We took our original book and added several chapters, half a dozen case studies, and updated screenshots and tutorials to reflect the digital changes that occurred over the last two years – which can seem like a lifetime. Learn why a blog could help your business, who would be the best person to write it, what you should write about, what multimedia you can add, and read some business success stories.

Blogging to Drive Business: 2nd Edition is available at Chapters/Indigo and London Drugs locations across BC.

The post Rebecca’s Book is Out Now! appeared first on sixty4media.

I have been asked to be a keynote speaker for WordCamp Victoria 2012 and have prepared the following outline for my talk:

Time Management with WordPress
One of the questions I get asked most often is “when will I find time to blog”. While most of my tips can be applied to almost any platform, there are specific features of WordPress that can save you a lot of publishing time. From the WordPress mobile application (for iPhone), to pairing WordPress with plugins and social media management tools, I’ll discuss ways that you can optimize your blogging time as well as your time spent offline.

Other topics on the schedule so far include multi-site installation, multimedia plugins, social comments, Drupal to WordPress, and more.

Tickets are currently on sale for $22.40 for a full day of WordPress-related talks. It’s a great way to learn more about the platform and network with the online community on Vancouver Island.

WordPress.com powers over 50 million blogs and in total, the WordPress platform powers 22% of all new websites created. This open source content management system is used by your favourite international new outlet to your favourite knitting blog. Miss604.com has been proudly powered by WordPress since 2006 and my company, sixty4media, has been building custom WordPress sites since 2008.

The post WordCamp Victoria 2012 appeared first on sixty4media.

Open Source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in. The non-profit Open Source corporation maintains standards for the good of the community (developers, software users, corporations and governments).

What this means to me is that platforms such as WordPress, that power millions of blogs and website worldwide, are constantly being developed and improved thanks to the contributions of the Open Source community.

As someone who owns a website development firm that specializes in WordPress development, celebrating and promoting its Open Source roots is key. I have done so through attending and speaking at WordCamps (conferences for WordPress users), liveblogging events (on Miss604.com), offering tutorials, promoting WordPress through blog posts and social networks, and organizing WordCamp Whistler (2009) and WordCamp Vancouver (2010).

As a part of Vancouver Open Source Week, there will be a WordCamp:Developers conference on Thursday May 5th, however this is just one of the many events.

The others include a Joomla Mixer Meetup Tuesday May 3rd, Drupal Mixer Wednesday May 4th, Linus User Group Meeting Thursday May 5th, Show & Tell: Storytelling for a Web Made World hosted by The Museum of Vancouver Friday, May 6th, and an HTML Meetup Friday, May 6th.

The week’s biggest event will be Make Web Not War (MWNW), a Canadian conference for designers and developers that has made its way to Vancouver for the first time. It will have a full day of sessions followed by an evening party, the details of which will be announced shortly.

All of the week’s events will offer networking opportunities and the chance to connect with the web community that drives Vancouver’s growing on and offline reputation for excellence in technology. Follow @WebNotWar on Twitter for updates throughout the week.

The post Vancouver Open Source Week appeared first on sixty4media.

During my session there was a question from Twitter about plugins and that since they are third party applications, they should not be trusted.

My response was that you can’t fear all plugins, but you can look out for the most effective and least damaging. Look for the version number and the date it was last edited. If a plugin was submitted yesterday and has no feedback, it may not be the best idea to install it. You want trusted plugins that have been updated, reviewed, and that work with your version of WordPress. Also, always install plugins from the WordPress directory and not third party websites.

As you can see form Lloyd’s response (he works with Automattic), plugins added to the official directory are vetted for malicious code. I would also add that the community is pretty good at policing plugins as well. If something’s not working, you’ll hear about it in the feedback, comments, and probably even on Twitter.

Should you have any questions about the basics of securing WordPress, please feel free to drop a note in the comments.

Finally, having organized WordCamp Whistler and WordCamp Vancouver before, we can appreciate all of the time and effort organizers put into these events and I must say, WordCamp Victoria was pretty stellar. Over 175 people showed up to participate, present, ask questions, and have stimulating discussions in the coffee room. Lunch was provided and Twitter was abuzz with backchannel chatter. Kudos to Paul Holmes and his team on another successful event.

