The difficult thing is when you get into a business relationship with someone and you find out later they were putting up a good front just long enough to establish the relationship. Once established, the self-serving PITA comes out to play and then you get to decide whether to put up with their antics or sever the relationship. Of course, they expect you to put up with their antics, and will persist until they get the feeling you’re about to bail, and they straighten up…but not for good, of course…just long enough to convince you they’re not more trouble than the income they represent.

What they don’t know, and for each person the time frame is different, is that you’ll only dance that dance so long before you either elect to find a new dance partner or leave the ballroom altogether.

For some of these people, no amount of direct and candid discussion will ever sink in. They’ll give you lip service, but that’s about it.

But don’t be fooled into thinking these people arrive in your life and/or your business by accident, anymore than the PITAs in your personal life do. It’s not an accident – you attracted them somehow.

The value of the PITAs in your life are the lessons they teach you about yourself. In business, they teach you about yourself as a business person – if you’re willing to be a student. As in the rest of your life, if you elect to ignore the lesson now, you’ll just be provided with another opportunity to learn, and yet another, and yet another – until you “get” it.

Sadly, most of us elect to do just the opposite – focus on the PITA and what all HE/SHE needs to change. We see the PITA as a “problem”, rather than a message and an available lesson. There’s no better way to frustrate the crap out of yourself than to focus your time, attention and energy on “fixing” the problem. Talk about an effort in futility! Yeah – that’s a good plan – try to change something over which you have no control. Your time, attention and energy are much more productively spent looking for what you can change about your business, your perspective, your attitude or your goals, so as to not attract these PITAs anymore. Remember, we get clarity through the contrast these darlings provide…if we’re willing to look.

So, while I have the most major of PITA clients in my business right now, I’m grateful to have learned enough to detach and look for the lessons. I’m getting better because I’m paying attention. My business will benefit, too.

Ironically, the PITA in question is oblivious. It’s actually quite funny, if I step back far enough (and some days “far enough” is at least a mile or two!) Nonetheless, the PITA count in my life overall is smaller than it used to be…and that is, as Martha says, “a good thing.”

No related posts.

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by demo

Before

Deborah’s site used the once extremely popular Cutline theme. It was quite the fancy theme back in the early days of WordPress with its multiple sidebar options and different header images for each page. It served Deborah well for a good while.

But a funny thing happens in business and in life: growth. Along with that growth comes the need to more fully express who you are, what you do and for whom. Deborah contacted me to create a custom WordPress design for her site that truly reflects who she is and how she shows up in the world today.

After

This was truly a collaborative project, as Deborah had a clear picture in mind of what she wanted and we worked together to bring that to reality.

The soft, muted color scheme evokes the same calming reassurance you experience when working with Deborah. We used three fonts from the Google web fonts collection to continue the custom look and feel of the site. The navigation incorporates images which provide visual interest complementing the clean design of the header banner and the textured background softens and warms the overall feel of the site.

Now, Deborah has a custom WordPress design that is unique to her and reflects her authenticity and her mission. This project is a favorite of mine, not just because of how beautifully it turned out, but because of how smoothly the process went from start to finish. My hat’s off to Deborah for not only knowing very clearly what she wanted, but also for being open to suggestions from me, trusting my intuition as much as her own.

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1. New Site: Temenos of the Blessing Light
2. WordPress 2.7 – I'm Lovin' It!
3. Selling Products & Services: Set Up Tips for Websites In WordPress

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

Give each product or service it’s own space.

How many products and services you have, and how diverse they are impacts the decision on how best to present them on your website in WordPress. Someone offering one-of-a-kind handmade jewelry pieces has different needs than someone offering candles or flower essences (where there’s an inventory of each scent/size/formula) or someone offering create-them-once-and-sell-them-over-and-over-again e-books and services.

Offering an affiliate program puts another set of requirements on the whole endeavor, too, and is another reason to give each product or service it’s own space.

For any product or service, the goal is to present your offers in the most focused way possible that also gives you the most options for getting the word out and attracting customers. As in everything, there are trade-offs to consider.

WordPress has two main content containers: posts and pages. A third content container are widgets, but they are best used to highlight and get clicks through to your posts and pages, so we’ll skip them for now.

