As a web designer specializing in WordPress blogs and sites, I’m especially excited about the release of a new framework for WordPress. It’s called: WP Startbox. It’s basic layout is relatively simple, and it’s a blog-style layout, however, that’s just the starting point! From there, there are many different things that can be done to spice up the design and make it one’s own.

(Click here to view the demo site in a new window.)

if you want to see examples of what the framework can do above and beyond its basic starting point, check out this page here:

WP Startbox Showcase

If you’re like me, then you’re probably starting to see its potential. I’ve read all of the information on wpstartbox.com, and it really seems promising! I found it via James Dalman, founder of Branding Shed who was also part of the iThemes‘ Web Desgin “University” until recently.

WP Startbox is a new venture of his along with Brian Richards who is the brains behind its development. Brian originally designed WP Startbox as his own “starting point” when developing blogs and sites for clients, but after several years of hard work, he came to realize others could benefit from his “starting point” framework, hence the birth of WP Startbox!

Until tomorrow, Sept. 1st, 2010, WP Startbox is having a pre-order promotion that you may not want to miss! I think it’s definitely worthwhile ss you can be one of the first people to get your hands on WP Startbox, plus you get some bonuses, including access to two exclusive child themes (only for early adopters of WP Startbox). Here’s a list of what you get when you pre-order, copied from the WP Startbox site:

• Startbox, the revolutionary new GPL framework for WordPress
• Unlimited use on as many sites as you can make.
• Out-of-the-Box Manual and step-by-step Getting Started Guide for getting the most out of Startbox.
• One Year of Friendly, Premium Support and Upgrades
• Comprehensive, members-only How-to Videos and Tutorials
• 30-day money back guarantee
• Four professionally designed child themes
• SB Exclusive Club: Two Exclusive Child Themes for being the FIRST to use Startbox! No one else will ever get these. Ever.
• PLUS: A FREE one-year subscription to WP Design Coach (a $199 value itself!)
• All for the $99.00 pre-launch price!

If you design and/or develop WordPress blogs and websites, pre-order it today because it launches tomorrow and the price will go up to $150 after the launch! I’ve already pre-ordered mine!

Please note that none of the links in this post are affiliate links, and I am not receiving any compensation for promoting WP Startbox. It is a project I wholeheartedly support!

I can’t stress just how important it is to backup your blog or website! I’ve been having an issue with the backend of my WordPress site for a while now, but just hadn’t had time to really look into it as I have some client projects on the go. My site is definitely due for an overhaul and redesign, however, in the meantime, since this is what I currently have and my clients’ projects come first before my own projects, this is the site I presently have to work with.

With that being said, I was starting to get frustrated with not being able to log into the back end and write new posts… I don’t like to wait too long before posting on my blog, and it has definitely been longer than it should. I tried different ways of fixing whatever was wrong, but honestly speaking, I just didn’t have the time to try to fully figure out and fix whatever was wrong with my site files, so I decided to use BackupBuddy.

I have to admit that BackupBuddy saved the day (or rather night) for me! There are, of course, manual ways (and time-consuming ways) of backing up your WordPress installation, however, PluginBuddy’s BackupBuddy. plugin makes it easy, simple, and not time consuming at all… very straightforward to use, even for non-techies! Luckily, I’ve been using it for a while to backup my clients’ sites as well as my own, but I haven’t needed to use my own site’s backup until now.

Now, I usually use SimpleScripts for my WordPress installations via BlueHost as my host provider, however, everything I tried to restore my files just didn’t work, so I decided to delete it all – files, database – everything – because I was just starting to get frustrated (I’m human after all). From there, I uploaded my full backup that was made at the end of July via BackupBuddy and went through the 6 easy steps to restore my site after creating a new database via the CPanel that BlueHost offers, and ta-da! I’m back in business!

Don’t take a chance! With WordPress, because of the regular updates made to the script itself (new features, security updates, etc.), things can always go wrong at some point or other, and you never know when it will happen. Always always always backup your installation – your files, your database, and yes, again, this can be done manually, however, if you want an easy and fast solution for WordPress backups, then I highly HIGHLY recommend BackupBuddy as the ideal solution! Without it, you wouldn’t even be reading this post right now!

