It’s inevitable, when you take the dive into WordPress to build your business website or make your first few changes, several questions pop up while moving through the menu’s, settings, and comparing your site to other sites.

Here are 11 real users questions and their answers, pulled straight from e-mail and chat from some of the 100+ online businesses IT Arsenal has supported.

It’s no wonder questions come up, there’s a lot to look at, and with website development, there’s about 10 names for everything if you’re unfamiliar and describing what you see. [is that a header, or logo, or masthead, or top part, or splash image?]

If you’re still getting familiar with WordPress for a business website, Id love to hear if you found these useful, I know questions vary, and this is by no means exhaustive.

 Q1. When to do SEO

So far I have done zero SEO work. Is it ok to complete most of the website and go back to add in keywords etc.? ..or will it be much more efficient to plug along with SEO as I go? I ask because when it comes to SEO, im a complete rookie.

I understand that adding keywords helps search engines etc… but how am I supposed to know which keywords I should actually be using, and where?

A1. SEO, what a wild beast.

Yes, it is okay to go back and fill in keywords later, and just create content right now, and that’s what I would advise doing. Be mindful of it, but DO NOT let it slow you down.

Place keywords [words you want to show up in search engines for] in page titles and paragraph headers [Header 1] but don’t obsess, it’s more important to get your website to a point where it can take transactions.

Q2. http:// What?

Some of the widgets and plugins have the option of including an image. however, there isnt always an “upload image” button. sometimes there is only a bar to enter a “http://” for it to find the image. im not familiar with how to do it like that. (for example – i got a special box plugin, and when creating a new style, there is an add image bar that has http://…)

A2. Okay, so before the invent of easy to use upload buttons, people had to login to their web host, or use a service to load up pictures, to “host” them, and then they were given a URL to use for that image.

This process is called FTP, and it’s foundational to understanding website building, so IT Arsenal built a guide on it: What is [and how to use] FTP in 8 minutes for the “I’m not a techy” Beginner

Alternately, you can get an http:// file URL through WordPress via the Media menu, here’s how:

Media > Add New, Upload an image, click Edit, then select the link in the File URL box.

 Q3. Where are the Fonts!?

How can I add/use specific fonts that aren’t already available in my WordPress theme?

A3. Fonts on the web aren’t the same as the ones on your computer, you’re only allowed to use fonts that everyone has, or “web fonts”… so it’s extremely limited.

*The landscape of web fonts is changing, but it’s not yet at the point where it takes no effort to use any font you want.

In the WordPress editor, without any plugins, you don’t get the option to choose fonts. The theme your using has code that dictates this. The easiest way to overrule this is to install the Plugin TinyMCE Advanced gives you the “Font family” dropdown for selecting basic, standard fonts.

If you want to go beyond that, of course there’s a work around. Google has started to “host” fonts for people around the world to use on their sites, meaning many more fonts can be used by the web, since if you don’t have this font on your computer, it will go pull it from Googles servers.

Implementing this is not as easy as installing a plugin and then selecting a font unfortunately. I’m glad to dig more into it, but essentially you install a Google Font plugin, and then assign a font to an “element” on your site, like paragraph text, or text that are marked with H1, meaning the biggest header. Expect to monkey with code for this fix.

Here’s a good plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-google-fonts/

Q4. Post Signatures

What is my best/easiest option for creating an “e-signature” that uses my real hand writing and can be inserted into my pages/posts?

A4. You’re best bet is to take a scan, or camera phone snapshot of your signature.

If you want to put this into every post, use a “template” plugin that you can add the signature to and set all posts to use that template, so essentially that image just get’s automatically added to every new post to start out with, as if you created a new post and added it yourself. Standard “template” thinking.

Good plugin to start testing with: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-post-template/

Q5. Comment Boxes

As of right now, there is a “leave a comment” box on every single page on my site. Where do i go to control what pages i would like people to be able to comment on?

A5. You do this on a “per post/page” basis. Go to the post or page, scroll down to the “Discussion” session, if you don’t see this, at the very top of the page on the right there is a “Screen Options” button, click this, and enable the “Discussion” box, this will cause the Discussion (Comment and trackback, meaning alerts when people link to your postpage) box to show up at the bottom of the page.

If you dont want the comments to show up on all posts, or pages, IT Arsenal can do that with behind the scenes code. Sometimes themes have this extra coding built in as an option in their backend menus.

Q6. Hover Boxes

I have seen certain sites that have colored/highlighted text, and when you hover your mouse over the text, a small bubble appears with more text. i’ve seen it used well – especially with jargon, so in the little bubble that appears after hovering, it gives a quick definition or something. do u reccomend any plugins or something for this?

A6. These are often referred to as “Tooltips” … plugins and shortcode implementation are required if your interested in these! Some learning, playing around involved.

Try these plugins:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/text-hover/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easy-tooltip/

Q7. Setting a Page/Post’s Address

When publishing an actual post/blog, how do i make it show up at a specific link http://mywebsite.com/THIS PART ?

A7. I believe you mean, how do you set it so a specific URL like http://mywebsite.com/myawesomeURLiwant/

You do this right above the post, and under the title, where it says “Permalink” … click the edit button there…NO SPACES ALLOWED!

Q8. “Continue reading” vs. Entire article

I see some blogs show the entire article right away. I prefer it when blogs show the first paragraph or so, and then have a “continue reading” option that expands the rest of the article if activated. whats the best way to do this?

A8. You simply hit the “Insert More” button where you want it to “break”. This will cause the “Continue Reading” link to show up when reading on the blog page, and obviously if the user is on the full article page, they will see the full article.

Insert More Button

Q9. If you Liked this, you might Like…

I’ve also seen some blogs that include at the bottom -> “if you liked this, you might also like (links to other similar articles)”. how do i get this on my blog?

These are called “Related Posts” in the WordPress world, a plugin for this if a theme doesn’t have this feature built in is required.

See here for a good plugin to test – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/spostarbust/

Q10. Cool Social Media Links & Buttons

I know I want my social media links in the sidebar, how do people do that?

There’s no universal method, or high technology here, most often, these are just images with a link to someones profile on a social website. If you want your images to be styled in a way that matches your website, you’re going to have to hunt for some on the web, download them, and add them into the sidebar as an image, or hire a designer to make them for you.

