl Example page.

When you have your pages all ready to publish, you return to the Settings screen (the gear). Click the Publish tab and then the large green Publish button. You will be asked to create and verify your account, and then your website is published.

Once your free hosting period is over, the cost is $4.99 per month, but there is a discount for early adopters, $3.99.

Simpl is a nice option for quick website design.

You just finished reading "Easy Website Design with Simpl". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

Google Places for Business

Using Google Places is a great way for a small business to get online and listed in local search. You can provide information about your business — what you do, your location, a link to your website, contact information, hours of operation, photos, videos, and also promotions for your business. But what do you you do if you work from home? You probably don’t want your home address listed in a local search. Google doesn’t want you to use a PO Box location for your Places page either.

Google has a solution for work-at-home businesses though. When you create your Google Places listing, you enter your home address, but there is a check box to hide your actual street address in the search listings, and you can specify a service area instead. See the FAQ at Google Places for Business.

When you get to the section labeled “Service Areas and Location Settings, Does your business provide services, such as delivery or home repair, to locations in a certain area?”, you choose the radio button, “Yes, this business serves customers at their locations.” As soon as you check, “Do not show…,” another section drops down that will allow you to check, “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing.”

Google Places When You Work At Home

Then you can choose a service area for your business based on distance from your location or you can select areas of service, based on a city names and/or zip code areas.

Once you have completed your Places page, Google verifies that you own the business. For a business with an actual location, they will call the business phone number you provided and give you a PIN. When you use your home address and hide it in the search listing, they send a PIN in the mail addressed to your business with Attn: to your name, which takes up to two weeks. Once you receive the PIN, you can login to your Places account, and add the PIN to the “Needs Action” section in your Dashboard.

Google Places Dashboard to Input Your Verification PIN

Also don’t worry about completing the entire listing at one time. You can login and edit it as often as you like. The most important information to start your page is your contact information, the Category of business, and the Service Areas and Location Settings.

Get started today with Google Places for your home-based business at Google Places for Business. More instructions are in the Google Places for Business User Guide.

You just finished reading "Google Places When You Work At Home". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

An Educational Group Website

This WordPress website theme is for an educational group. It has a members-only area for some of their pages and their monthly newsletter. The site also has a contact form, a styled photo album gallery, and a login form that redirects to the members-only pages. Their monthly newsletter has eight sections, but is easy for them to update. They also use a group mailing list to communicate information.

You just finished reading "A Members-Only WordPress Website Theme". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

A portfolio page was added. This one is a simple brochure site with a page slider. View the live site for the full effect. View the rest of the additions on the portfolio page.

You just finished reading "Portfolio Additions". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

Some Questions to Answer

1. Who are you trying to reach?
The obvious answer is anyone who wants your product or service. But by trying to reach everyone, you spend resources you don’t have for little return. If you shoot enough random paint balls against a wall, after a long time, the wall will be covered with paint. But if you want only a small portion of the wall painted, shooting paint balls randomly is not the way to do it. It’s better to focus your aim before you shoot, and shoot only at the area that you want to hit. So think about narrowing your market or niche. If you’re a music teacher, do you specialize in piano or guitar? Do you prefer teaching beginners or advanced students? Maybe you like teaching retired adults who have always wanted to take piano lessons. If you narrow your focus, you can enhance your story and focus more specifically on potential clients.

2. What’s your story?
When you find a potential client, have a story to tell them – your elevator speech. The story should tell what you can do for them. What problem can you or your product solve for them? How can you solve their problem in a way that’s different from everyone else?
Specifically, to create your story, you need to ask yourself:

1. What is the problem you can solve?
2. How can you solve it?
3. What do you want them to do next?

For instance the music teacher can talk about helping people fulfill their life long dream to play the piano. Emphasize how you are different from your competition. The music teacher specializes in adults; she understands that teaching an adult beginner is different than teaching a child beginner. Testimonials from previous clients can help. That’s proof that you or your product really can deliver. What you want them to do next depends on whether they are a friend, a previous client, or a potential client. The music teacher can ask friends if they know anyone who wants lessons; she can ask previous clients for testimonials; she can ask a potential client if she can call them later or to take her card.