Click on the image below for more information on how to get BackupBuddy for yourself:

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Thanks to the guys at iThemes and PluginBuddy for this awesome plugin! If you’re considering purchasing it, you should check out the PluginBuddy Developer Suite.

No matter if you use BlueHost or another hosting provider, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) should be important to everyone with a website because applying certain SEO tactics and strategies will help you to rank better with the Search Engines, which in turn will make it easier for people to find your website as opposed to someone else’s when they search for keywords related to your site’s content. SEO issues and problems can arise, though, when working with one hosting account and multiple domains. You may need to edit the .htaccess file to overcome these issues, which I’ll explain in this post.

I’ve been learning a lot about SEO in the past little while, and dealing with SEO issues is something every web designer should be aware of. It’s no secret that I use BlueHost for my domains and WordPress websites, and have been doing so for the past two years or so. I highly recommend BlueHost as a hosting provider, especially since you only need one hosting account to host many domains, which is exactly what I do.

Having gotten into the website building and creation business, over the years I’ve learned a lot about hosting, domains, subdomains, and more. I’ve also learned a bit about working with .htaccess files, which we’ll look at in a few minutes.

If you’re a beginner, here’s a simple way of looking at these four things:

• Hosting is basically a service that holds the files needed to serve up your website, so when someone goes to YourDomain.com, they’ll actually see your website.
• Your domain is you internet address. Just like your house as a street address (such a 222 Street Ave.), a website needs an address as well, and that’s what the www.yourdomain.com is. The .com is almost similar or equivalent to the country you live in – .com stands for commercial and is the most common and sough-after type of domain. It is considered a “top-level domain”. .ca, for example, stands for Canada, .au for Australia, .uk for the United Kingdom and so on.
• A subdomain is when you have “something.yourdomain.com” instead of www.yourdomain.com, or just yourdomain.com. It is a domain that piggy-backs on your main domain name, and there are many different uses for subdomain, but basically you can create a brand new site with a subdomain without having to register and pay for a brand new domain.
• A file named “.htaccess” is basically a configuration file used by Apache Web Servers containing certain commands to enable or disable different features and functionality.



Keeping these points in mind, I mentioned that with BlueHost, you don’t need more than one hosting account to host many different domains. BlueHost accomplishes this by assigning a Primary Domain (usually the first domain you register) to your account, and all your additional domains become secondary domains that are initially set up as subdomains to your main domain name.

To give you an example:

Your Primary Domain = primary.com
Your Second Domain that you register = secondary.com

BlueHost adds this domain to your account initially as:

secondary.primary.com

Then it tweaks the system so that you have secondary.com and it points to the right “folder” containing the appropriate files for the new site you would’ve built for this site, but in the background, without anyone really noticing, you still have secondary.primary.com running and available.

Now, yes, I did mention that no one usually notices this – no human, that is. Search Engine Robots are a whole different story, though! They crawl all over the web through any existing domain in order to index every site they find on the internet. This puts you in a situation where you have your website at two different addresses: secondary.com, and secondary.primary.com, which means you have duplicate content to deal with, and this is a big SEO “no-no”.

Since BlueHost uses an Apache Web Server to serve up websites, the solution is to use a .htaccess file within the folder containing your secondary domain’s files. In this case, we want to tell the Apache server to redirect the secondary.primary.com domain to simply www.secondary.com (or secondary.com).

After some research, I found an easy way to do this that I’ve implemented successfully with my own domains.

You would need to download the .htaccess file in your subdomain’s folder via FTP (I use FileZilla – it’s a free FTP client) to your local computer so that you can edit it, then just use a basic text editor such as Notepad in Windows. If you’re running a WordPress site, there will likely be a file named “.htaccess” already there, but if not, you may need to create a file from scratch and name it “.htaccess”. Use Notepad to do this, but be sure to change the name of the file after so that it doesn’t have “.txt” at the end.

Add the following lines, replacing “YourSecondaryDomain” with your actual secondary domain name:

Then save the file, upload it back to the folder from which you downloaded it (replacing the old file), and then ta-da! You’re ready to go!

Now, if you were to try to go to the secondary.primary.com address, it’ll redirect you to the secondary.com domain as an SEO-friendly redirect, which also means the search engine robots won’t index both sites, which in turn means you don’t have duplicate content!