Sounding like a broken record, there is of course a plugin that offers a wide array of icons for adding sidebar social media icons and links to your sidebar as a stand alone widget.

Social Media Icons Widget: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/social-media-icons/

Q11. Making Pages and Editing the Navigation Menu

Why do pages I create not show up in the menu navigation area?

The navigation menu [that show up as tabs on many websites] in WordPress is not linked to the pages you create in anyway. You set the navigation menu, what pages you want [from the ones you've ALREADY created] and their order from the Appearance option in the WordPress backend.

Appearance > Menus

NOTE: Typically questions are posted on on our dedicated page for Q&A [have a question, go ask!] but today we have a series of 12 questions compiled here for compounded knowledge!

Thanks for reading, share this with someone who would find it useful!

More visibility in search results leads to more traffic, which leads to the potential for more customers, followers, hits, whatever you’re looking to get out of a visitor.

People are all the rage about it when they start out, despite anything beyond the basics not really being that important at first. What are the basics? It really boils down to titles of pages, posts and your homepage. My advice is to title these things according to what your market would search for, and stop there until you’ve made your first $5000.

So better SEO can lead to more traffic, OK, but how do you know what your SEO “looks” like, so you can figure out how to improve it?

USE This Tool!

If you don’t have an SEO tool, I have one for you right here. When you use Domain Tools SEO Browser you will be able to view your website the way that search engine bots do. 100% Text only.

It will actually load inside a simple looking browser on the Domain Tools website, see the images below for an example of what it looks like. Seeing the text only version of your site will provide insight into what keywords a search engine bot will see without having to do a ton of digging.

I like this tool specifically because of this, yes there are other site services that give you a grade, but why do you get a C verses an A? This tool shows you plainly if the context of your site’s message get’s across in just text.

You don’t typically need to spend more than an hour or two on SEO during the first few months that your website is up.  Newer webmasters or those who haven’t paid attention to their ranks in search engines don’t need to know every SEO trick, a quick spin around the block with the SEO Text Browser reveals most of the major corrections that are needed to rank better with on-page content. Simply checking your title relevancy and description relevancy can be a major eye opener.  

The Benefits

Using a site like Domain Tools SEO Browser helps expose problems that may show up when sharing posts from your website to social media (typically the wrong text shows up in the title and description). 

You can press the “i” button [seen below, top left corner] to see what your optimization rank is.  I suggest comparing your website to a competitor’s that ranks better. Look for the differences to see what SEO work needs to be done. Other helpful information that you can find within DomainTools is the number of images, links, and domains linked to your website.

For Example:
Below is a set of screenshots for Etsy.com within Domain Tools. You can tell straight away in the first shot what Etsy is all about.  In the second you can just as easily view Etsy’s SEO score, what improvements are recommended and active keywords.

[click to enlarge]

Basic SEO Strategies

Some simple ways to improve your SEO are as follows:  

Using relative keywords throughout your site every nook and cranny, meaning the title of pages, posts, and headers inside pages and posts. The keywords that you use on your site should basically be search terms. What words would someone type in the search bar when looking for information in a topic?

Your page header is a crucial place to use keywords.  Also make sure to be updating your website often with useful knowledgeable information to keep the clients that you have gained.

Fresh content keeps your readers coming back, which is just as important!

Creating “obvious” URLS or Permalinks with keywords is another great way to make sure that your website is being seen by search engines.

Click here to change Permalink

Filling out the “alt text” when insert images with a keyword relevant description

*TIP* Don’t stress about SEO, about terms you don’t know, about percentages, if you’re starting out, put your best foot forward, title things appropriately and move on! SEO is just one method to gaining traffic, if you have ferocious fans who share your content to every living soul, it won’t matter what robots see on your site, so take things in context, clean up a few headlines on your site, and move on to the next pressing task!

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Always glad to help!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1L3A96yE

[bear with us while we explore different recording variations]

Special guest: Travis Sherry, Extra Pack of Peanuts

Topics Include:

• E-Junkie service thoughts  30:31 – 32:57
• Moving web hosts, how hard is it? [common sluggishness problems and good hosts]  1:27-11:04 and 34:02 – 37
• AWeber forms, how to get javascript working in WordPress! [and why you want the javascript version]  16:02 – 24:55
• How to put a call to action at the bottom of every post [post footer]  24:55 – 29:57
• Using shortcodes for putting a sign up in the middle of a post  29:57 – 30:30

 Notes on Each Topic and Resources

Hosting

• Bluehost/Hostgator – Good shared hosting services
• WPEngine – More expensive, great customer service and scalable webhosting
• Imsanity - Use this plugin to trim and search for large images on your WordPress website
• Covered in video: How to move your website hosting – how long, how hard, what has to happen?
  • his site goes down, or has been slow
  • has used cached plugin
  • the uselessness of shared web hosting support
  • sometimes your host is just bad quality

Hosting Migration

• Involved coordinated action, and technical expertise to backup, export, and migrate data.

EJunkie

• It’s an extra layer on top of PayPal

AWeber

• Must use HTML mode if you want to use Javascript embed method to work properly
• Switching visual to HTML mode strips out code in several occasions
  • Widget/sidebar text widgets strip this out too, use this plugin to enable Widgets with HTML [or "Text"] mode.
  • Use shortcode plugin mentioned below to solve this problem, so the script won’t be stripped out when moving between visual and HTML

Add Post Footer Plugin

• Use for adding content, like a newsletter sign up to the bottom of every post
• 30:45 Add an image or your signup form in a normal post or page like you would normally, and copy the code from the HTML mode and paste it into the add-post-footer plugin

Gravity Forms Plugin with PayPal Addon

• Used as a e-commerce system, and explored how to see if a buyer has paid, and with what e-mail address.

Shortcoder Plugin

• Use this plugin to set up “shortcodes” for your AWeber or other embeds, so you can easily embed them without “wrestling” with HTML mode, and frustrations from switching back and forth from HTML mode and Visual mode.

First, real quick, I’m increasing my Lifeline program, [an "all you can eat, all problems handled anytime" program] from $249, to $349 January 1 2013, if you want to lock in the lower rate, and ensure your site and business tech is handled while your traveling between family dinners and partying on new years eve, get the Lifeline now at the lower rate.

