In the above view, choose to modify an existing account, or choose to add a new account.

If you chose to add a new account, you will see the screen below and you should select “Internet Mail”.

The following:

1. Add your own email account where you see “anieves@mydomain.com”. (Three places).
2. Select the account type as “IMAP”.
3. Type in the same servers you see here.
4. Type in the password you use for Gmail for Business. Select “Remember password”.
5. Uncheck the box “Check Account Settings by clicking the Next button”
6. Click “More Setting” for the nest screens. This will bring up a tabbed popup.

In this screen, you have four fields to complete. Set both ports numbers as shown, and also set the encryption type as shown.

2. Select “Add New Account” or “View or change existing e-mail accounts”:

3. If you selected ”View or change existing e-mail accounts”, then highlight the account you wish to change and his “next”.  You will encounter this next screen with you are switching from a different email provider to “GMail for Business”. In this example, “regina2″ is the account with are switching to “Gmail for Business”.

4. Change the server settings on the right to what is shown in this screen.  So the incoming server is “imap.gmail.com” and the outgoing server is “smtp.gmail.com”.

Also change the account password to the password for your Gmail account.

Then click “More Settings”

5. “More Setting” brings up the following tabbed screen. Click the “Outgoing Server” tab and check off the box next to: “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication” and also check off “Use same settings as my incoming mail server”.

Then click the “Advanced” tab and set the port numbers as shown in the below.

I looked everywhere and could not find a solution. I found other people with similar problems. They wanted to set up one username/password so people could see how different parts of their site worked, but invariably, someone would change the password and mess things up for everyone. I also found solutions using php coding, but the coding I found wasn’t working for me, and who wants to get into php coding if they don’t have to?

My solution was to combine three different plugins to give the site the complete protection it needed. The three plugins that I ended up using were:
1) Maven Member
2) Disable Password Reset
3) Disable Password Reset Extended

First of all, I want to say that Maven Member was a much nicer plugin that most of the other member type plugins that I tried. The login page was much easier to customize than Password Protected or Exclusive Content Password Protect or any other plugins I tried. It also allowed you to use your regular header and footer for the site, which is what I wanted, instead of the WordPress login page.

And for most people, that plugin is probably good enough on it’s own. But I wanted to take the security a step further. What if someone realized it was a WordPress site and tried to login through the back? Because I wanted to set up just one user to give out to everyone, the downfall of Maven Member was that users were allowed to edit their profile and change their password. I solved this by using the other two plugins.

Disable Password Reset gets rid of the “Lost your password” link so that people are not able to reset the password through email. Disable Password Reset Extend gets rid of the password reset section of the member profile area. Along with this, you need to be sure to disable the admin bar for that user on the front end and be sure to enable the user as a “Maven Member”. You will also need to be sure to set up all the users you want before enabling the Disable Password Reset Extend plugin because once you do, of course, you cannot add or edit any passwords. You can always disable it to add members, but it is much easier if you have this set up in advance.

Overall, I have to say I was very happy with this easy way to completely protect my site. I’ll admit that this way actually requires a username and password rather than just a password, but it works quite simply. I just wish someone would have figured it out before me so I wouldn’t have had to spend hours looking for the solution. Hopefully, this post will save you some time in protecting your site.

1) UPLOADING Visit http://www.gravityforms.com/ to pay for the plugin. Once you pay for the plugin, you’ll be sent an email with a link to download the plugin as well as your license key. Download the plugin to your computer and then you’ll want to head to the plugins section of your WordPress site and choose “add new”. Then click on the “upload” link near the top as shown below.

Browse your computer to find the Gravity Forms file and click on the “upload” button. Once it uploads, click the “activate plugin” link. You will probably have to refresh the page for the form icon to show up on the left menu bar.

I have my left sidebar collapsed to allow more space on my screen, but if you don’t have your’s collapsed, the icon will look the same and say “Forms” next to it.

Note: If you’d like to collapse your left sidebar, simply click on the “collapse menu” link at the very bottom of the sidebar.

Then, hover over the icon and click on “settings” so we can get started.

2) SETTINGS On the settings page, you will see spaces for two numbers.
a) The first will be the place for your license key that you received in your initial email. Copy and paste it there.
b) The second is an optional reCAPTCHA key if you want to use the reCAPTCHA code before people submit their form to reduce spam. Personally, I haven’t had much problem with spam, but that is up to you. Just click on the “sign up” link under the box and it will explain how to get your free key.