Put ‘em on Posts

Without even considering custom post types, regular old posts have a lot to offer when it comes to selling products and services. Posts, as you know, go out through your RSS feed, so if you use posts as containers for individual products or product sets, anyone subscribed to your feed would be notified as soon as you post. Think lovely, automated announcements to the world of your goods.

Posts also have categories and tags. Think categories=product types and tags=colors, sizes, scents, formulas. WordPress creates dynamic archive pages for both categories and tags, so with the custom menus now available in WordPress, you can create a menu structure that emulates a catalog directory. This flexibility allows you to have posts that are used for products as well as blog posts – all in the same site!

Best of all, with your products on posts, it’s easy to make something a sale item, mark it as a best-seller or an out-of-stock item just by changing its category or tag. Categories and tags give you plenty of creative ways to organize, present and manage your products when an inventory of some kind is involved, which is why posts – not pages – are the best choice here. Pages don’t have categories or tags.

Do it using Pages

When I create a new product or service, I write a sales page for it where that product or service is the ONLY topic on the page. This is not just because I like to create sales pages (though I do. I know…I’m weird.) It’s because I want your attention on the product or the service, NOT anything else. I know you’re busy, I know you don’t have time to be mucking around looking for my point. By removing all other distractions from the screen, it’s easier for you to discern what the heck I’m offering.

Pages work best for me because my products are digital, meaning I don’t have to deal with inventory issues because there’s not a limit on how many times someone can download an e-book, for example, unless I put some kind of arbitrary limit on it myself. Same goes for services I create.

A couple years ago, getting all those distractions (the sidebar, the header, the navigation menu, the footer) off my pages was a royal pain in the butt. I love WordPress, but back then, it was not an easy task. I struggled, I wrote and rewrote code, I monkeyed with this theme and that until it dawned on me that what I really needed was a sales page template that was independent of whatever theme I was using. So, I created WP-Sales-Page.

(Note: I was obviously not the only one struggling with that problem, because now there are sales page themes, themes that allow endless page layout configurations, and sales page plugins. That’s all fine and good, but if you’ve sunk a bunch of money into your design and don’t want to abandon that for a different theme, then my little ol’ WP-Sales-Page template might be just the ticket.)

On a Domain of its own

Sometimes, you just want to give your new creation an address of its own on the web. I don’t have any hard and fast rules about this other than to say that, for me, it depends on how much attention I want it to get on it’s own, unrelated to everything else I’ve got on my site. If I give it its own domain name, then I can go to town with SEO by getting a keyword-rich domain name and then optimizing the pants off of the content on the page, thereby helping it get more attention in the search engines.

You can certainly get a keyword-rich domain name and point it at a page in your site and then use that domain name for all your marketing. But, in my opinion, you can get a whole lot more traction with that approach if you put a mini-site together for it, separately. That’s what I’ve done for WP-Sales-Page and my WP-Free-Clinic.

On a Sub-Domain

Maybe you don’t need a separate domain name, but you do want some separation from the rest of your site. Another option to consider is a separate website in WordPress sitting on a sub-domain. This allows you to use a specialized e-commerce theme for your store without mucking up your main site.

Sorting through the options

I’ve just scratched the surface of considerations and options available to you for selling products and services on your website in WordPress. If you have specific questions, leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them. If you need help putting a plan together, this might help.

Related posts:

1. How To Remove Comments from Pages in WordPress
2. Should It Be a Post or a Page?
3. Self-Hosting Your WordPress Blog

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

There are a few different ways to remove comments from pages, and which one you will like best depends on you, your theme, and your willingness to “go into the code”.

Check the Theme Options for your Theme

First, check and see if your theme offers a theme options page, and if there is any ability to turn them “off” on pages there. Often times, the option to remove comments from pages exists there, and the theme author (in many cases) has coded the theme to not run the code at all if you’ve chosen to remove comments from pages. That means no trace discussion options are shown.

Edit the Discussion Section of the Page Edit Screen

The built-in-to-WordPress way to remove comments on a page is to uncheck the “Allow comments” and “Allow trackbacks and pingbacks” boxes in the Discussion section of the page edit screen. Save the page.