Okay, Hi,

There’s one key piece of technology I use to NEVER forget about an e-mail, while RAPIDLY emptying my inbox at the same time and I want to share it.

What if you never had to worry about following up with someone again, but could file away their e-mail and be magically reminded about it later?

You could…

• Clear out your inbox of stuff that can wait a day, or week, or month
• Bring time sensitive e-mail back to your inbox if no one responds by the next morning
• Nudge clients or support that seem to be unresponsive
• Kill that “follow up” folder you have in your e-mail program nagging you
• Avoid that sense of e-mail overwhelm

…all WITHOUT adding any time in your daily workflow?

Sound useful?

Here’s the answer

The “Boomerang” Service for Gmail & Outlook

This works with Google based webmail or Outlook. I do realize not everyone uses those, hit reply and let me know if you’re interested in learning how to switch your current setup to Google Mail.

Boomerang puts a small checkbox in your compose window [see below] that let’s you set the message you are replying to, writing, or just viewing, to come back to the top of your inbox in however many days if no one responds or just whenever you want.

That’s it, hit send like normal, [or file the message away] after you check this box, and your e-mail is automatically managed.

It’s a small thing but SO powerful, especially for looking like a rock star business owner.

You’ll nudge projects, see less e-mail in your inbox, and sense less overwhelm.

It’s a tool I use every day, and I hope you find it useful!

Get it for Gmail —–>

Get it for Outlook –>

Want more e-mail management info? Hit reply and let me know, I had to stop myself from telling you about 3 other tactics!

IT Arsenal promises to never e-mail you junk, only useful actionable content.
Questions? Hit reply!

If you upload images to your WordPress website, you’re very likely unknowingly making your website fat, slow, and hard to backup with each post. You’re potentially losing readers, causing backups to fail, and making life harder in the future.

Let Me Explain

A large website will load slower, and be harder to backup, potentially losing you readers, some Google rank love, and wreaking havoc later when that backup you thought happened a week ago, didn’t, and now your site has crashed.

AHHH! Right? Don’t stress, it’s okay, but it’s something you want to nip in the bud, become aware of and fix now. It’s not too difficult or technical a problem to solve either.

The Problem [do you have it?]

Many of your images, ESPECIALLY if you are uploading them from a digital camera are MUCH larger than they are showing up on your posts. This is the problem, you likely don’t look at the resolution, or megabytes of the image, and who wants to, you just upload the thing and make it work right!?

If you know how big your images are, and trim all of them before uploading them to WordPress, this post isn’t for you.

Well..when you upload a image at full resolution and its HUGE, WordPress doesn’t shrink it, instead it just tells the website to display it smaller. So it’s still a big picture, taking up a lot of space on your website, it just shows up smaller on the page because of the confines of the theme you use on your site.

It looks pretty, but that’s not the whole story.

It’s making that page load really slowly, especially for phones that want to read your content, [you know that's only going to get more popular right?] and 6 months and 30 posts later, your site is now getting so big it can cause problems with backup or your website host.

Here’s an example to make it really clear.

So on this page —

http://wakawakawinereviews.com/2012/11/01/being-delectable-how-a-data-guru-and-entertainment-engineer-went-deep-into-wine/

There’s an image that looks like this

In reality, the pictures are actually this big, note the scroll bars and how much bigger the image really is.

See the problem? Especially if you post often, or include multiple pictures in posts.

WordPress will hopefully clean this up someday, and build in some automatic feature to shrink images down and protect people from not even realizing they are doing this, but until then, here’s a solution. [note: there a lots of ways to solve this, but this one let's you set it once, and forget it so you don't have to try and form a new habit or learn something new]

Hint: It’s a plugin [of course, but this one is a set it and forget it type]

Imsanity

This plugin scans your website for any images over a specific width you give it [I recommend 1024px] and then lets you shrink down all images to this size you’ve already uploaded, AND automatically does this for all images you upload from now on.

You have the option for it to simply list all the photo’s over your size limit before shrinking them as well, so it’s good for researching if you have this issue.

Educate Yourself

If you don’t know anything about pixels, a high resolution photo is probably 4000px wide…a Facebook photo is probably 800px. The new iPhone 5 for example takes pictures at 2592px x 1936px, and if you have a “real” camera, it likely takes pictures much larger. If you have a fancy DSLR and spent over $700 bucks for your camera, I bet you’re shooting images closer to 6000px wide. [this data changes as our cameras and tech advances]

The point? If you’re not printing the photo, it does not have to to be more than 1024 to look nice on a computer screen right now.

Here’s the step by step

How to Install and Use Imsanity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXFvNg64ywU

Steps shown in the video above

• Install the Imsanity plugin on your WordPress website, activate the plugin.
• Go to the Imsanity Settings Page to set your max width, hit save! [that's all that's needed to solve the problem from today onward]
• Go to the Imsanity Settings Page, search your sites images to “Bulk Resize Images”.

Example Bulk Resize Image Search

• View the list to see how much bloat your website has, check off the images you want to resize.

IT Arsenal is all about a smooth running online business, and eliminating image bloat, and massively sized websites is part of that.

Special thanks to Elaine from wakawakawinereviews.com

The most useful functions of FTP are uploading images and files to your website so you can create links like www.yourwebsite.com/images/logo.jpg or www.yourwebsite.com/downloads/myebook.pdf.

FTP is one of those core essential techy things you have to learn if you’re going to have an online business, even if it’s just to manage other people who deal with it or understand the concept for passing off to troubleshooters.

The below video will, in 8 minutes, leave you fully understanding the concept, and how to use it, even if you know nothing.

Benefits?

• Make website changes, like updating your header or WordPress theme files.
• Upload large files for your information products to be easily downloaded by your users and the links remain on your website
• Create your own links [URLS] that start with your website address
• Manually backup website files in an emergency
• Point troubleshooters/support people in the right direction to get problems fixed fast

What is FTP in 8 minutes for the Website Beginner [HD]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E07qoIse2Eg

Creating Your Own URL

Go to the “root” folder of your domain, create a folder for the file you’re going to make a URL for and put the file in that folder. Your URL is now www.domain.com/foldername/filename … see below for an example.