I’m sure other hosting providers use this method of having multiple domains within a single hosting account, so you can probably use these instructions for many other hosts, though I’ve only had experience with BlueHost, which is my preferred shared-hosting provider.

Did that make sense to you? If you’re unsure about anything, please feel free to post a question in the comments section below and I will do my best to answer and clarify for you!

If you love free stuff, don’t miss out on this! There’s a free CSS video course available for you to download right now! (No, there is no catch!)

Working with WordPress requires a lot of tweaking of CSS (style sheets) to get the right look and design that you want, but if you don’t know what CSS is or how to edit CSS, you’re not going to be able to customize your WordPress blog or site. That’s where SitePoint comes in! They’re celebrating their birthday, and are giving away a free CSS course!

If you’d like to learn more about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), what better way than to download a free video series on the subject? SitePoint (which is an awesome site, by the way – tons of resources there!) are giving away this course, which normally has a cost involved, for free as part of their celebration! Yes, I will repeat, they are giving away a FREE Video Series Crash Course on CSS!

I’ve already grabbed my copy, and you can too, but ONLY until tomorrow!

Go here to access this free css course:

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/06/04/its-our-party-and-well-give-away-a-free-css-video-series-if-we-want-to/

Side note: I have a few projects on the go so I haven’t been writing as much as I want in my blog (not easy to keep up with full-time job, freelance work, blog, and family responsibilities!), but when I saw this, I really wanted to share it with my readers! I hope you find it as useful and valuable as I have!

Ack!! What happened to my blog??

As with everything that becomes popular, WordPress is not immune to the potential breach of security that hackers can inflict, and it certainly has not escaped the attention of hackers around the globe. There is always someone out there who wants to do more harm than good… that’s how I see hackers, anyway. As a law-abiding citizen, I really don’t understand what the whole point to breaking into people’s websites and computers is (and what kind of pleasure is apparently achieved), however, I do completely understand the repurcussions of such a breach of security.

Here’s a dictionary definition of the word “hacker”:

Hacker: A programmer who breaks into computer systems in order to steal, change or destroy information as a form of cyber-terrorism.

Does this sound like the type of person you’d want accessing your site? Heck no! You would definitely want to avoid having this type of person accessing your site! I’m writing this series to give you a little insight on some steps you can take in order to protect your WordPress website or blog.

I’ve been doing a lot of research in the past few months on WordPress security, especially since I set up WordPress blogs and sites for customers. I work in the Security Industry at the moment, so I’m very aware of how malicious people can be, so to me, it’s extremely important to understand how to protect the WordPress blogs and sites that I set up, and because I’m passionate about helping people, I’m sharing the tips I’ve learned with you!

Disclaimer: There is no way to safeguard your WordPress installation 100%, however, there are many steps you can take towards protecting your blog or site. Read on to discover a few tips you can put to action right away (if you haven’t already)!

Tip #1

• Keep your WordPress installation up to date!

This is EXTREMELY important. WordPress releases regular updates to the platform itself, and part of the reason for these updates is the implementation of new features, but another big reason is closing security gaps! Over the years, the WordPress developers have discovered security vulnerabilities that are patched up and fixed in newer releases, so it is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL to keep your self-hosted WordPress site at the latest version. I can’t stress this enough! At the moment, you should be running version 2.9.2, and if you’re not, you need to upgrade urgently, and I mean AS SOON AS POSSIBLE! (Can you tell I can’t stress this enough?) If you’re not sure how to upgrade, it’s actually really easy, but let me know (leave me a comment below this post) and I will record a tutorial on how to upgrade your WordPress installation.

Also make sure you’ve kept all of your plugins up-to-date as older versions can also pose a security risk. The easiest way to upgrade multiple plugins is to login as the Administrator, then go to Tools –> Upgrade, select all of the plugins that have updates available, and click on the button named “Upgrade Plugins”. It takes less than a minute of your time, but could save you a lot of heartache and frustration!

Note: This area will also let you know what version WordPress you’re running, and if an upgrade is available, you can also upgrade the WordPress installation itself from here. However, if you’ve installed via Fantastico or SimpleScripts, I’d recommend using those tools to upgrade to the latest WordPress release.