Then be sure to click on the blue “save settings” button at the bottom.

*A quick note: Be sure to visit your plugins page to make sure you have the latest version of Gravity Forms. If not, updating is easy with a simple click, so be sure to update.

3) CREATING YOUR FIRST FORM Once you have the plugin activated, you’re ready to start creating forms. Go back to the form icon on the left sidebar, hover over the forms icon and then choose “new form”. Then hover over “Untitled form” as shown below. A box will appear so you can fill out your form title and a quick description. At the bottom of the box, you can choose your label alignment. This will decide for the form whether the form label will appear over, to the left or to the right of the form box. I usually prefer to leave this in the default position.

4) ADD FIELDS A form is really made up of fields, so let’s start adding them. To make things easy, let’s start with the “advanced fields” tab on the right hand side of the page. When you click on it, you will see all of your basic form options. Let’s click on “name” and “email” to get started. As soon as you click on them, they are automatically added to your form.

5) SAVE IT Click on the blue “Save Form” button on the bottom right of the screen. Okay, wasn’t that simple? Yes, that’s all there is to it. Your form is complete and ready to be inserted into your page post, or widget.

6) INSERT IT Now let’s go to the page where we’d like to insert the form. At the top of the page, you now have a new icon next to the meida uploader. Click on that icon and you will get a pop-up window that will let you choose which form you want to use and if you’d like to include the title and description. Once you have chosen your preferences, click on the blue “Insert Form” button and it will automatically insert the shortcode for you. You have the option to include content before or after the form. Then, publish or update your page and view the page to see the form. Viola!

Now we’ve seen how easy it is to create a simple form. Please come back next week when we’ll delve deeper to learn more about all the features Gravity Forms has to offer.

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1. Support- Working with Genesis saves me time because when I use it,  I am starting out with a great product that I am already familiar with.  But to speed things up even more, Genesis has a great team behind the framework.  To begin with, each child theme has a tutorial to help you get the site set up exactly the way the demo site looks.  That can be a big time saver the first time using any new theme.  It always takes a while to look around a new theme and see how things are set up. Even though I work with themes all the time, each one is a little different.  With Genesis, if the setup isn’t immediately obvious, (and many times it is) then I go straight to the tutorials and don’t waste time trying to figure out how they put in a slider or some other option.

And if I’m looking to do something a little different, the support forum is always there to answer my questions.  Many times, someone else will already have had my same question, and I can just search the forum for the answer. If not, the StudioPress team is always quick to respond to my questions.

2. Widget Areas- One of the nicest things about Genesis child themes is that most are set up with special widgets areas to make your homepage stand out.  These widgets make it easy to add image sliders, portfolios, and custom text right to the home page.  Right out of the box, Genesis comes with some great options.  Genesis offers a “featured page” widget that lets you have an excerpt that links to the actual page on your site.  The spacing is already set up and I just plug in my personalized settings.  Very easy!  One of my favorite set of widgets are the 3 or 4 footer widgets that run along the bottom of the page, just over the copyright notice.  This allows you to accentuate your main features.  If this widget doesn’t already come with your child theme, it’s also available as a free plugin, which brings me to the next topic- plugins!

3. Plugins- Genesis offers some great free plugins to make life even easier. One of my favorite is the Simple Edits plugin that allows you to, among other things, simply put your footer information into the theme settings without having to go into the coding.  Another good one is the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin that allows you to insert HTML, PHP, and even shortcodes and attach any of the 50+ action hooks throughout the framework.  It’s an easy way of creating functions for your theme.  Very useful!

4. SEO- Genesis’ code is created with search optimization in mind. For the website as a whole and for any page, you can easily set a meta title and description.  It’s easy to set up the noindex and nofollow codes.  Even if you leave the easy to fill out forms blank,  Genesis will automatically pull the post or page title and use it as the meta title.

5. It works- There is no more important element than the fact that it works and works well.  Genesis has been around awhile and is backed by a capable support team.  You can count on it to run well.  The bugs and discrepancies you find among the new themes and novice developers just aren’t there.  The glitches have already been worked out and you’re left with a streamlined, stable system.  Genesis’ core is created with secure code to help keep your site safe.  And I would be neglectful if I didn’t mention that all future Genesis upgrades are free, once you buy the framework.  That is simply marvelous. As a busy developer, I don’t want to waste time testing new themes and worrying about updates.  I want to buy a framework that I know is a sure thing, and that’s Genesis.