The post Basics for Securing WordPress – WordCamp Victoria 2011 Talk appeared first on sixty4media.

As promised, here are the slides from my session on SlideShare.

Here is a break down of the plugins I mentioned in this session. The conversion of Keynote to PowerPoint to SlideShare didn’t take so well, so here’s a list of those plugins with links to find out more about them.

• Ad-minister
• AddQuicktag
• Add Local Avatar
• cforms
• Easy Flash Embed
• FancyBox Gallery
• FAQ-Tastic
• Flv Player
• Pods CMS
• Simply Show IDs
• WassUp
• WordPress Database Backup
• wp-forecast
• WP-RSSImport
• WP-UserOnline
• WPaudio

If you having any questions about the material I’ve presented, please leave a comment on this post.

The post Using WordPress for an Intranet appeared first on sixty4media.

WordCamp Fraser Valley returns for its 3rd year of talks and workshops in Surrey on November 20th, 2010. WordPress is the top blogging platform in the world however it is also used to power millions of websites that you visit each and every day. Its endless theme and plugin capabilities make it one of the reasons why I have been building a business around the platform since 2008.

My company develops WordPress websites, specializing in social media newsrooms that tie blog and multimedia functions into a much more robust website platform. Along with Brave New Code, we hosted WordCamp Vancouver this year and received a fantastic response. I’m hoping that those interested in WordPress, from design and code to using it as a writing tool, will check out WordCamp Fraser Valley this weekend as well.

Speakers include my husband (and business partner) John Bollwitt who is an engineer at CHUM Radio Vancouver. He’ll be talking about how companies can built intranet sites using WordPress to keep their teams informed and in the loop. John has been using WordPress since 2005 and got me hooked on the platform in 2006.

He’ll be joined on the roster by Tris Hussey (author of Using WordPress), Dave Zille, Lynn Robson, and Kulpreet Singh. Raul Pacheco, Danny Bradbury, and Leah Cross will also address how to write and publish your various forms of content using WordPress.

Tickets are still available for $45 so if you’ve ever been curious about WordPress as a user, writer, or developer, these sessions and networking opportunities can’t be beat.

The post WordCamp Fraser Valley 2010 appeared first on sixty4media.

“The goal is to put our city on the map as the technology hub that we actually have been for quite some time, by drawing together stories of products and technologies people know about and that have daily impact in a visually compelling way,” said Ian Bell of AppSocial.

Some social media companies featured in the video include Flickr and the HootSuite Twitter client.

If not for the welcoming and nurturing local tech community in which we immersed ourselves back in 2006, we would have not been able to grow our business the way we have. The success stories in this video are inspirational and a great reminder that business in Vancouver is looking toward the future, while building upon the past.

The post Vancouver: Wonders Start Here Video appeared first on sixty4media.

Next month Small Business BC is hosting the Successful You Business Awards and we’ve been invited to check it out.

The event will announce the winners of the Successful You Awards and provide a unique opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs and the media to network with over 350 local business professionals and successful small businesses. Keynote speakers, Larry Finnson and Chris Emery, founders of Clodhoppers Candy, will share their success story of making Grandma’s candy recipe into a recognizable worldwide brand. [Small Business BC]

Where Birks Flagship Store, 698 Hastings Street
When Thursday June 10th from 5:00pm – 8:00pm

If you’re a small business and aren’t familiar with the services offered by Small Business BC I highly recommend checking them out or at least coming by the event. Tickets for the awards event are currently on sale starting at $36 (early bird) and $60 (then $70 at the door).

The post Small Business BC Successful You Business Awards appeared first on sixty4media.

We’re at WordCamp Victoria 2010 today. Rebecca just wrapped with the blogging panel during the lunch break with Raul and Lorraine, so we’re taking a break to get caught up on some food, post some photos, and catch some of the chatter over various WordPress related topics.

There are a lot of great topics being discussed here. Lloyd Budd gave us some great insight on what’s to come from WordPress 3.0, even giving a slight plug to WordCamp Vancouver that we are helping put together with our friends from BraveNewCode, John Biehler, and Kulpreet Sing on June 12th.

