I handle the tech stuff (installing, configuring, plugins…if your eyes just glazed over then my services will probably help you a lot), and you get to come home to a cozy new just-for-you website and start bringing your smartnesses to your right people. You know, the ones who are out there hoping to find you and will be thrilled when they see that you have a website.

Call me during Open Office Hour any Thursday (from 10am-11am Pacific time) if you have questions or want to know if I can help you. I might even be able to give you a (free) solution right on the phone!

Here are my packages (links take you to pages that describe the packages in detail):

Basic WP Install: $99
Blog Move-In Special (Basic WP install by me, plus copyediting by Michelle Russell): $199
Bonus WP Install (includes theme customization & extra tweaks): $299
Bonanza WP Install (includes custom header and art by Amy Crook): $599

If you know someone who deserves a blog of their own, or want to tweet (I’m @wendycholbi, just @ reply me to say hello!) or send a friend to this blog post, that would be super-nice of you. And I would be way-more-than-happy to send you appreciation monies if you are one of my affiliates.

August is going to be a good month (I’ll be fresh off the train from Jen Louden’s Taos retreat!). A busy month (that’s why I’m setting aside this limited number of slots now!). A fun month (classes, ebooks and good times ahead!). A month when eight new blogs will see the light of day.

I’d love for one of them to be yours.

Related posts:

1. Go ask Johnny if you need a WordPress installation before January 11

In this no-cost one-hour call, we’ll tell you how to choose (and more importantly, how NOT to choose) a color scheme for your website, give you some solid design principles to help you use color effectively, and offer recommendations for upgrading and fine-tuning your website’s colors. Got a question about color? Join us and ask it live!

Amy is going to announce a special deal just for callers, and this call is also the official launch of our joint WordPress packages, but this is not a sales call. We’re going to have fun picking apart some websites we know and love, and learning to see web colors with a designer’s eye. We’d love to have you join us!

We’re publishing the dial-in number and access code so that you can join us easily. No strings attached, no reservation or registration required.

Free teleclass details

• Date: Wednesday, June 16
• Time: 1pm Pacific time (what’s that in your time zone?)
• Dial-in number: 402-237-2450
• Access code: 883119#

We’ll be recording the call, and we’ll be happy to send you a free copy of the recording plus a 5-page PDF handout on using color effectively online. For that, we’ll need a way to contact you. Sign up here to get on the mailing list for the call recording and handout (this handout was designed by Amy, and she’s an artist — trust me, it’s gorgeous!).

Related posts:

1. Upcoming classes: Backups, Upgrades, & Web Colors
2. Free Teleclass May 18: Love Your List
3. Free Teleclass April 26: Why WordPress?

I’ve taught quite a number of teleclasses about various tech topics, but I only realized recently that the setting-up and managing of teleclasses themselves is a tech topic that you might need help with.

I’ll describe the technological steps that I go through each time I set up and run a new class, from beginning to end.

In the previous two installments I talked about conference lines and getting the word out. Today’s topic is recording your teleclass.

Why record in the first place?

If you’re just starting out, you might be a little shy or even squeamish about the idea of recording yourself talking. And I totally get that. I still get a little weirded out by listening to myself on a recording, so I’m right there with you.

But here’s the thing: There’s no downside to recording your class. That becomes pretty clear if you flip the question and ask “Why not?”

• I might say something stupid or sound dumb. Yep, you might, and no one ever has to hear the recording if you do. It’s yours. You can hide it, archive it, or delete it.
• No one will ever want to hear/download/buy the recording. Yep, that might be true. But no one will ever be able to make that choice unless you have a recording in the first place.
• I don’t know how. That’s OK, you can learn! Keep reading for your first steps.

Let’s flip these into reasons to go ahead and record:

• I might say something brilliant. However unlikely you may think this outcome, it’s at least technically possible, right? And if you do, you’ll have captured it for posterity. Bonus: If someone else says something nice about your class, you’ve captured an instant testimonial!
• If I ever want to create products to sell, having audio recordings gives me material to work with. You bet. You can even give them away as free bonuses, if you’re not ready to build an info product empire just yet.
• This is a chance to practice something new. I think it’s a great idea for us solopreneurs to learn how to do most, if not all, the work our businesses require. If there are tasks you hate, sure, you can plan to outsource them at some point, but even if you do have that plan, you’ll want to know enough about what you’re doing to describe your plans to future helpers, right? And if it turns out there are tasks you can do yourself that you don’t mind, you can save yourself some money and feel super-capable at the same time. What’s not to like?