So, you can try out different themes and learn all this stuff on your own, or you can take my advice and make your life simpler by using Genesis.  Or better yet, let me use my experience to create a great site for you using Genesis.  You’ll see that the flexibility of the site, the security, and the search engine optimization make it just as good choice for you as it is for me.

I can list 20 reasons why you should blog for your small business; however, because you are a busy entrepreneur I am going to list my top three reasons:

1. You Get Buyers Through Search Engines

Blog posts are found by search engines and appearing in search engines is a must. 70-80% of buyers begin their purchasing decision with search engines.  Good bye Yellow Pages!  The new Google search logic places a greater emphasis on recent content.   By their very nature blog posts provide your website with new content on a regular basis. You don’t need to spend time thinking of changes to your About page just to keep your sites content updated. You can simply blog.  Blogging is the best way to show up on search engines for your targeted keywords.

2. You Connect with Your Prospects

When you blog your prospects get a sense of who you are and your philosophy. They feel connected to you and your blog becomes part of closing the sale in a wonderful way. It is really awesome when I have a regular blog reader call me and I don’t need to explain what I do because they already know thanks to my blog.

I’ll give you an example. I am hiring a gardener and want someone with a specific approach to gardening. After doing a few Google searches, I found a few candidates. I decided to call the fellow that blogged about his love for organic gardening and posted awesome pictures of his work with each blog posts. When I called I felt as if I knew and trusted him. The sales dance was quick – no time wasted on the what and how. We were able to get to the close very quickly; “Can you fit me into your schedule and how much do you charge?”

3. You Are the Expert

A blog enables you to establish yourself as an expert in your industry. This is so important in today’s interactive world. Do you want your customers to have confidence that you are knowledgeable? Blog about it. Write informative, relevant information your prospects are eager to understand. You can become their go to person for a specific topic. When the needs arises they will call you. Share you blog posts on Social Media networks to expand your territory.

If you blog consistently, write about the things that matter to your customers, and communicate with authority, you are increasing your visiblity and thus increasing sales.

P.S. You don’t need to be a great writer to blog. Be yourself!

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Ranking high on search engines is a must to increase sales through your website.  Studies show between 70% to 80% of buyers begin their purchasing decision with search engines.   That is HUGE!  But this post is not about how to rank high on search engines.  Its about how to get searchers to click to your website once you rank high.

The description tag to the rescue!  If you have a great description more people will click on your search listing.  Google shows the first 150 characters of the description so make it a good one.

Here is what a good description looks like in Google:

In my example, I searched for “Fine DSLR  Camera Bag”.   Onabags.com ranked #2 and the description communicates it is a high quality bag that is durable. This will get my click.  Just above the Onabags.com listing, was an Etsy.com listing (see below) but the description did not provide value.
Full disclosure: OnaBags.com is a client of mine.

The long string of DSLR terms is not telling me its a fine camera bag.  And the, “Leather Cute Owl”…well.. something about that does not convey a fine bag.

Major tip – each page on your site should be optimized for a different search term. That means each page has a unique description.

Are you ready to check your website? Here is a quick checklist.

1. Do I have a unique description tag on each page?

2. Are my descriptions compelling? Because it is my 2 second sales pitch and call to action on search engines!

3. Is the description equal to or less than 150 characters?

4. Does the meta description match the search term for which the web page is optimized?

5. Does it compel searchers to click on my link?

6. The Title Tag is just as important as the description so give it some love.

How did you do?  If you said yes to #1 you are off to a good start.

Some technical notes about meta descriptions…for the techie in you:

1. If you don’t fill out the meta description tag, Google will simply use content from your website.

2. If you use WordPress, the All In One SEO plugin let’s you add a meta description tag on each page.

3. If you have an html site, you can manually add using the following code:

<meta name=”description” content=”This is my meta description which will influence the searcher to click on my link and go to my wonderful website.” />

4. If you don’t care about these technical notes and you don’t have meta descriptions, hire a web developer today!

Share other great tips for getting people to click on your search engine listing.

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