Tip #2

• DO NOT leave the default “admin” username as the Administrator

If you’ve installed WordPress with Fantastico or SimpleScripts from your hosting provider’s Control Panel, then you’ve had the opportunity to use a different initial username for the Administrator account, and hopefully you will not have chosen “admin” as your username. If you’ve gone through WordPress’ “famous 5-minute installation” and downloaded and installed everything yourself, your default username is “admin”. It doesn’t take very long for a hacker to figure out what your password is and then log into your site or blog and cause some damage to your site! It is much harder for a hacker to figure out both the proper username AND password than just the password itself, and they know this and have already taken advantage of this fact! You don’t have to take my word for it – just google the keywords “wordpress hacked” and you’ll find lots of information about WordPress sites/blogs being hacked and precautions you can take. My goal here is to try to lay it out in an easy-to-understand manner so that even someone who is not very technical can protect their WordPress site.

So, if I can’t use the username “admin”, what should I use?

You shouldn’t use anything that’s obvious (for example, your name), and you should also make sure you update your nickname to be unrelated to what your username actually is, and then update what your name appears as to the public. To do this, you must go to Users –> Authors & Users, then click on “Edit” under your username. Here you will find the “Nickname” field, and below it you’ll see the “Display name publicly as” with a drop-down menu that will show you user username, your name, and your nickname. Make sure you pick your nickname, and again, make sure your nickname is NOT the same as your username.

Doing this will at least make it a lot more difficult for a hacker to try to access your site and hopefully deter the hacker from even trying.

If you haven’t take action on these steps yet, do so NOW!

These are merely two tips to help you protect your WordPress site/blog, and there are many more tips that I will be sharing in this series. I perform these steps myself with my own sites/blogs, as well as with my clients’ blogs and sites, and I do offer WordPress maintenance packages in which I ensure your site is as protected as possible. If this is something you’re interested in, please do not hesitate to contact me to inquire about these services as I would be happy to help you make sure you’re as safe as possible from hackers, but again, there is no 100% guarantee! The measures we take to protect our sites are mainly deterrants, but it’s definitely better than being wide open to hacker attacks!

Have you ever had your own blog/site attacked by a hacker, or do you know someone who has? Share your story by leaving a comment below – it will help others understand that it is a very real threat, and it’s something that’s important to always keep in mind! I’m very thankful that my sites have never been hacked, but I’ve read some nightmare stories that really got me thinking about this subject – I hope I’ve sparked that in you too if you weren’t aware of the potential risks!

With many dubbing Google as the “King of the Internet”, any changes they make to the way they rank a website catches everyone’s attention, including mine!

There are many ways to improve your page rank and traffic on your site, but in this post, I will concentrate on one major tip: decrease your site load time! If you’re wondering why, read on!

I guess I should start by defining what a Page Rank is… I know that when I first started blogging, I had no idea what this even meant, or how important it could be! Basically, “PageRank” is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance – basically, its popularity on the web. It’s a measurement that ranges from a rank of zero (you don’t have enough inbound links or you’re too new to have a rank at all) to a rank of ten (which means you’re one of the top sites on the internet). As a website owner, your goal should always be to climb the “PageRank” ladder!

Here are a few example values to help you understand this a little better: www.yahoo.com has a PageRank of 9, www.google.com has a PageRank of 10, www.microsoft.com has a PageRank of 9 and www.redcross.org has a PageRank of 8.

With that being said, it’s much easier said than done, right? Or maybe too much effort for you to bother? You may want to think twice about this one… I know I am!

Website/Page load time can now affect Google’s perception of your site when it comes to page rank, because Google now uses site speed in their search ranking algorithms. (Read this Google article for more information.)

Another reason for you to worry about how long your site takes to load is the fact that you could be losing traffic! Googld has added this new “page load speed” factor because people are generally not willing to sit and wait very long for a site to load, and I’m guilty of that myself… if I’m running a search on a topic, and the site I’m trying to access takes more than 5 seconds or so to load, I give up and go on to the next search result. We’re entering a phase of impatience when it comes to browsing the web, and for those of us trying to run an online business, this could potentially be a crippling factor!

Okay, so what can I do to improve my site load speed?