Now that I’ve given this great pep talk, let’s move on to the actual recording how-to.

Use your conference provider’s built-in recording feature

Most of the free conference providers offer free recording of their calls. If your call provider doesn’t offer this service, or charges you for recording, you really ought to switch.

The exact procedure for starting and stopping the recording depends on the conference provider. There should be clear instructions on the provider’s website or in the email you received when you signed up. And the provider’s automated system should walk you through the process as you do it, too.

For example, when I’m hosting a call using FreeConferencePro, I just have to press *9 to tell the service to start recording. I’m prompted to enter a number to identify the call (this is just any number that I make up, and I don’t have to remember it), then the # key, and then I hear “This conference is being recorded.” And when I hang up, the recording stops.

That’s it. As few as four key presses, and I’m recording.

Your conference provider should store your recordings for you, but you should still download a copy of the recording to your own computer as soon as possible after the call (I’ll cover downloading in a future installment of this series).

Always have a backup plan

If you’re going to record the call, I highly recommend creating a backup recording. You can (probably) do it for free, so the same “there’s no downside” argument applies. There is more than one way to handle backup recording, so here are a few ways I’ve done it:

Use a paid service like AudioAcrobat or BYOAudio. Each is $19.95 per month after a 30-day free trial; those are not affiliate links since I’m not a paying subscriber of either service. I have used AudioAcrobat in the past and it does make publishing audio files very easy, but WordPress plugins can do that job just as easily for $0. To record a conference call, you’ll need three-way calling to connect the AudioAcrobat recording service with your conference line.

Use your computer to record directly. This only works if you’re going to use Skype or a similar VoIP service for your call (which in general I don’t recommend due to possible connection and clarity problems), and if you have audio recording software and know how to use it. You’ll also likely end up with a recording that features your voice loud and clear, while any other voices on the call will sound like they’re, well, on a long-distance line. So you’ll want to be a savvy enough audio editor to do tricks like balancing out the volume levels. Not for the faint of heart.

My current favorite backup: TalkShoe.com. It’s a hybrid of an Internet radio network and a conference-call service, allowing both live webcasts and private invitation-only calls. I simply set up a private call, dial in using three-way calling, and have TalkShoe automatically record the entire call. Come to think of it, you could do this three-way-calling backup-recording dance with any other free conference service (or even another FreeConferencePro account).

Got a question about any of these services, or about recording conference calls? Leave me a comment or talk to me during my Open Office Hours!

Related posts:

1. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, part 1: Conference Lines
2. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, part 2: Getting the Word Out
3. My computer is dead, but my teleclass is ALIIIVE!

Tomorrow (Thursday, June 10), I’m Cairene MacDonald’s guest for a special Bite the Candy workshop on backups and upgrades. So if you’ve been putting off backing up your hard drive, or upgrading your WordPress plugins, or you want support with other backup-and-upgrade-related issues, join us for a dose of reassurance and some focused work time.

Learn all about Bite the Candy and sign up here.

Next week, on Wednesday, June 16, I’m holding a free Color Clinic teleclass with artist Amy Crook of Not Dead Yet Studios and Antemortem Arts. We’ll talk about the do’s and don’ts of choosing colors for your website (I’ve got lots of stuff to ask Amy, because I’m a builder, not a designer — I deliver function, and the form is pretty much up to you), plus we’ll announce our top secret joint project!

Learn about the Color Clinic and sign up here.

Finally, my Love Your List workshop with Shannon Wilkinson is going really well, and you can still join us! The live workshop runs through June 22, and you’ll have access to all the call recordings so you can catch up and get AWeber all set up to build your business. We will be packaging the recordings and creating a workbook for a home-study version, which will be priced 50% higher. So if you want all the same materials as the home-study version, for a much lower price, you’ll want to sign up now.