Example: If your domain was apple.com and you uploaded an image called “logo.jpg” into the root folder using FTP, going to www.apple.com/logo.jpg would show your file live on the web, immediately.

I recommend uploading folders and putting files in them so there’s some sensical structure to the files and folders that constitute your website. So for this example, create a folder called “images” in the root folder, to make the URL www.apple.com/images/logo.jpg

FTP Programs

Many are free, some have advanced features and cost, often times the ability to connect to multiple kinds of servers, like your Dropbox account, or AmazonS3 account are mentioned, but not related to this how-to.

• The most popular FTP program that is available for free is called FileZilla.
  • Download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla/ 
• FireFTP is another popular FTP program, used as a Firefox addon.
  • Download here: http://fireftp.mozdev.org/
• CrossFTP is another widely used FTP program.
  • Download here: http://www.crossftp.com/index.htm

Final Notes

Note: If you have to setup an FTP user, make sure the directory or access for that user is set as high up as possible, this is often times the folder that is simply a slash “/” or ends with “/public_html”

Note: If you only bought a domain name, not hosting, you won’t have the ability use FTP. So if you use Blogger, or Typepad, with your domain name you don’t have control over your specific website files, this is a major reason why these platforms are limited.

In the instance where you have a host, but they don’t allow you to use FTP, they otherwise LOCK YOU OUT, you’re working with a provider who chooses not to give you access or manage your website files. This is usually an indicator of a tightly managed provider, and possibly a very limiting one. It’s sort of like giving you a computer but telling you that you can only use one program on it.

I recommend you use a provider that gives you full FTP access like Hostgator or WP Engine.

I get that the concept of FTP isn’t easy for the non-technical, but after a few times, and you’ll have it down, and really surprise the next “web” person you talk to when you’re able to give them not only a username and password but a folder path!

Happy uploading!

“I need a header, still waiting on my graphic designer“

“I don’t have a logo yet, I’m working on that”

“My sales page has no graphics, my website is bland…”

These all seem like graphic designer things that cost $100-1000 each, but let’s cut the crap, you need to move forward now, so…I’m super excited to announce this course!

It’s all about the tactics to get you working logo, header, and sales page images so you can move beyond that “stuck” point, WITHOUT a graphic designer, and without tons of time investment.

The course was built with a real beginner, Stephan March, who I met months ago through a reply to the IT Arsenal newsletter.  He’s in the course video’s asking questions during the course, and prompting the best tips and tactics on inspiration, fonts, icons, image transparency, inserting graphics into WordPress, and other tricks.

The actual course content is made of how-to instruction, tips, and tricks in the form of web services, text and screen cast videos that will be invaluable to an online entrepreneur.

This course will erase the excuse that you MUST have a graphic designer to move forward.

I’m not negating the fact that a designer is sometimes needed to create graphics, but nothing a graphic designer can do now, can’t be done later. They should not be a stopping a point for you.

The technical difficulty level is low enough and tools freely available to produce logo’s, headers, and sales page graphics in only a few hours with the right tips, tactics, and know-how.

Graphics that will move you past being “stuck” and not launching your site or sales page, or idea.

Review: Worth the time and money

Robert puts together a collection of resources to generate a no to low cost logo image. Then he shows you the basics of putting these images together and onto your site. I learned a lot from the course and felt confident with my new skills to create and upload my new header design. Additionally, Robert was available for follow up questions. Well worth it! See this review on Udemy

Lorena Knapp

Enough! Go Checkout the Course!

50% off for readers! Leave a comment below explaining what you’d use the course for and I’ll e-mail you a code for %50 off!

Hi, I hope turkey day treated you well! Back to the online business hustle!

I can’t tell you how many times I see a logo being the major reason people are “stuck” in launching their site or sales page.

This reason dies now, right here, in under 1 minute!

I understand, you think you need a designer, the perfect “look” …It’s one of those things that can mess with your mind searching all day through countless designs until you think it’s hopeless.

Here’s one super fast, anyone can do it, even you, I PROMISE method to making a font based logo in about 1 minute. Stick this in your “pocket” to come back to again and again. Instructions are below AND a link to a video of the live process, done is less than 1 minute!

If you have trouble with this, hit reply, and I’ll make the logo for you for free!

Use this technique for new websites you’re testing, blog posts, products, manifestos, and more!

• Go to Dafont.com
• Click a topical theme that fits your site, product, thing from the options at the top.
• Click More options, select Free and Donationware, uncheck Free for Personal Use.
• Type in the name of your site or product in the Custom preview field. Hit submit.
• Scan fonts for one that looks good.
• Take a screenshot of the name for immediate uploading to your website. Need to know how to take a screenshot? See here.
• Download the font for use in Word/Pages and other programs to make extra tweaks if needed.
• Done!

See the whole process here in under 1 minute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibN07gxPNTg

Do you like this idea?

IT Arsenal [me and a previous client!] created a course packed with one’s just like it, over 13 lectures and an hour of content. Click the link below to check it out.

Go to –>>  Logo, Header and Image Basics for Online Business/Wordpress

IT Arsenal promises to never e-mail you junk, only useful actionable content for your websites, newsletters, sale systems and website backup.

Questions? Hit reply!

Click to Enlarge

Whether as a reader, customer, or fellow business owner, you know words have impact.

These words are a declaration of not only the qualities and services you can find here, but ones you can make your own as you work with others and the internet.

I’m really excited to share this with you, please download, share, leave a comment and join IT Arsenal below!

I respond to every message, and luv, love, adore, am head over heals, am not lying when I say I enjoy replying with useful information.

Download the Manifesto PDF

[Bonus] Download the Apple Pages document to use as a template for your own manifesto!

Tweet “Awesome manifesto for technical support and more by @ITArsenal“

Thanks Expert Enough for the inspiration

Here’s a trick to quickly see what Facebook “sees” for troubleshooting issues, and checking if the correct image is going to pull over, along with a few WordPress plugins that allow you to explicitly tell Facebook what to do when you have trouble. I’ll leave it up to you to know if you’re having trouble or not, that much should be obvious.