3. Who do you need in your network?
First think about the people you know – all of them – the parents of the girls who take dance lessons with your daughter, the people with whom you volunteer at the food bank, good friends. Contact them and tell them your story. You can do this the old fashioned way – when you see them or call them on the phone. You can ask them to keep you in mind, or to give you leads, or to follow or like you on your favorite social media.

You can also use social media, like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, to network with those you know; this can really help to grow your business.  You can join other networks where potential clients are. Then you can begin to gradually add some of those people to your network. The really wonderful thing about using the online networks is that you can continually remind those in your network that your business exists just by posting something. Just don’t post too often; you don’t want to be obnoxious. And don’t post only about yourself; you are networking to build long-term relationships.

You just finished reading "Small Business and NonProfit Marketing for Free". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

Demo

The gif is surrounded with a conditional comment.

<img class="modern" src="logo.png" />
<!--[if lt IE 7 ]> <img src="logo.gif" > <![endif]-->

At this point all browsers display only the png, except IE 6 displays both the png and the gif.

So in the css, to keep the png from displaying to IE 6:

img.modern {
_display:none; /* IE 6 */
}

The underscore hack before display: none targets IE 6 only.

OK, so this uses a conditional comment and a CSS hack; a png fix or background image is probably a better choice. But since IE 9 works only in Windows 7, the IE hack or conditional comments and style sheets for IE 7 and IE 8 are going to be with us for some time.

More information on hacks and conditional comments can be found on Web Designer Wall and Paul Irish.

You just finished reading "IE Hacks and Conditional Comments". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

Community TechKnowledge Foundation:

The first is the 2011 Heart and Soul Grant Award Program from Community TechKnowledge Foundation. They also have a Facebook Page describing the program, including a brief video. This program is giving away over $25,000 in grants to support all registered nonprofits and charities in the US, Canada, and the UK, and the top winner will get a song written for their organization, in addition to the grant.

To apply nonprofits (anyone associated with the organization) should write an original 4 to 8 line poem (or description) describing their mission and work. The application deadline is March 28th, 2011. This appears to be a yearly program. There is a brief video on the Heart and Soul Facebook Page describing the program.

Google for Nonprofits:

Google has had a program for nonprofits (US organizations must have current 501(c)(3) status.) for some time. Nonprofits, including churches, are able to use Google email ad-free just like educational institutions. (Businesses are able to use Google email free with ads or ad-free with a paid account.)

Google for Nonprofits has recently increased their offerings to help nonprofits that fit within the Google eligibility restrictions to reach donors and raise awareness for their causes. Of note is YouTube for Nonprofits and Google Grants for free AdWords advertising.  While most churches and membership organizations would not meet the eligibility requirements, some community or international organizations would.

You just finished reading "Grants for Nonprofits from Community TechKnowledge or Google". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

There are lots of tools to use for screen captures, but one of the most useful and intuitive applications to use for screen cast video capture is Jing by Techsmith. It’s available for Windows and Mac. There’s a free version and also a Jing Pro version for $14.95 per year. Screen shots and videos can be easily saved and shared on your favorite social media site; that’s the beauty of Jing. Your Jing account is connected to a Screencast.com account with 2 GB storage for easily storing your videos.

Once you sign up for your account, and install Jing, you can begin recording immediately. If you want to record audio, be sure to plug in your mic first. You can also set your Preferences by clicking on the gears on the sun logo before your first recording.

To begin recording, click on the plus sign on the sun logo, and drag the cross hairs from the upper left corner to the lower right corner. You’ll also see the control buttons. Click on the video icon; your screen will let you know that the mic is on, and give you a 3-2-1 countdown.