There are many tools available online that can help you determine just how fast your site loads, and one that I found recently is tools.pingdom.com. It really opened my eyes as to how slow my site has been loading, and the main culprit is the WordPress theme I’ve chosen to use for my site! This just goes to show you how important it is to choose your theme carefully – you should definitely factor in usability, design, and load time when picking your theme. At this point, I have to re-evaluate my own site, and probably do some research to find a theme that better suits me and the factors I mentioned, but still providing the look and feel that I’m going for. This also translates to quite a bit of work, so admittedly, I’ll probably procrastinate a bit, but it’s definitely one of my priorities for my own site.

If you’re facing a similar issue with your WordPress site, something that could help you is a caching plugin. There are many available (such as the highly recommended WP Super Cache, but the only one that’s worked successfully for me to date is the W3 Total Cache plugin. After installing and activating this plugin, my load speed went down considerably, though not as much as I would like, which is why I still have to consider changing my theme altogether, but you may not be in that boat yourself after trying out this plugin! I highly recommend it (you can download and install it from here).

To keep track, be sure to use Google’s Webmaster Tools. They’ve added a new feature under the ‘Labs’ menu called “Site performance” that will give you more information on the average time your website’s pages take to load as compared to most sites on the internet. Here’s a screenshot of my results:

One of the nice things about this tool is that it also provides some suggestions as to what could be done to speed up and optimize your pages. Google also has a page speed tool that you can install if you use Firebug that will provide full details and recommendations.

Well, I know I have a bit of work ahead of me now that I know my theme is definitely not the optimal theme to be using… have I given you something to think about? What kinds of changes might you make to your site to optimize it and improve user experience? Do you have other tips you may want to mention? I’d love to hear from you – feel free to leave a comment below!

One of the greatest things about WordPress is the ability to add functionality to it via plugins. There are some awesome free and premium plugins out there that will enhance your WordPress blog or website, and personally, I find it difficult to keep my number of active plugins to a minimum, but there are a few reasons to not install every single plugin you find that you like!

Why would you want to keep the number of plugins you use to a minimum?

For example, I used to have a neat little “bar” at the bottom of my site that made it easy for people to interact more with my site and with my blog. Initially, I tried the Wibiya bar, and then I tried the Skysa bar for a short period of time, but again, both of these “cool” bars made my site load just a little slower. I even find myself waiting only a few seconds on a site to load before giving up and moving on, so I knew that I needed to ensure my own site loads within a reasonable amount of time, so I disabled both of these plugins and no longer use the bars.

I have a post that shows how cool the Topaz Labs Photoshop plugins are, and this post makes use of a couple of java scripts to enhance a user’s interactions with the images on the post itself.

Remember that WordPress is very dynamic – it’s always being updated, and likewise, plugins are always being updated, and I do my best to always make sure I’m running the latest version of both my WordPress installation as well as my plugins. Ensuring you’ve got the most up-to-date WordPress version is also very important for security reasons, but that’s a subject for another day.

One day, I noticed that my Topaz Labs post was no longer showing my images, and that confused me, so I went to check on the post itself, and sure enough, it had all the proper code and there was nothing wrong with the post itself, so I had to dig deeper… I spent hours trying to figure out what the root of the problem was, and in the end, it was a plugin that was conflicting with the scripts I was using on that particular page. As soon as I disabled the culprit, the post showed up perfectly!

Unfortunately, this was not the only experience I’ve had with a plugin causing problems – I’ve even had my RSS feed affected by a plugin!

I use Feedburner to syndicate my RSS feed, but when trying to set up the Socialize option, I noticed that my feed hadn’t been updated with my last few posts, so this prompted me to investigate further. After hours of research, I finally found the problem: the “Yet Another Related Posts” plugin I’m using has an option to display related posts in feeds, and it was conflicting with my feed and causing it to timeout – Feedburner wasn’t able to access my feed because of this option. As soon as I disabled this option, the feed was accessible and Feedburner was happy again!

This also illustrates the importance of checking on your site or blog every time you update to make sure everything is still running without any hitches!

Conclusion: plugins have added some great functionality to my WordPress installation, however they’ve also caused a few headaches, and quite a bit of wasted time.

My opinion: plugins are friends, but potential foes, so you have to keep an eye on them, especially when updating!

Have you had issues with plugins? How many plugins do you use? What’s your opinion on plugins: friends, or foes?

This is really just a silly post, but it’s been a while since my last post, and I am alive and well – just still trying to catch up from my business trip to Australia! I did have some time to explore on my own as a “tourist”, and got some awesome photos that are posted on Facebook, and I even had the opportunity to touch two different Koalas!