See What Facebook Sees

Facebook has a diagnostic tool called the “Object Debugger” or “URL Linter” and can be found here: http://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

This webpage is very straightforward, simply showing an entry field to type in the address of the page you want to share. Submit the website address your having trouble with and it displays all sorts of useful information, use it to give you a clue on what’s going on.

NOTE: It also tells Facebook to go take a new look at your site so if you’re having an issue where old content keeps getting posted to Facebook, try using it.

The main section of the page you want to look at is the “Object Properties” which have the title of the post and the image. The properties Facebook looks for on a web page start with “og” and are called meta tags, but you don’t need to know that unless you’re going to be digging into code. [not required]

If those are “off” use the plugins below, which then explicitly define these properties on your site vs. having Facebook “scrape” or “infer” the information and come up with their best guesses. See below for an example.

Click to Enlarge

Plugins

Most of these plugins don’t make a visual change to your site after installation, they change some data you wouldn’t normally see except when sharing to Facebook, so after you install one, the best course of action is to update the post or page you’re having trouble with, submit the address to the “Object Debugger” and then try sharing it to Facebook again.

Any of these should work, my favorite is number 3.

1. https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-revised-open-graph-meta-tag/
   • No options panel, “just works”.
2. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easy-facebook-share-thumbnails/
   • Makes the “featured image” of an article the Facebook share thumbnail.
3. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wonderm00ns-simple-facebook-open-graph-tags/
   • Options panel, several configurations including how large a text snippit to take, and what image to mark for Facebook to use, first vs. featured.
4. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-facebook-share-thumbnail-meta/
   • No options panel.

That’s not the action, don’t worry, but it does start with responding.

A short quick response to anyone who’s ever signed up, purchased something, or asked you a question can distinguish you, and put you on a higher level than your competition. It sounds odd, but it’s true.

If it’s quick, and demonstrates you’ve taken the time to get to know them, you’ll potentially earn a follower, user, or buyer for a very long time. Time though, is just the point, who has the time to do that? How do you know if the person has a website, or blog, or Twitter account just by their e-mail? How can you comment on it without digging around?

Rapportive is a tool that does that for you instantly, allowing you to stun the person you’re replying to rather easily. It’s fun, beneficial, and really useful.

It comes in the form of a web browser plugin, and interacts with Google’s webmail (Gmail). You’ll need to be using Gmail, so you’ll either need to have an @gmail address, be using Google Apps with your domain, or have your Gmail account set up to check other e-mail accounts. I’ll be creating a guide for that soon, but until then, here’s a fairly decent one.

Once you have Rapportive installed, [install it here] simply load up a message in Gmail, (see below) and reap the rewards.

Close-up

Here’s a common scenario, you’ve just received a newsletter sign up from your website, like the one above from the Mailchimp e-mail marketing service.

I instantly can see a picture, location, and a button to view the LinkedIn profile of the user who signed up.

Here’s where the magic happens, a quick reply saying thanks, whatever business relevant sentence that applies, and hey, I see you have your MBA, [says so on her LinkedIn] that’s awesome… may just be enough to stun the person receiving the e-mail in a good way. Woah, they took the time to look me up, they know me.

You can take it from there, perhaps their inquiring about a service, and you now have access to their website, work history, tweets…you could reply and hit on all their pain points by glancing at a few pieces of data about them and make a sale, or provide extremely useful information to them.

Give it a try and checkout Rapportive.

The plugin is pretty useful, especially for generating some traffic and keeping old posts alive on your site, but as with a lot of website issues, the software decided to randomly stop working. (don’t you love that?)

Jonathan shot me a message to troubleshoot. He’s enrolled in the IT Arsenal Lifeline program, where support is typically that simple.

I logged in and ran through basic troubleshooting, uninstalling, installing, contacting his host Media Temple and asking them for any relevant logs with errors in them. After a few changes and resets, I sat and waited to see if the plugin would fire, no dice, nothing.

Hmm, WordPress plugins can be finicky, sometimes they conflict with your web host, sometimes with other plugins, what to do next?

Research, meaning Google….which led me to the developer and CRON jobs.

I don’t advise trying to contact the person who created software you are using without exhausting other avenues, or even assume that’s always a possibility.

Fortunately, the developer, Ajay Matharu, supports his creations and after some banter on Twitter, informed me and others he had heard reports of the plugin breaking and was working on a fix.

Through some gentle and diligent coaxing, a new version of the plugin was released within the week, all credit to Ajay for his responsiveness and software skills, which resolved the issue.

I jumped back into Jonathan’s fantastic site, Paid to Exist, updated the plugin and got to inform him this pesky issue was now resolved! One of the best things I get to do is let someone know an issue is fixed, or complete.

I’m happy to say his response was positive.

You can’t always rely on contacting the developer, but it’s good to remember sometimes it’s best to go straight to the source.

I was on my way back from Italy this past week, writing some content on the plane and thinking about the people I help when I realized I hate the web when it comes to text formatting. Things like fonts, ordered lists, line breaks. They never seem to work right!

Sometimes WordPress formatting just plain stinks.  And AWeber and Mailchimp?  It can be just as frustrating.

I know you’ve been having a hard time with getting content into WordPress or your newsletter and then making it look right, below are some awesome tools, and concise information for fixing these things and making the experience less painful. I truly hope they’re helpful.

Writing text in a WordPress page but can’t seem to get the line breaks to work and you’re wondering why you can’t change the font?
%99 of problems come from pasting in content from Word (same for newsletters) and not using a plugin to enhance the editor (the format bar) in WordPress.

First of all, stop copying and pasting from Word. You may think it’s the best way to do things, but the truth is, the WordPress editor is not Word, and things are bound to get screwed up! Use the WordPress editor.

Other surprises? Hitting return does not put in the code to create a line break by default (the plugin linked below can turn this on though) and there aren’t any font options by default either! (because this is part of your theme as an entire website setting)

You can jump into the code view and add <br/> to force a line break, but you have to stay in HTML mode if you do this, when you switch back to Visual mode, it strips out the line break! Tip: be careful when switching between HTML and Visual mode!

Bottom line? Create your content in WordPress, and use this plugin to enable line breaks and additional styles. TinyMCE Advanced: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/

The same advice goes for newsletter services like Mailchimp and AWeber; create content on their sites!