You can pause, mute the mic, or restart the recording whenever you like. Jing Pro allows you to also record with your webcam, so you can switch between the webcam and the screen. When you’re finished recording – there’s a 5 minute limit – click the stop button.Then you’ll have some choices about how to share your video. If you haven’t set the Preferences for social network sharing, you can choose to upload the video to Screencast.com. You’ll be given a link or embed code to share your video. You can also login to Screencast.com to get the link or embed code, if you want to share your video later.

Next edit your Jing sharing buttons so that you can quickly share your videos with your friends using your favorite social media. In addition to uploading to Screencast. com, options include YouTube (for Jing Pro only), Flicker, Facebook, Twitter, your blog, or your website.

Jing Pro allows video to be saved as MPEG-4 Video, as well as SWF. Free Jing only saves to SWF. Jing Pro also allows unbranded videos, webcam recording, and sharing to YouTube.

You just finished reading "Screen Capture and Screen Cast Videos with Jing". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

This is what happened:

1. The text and images inside the posts imported nicely.
2. The images for the Tumblr image posts did not. I didn’t have very many, so I just copied them  from my Tumblr, and then inserted them into the correct image posts.
3. The post types had the correct Format type, except that the normal posts were labeled as “Aside,” instead of “Standard” in WordPress.

It might be useful to try adding the WooTumblog plugin to your WordPress before importing. I’m curious to know if that helps with the image import.

So here’s how to import your Tumblr to WP:

1. Go to Tumblr2WP and fill in your Tumblr details. For Permalinks, I selected “Tumblr text slug only,” and left all the rest at the defaults.
2. Tumblr2WP creates an XML file for you to download to your desktop.
3. Login to your WordPress, and in the left hand links, choose Tools and then Import.
4. When you click on Posts in the left hand links, you should see all the imported Tumblr posts.

Note that I used Tumblr2WP when only 274 sites were exported. I’m sure improvements to the image post imports will happen soon.

You just finished reading "Importing your Tumblr to WordPress". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.

<video src="Videos/cat.ogv" controls></video>

If you use this format instead, you will be ready to add the code to play H.264 and Flash:

<video width="320" height="240" poster="Videos/cat.jpg" controls>
<source src="Videos/cat.ogv" type"video/ogg">

</video>

where “poster” is the image used while the video is loading, “width” and “height” refer to the video dimensions, and “controls” adds the native video controls. The Dev Opera site has information on other attributes and also how to script your own controls.

You can convert nearly any video codec into Ogg Theora using either Firefogg, an add-on for Firefox or ffmpeg2theora.  These work in all operating systems.

Dive into HTML5 and Theora Cookbook both have detailed explanations of how to encode Ogg video with Firefogg.

Ffmpeg2theora is a command line application, but it is easy to use. If you use Linux it is probably available in your repositories. If you use MacOS X or Windows, you can download and install ffmpeg2theora.

The cat video in the demo was taken with an inexpensive camera; the video from the camera was .mov format. To convert it to Ogg Theora, use the command:

ffmpeg2theora cat.mov -o cat.ogv

where cat.mov is the input file and -o means that you are writing to an output file named cat.ogv.

You can also change the video quality and the view size of the video; both of these affect the size of the output file.  For instance, using the command:

ffmpeg2theora cat.mov -v 5 -a 2 -x 320 -y 240 -o cat.ogv

-v is the video quality; 5 is the default; smaller numbers are lower quality
-a is the audio quality; 2 is the default; again smaller is lower quality
-x is the desired width of the output video
-y is the desired height of the output video

There are other parameters that can be used as well.  Theora Cookbook and It Came from the Internet have more examples.

You just finished reading "How To Encode Ogg Theora Video". I'd love to hear what you have to say! ~Marcy Amethyst Website Design - Creating easy-to-update websites for small businesses, professionals, and churches. Located in the Ahwatukee area of Phoenix, AZ.