One of the greatest things about building your site in WordPress (self-hosted) is that there will always be room to grow.

Those of us who have been in the game for a while can easily remember a time when WordPress was very little more than a blogging platform, competing with services like TypePad and Moveble Type.  Sure, even then you could hack into the code base and create some pretty wild things, if you knew your .php and CSS, but a website platform, it was not.

Back then, we built some pretty cool-looking blogs, but for customers needing a website with a blog, the done thing was to build the site in .html with a few .php elements, and then hang a WordPress blog installation off of it, and skin them up so that they looked like the same installation.  (Oh boy, I don’t miss those days!)

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Here’s a really great example of a blog converted over to a site:  Rewire Your Brain For Love is a project we helped launch a couple of years ago.  Neuropsychologist Dr. Marsha Lucas was fixing to write a book combining the disciplines of neuroscience and neuroplasticity with mindfulness meditation, to teach readers how to literally rewire their brains to improve their relationships and ultimately, their lives.  Pretty cool project, we thought, as we sat down to come up with a long-term web strategy.

Like many grass roots projects, we had a moderate budget to work with, and so we decided to put together a blog, built on WordPress so that Dr. Lucas could compose and publish her own posts, and we took on growing her Twitter channel while she labored with her book.

This strategy worked very well.  We were able to quickly grow up her Twitter channel (who knew there would be thousands of people on Twitter actively interested in Neuroscience??), regular blog posts help drive the search engine traffic we needed for the site, and luckily, the sort of visitor her content was attracting was precisely the sort interested in signing up for a monthly newsletter in exchange for a Mindfulness Meditation audio download.  Interestingly enough, we’ve had very few unsubscribes to the newsletter list, which proves that it pays to put some serious energy into producing a high-quality monthly newsletter.

It wasn’t long before we had 22,000 Twitter followers, hundreds of whom were actively engaged in Dr. Lucas’ content, her site traffic blew up into the thousands every week, and she was being retweeted and @ mentioned by prominent figures in her field.  The strategy we put into place helped provide a good showing, leading her to the publishing deal she was shopping for, and with the book’s release date fast approaching, we found it time again to move into the final phase of the marketing strategy: preparing the site for launch.  (Incidentally, the books’ release date is Feb 1, 2012.)

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The site had originally been built as a blog.  The home page was simply the main blog page.  There was an “About” page, and a couple of other informational pages, but it was still just a blog at its core.  So with this in mind, we moved to update the site’s “look and feel” to give it more legitimacy.  We also created a new “Home” page, which would act as little more than a landing page created with one purpose: to sell the book.  The blog posts were moved back into the Blog tab, and all of the other informational pages, which had been used to attract attention and generate interest, were now pushed to the back, to make way for the new sales page.

Before WordPress, this would really have been two projects.  Two websites.  A pre-release website, and a post-release website.  With WordPress, we can create a long-term content strategy, and turn it around on a dime, or make adjustments as we measure traffic and other results on a budget affordable to any small business.

What makes Dr. Marsha’s site work, besides being built on WordPress, is its minimalist design approach, easy navigation, and really great content.

Check out the new, relaunched Rewire Your Brain for Love site.

Follow Dr. Marsha Lucas on Twitter.

Site design by Pausha Foley

“Badass” WordPress Logo by Jon Cazier

How many times have you seen this DM in the past month?:

If you’re a casual Twitter user you may not find this sort of thing to be much of an annoyance.  After all, you may not even pay attention to your DM’s. If if you do, you may be bright enough not to click on any links sent to you by strangers.  If you’re a professional brand-manager, as I am, this situation is more than just an annoyance.

I receive this message, and many other similar phishing scams up to 30 times per day across the handful of channels I monitor.  The barrage of spam DM messages basically renders my entire DM channel useless to me, and it fills my iPhone Notification Center up with garbage, such that I miss important communications from the brands’ customers, vendors, and PR personnel.

I’ve seen a few individuals rail directly at Twitter from time to time about doing more to close down spam accounts, bots, and other malcontents who are pissing in the Twitter stream, and that made a lot of sense until quite recently.  Now that doesn’t’ make a lot of sense, and here’s what’s changed:

It used to be that these garbage DM’s and spam-link @ mentions were coming almost exclusively from fake profiles created, often in bulk, by spammers and folks pushing botnet links.  Now, these messages are coming from YOU.  That’s right.  There’s a new strategy in town, and that strategy targets the profiles of legitimate Twitter users, susses out their user/password combination, and then sets up an Auto-DM sequence with one of the many such services, sending out bulk spam DM’s without the profile owner ever knowing that they’ve been compromised.