Learn about Love Your List and sign up here.

I love doing these live classes, and I’d be thrilled to have you join me for any of them.

Related posts:

1. Backups and Upgrades: The Greatest Hits Collection
2. Free website color clinic teleclass today!
3. Free Teleclass May 18: Love Your List

I’ve taught quite a number of teleclasses about various tech topics, but I only realized recently that the setting-up and managing of teleclasses themselves is a tech topic that you might need help with.

I’ll describe the technological steps that I go through each time I set up and run a new class, from beginning to end.

Last week I talked about conference lines. Now that you have a dedicated phone number for your teleclass, how do you give that number to the people who need it?

Open the doors or close the gate?

The first decision to make is whether to require people to sign up to join the class, or just broadcast the telephone number to the world.

If you are charging admission, you obviously want to collect payment before giving people the call-in details. An example is the Bite the Candy teleclass on backups and upgrades I’m doing on June 10 with Cairene MacDonald of Third Hand Works.

It costs $37 to register for the workshop, and Cairene has a nifty system set up so that buyers automatically receive an email message containing call details once their payment has been received (I’ll describe how I set up systems like this in future installments of this Teleclass Nuts & Bolts series).

If your teleclass will be free, it’s still a common and accepted practice to ask people to register. An example is the free teleclass called three ways to get more out of your AWeber investment (you can still sign up even though the class is over — you’ll get the recording), which I did with Shannon Wilkinson to promote our Love Your List workshop.

Why do you want people to sign up, instead of just handing out the number? So you can get your (electronic) hands on their email addresses, which you can then use to send marketing messages. In our case, we wanted to promote a paid workshop, and we also wanted a way to send people the recording after we held the live teleclass.

Of course, people will (rightfully) complain if you do this in a sleazy way, so it’s always a good idea to be upfront about what you’re going to do with their email address, and then make that something good. Such as sending them a recording of your class afterward, asking their opinion, thanking them with a special offer, or any number of other good-citizen marketing techniques.

Open to all

A note (and a question) about ungated calls: I’ve heard it said that giving something away (like an ebook) without requiring an email address means it will spread 20 to 50 times more people (not 20% to 50% more, but 20x to 50x). I’m not sure if those numbers apply to teleclasses, however (and I wonder if anyone has any information or statistics on this).

Teleclasses are different from ebooks, because they happen at a specific time. I’m sure that many more people will have access to the dial-in information if you make it public (for instance, simply publishing the phone number on your website, your blog, your Facebook and Twitter accounts, etc.). But that might not translate into more people actually calling in. Or it might. Does anyone out there know?

If you’re going to make the call-in information public anyway, I’d suggest going one step further and broadcasting your call as a live Internet radio show. You can do this for free at sites including BlogTalkRadio.com and TalkShoe.com (I personally prefer TalkShoe because there are no restrictions on when you can broadcast, you can have more live callers, and you can also schedule “private” broadcasts). People can listen on their computers or call in, you can easily get a recording (which will live on in your public archives, too), and you also get a bit more exposure by using the Internet radio site as a platform.

Countdown to the call

Whichever way you choose to set your call up, you’ll want to make yourself a Call Countdown Calendar, scheduling your publicity-generating activities so they build to a peak in the day or so before your call.

This is a chance to use your normal online activities to promote your call. For instance, if you hang out on Twitter, tweet a few times each day, and ask for retweets. Update your Facebook or LinkedIn status to include a note that you’re excited about your teleclass (with a link, of course!). Write a blog post (or several).

If you asked people to register for the call, I highly recommend that you set up a reminder email message to go out to everyone who registered, on the day before or the day of (the morning of the teleclass day is best, in my opinion). If you added them to an email list service like AWeber, it’s a cinch to set up a broadcast message containing the call-in details.

In my next Teleclass Nuts & Bolts installment, I’ll talk about recording your teleclass.

Related posts:

1. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, part 1: Conference Lines
2. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, Part 3: Recordings (and backup recordings!)
3. Free Teleclass May 18: Love Your List

Side note: “Without tears” is pretty much my preferred way to do everything, except maybe attend weddings — there’s no avoiding a meltdown of empathetic joy in that case, so I just bring tissues.