As for fonts, in general, they are “set” for your website, as in, there’s a code file that sets what font a paragraph is going to be, and it’s not very easily changed for the non-technical.

If you want it changed, you’ll have to ask someone else, (AKA hire someone) or take some time and learn how to edit a CSS document and look at some code. You’re probably not interested in learning CSS, but if so, here’s a good article: http://codex.wordpress.org/Finding_Your_CSS_Styles

Or…if you just want the easy answer, reply and I’ll create a screencast video of how to change the paragraph font on a WordPress website.

Images are a pain to find, and I’m not sure if I’m allowed to use them!
PhotoDropper (another WordPress plugin) let’s you search Flickr’s free to use creative commons images WITHIN the editing window for WordPress. PhotoDropper saves time searching, and then hunting and saving images, making the entire process much less frustrating. PhotoDropper: http://www.photodropper.com/

You want images in your newsletters but they keep having issues? Check out this article on Mashable.
How to Ensure Your Subscribers See Images in Emails

There’s a ton more I want to share with you but I refuse to overload your inbox!

Have a question? Hit reply!
Have more tech requests for your website? —-> Check out the WordPress Maintenance Packages

I work with computers all day as I give tech support and advice to friends, family and users. The trend I continue to see sneaking up on people is that they’re investing more and more of their time and by extension, their money, into their computers without being aware of it. People today are also flat out buying more digital content in the form of songs, movies and other media than ever before. Here’s the thing, the proportion of content and money we’re pouring into our digital devices is not equal with the awareness we have for backing it up. We might value our computers at $1000, but 2 years later it might have $10,000 worth of content on it. Scary if you don’t have a copy somewhere. Scary if you don’t have two copies of it somewhere!

One reason the proportion is so out of whack is because of awareness. We gradually add data to our computer and most of the time we don’t even think about it. Sure when we download new software it feels shiny and new, but next week it’s just another icon buried in a folder. How do we wake up to how important our megabytes and gigabytes are? Look at the cost, money and time are great motivators.

Real Costs

Let’s try to put value to a typical computer users data.

Operating System

Apple’s current operating system is $29 dollars, Microsoft’s varies wildly but if you were to go into the store and get a fresh new copy it would cost around $199 for Windows 7 Home Premium. Most of the time you get this when you buy the computer, but not always, and not when you upgrade.

Software

Depending on vocation, you most likely own Microsoft Office ($149.99+), Quicken ($59.99), Quickbooks ($99.95), Adobe Photoshop ($699), Adobe Dreamweaver ($399) or about 1000 other applications. While applications can usually be re-installed from a disc, this is becoming less common as it becomes easier to download large files from the web. We can often recover lost software, but it costs in our time and the technical hassle to do so.

Smartphone Applications that are also synced to your computer count and according to a recent survey iPhone users have nearly $80 of apps on their phones! And did you know previous iTunes purchases may be unavailable if they have been refunded or are no longer on the iTunes Store.

Songs, Movies, and Media

Here’s where it gets interesting. You may have never bought a song on iTunes, but at $1 or more a pop, those of you audiophiles might rack up $1000 dollars in digital songs over a year or two and not even realize it. The digital content we buy today costs real money and isn’t always easily replaced. While Apple and other providers are usually pretty good about replacing content if you can prove purchase, it’s not as easy as a click of a button.

In recent years Getting Rich Slowly has often shared great tips on how to spend less on DVD’s and cut the cable bill, and do you know where those solutions lead? Right to your computer’s hard drive. J.D. has even shared that he spends about $20 on iTunes a month. It adds up quick.

Pictures

Oh the pictures. I can’t remember the last time I saw a camera that uses film. Our memories become digital almost instantly today and they are passed around through computers, phones, etc. All capable of failing at a moments notice. Our pictures are amongst the biggest shared sentimental keepsakes we have, enough said, how does it go…priceless? I really don’t have to continue on about the potential value of our pictures, these things scream important to us.

Business

My wife is a lawyer. (I thought I spent a lot of time on the computer!) I mentioned I was making a backup guide to her one day and to my surprise, she immediately had 2 stories to tell me of lawyers in the field losing data because they have zero measures in place to back up. Wow! The work we do on our computers, whether it’s for our business, or it is our business is priced beyond worth because it holds value to our future.

Take AVSIM for example. AVSIM, a leading website dedicated to the flight simulation community focusing mainly on Microsoft’s Flight Simulator program, had their two servers hacked and their site brought down. The company had no external backup system. Thirteen years of hard work and success was instantly wiped out. Source: Mozy

Adding it Up

It’s a really hard game to play in figuring out the actual dollar value of all the data on our computers, but I’ll take myself as an example. First lets break down some actual dollar values and then mention the more nebulous items like business information. Note: I’m admittedly on the more extreme side due to consuming all my media on my computer, running my business on my computer and gaming. Here’s a look at my 2010 spending:

• $1000+ Software: Operating System, iWork, CS5, StarCraft II, Omnigraffle, iPhone View, Screenflow, Things, etc.
• $512 iTunes Media: Including music, apps, movies, tv shows, etc.
• $112 eBooks.
• I run IT Arsenal almost solely from my computer. The cost of my clients data, my writing, and the resources and time put into it could easily amount to $10,000.

At a total of $11,624, the sticker price on my iMac doesn’t look that bad anymore. As you can see a majority comes from potentially lost income and productivity if everything you’ve built and configured on your computer suddenly disappeared.

I know what you’re thinking, it doesn’t cost all that to replace software I have install discs for…and I agree, but what about the data I can’t replace? What about the time it will take to completely re-install things from scratch vs. restoring from a backup? How about if you lost all your website passwords and the time it would take to recover from that?

You’re no Dummy

One way you can save yourself time and money with something you’ve already put a huge investment into is to make a backup plan for your computer as soon as possible. It’s obvious from the cost above that this isn’t something to put off. “Someday” isn’t on the calendar…let’s make it an actual day, like this Thursday…or sooner.

The Point is Action

The tools to backup today are numerable and affordable, and although it may seem like a daunting task, it really doesn’t have to be. Some tools I commonly recommend are Dropbox, Time Machine, Carbonite, SugarSync and Mozy.