Would you like to know whose fault it is?  Are you sure?  Okay, here it comes. 

This is your fault, because your password sucks.

That’s right.  No matter how many times you’ve been told, or you’ve read that you need to create truly secure passwords, you do not.  You’re lazy, and/or you’re convinced that you can’t remember a complicated password.  And now you’re polluting everyone else’s online experience.

Most users I’ve talked to about this don’t realize that the spam DM’s are coming in from real profiles.  You’re running the risk of being blocked and reported as a spammer, and you’re damaging your own brand.  How do you like that?

So, are you still reading?

Good.

Twitter could start holding users responsible for their accounts being hacked, but they never will.  Fixing Twitter is up to us.

Now go and change your password to something secure.  Remove any installed applications that you’re not currently using, or that you can’t recall installing yourself.

Apple goes above and beyond when it comes to helping the visually impaired. With brilliant accessibility tools across all of their product lines, they are looking out for most everyone. In fact one could even say the greatest accessibility tool is Siri. Having a personal assistant to help you perform tasks on your phone without the need of even looking at the screen is an advancement that will certainly help everyone, especially, the visually impaired.

It won’t be to long before you see a super-intelligent rendition of Siri implemented across OS X.  However, even amazingly smart artificial intelligence has it’s limits. When it comes down to it, Siri has no way of helping you read the words on your screen. In the mean time, while we wait for Siri to be able to think and see for us, apps like Zoom It make zooming in on your Mac quick and easy.

Get the big picture from your menu bar

There are already so many tools in OS X for helping visually impaired users that we initially scratched our collective head at Zoom It, an application that lets you magnify parts of your screen with a customizable loupe. But although it’s no substitute for OS X’s built-in visual accessibility features, it’s a handy way to access some of them quickly.

When small text comes along, you must Zoom It.

Like the device it represents, Zoom It is nothing if not easy to use. Clicking its menu bar icon displays a brief menu that lets you show and hide the loupe, which looks right at home in OS X thanks to a 3D border and a slightly shaded view under its virtual glass. You can also change its size and zoom level, and switch from a round to a rectangular loupe. That’s useful when moving from images to text, but you can’t resize the loupe with a pinch the way you can Preview’s Magnifier tool. Each feature can be controlled with customizable keyboard commands, including shortcuts to temporarily show the loupe, and another that takes a screenshot of just the magnified area. True to its name, using Zoom It was speedy, and it didn’t affect keyboard commands, trackpad gestures, and other controls in our applications.

Read The Full Article Here

This MacLife article caught my eye because I recently went through my own hard drive and eliminated all the extra fluff I did not need. I freed nearly 100GB just by following simple guidelines like the ones presented in this article. Sometimes a task that may seem daunting isn’t all that bad when approached with the right tools and attitude. Good luck and happy pruning.

How to Locate What’s Sucking up Your Hard Drive Space

It’s all too easy to say “oh, I’ll just delete some stuff” and then never do it. Take action today and cut the flab from your file system by locating the major space-sucking culprits.

1. Balancing the Blocks

The first step isn’t always the easiest, but this time it is: determine just how much space you have remaining on your Mac’s main disk. If you’ve read this far, chances are it’s not much. To get the complete picture, click on the Macintosh HD icon (or whatever you call your main drive) in the Finder, then type Command-I to bring up its Info window. From here, you can see the capacity of your drive as well as the amount of space available.

Aim to have a third of your drive free.

If the available storage is less than one-third of the total capacity of the drive, it’s worth freeing up more. The benefits of a healthy hard drive are far greater than just having more room to play with. With around one-third of your drive’s capacity available, you should see slight improvements in drive access as well as application speed. Mac OS X will also be able to use some of that storage as virtual memory to help it perform tasks without using your RAM, a great help to those using older Macs.

2. Find and Delete Huge Unwanted Files

Next, with the Finder selected, press Command-F to bring up a search window. Click on the first drop-down menu and select Other and then Size. From the second drop-down menu, select “is greater than” and then enter an amount in the field to the right of it. A good place to start is 50MB.

Next up: find those big files.