Anyway, I’ve written about upgrades in detail here on the blog, and I thought I’d collect all the related links into a handy-dandy reference in honor of biting the candy.

How to upgrade practically anything

This is a 6-part series on upgrading, inspired by my experiences upgrading WordPress from version 2.6 to 2.8. It’s written mostly about software, but the theory and practical steps apply to hardware, website stuff, and everything in between. More or less.

• Part 1: Taking Stock (or: Meeting Your Fears Where They Are)
• Part 2: Laying the Foundation (or: Back Up Your Stuff)
• Part 3: Preparation (or: Getting Out Your Ingredients)
• Part 4: Documenting (or: Show Your Work)
• Part 5: Testing (or: Run That By Me Again)
• Part 6: Postmortem (or: Monday Morning Quarterbacking)

I also wrote posts (with step-by-step screenshots) on how to upgrade WordPress and how to upgrade a WordPress plugin. Since I wrote the latter post, WordPress has introduced the ability to bulk-upgrade plugins (meaning you can upgrade a bunch of them all at once, with a single click), which is an awesome time-saver and probably means I need to write another post illustrating that process.

The backup brigade

Did you happen to notice that I devoted a whole entry (Step 2) of the upgrade series to backing up? If you go read my post about upgrading WordPress, you’ll see that I mention backups there, too. And any sane upgrade guide will tell you the same thing: Back up before you upgrade.

This is why backups and upgrades are a package deal. You need your stuff backed up before you attempt an upgrade (honestly, you need your stuff backed up no matter what, but upgrading is a great excuse!).

Here are three posts about backups:

• Back up before you upgrade (yes, this is the same link as Step 2 in the list above, because backing up is just that important).
• Detailed instructions (with screenshots) for using the WP-DB Backup plugin to backup your WordPress database
• My first post urging regular backups contains a short list of suggestions for starting a backup habit.

I’m looking forward to biting some candy with Cairene on Thursday, and I hope you’ll consider joining us!

Related posts:

1. Upcoming classes: Backups, Upgrades, & Web Colors
2. How to upgrade anything, part 2 of 6 (Heart-Centered Technology Tip)
3. How to upgrade WordPress

For this next one, I’m partnering with my fabulous friend Shannon Wilkinson, who is an expert on helping people get out from underneath piles of should (and she’s a life coach and NLP expert and has helped me shift my perceptions to get past stuff that was blocking me).

We were chatting about how we use email service provider AWeber for our various email lists, and we realized that many of the people we’ve talked to are intimidated by the technological process of setting up an email list and using it — and at the same time they feel kind of icky about doing email marketing at all. It’s no wonder that they get stuck!

So we decided to put our heads together to help our peeps with these problems. By combining my step-by-step tech-teaching style with Shannon’s genius for helping people reframe difficult situations, we believe we can help you overcome both the technological and the emotional barriers to integrating email marketing into your business.

If those feelings of intimidation and ick are familiar to you, then you might dig our free teleclass, Love Your List: Three ways to get more out of your AWeber investment.

Teleclass details

• Date: Tuesday, May 18
• Time: 10am Pacific (what’s this in your time zone?)
• Yes, we will be recording the call and sending the mp3 to everyone who signs up.
• Cost: Your email address so we can send you the phone number and access code, and the mp3 afterward
• This call is for you if: You have an AWeber account but don’t know what to do to get started using it, or you’re planning on signing up for a new AWeber account in the near future.

We’ll give you three steps you can take immediately to start using AWeber’s powers (for good, of course!), and we’ll address that “ick — email marketing is yucky” feeling with a dose of Shannon’s perception-shifting mojo.

We’re also planning a four-week workshop in June to delve into these topics more deeply, and we do plan to mention the workshop at the very end of this free call. But our intention with this call is to give you good solid action steps and a perception-shifting exercise that you can use again and again, not spend a lot of time giving you a sales pitch. We figure that if we give you something useful, that’s the best sales pitch of all.

Ready to sign up? Just fill out this cute little AWeber form (if you can’t see it because you’re reading this in a feed reader or in an email message, head on over to the Love Your List page to see the original form) and we’ll send you the dial-in number, plus the call recording afterward.