The problem isn’t usually with the software though, it’s with making the decision to take action. (Isn’t everything?) So I encourage, no I beg you to make an investment in what you already own today and put a backup plan in place for your computer, your mom’s computer, and everyone you know who would be devastated if catastrophe decided to chomp down on your digital data.

Need Help?

If you want to make the decision to finally cover your butt (and need help doing so), I invite you to talk to me and checkout The Backup Informer, a guide I created to take you from decision point to complete set up with easy to understand language, big pictures and video on backing up your computer. Check out the guide and get in touch if you have any questions on how to make the right decision on backing up. I love to help through e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook.

I’ve been a miscreant! A total loser! I should be flogged!

I haven’t e-mailed you some awesome stuff I’ve been using when I promised you useful information!

I think I owe you, you might not, but I do and so I’m going to make it up to you below.

Here are SIX powerful tools and how I use them, for SIX critical parts of your business, along with some useful posts about online business I think you’ll really be able to put to use.

No catch, nothing else! I hope you find them useful, hit reply if you have questions!

=====================

Scheduling – ScheduleOnce [Freemium]
I use this on my site so people can choose and make appointments from times I’ve set. You can embed it or use the page they give you. See it live: http://itarsenal.com/scheduler/
http://itarsenal.com/go/scheduleonce

Website Backup – Backup Buddy [FREE because you're my client]
I use this WordPress plugin to backup WordPress sites reliably and fully, and migrate them! Some learning required.
Sign up for the newsletter to gain access

Contact Forms – Gravity Forms [FREE because you're my client]
Gravity Forms is the best forms plugin available for WordPress. Use it for reliable contact forms and much more (newsletter sign ups) with their add-ons.
Sign up for the newsletter to gain access

Digital Product Box Art – BoxShotKing [Lowcost]
I use this for digital product pictures, super easy, zero graphic skills required for awesome images like this one:

http://itarsenal.com/go/boxshotking

List Building – Welcome Gate [Free]
This plugin is fairly new, by Clay Collins, it’s the most unobtrusive way to grow your list. It plants a one time only welcome page that integrates with your newsletter service on your site. New visitors see it once, that’s it.
http://itarsenal.com/go/welcomegate

Social Media – Buffer [Freemium]
If you’re not into social media, that’s okay, make it easier by “batch” writing updates. Buffer let’s you line up a series of posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and then they trickle out overtime. Great for you to get in, and get out without having to feel tied to social media madness.
http://itarsenal.com/go/buffer

Useful Posts from Others

• 10 Tips for Great Intake Forms | Laurie Foley
• Nice comparisons – How to Make Your Website a Customer Magnet
• Super basic things, a lot of people don’t put into play – Tips and Tricks to Using WordPress for your Small Business
• Good read, even if just for avoiding the common mistakes – Launching a New Business? Branding 101 Q&A
• Five Ways Traveling Can Help Entrepreneurs – Liz’s comments here are great

Questions? Hit reply!

Have tech requests for your website? —-> Check out the WordPress Maintenance Packages

I knew that author didn’t follow my blog, or know me, but in that post I mentioned the authors name a few times, pieces of his book and the book title, which obviously triggered something for him.

I thought, man, how did he do that, and how cool is it he commented?! Shortly after, it clicked, it was obvious he has Google Alerts setup for his name, and likely his book as well.

I didn’t think too much about this, I’m not an author, I don’t have a book (unless a digital one about backing up your computer counts), but over the last year I’ve read countless articles about how your employers or potential employers, Google you, send interns out into the world to dig up dirt on you, ask for access to your Facebook accounts, read your blogs, etc.

It’s not just techy nonsense to Google yourself anymore.

Short Story

I set up a Google Alert a while back and saw my name was listed on a website called “bad bosses” or something similar. No one had submitted any commentary on me as an entrepreneur who has hired and fired some staff, but the fact that some website indexed me, labeled me as a boss, and now opened up a community based site for people to openly attack me didn’t sit well with me.

I thought the site’s concept wasn’t very appealing in general, so I contacted them, and they quickly took my name down at my request.

I’ve also found, my age, and my previous living locations published on sites I wasn’t aware of.

The only reason I noticed this was because I had a Google Alert set up for myself.

Not convinced? I get it, it sounds silly, maybe one of the situations below matter to you when it comes to your name being thrown around.

• What your employer sees because he is the one most likely to Google you
• Your clients are
• Your friends do
• You’re getting published and will show up with related content
• You’re getting slandered and don’t know it
• You’re getting mentioned and have no idea
• You’re getting cataloged/indexed with other people
• You want to shape your reputation online
• You want to be part of the conversation that’s going on about you, or at least be aware of it.

I’ve given up trying to remove my name from the web, it’s a losing battle, but being aware of it, and shaping it, is increasingly easy if you take an ounce of effort.

How To

It’s insanely easy. [Google account required]

Go to this link: http://www.google.com/alerts  … and fill out the simple form. (show below)

You can receive weekly, daily, or on-demand e-mails to be in-the-know.

Bonus: As a business owner, when my name gets dropped around blogs, I can quickly get in on the conversation, meet interested and potential users, and partner with those who found my content worth writing about, if you do anything online, you might benefit from being alerted when your name or business name shows up.

I don’t have anything against them (in fact I love them), but I do have a suggestion for those building their website, or looking to launch a product with a membership site that will rapidly speed up your production, and allow you to bring in sales almost immediately without a traditional membership setup.

It’s a sudo variation of a membership site that is mostly transparent to your users but easier for the creator.

The problem with a “real” membership site is development and management. There’s the typical e-mail flow that needs to be set up, and copy written, but then there’s also the technical back-end to support members, sign up, usernames, passwords, checkout, possible repeating payment and the cost of the membership site software itself. It’s a lot to handle, which most owners don’t realize until they get into it and if this is your first or second product, or website, I don’t think you should do it.

Here’s Why

• You don’t want to spend $1000 on development, which you can easily do (and probably will) with a system, and working with someone to set up the system, and then make sure it’s exactly how you need it, with split payments, or tax requirements, or with reminder e-mails, or levels of access, or whatever idea you have.
• You should test your idea more rapidly to validate it, and gauge interest. (lean startup)
• You don’t want to learn a new system, and don’t have time to manage more.
• You’re likely still building the content that will live behind this payment/membership wall, and you don’t know what it looks like there yet.