The files and folders that now appear in the Finder window all fit the criteria you entered—if you looked for files bigger than 50MB, these are all the files of that size or larger on your Mac. But wait! Before you start blindly erasing some of them, check out what they actually do on your system. Mac OS X includes some rather hefty system files that are necessary to keep things running smoothly. If you’re absolutely certain that you know what a file is, then chuck it, but it’s worth checking if in doubt. An easy way to find out more is to select a file, right-click on it, and select Open Enclosing Folder for more details on its origin.

[Continue Reading Here]

Whether you just recently joined the Apple family or you need some pointers, Mac|Life has put together a wonderful Mac Resource guide.  This guide covers everything from just getting started with your computer, keyboard shortcuts, to installing Windows with Boot Camp.

Enjoy,
~Kaz

So, you finally let Windows out to rot and made the switch to the Mac. Feeling a little anxious about it? Well, first of all, relax. There are plenty of resources out there to help you get situation, not to mention an amazing community of enthusiasts who have no problem helping you find your way. To get you started, here’s a list of 9 essential resources you should add to your arsenal right now. No matter your experience level with computers, these resources can surely help you find your way.

1. Apple Mac 101
Apple’s Mac 101 learning site lets you discover all of the ins-and-outs of your new Macintosh computer. This is a great site if you’re new to OS X or if you want to learn about all of the features of the Mac. If you’re moving from Windows to the Mac, be sure to check out Apple’s switcher guide.

2. Apple Discussion Board
When you’re new to a platform, you often have tons of questions, like where a setting might be located or if if you need to perform routine hard drive maintenace. Apple’s Discussion Board is a great place to get started with these types of questions and receive answers from the Mac community at large.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Article Credit: Cory Bohon

One of the most important lessons I have learned from Chris here at FoleyPod is: Always bring the right tool for the job. I don’t think I can fully express how much of a difference it makes to have the right hardware and software to get the job done. Just the other day I was reflecting on this idea in relation to past jobs and personal projects that where broken from the start because I was forcing tools to do things they really weren’t supposed to do.

But this rant has a purpose.

The principle outlined above in my opinion will always be, but the rules are definitely changing. Traditionally, people would scoff at the idea of a tablet replacing their laptop, but again its all about having the right tools.

The iPad is as versatile as it is thin. With the largest app store around and a thriving community of developers, an iPad equipped with the right apps, can do some incredible things. To help further that point, this article from Mac|Life will show you how to achieve a more iPad centric work experience.

How to Ditch Your Laptop for an iPad

If hotcakes were selling like iPads, IHOP would be the hottest investment on the block. But hold the maple syrup — despite the higher price tag on most Macs, Apple’s making more money off iPads these days. Its Q3 2011 iPad earnings were $6.05 billion, up 179 percent since the previous year. Meanwhile, Mac sales raked in $5.1 billion…representing gains of only 16 percent.

What’s driving the iPad’s explosive growth? The “cool factor” is certainly part of it, but the iPad’s utility is the foundation of its success. It’s terrific as a second computing device (the first being a Mac or PC), and for many of us, it’s taking the spotlight as our primary platform for work, email, browsing, and beyond. Thanks to the cutting-edge offerings in the App Store (15 billion downloads served!), it’s even more practical than ever before to handle all your productivity needs with an iPad. We’re talking photographing checks to deposit them, piping video calls to your TV, and loads more. But how?

That’s the beating heart of this story. Whether you want your iPad to become your work machine or you simply want to be sure you’re wringing every last drop of productivity out of it, we’ll show you how to set up the apps and accessories you’ll need to put your iPad front and center.

[Continue Reading Here]

With Chris off working in Europe, the rest of the FoleyPod Team is getting its first taste of what extreme work-shifting is like. Despite Chris’ recent disappearance, Kazdyn and I are managing just fine, we remain incredibly productive and despite our go-to man being gone, we have adjusted accordingly.

In fact this trip is turning out to be a great trial run for the more permanent departure Chris has planned for May 2012.

But staying more in the present, here is a great tip from Lifehacker and one that we have certainly implemented into our own schedules now that the FoleyPod team is working across different time zones:

How to Avoid Time Zone Confusion When You Create Google Calendar Events

Whether you’ve got colleagues in a different time zone or you’re planning meetings for a trip, it’s easy to mix up your schedule when time zones are involved. Save yourself time and confusion when creating new time-zone-sensitive events in Google Calendar by including the event time zone in your event description. Here’s how it works.