If you are interested in WordPress and want to find a way to learn more about it, WordCamps are a great resource to do this. I know I always walk away from these events with something new that usually ends up in a project somewhere down the road.

You can see more of my photos from today on my Flickr set, and there is also a yyjWordCamp Flickr Group to check out as well.

The post Taking in WordCamp Victoria 2010 appeared first on sixty4media.

To many people, Facebook is the internet. It’s open in a browser throughout the day, it could be their home screen, and on average users are connected to 130 “friends” at a time [Facebook: Stats]. However, even with close to 400 million users (11 million in Canada alone) Facebook isn’t on everyone’s friend’s list.

Recent changes from everything to layout, policies, and terms of use have some people wanting to quit the platform. This has prompted the creation of “Quit Facebook Day” which will be coming up May 31, 2010.

For a bit of background as to why the extraordinarily popular site is seemingly losing momentum, here’s a brief history of Facebook:

Facebook Timeline

2004
February: Mark Zuckerberg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launch Facebook from their Harvard dorm room
December: Facebook reaches nearly 1 million active users

2005
August: The company officially changes its name to Facebook from thefacebook.com
September: Facebook expands to add high school networks
December: Facebook reaches more than 5.5 million active users

2006
August: Facebook and Microsoft form strategic relationship for banner ad syndication
September: Facebook expands registration so anyone can join (not just school networks)
December: Facebook reaches more than 12 million active users

2007
February: Virtual gift shop launches as a feature
March: Facebook reaches over 2 million active Canadian users and 1 million active UK users
July: I wrote a post about why I use Facebook (and you should too)
October: Facebook and Microsoft expand advertising deal to cover international markets; Microsoft takes a $240 million equity stake in Facebook

2008
January: Facebook co-sponsors Presidential Debates with ABC News, Vancouver hosts first Facebook Awards
April: Facebook launches Facebook Chat and releases Translation application to 21 additional languages
August: Facebook reaches over 100 million active users
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada launches the world’s first investigation into Facebook’s scanty privacy safeguards [Globe&Mail]

2009
February: Facebook updates its Term of Service, backlash follows: “Facebook’s terms of service (TOS) used to say that when you closed an account on their network, any rights they claimed to the original content you uploaded would expire. Not anymore. Now, anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. ”

December: Facebook reaches over 350 million active users

2010
February: Facebook reaches over 400 million active users
April: A new privacy setting called “Instant Personalization” was launched. It shares data with non-Facebook websites and it is automatically set to “Allow.” Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites and uncheck “Allow”, then repost this to your profile. “Many users take issue with the social network’s now-default opt-out inclusion of its users in new features and services and “How do I delete my Facebook account” has become a top search suggestion on Google.”[ReadWriteWeb]

Quit Facebook Day

When I give presentations about social media for business I usually focus on Twitter and blogs however Facebook always comes up. It’s a great way to connect with millions of users and it’s good to have a presence there. However, in every presentation I have at least two people who were completely unaware about Facebook’s Terms of Service. What you upload to Facebook, belongs to Facebook and they may share your information at will. See: “Shocker: Facebook Does What’s Best for Facebook“.

That being said, many users are rightfully unhappy about the “opt out” information sharing that can now take place on Facebook. This is where “Quit Facebook Day” comes in. Created by Matthew Milan and Joseph Dee they are hoping to organize a mass exodus of users from the platform.

From the campaign’s website:
“Why are we quitting? For us it comes down to two things: fair choices and best intentions. In our view, Facebook doesn’t do a good job in either department. Facebook gives you choices about how to manage your data, but they aren’t fair choices, and while the onus is on the individual to manage these choices, Facebook makes it damn difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. We also don’t think Facebook has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future.”

Still, ReadWriteWeb has us ask ourselves some valid questions:
“And while the sharing of your data sounds quite scary, we have to wonder if this reactionary unchecking is causing some who would otherwise benefit to miss out. After all, are we really all that concerned about Pandora knowing, from the moment we load the site, that we’re huge Weezer fans?”

You may take a look through the updated policy (with changes highlighted) in order to form your own opinion on the matter.

The post Quit Facebook Day appeared first on sixty4media.