I have a few draft posts lined up and waiting to be completed with some useful information, but for now, here’s a “fun” post about what I observed and learned from my trip:

Photo credit: Ursula Comeau

• Hotels in Sydney charge an arm and a leg for internet – about $25 per day! Needless to say, I did not have internet access, and felt very deprived!
• It was definitely different for me to see cars driving on the opposite side from North America, and to have the driver’s side of a car be on the passenger’s side (from my North American perspective)
• Koalas may see cute and cuddly, but they can be vicious and have claws that can cause some real damage! Luckily, I did not witness this!
• Being deprived of internet access other than via my Blackberry, I had quite a lot of e-mail to catch up on when I got back (I was gone for 11 days)!
• I must be completely addicted to the internet, because I felt very out-of-touch without it! (also, am I mentioning it one too many times or what?)
• Australians speak English and I love their accents, but some of the words they use are different from what we use in North America — for example: garbage = rubbish, power bars = power boards, trunk (as in a car trunk) = boot, Pharmacy/Drugstore = Chemist, Agenda = Diary, washroom/bathroom = toilet, cookies = biscuits, among a lot of other differences, but these were the ones that stood out for me!
• Australians (at least the ones I met) definitely use the word “mate” a lot… and I mean A LOT!
• Having a lack of internet drives me insane! (are you sick of this line of thought yet?)
• Sydney’s public transport is awesome, especially the ferries!
• Australia is definitely a very multicultural country
• Australia’s population is smaller than Canada’s – I was surprised by that one!
• Sydney’s weather is infinitely nicer than the Canadian weather I live with on a day-to-day basis
• Being an animal lover, I absolutely adored seeing the unique Australian animals, such as Koalas and Kangaroos, that to Australians is just an everyday occurrence… to the point of said animals being “pests” (though I don’t think so myself, but that’s just me – what do I know?)
• You have to be careful with electronics – if the electronic’s power supply doesn’t meet the 240v specification, you could end up needing a replacement! Luckily, my hotel provided me with a “transformer” so that I could charge my camera’s rechargeable batteries
• As much as I missed my internet access, I definitely did a lot of exploring when I wasn’t working, since I really didn’t have much else to do… this is a good thing, as I’ve dreamed of visiting Australia ever since I first learned of this country and its unique fauna when I was in 2nd grade and living in Boulder, Colorado!
• The Duckbilled Platypus is a lot smaller than I expected, and the Wombat was a lot bigger
• The grocery stores sell Kangaroo meat, such as Kangaroo roasts… I thought that was strange, because in North America, you won’t find deer meat at the grocery store at all…
• Australia is Carb Heaven! Bad for me as I’m on a low-carb diet… I resisted, but it was not easy! They have many MANY yummy things, including the infamous TimTams! Luckily I can get those here in Canada – some of the grocery chains import them, though I wish they would import ALL Arnott’s products!
• The seagulls there make different sounds than the seagulls in North America, but they’re just as rowdy! (No, they don’t say “Mine!”)
• Not having any internet access made it very hard to keep up with my blogging!
• Australia is a beautiful and unique country!
• The jetlag was worse when I came back to Canada – probably because I was so excited when I had initially arrived in Australia!
• The 13 hour difference made calling my husband a difficult task – I felt a little isolated down under!
• I really REALLY missed my internet connection!

I definitely loved Australia, and can honestly say it’s a country in which I could happily live (if I have my high speed internet access!), if the opportunity were to arise. For now, I leave you with some photos I took during my trip! Yes, there are a lot of photos of animals – as I said, I am an animal lover, and ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted to see Koalas, Kangaroos, the Platypus, and other animals that are unique to that continent. I also got to touch two Koalas! If you’d like to see the photos, click on the image below – I posted them on Facebook!

Also, don’t forget to become a fan of the UC Web Creations Facebook Fan Page!

So, have you ever been to Australia? If so, what observations did you make? If you live in Australia, what observations have you made when visiting North America? Would love to hear about your experiences – leave a comment below!

A few months back, I wrote an post on Free Google Tools for Websites and Blogs. One of the things I recently discovered is yet another awesome Google tool: Google Feedburner’s Socialize feature. Google now has its own URL shortener, which Socialize makes use of. This also enables you can use Google Analytics to track your traffic from Twitter.