In some themes, this is all you need to do. In other themes, a message appears when you edit the discussion options. If you don’t mind that, then you’re done. But if you do, and would rather nothing appears on your pages, then you can…

Remove the Code in the Page.php File

Now, this sounds scarier than it really is. But be brave – you’re only looking for one line of code and you’re just going to take it out and save the change to the template.

In your Appearance menu, click Editor.

You’ll be taken to a screen that shows all your theme’s files listed at the far right, and the style.css will be displayed in the editor window in the midde of the screen.

Look down the list for the Page Template (shown at the right.) This is known as the default page template. Click it so that it is displayed in the editor window.

Now, scroll down the page and look for this line of code:

Now, delete that line! (Don’t delete ANYthing else!)

Save your changes by clicking the “Update File” button under the editor window. Now you won’t see any trace of comments on your pages, no matter what your settings say (because you’ve taken out the code that puts that functionality on the page!)

Comments Still Showing?

The most likely culprit is another page template that’s being used rather than the default. Most of the time you can tell what template is being used by editing the page and looking over to the right in the Page Attributes section. If there is another page template in use for this page, the Template drop-down box will read something other than “Default Template.”

Alternate page templates are pretty easy to identify by matching up what you see in the Template drop-down box with the name of the templates on your Editor screen. If your page is using an alternate page template, you simply need to remove the line of comment code from this page template, too. Save your changes and comments are all gone, buh-bye!

Related posts:

1. Sales Pages in WordPress? Yes, You Can!
2. WordPress 2.7 Feature: Reply to Comments from the Admin Dashboard
3. Link to Your Own Content Without Mucking Up Your Comments

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

Web/blog statistics make some people want to stick pins in their eyes, I know…but bear with me for just a minute, because you don’t have to love them to benefit greatly from paying just a little bit of attention to them.

The image above is a screenshot of the overview stats for one of my sites in Google Analytics. Now, I know that not everyone uses Google Analytics…and I’m not going to convince you one way or another. But I do use Google Analytics, so it’s what I have to share as an example. If you can’t stand GA, feel free to stop reading now.

Ok…here we go.

What is this telling me?

This graph shows the most basic of statistics for this site:

• How many visitors came to the site in this period?
• How many pages were viewed in this period?
• The average number of pages viewed by each visitor
• The bounce rate for the site, overall, for the period
• The average amount of time spent on the site by each visitor
• How many of the visitors were first-time visitors, rather than returning visitors?

The list above is rather self-explanatory, which the possible exception of ‘bounce rate’. So let’s talk about that for a minute.

What is ‘bounce rate’?
Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page (i.e. the same page they landed on when they arrived.)

Which direction do I want these numbers to go – up or down?

• # of visitors: UP
• # of page views: UP
• page views/visit: UP
• bounce rate: DOWN
• average time spent: UP
• % first-time visits: depends on your objectives*

* A high percentage of first time visitors is normal for new sites…it’s actually what you want. As time goes on, you’ll likely want to concentrate on getting visitors to come back again and again, especially if you’re blogging, so this percentage will likely come down. This stat is best interpreted in relation to your goals and objectives, how long your site has been online, and in conjunction with other statistics

How can I use this information?

The obvious answer for this set of statistics is track your site’s growth and usage. That’s what these stats are all about. But you can go a little further than that…

For example, if your # of visits is growing (that’s the goal for most of us) and your % new visits is still high, but your bounce rate is also very high…that means you’re doing a good job of getting people to your site, but when they get there, they’re leaving as fast as they came. Now it’s time to concentrate on engaging the visitors you get and giving them reasons to stick around. You’ll know you’re getting this handled when your visits continues to grow, your page views grow, and your bounce rate decreases.

There’s a wealth of information awaiting you in your stats. It may take you some time to discern the clues hidden in the numbers, but it’s well worth the excavation!

Related posts:

1. Make Your WordPress Site/Blog More User-Friendly for SmartPhone Users
2. The Easy Way to Put YouTube Videos On Your WordPress Site or Blog
3. Worry About Your Site Being Hacked? Use WordPress File Monitor to Alert You to Changes at Your Site

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

What happens if your site is not a photography site, or an art site, or some other type of site that jumps to mind when you think photo contest? You get creative, that’s what! Just like Patricia did! She’s holding a contest around her poem, “Imagine A Woman” at her site of the same name. (She’s accepting entries until October 31st, and there is a prize…go check it out!)