Related posts:

1. Free website color clinic teleclass today!
2. Free Teleclass April 26: Why WordPress?
3. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, part 2: Getting the Word Out

So, as I was going through my mental countdown for WordPress Swimming Lessons, and simultaneously starting the pre-launch preparations for my next class (my fabulous friend Shannon and I are co-teaching a class on AWeber called Love Your List), I came up with the idea for a series of blog posts describing the nuts and bolts of teleclasses.

I’ll describe the technological steps that I go through each time I set up and run a new class, from beginning to end. Each Monday I’ll publish a new installment.

I’ll start with the “tele” part: Signing up for a conference line.

That’s why they call it a teleclass

So you’ve decided to hold a class (or an interview, or a Q&A session, or a guided meditation, or whatever) on the phone. You now need a number that a group of callers can dial to get connected with you. I refer to this phone number as a conference line, but you may also hear it called a bridge line.

Fortunately, a whole bunch of companies are giving away these conference lines for free. Yes, there are paid services (and some of the free services have “pro” upgrades), but personally, I wouldn’t pay when I can get all the features I need for free.

“Free” in this case means you will probably get a number that is in some area code you’ve never heard of, that will be a long-distance call for you. In these days of flat-rate unlimited calling, you’re probably not paying by the minute for long-distance anymore…but if you are, be aware that calling your “free” conference line will result in long-distance charges.

Do a quick Google search for “free conference call provider” and you’ll be overwhelmed by the choices. Here are two that I’ve used before and can vouch for:

• FreeConferencePro.com: This is the service I currently use for all my teleclasses. Despite the “pro” in the name, this service is completely free.
• FreeConferenceCall.com: I used this service before I found FCP. The name says it all. One thing I like about this service is that you can get international dial-in numbers (also free), so if you have callers from outside the US, they won’t have to make an international call.

Features to look for

Here are some features I like, all of which FreeConferencePro offers:

• Call recording
• Online control panel so you can see who’s on the call
• Ability to mute all callers (sometimes called presentation mode)
• Ability to mute all callers but let them press a key to unmute themselves (sometimes called Q&A mode)
• Ability to selectively mute individual callers via the online control panel (great when someone’s phone is staticky or has a lot of background noise)
• Storage of multiple call recordings (you should still download them to your computer, though!)
• Ability to schedule calls in advance, while also allowing “instant” or “reservationless” calls
• Custom recorded greeting for your callers
• Ability to change default settings (like turning off those annoying dings you hear on some calls whenever a new caller joins or hangs up — if you change the default, you don’t have to remember to turn these off every time you have a call)
• Ability to change either the phone number or the access code (in effect giving you a brand-new number whenever you want it)

Some slight downsides: These services, being free, don’t tend to offer much in the way of live customer support — there’s usually a FAQ, and ideally the user instructions are sufficient and clear, but if your question isn’t answered or something weird happens, it may be hard to find a way to get help. Which leads me to…

Don’t forget to test drive

When you sign up for a conference line, get a friend to call in with you so you can spend some time practicing. You’ll want to make sure you know how to start and stop the call recording, how to mute and unmute your callers, and how to change settings during the call, for instance.

Another thing to do during the conference test-drive is to make sure your callers can hear you clearly. If your volume is too low, or your phone is too staticky, find out from a friend, well before your teleclass. I’d also recommend doing a short test recording of you and a friend, and listening to it yourself to hear whether both voices are similar in volume.

You may need to make adjustments to your phone (if you’ve got things like a volume control button), use a different phone, or buy a headset if you need one. In general, I don’t recommend using a cell phone or a VoIP service (such as Skype) to run a teleclass, as they tend to have more interference and drop more calls than landlines.

When you’re comfortable using your conference line, you’re ready to plan your teleclass.

Got a teleclass question? Leave me a comment!

Related posts:

1. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, Part 3: Recordings (and backup recordings!)
2. Teleclass Nuts & Bolts, part 2: Getting the Word Out
3. My computer is dead, but my teleclass is ALIIIVE!

Now my challenge is to get this course in front of the people who really need it. Because I know people really do need it! If you’re one of those people, I’d love to welcome you to the course.