Say you live in the Pacific time zone but you’re taking a trip to the Eastern time zone in a week. You’ve got to set up a meeting at 11am for when you’re there, so you open GCal and create an event for 11am. The problem? When you’re there, GCal will auto-convert that meeting to 2pm to accommodate the time zone change. So to get it right, you’d need to mentally convert your new event to 8am when you create it so that when you’re in EST, it’ll correctly convert to 11am. Bit of a headache, right? But there’s a very simple solution.

[Continue Reading Here]

In most cases I would disagree with the old adage “bigger is better,” but when it comes to screen real-estate I can’t get enough. I remember a day when I was happy with my 15 inch desktop display, tootling around in windows 95, blissfully ignorant, doing whatever it is that a 12 year-old does on an ancient machine.  However, just has my computer needs started to revolve less and less around gaming and more about getting work done efficiently, I realized one 15 inch display was not enough.

Just like that I had entered into that never-ending journey to find bigger and better displays. Mac|Life understands that people just like me, obsessed with getting bigger and better displays need guidance, so here is their guide to finding the right one:

It doesn’t seem so long ago that buying a new Mac often required buying a new display to go with it — and there were plenty to choose from. Flash forward to the present and Apple is selling more notebooks and iMacs, which has all but negated the need for a separate monitor with many users. But for the few, the proud who still need one, here’s a quick look at your options.

From the Macintosh Portrait Display introduced for desktop publishers in March, 1989 to today’s 27-inch Thunderbolt Display, Apple has kept busy producing a wide array of monitors to plug into their Mac computers over the years. But a funny thing happened 13 years ago this month — a little Bondi blue marvel called the iMac set the stage for an external display to become less important as Cupertino retreated back to the all-in-one design that made the original Macintosh so popular in 1984.

Of course, there are plenty of us who still need to get work done with an external display. Mac mini and Mac Pro users immediately spring to mind, but many MacBook Pro users also prefer to dock their laptop while at home or the office to enjoy a larger view of what they’re working on. (Never mind the power user who thinks nothing of two or even three displays for their work.)

While there is but a single choice of external display from Apple today, thankfully other manufacturers are still busy pumping out Mac-friendly monitors. Here are some tips for finding the one that fits you like a glove.

[Continue Reading Here]

Popular RSS/Feed library service Lazyfeed has been “down for maintenance” for some time now, and I hope this outage doesn’t spell the end of this service, for I quite liked it.

Their website HERE has had the following message for more than a week:

Lazyfeed is going through a maintenance.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

In fact, it’s been down for so long that Google has cached the “down for maintenance” page, and has updated the site’s meta description with the maintenance message!

I first noticed this on August 19th, and I tried to call them out on Twitter:

True to form, Lazyfeed did not respond to my tweet, in fact their Twitter page has not been updated since October of 2010. 

Alas, cool services come and go.  I wonder if this is the end of Lazyfeed.

OS X Lion was likely released download only as a means of promoting the the Mac App Store. I am all for the Mac App Store, it’s yet another step towards having an awesome cloud experience, but when it comes to a full-blown OS, I like to have a physical means of backing up my Shiz.

Thankfully, Apple has released the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, a tool that will allow Lion users to make a recovery partition on an external drive or USB key. This announcement comes after Apple released their own external drive loaded with Lion available for purchase, for about $70. If you don’t feel like having a reliable physical medium at that kind of cost, you can simply make one for yourself!

From the people of Apple, directly:

To create an external Lion Recovery, download the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant application. Insert an external drive, launch the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on screen instructions.

When the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant completes, the new partition will not be visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. To access Lion Recovery, reboot the computer while holding the Option key. Select Recovery HD from the Startup Manager.

The Recovery Disk Assistant can be downloaded HERE.

This utility is similar to the recovery utility that comes with your initial install of Lion. The reason behind having the physical medium:

[Users can] reinstall Lion, repair the disk using Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup, or browse the web with Safari. This drive can be used in the event you cannot start your computer with the built-in Recovery HD, or you have replaced the hard drive with a new one that does not have Mac OS X installed.

In conclusion, Apple had these final notes:

- If the computer shipped with Lion, the external recovery drive can only be used with the system that created it.

- If the system was upgraded from Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard to Lion, the external recovery drive can be used with other systems that were upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

It’s always nice to have a digital safety-net and Lion already comes pre-installed with one.  But having a second one that you can hold in your hand is even more satisfying.

Safe Travels

~Max