There’s a simple way to be lean, fast, and easily validate your idea for content that belongs behind a membership site, and you should do it first. Here it is.

Use a Simple Password Protected Page, and Send the Password to Buyers

I can hear you saying now…

• That isn’t professional! (not true by the way)
• People will share my password!
• I can’t block people who have stopped paying or asked for a refund!
• I have more than one page of content!
• I need more options!

I know you love your content, and it may seem like I’m telling you NOT to build a membership site but I invite you to consider that these things don’t matter unless you expect to have over 100 sales immediately and are already doing a few thousand hits a day to your site. If that’s the case, spending $1000 on setup, and taking the time to learn real membership software (or paying someone to) shouldn’t be a problem for you.

…but if you’re an online business owner that is still growing or just starting, with perhaps a few hundred in your mailing list, and launching your first couple of projects, wouldn’t you rather have sales, actually launch, and find out your program is gaining so much popularity that people are TRYING to get into it?

Consider this, if you’re doing enough sales that you need to block people, and you find users sharing the password, you’re having a good problem, and can take the appropriate actions with the sales you’ve already made, instead of wasting energy and money protecting something that may not even need it.

You’ll skip almost all of the technical setup, money and time it takes to create a membership platform (even one of the easy WordPress Plugin variations like Wishlist or aMember) and immediately test if your product is viable enough to build out into a more robust system later.

In addition to this, you can still market and treat this product like a membership site, because to your user, who is mostly unaware, it will look the same, especially with the few small tricks below.

• Use a series of password protected pages that all take the password from the page located hierarchically above it using the plugin: FT Password Protect Child Pages
  • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ft-password-protect-children-pages/
• Customize your password protected page login with the plugin: Password Protected Enhancement
  • http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/password-protect-enhancement/
• Make your password nonsensical and look randomly generated in the payment notification e-mail you setup, something like “E1H3XTT”. This discourages users from sharing.

I know this isn’t something you’d expect to hear from a business who sets up technical back-ends, websites, and fixes IT problems, but it’s the solution that often times is your best course of action to actually make your product idea a reality and you money. Your business running smoothly is the idea, and starting with less complexity can be a good start.

IT Arsenal uses this very system to soft test product ideas, it’s quick, painless, and yields results, I hope you consider it next time you’re contemplating a membership site to validate, and earn sales quickly. Once you do that, move on to the more capable, complex, and suitable membership platforms.

You’re not alone. In fact, most WordPress users I know stay away from updating because their afraid of what might or might not happen. I’ve seen it a lot lately. It’s not too surprising, everything from an entire site breaking, to only the backend turning white screened, to various errors and odd behavior after updating WordPress can happen. The thing is, updating protects you from security holes (heard of anyone site being hacked lately?) and often times is required for new features. Our websites are like computers now, they need updates.

Why Does It Break?!

It’s no one thing, it’s everything. WordPress is a platform that works with lots of other platforms and services, so when one of those elements change, everything involved has to be able to handle those changes. Makes sense right?

A lot of the times, updating works just fine, but there are times the core WordPress application fails, or a plugin, or some sub-element. The failure or error commonly shows up as blank white pages, or 2 or 3 lines of code at the top of a white page, and if you don’t know what happened, there’s no going backward to revert and fix your site.

What to Do

Backup. Always backup your site, database and files (those are two different things), in case you need to get someone involved to do a full site restore after a meltdown. I recommend BackupBuddy for backup.

Disable plugins first. If you head into the plugins section of WordPress, select any or all plugins and disable them before updating, it’s often the cleanest way to upgrade, be forewarned, you may need to reconfigure or setup some plugins after this happens.

Understand, be prepared. Upgrading can take literally 30 seconds, or sometimes it can take hours repairing design and technical breaks after you upgrade your site, plugins, and potentially themes. Awareness is important, if only to be on guard in case something happens and to plan accordingly. Hint: Upgrade during low traffic times.

Solve This Forever Option

If you want a set it and forget it solution, let someone else manage backup and fixing your site when updates break it so you can worry about your message and mission, not the back-end.

IT Arsenal offers a low cost one time and monthly option to keep your site backed up and updated. You check that out anytime here if you didn’t know that. Includes simple maintenance requests and friendly advice.

Here to help!

Case Studies are when I take some time to highlight recent work, the challenges and technologies involved, and what I learned in the process.

Sticky eBooks is a client website from Kelly Kingman. Kelly is excellent at extracting ideas and helping people build profitable e-books from what they already know.

How We Met

Kelly was a referred to me from the wonderful Cath Duncan, she first contacted IT Arsenal from the contact contact form.

The Client

Kelly has several sites, but her most prominent so far is Sticky eBooks which is a WordPress based site with clean minimalist lines and a solid following.

Kelly is a member of our backup and maintenance program that includes a monthly e-mail with suggestions on where her site could improve, or possible web tools to enhance engagement or appeal.

Kelly has been great to work with and one thing that has really “worked” is going back and forth with her on tools or suggestions for site improvement. Simple things that the outside eye often catches when you’re the the one one the “inside” working on your site you might miss.

Font sizes, “calls to actions,” or naming structures are often things we can completely overlook when we’re inspecting our own work. I know I do.

The Work

I didn’t create Kelly’s sites initially but I’ve been in the backends and now maintain their updates, cleanliness, and backups. I’ve been mostly using a tool called ManageWP for easy access to her blogs and the many others I manage and suggesting tools like Hello Bar for increased call to action on her site.

I’ve most recently worked on updating a plugin called Premise that she uses. Plugins when updated sometimes break a website’s look or functionality, so it’s smart to backup before and be prepared if it doesn’t go smoothly.

Other work includes regular backups, tweaks, installs, and consulting.

What I’ve Learned

I’ve learned personal real suggestions are appreciated. Taking a real look, even for 5 minutes at someone’s website and offering recommendations based on what skills and techniques I’ve come to know as effective and that relate specifically to a clients website is highly valued. It’s a personal touch that lets the client know you actually care, and it’s led Kelly to share some really nice things about the work we do together.