I absolutely love Socialize because it automates your workflow. There are other tools as well that do the same thing, such as TwitterFeed, however, I’m a big Google fan, and I love the integration with Google Analytics, which I already use on a regular basis.

Socialize is really easy to set up, and the Feedburner Blog contains a really straightforward paragraph on the steps:

“To get started, go to the Socialize service on FeedBurner’s Publicize tab and add the Twitter account to which you would like to post items from your feed. You can take the default settings and click [Save] to start socializing immediately, or use the options we offer to customize exactly which feed items are sent to Twitter and how exactly you would like them to look. The next time you post a new item to your feed it will be sent to Twitter (as always, make sure to ping FeedBurner whenever you update your feed so this process happens as near real-time as possible).”

Here’s a screenshot I took of the Socialize area in Feedburner, found in the “Publicize” tab:

Once I set everything up, whenever I post to my blog, my blog feed is then fed to Feedburner, and from there, Socialize automatically posts my blog title with a link (using the Google URL shortener) to my Twitter account. I also customized mine and added “UC Web Creations | ” to the front of the title itself. This way, I don’t have to do it manually, and can concentrate on other tweets!

This is what my last blog post tweet looked like on Twitter:

UC Web Creations | Resources for Small Businesses – DimDim http://goo.gl/fb/vDKY
9:38 AM Mar 5th via Google

I’ve been setting this up for my clients as one of the services I offer, and every single one of them loves this, because it helps them be more efficient as well.

I wanted to share this resource with my readers – this is definitely a worthwhile FREE service to use with your blog, especially if you’re already using Feedburner and Twitter and you might be feeling a little overwhelmed with keeping up with it all. This will make your life easier – it’s definitely made mine and my clients’ lives easier!

Have you tried Socialize yet?

During my entrepreneurial journey, I have discovered many cost-effective tools that are very helpful, especially for small-businesses and freelancers. I’m going to start a new category labelled as “Small Business Tools” so that I can share these resources with those who are just starting out on their journey to run their own businesses, and anyone else who may find these tools useful!

The tool I’m referring to today is called “DimDim”. Yes, it’s a bit of a strange name, but definitely an easy name to remember, which is a bonus!

Have you ever attended an online webinar where the presenter shows you a powerpoint or keynote presentation, and perhaps they’ve also shared their browser and showed a few different website? Or perhaps you’ve attended an online training session where the trainer has guided the attendees in a how-to lesson and thought to yourself, “Wow, was that ever cool! Wish I could afford to use this tool!”

The two “biggies” that I’m aware of out there are WebEx and Go2Meeting – both completely out of my price range. They do have a competitor, though, that is much more affordable, and even allows you to have more people on your online webinar than these two providers for less money (and in some cases, for free!). This competitor is DimDim!

I’ve had the pleasure of using DimDim a few times now in the past year or so, and I must say that I’m very impressed with their offering! If you’re just starting out, you’re in luck – you can use DimDim without paying a penny! Yes, they have a free option, as well as a pro option, and webinar option. Below is a small chart profiling what they offer and how much each option costs.

I first discovered this type of service through my day job in the corporate world. My present employer uses WebEx, but they charge $49/month for up to 25 participants. I’ve also heard a lot about GoToMeeting, but their minimum is $49/month for up to 15 attendees, and the plans just go up from there for both… as you can see, DimDim is more cost effective.

Another aspect of DimDim I really like is that your attendees don’t have to install anything at all – it’s all browser-based, so there’s no download required! This is an awesome feature, especially for those who have online meetings with people who are not necessarily the most technically savvy.

If you go with one of the paid options, you can also access the collaboration function where you can have more than one presenter – another great option for people who work in partnerships. Want to use a whiteboard? Yet another option that’s available to you!

DimDim’s Features and Benefits:

• meet instantly
• share your desktop
• use mics, webcams, and chat
• use widgets to spread the word
• record and embed meetings
• whiteboard and annotate
• leverage the social web

In my (humble) opinion, DimDim is definitely the easiest and most cost-effective way to organize and attend online meetings.

You have absolutely nothing to lose – go try it for FREE!

Have you ever held an online meeting or conference or webinar? What service do you use? Have you ever tried DimDim? I would love to hear your opinions!