(You can also join my affiliate program if you’d like thank-you monies in the form of 30% of all live class registrations and 50% of all product sales you refer.)

I did a free call last week and you can get the recording here. It wasn’t a sales call (although I did mention the course, and one person asked me to go into more detail at the very end of the call), it was a description of why I love WordPress and what makes WP so great and powerful.

Who the Swimming Lessons are for:

• Complete WordPress beginners
• People who had someone else set up a WordPress site and don’t know how to use it themselves
• People who know they’ll be using WordPress real soon now and want to learn the basics
• People who are switching from Blogger or iWeb and want to learn the WordPress landscape

This is about demystifying the technology of WordPress, and getting you comfortable using it by yourself to manage your own site (whether it’s a “blog” or a “website” because WordPress can do both). It’s about freeing you from the need to hire a webmaster to update or change your site. It’s about being resourceful and empowered when it comes to maintaining your online home — and making that home into a place where you’re comfortable and relaxed.

Here are a few things that I will not be doing (though I can refer you to excellent resources for all of these):

• Explaining how to get traffic to your site/blog (otherwise known as SEO)
• Telling you how to write compelling content
• Giving you advice on blogging or marketing strategy
• Doing anything remotely related to web design (although I will talk about the power of WordPress themes and how easy it is to create and manage your own look/feel/design)

WordPress Swimming Lessons begins next Monday (May 10) at 10am Pacific time (what’s that in your time zone?). There are two one-hour webinars and two one-hour “practice sessions” (Q&A with me), plus you get email support. It’s $99, but you can get a $20 discount if you sign up for the free call recording.

You can read complete WordPress Swimming Lesson details and sign up here.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Webinar begins tomorrow!
2. All aboard the SOBCon Express
3. Free Teleclass April 26: Why WordPress?

I’m going to SOBCon!

Chicago, here I come! Although I haven’t accomplished a fraction of my pre-conference to-do lists, I’ve got my boarding pass printed out, my hotel reservation confirmed, and my TSA-approved carry-on luggage almost-packed. This is a chance for me to step outside my small home-office world for a weekend, just like I tried out driving a truck last weekend (hey, it makes sense to me).

Last year I went to this conference thanks to serendipity and a last-minute giveaway from Naomi. This year I’m traveling under my own steam (is that the expression? That doesn’t sound quite right. Ah, whatever) and I have every hope that SOBCon 2010 will rock my socks as much as SOBCon 2009 did.

No Open Office Hour this week (April 29)

See the part where I’m going to SOBCon? That means that I’m actually going to be on a plane (or being x-rayed by airport security, which is equally bad when it comes to trying to use a cell phone) during my regular Thursday Open Office Hour timeslot.

So if you were planning on calling, try next week, or send me an email (although, what with all the conferencing this weekend, I may not answer before next week anyway).

WordPress teleclass recording is available!

I just emailed out the recording of Monday’s free teleclass, Why WordPress? You can get your free copy by signing up here, and hear why I recommend WordPress. It was pretty fun, and I got to answer some good WordPress questions.

Of course, you can always join me during my Open Office Hour (except tomorrow, remember the part where I’m leavin’ on a jet plane?) to ask your own question, or email me and I might post an answer here on the blog.

Webinar starts May 10!

I ran a class called WordPress Swimming Lessons back in February, and people seemed to like it. So I’m doing it again in May. There will be two one-hour webinars, two Q&A calls, email support, and lots of easing of your technology fears. And you can get a secret discount code to save $20 if you sign up for the free teleclass recording (plus listening to that recording will give you a good idea of what my Q&A sessions will be like).

Cool new stuff coming sometime soon!

I’ve got a handful of nifty joint ventures and non-joint ventures coming soon. Like a course on email marketing, a new service to help teleclass leaders, a free monthly call for graduates of my classes, and new WordPress installation packages that include actual graphic design by an actual graphic designer. If you want to find out when these things are going to happen, plus read more about my adventures in pickup-driving and cooking, you should subscribe to this blog. Seriously.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Swimming Lessons are back!
2. Update on Open Office Hours
3. Free website color clinic teleclass today!