This site is obviously not at all about photography. But I could hold a contest like…

• Submit an original photo depicting how you feel about blogging.
• Submit an original photo of autumn where you live. (Autumn is my favorite season…and maybe I’d request permission to use the winning photo in a design…)
• Submit your About page photo

…and who knows…I just might!

With the Photo Contest plug-in, Subscribed users can uploads photos and everyone else can vote for the uploaded photos.

When creating a contest, you can set the voting period, the period contestants can upload photos and you can set the maximum number of photos per user.

This plugin will create a WordPress page (or post) with all the necessary links to handle the uploading, voting and subscribing to your blog.

Learn more about Photo Contest and see if you can’t find a creative way to use it to boost engagement with your readers!

(I’ve noticed that some themes require a little tweaking to play nice with this plugin. But still, a great plugin, overall.)

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1. Photo Dropper WordPress Plugin
2. DIY SEO: Step 5 – Make Navigating Your Site Easy
3. Using DoFollow Is Like Signing a Letter of Reference

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

I didn’t know it would be this hard.

I don’t know why I didn’t know. I think I should have known.

Prior to starting this business, I had not experienced success in self-employment. I had tried, but there was what felt like a bullet proof window between me and the success I sought. I could see it…I just couldn’t get there.

What was standing in my way back then was my mindset. My beliefs. One of them was that anyone who comes telling you that you need to change how you think to be successful was full of hooey, plain and simple. Why? Because we all know that you can’t just think your way rich…sorry, Napoleon Hill…there’s something other than thinking involved: Action.

But I think our buddy Napoleon knew that. It’s just me…when I read what he wrote…I wish it were just that easy. Think…and grow rich.

But the real problem is this: How are you supposed to know what to do if you’re in uncharted territory? How are you supposed to think yourself forward? Time marches on whether we do anything, or not, so it’s not merely the passage of time that will make us wiser. Can’t be.

So, you’re right when you conclude that it’s something different you need to do.

How do you figure it out?

Well, the obvious way is to find someone successfully doing what you want to do. Ask them what they did to get where they are and then go do that. But even that’s not going to work completely, because you are not them and they are not you.

In my quest for business success, I have fallen prey to many a ‘guru’…have spent an inordinate amount of money pursuing ‘the secret’ to success right now. Not all that money, time or effort was wasted, because the lesson I learned is that you can’t look outside yourself for the key to your success. You have to look inside.

I used to get extremely frustrated looking around the web because I’d come across so many people making good great money and I’d think, “Why them? I’m smarter. I’ve got more experience. I…” and the list goes on and on.

You can see where this line of thinking will take you: Nowhere…fast.

A much more fruitful use of my time has been to turn my attention inward, asking, “What do you want, Suz?” (I’m continually stunned at how difficult that simple question can be to answer.)

So, the past three years have been about answering that simple little question for myself.

And in answering, I’ve had to become willing to take risks. I’ve had to put myself out there. I’ve had to let go of thoughts, beliefs, ideas and attitudes that held me back. In doing so, I’ve felt scared, vulnerable….naked, even. Definitely not my favorite feelings. But they’ve led to courage, confidence…success, even.

Skills: Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems; wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges; wish for more wisdom.

Growth: Don’t join an easy crowd. You won’t grow. Go where the expectations and the demands to perform and achieve are high.

Change: We generally change ourselves for one of two reasons: inspiration or desperation.

Activity: The few who do are the envy of the many who watch.

Success: Success is what you attract by the person you become.

~ Jim Rohn (September 17, 1930 – December 5, 2009)

Here’s the paradox: You need your gurus. They are the shortcut to your success, because they can fill in the ‘what to do’ gap when you have no clue. They can also inspire you with their own journeys. They can lead you by example.

But no guru can tell you who you are or teach you how to be you. They can model being themselves, but you are the authority on you. And if you’re not, no guru can really help you.

From this point forward, when you find yourself seeking advice, information, or steps-to-success from the gurus, don’t forget to check it all against what you know about yourself and what you want. Take what works for you and leave the rest. Don’t make anyone but you the authority on you.

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Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

I have a perfect example of this to share with you via my friend, Patsi Krakoff. She asked me to create a new header for her site. Here it is, as it was:

She had had lovely new pictures of herself taken and wanted to use one of them. So, she sent me her favorites and gave me a few wording changes and turned me loose. (Love that, btw. It’s great, as a creative person, to be given a short list of “must haves” and then be turned loose to let my creative juices flow! Thank you, Patsi, for that freedom!)

So, I created a few variations for her to choose from. She chose her favorite (which also happened to be mine – yay! Love it when that happens!) and gave me a couple of minor tweaks she’d like to see made.

One of those tweaks was to lose the lime green used on the line containing her name, but she wasn’t sure what she wanted to use instead. I suggested we pull in the blue that her site was using for post titles. I told her if she also changed the background of her site to the blue, she’d have a whole new lookin’ site on her hands.

So, that’s what we did:

Beautiful! Amazing what a new header and one color change can do for a site, eh?!

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1. DIY SEO: Step 5 – Make Navigating Your Site Easy
2. Make Your WordPress Site/Blog More User-Friendly for SmartPhone Users
3. 13 Plugins Make My WordPress World Go ‘Round

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

(Hmmm….who among you would have expected to find Kipling quotes on a blog about WordPress? If this is your first visit, this type of thing is just another one of the value added services around here. LOL)

To an impressionable child with an insatiable curiosity, this was heady stuff!

Mrs. Williams said no essay, no question, really, was ever complete without addressing all six. That stuck with me.

So, when I think in terms of this blog’s readers, I realize that I would better serve you by giving you the whole story. So, we’ll try it out and we’ll see how it goes, ok? And, as always, your voice is heard through the comments. Don’t be bashful.

Who, What and Where

The ability to make a post “sticky” was introduced with WP 2.7 and is a way to keep a particular blog post showing as the first one on your blog (a.k.a. the most recent one.) Remember, blog posts are typically shown in reverse chronological order, meaning the most recent one shows first, the one before that shows next, and so on.

Why and When

Well, what if you had a reason to want a particular post to always show first? How would you do that? Previously, you’d always have to be monkeying around with the date or use a plugin. As of WP 2.7, this ability to make a post “sticky” is built in.

You might want a particular post to show first because it is an announcement of some sort, or it’s an explanatory post you want everyone coming to your blog to see first.

How

How you make a post “sticky” is really very easy.

There’s a setting in the Publish section, a check box labeled, “Stick this post to the front page” and you check it, update the post and there you are!

Easy peasy!

And how do you “un-stick” it when you no longer want it to be the first post?

Just uncheck the box, update your post, and it falls back into the flow of posts according to its post date.

Can you make more than one post sticky?

Oh yes…and they’ll order themselves according to their post dates. So, if you make two posts sticky, the one with the most recent date will show first, then the other one, and then the rest of the blog posts will show.

Note: This works on blog pages where the “normal” blog stream shows. It doesn’t affect custom home pages, magazine-style pages, etc.

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1. What Are Categories and Tags and How Are They Used?
2. Turn Off Post Revisions for Single User Blogs
3. Give Extra Link Love by Using the CommentLuv Plug-in

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne

The good news is Matt is a funny guy – very fun to watch/listen to. (Further proof that we geeky tech people really can have interesting personalities…) Which is a good thing because this video is 46 minutes long. But you will laugh your way to learning…promise. (If you’re reading through the feed, click the title of this post to come to the site to see the video.)

• Pagerank – what it is and how to get more of it
• Keywords – how to pick ‘em
• Permalink structure – which one to use and why (oh, I feel so confirmed!)
• How to get more people to link to you
• and the real, true, deep secret of blogging!

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1. The Easy Way to Put YouTube Videos On Your WordPress Site or Blog
2. 13 Plugins Make My WordPress World Go ‘Round
3. Upgrade WordPress Yourself? Yes, You Can!

Published at Websites in WordPress - Websites you can manage yourself no matter how non-technical you are! by Suzanne