Tag Archive: blogsites

Concentrate on what’s easiest for you

Written on Friday 20 April 2012 by
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

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There are many ways to accomplish the same things. This is also true for building WordPress blogsites.

At the end of the day, you want to do stuff that is the easiest for you. Being bogged down in complicated procedures when you don’t know what is going on can be confusing, time-consuming and off-putting.

I have a friend who has built up a successful business around printers. He has achieved this by focusing on the areas that bring in the most returns. He doesn’t bother with troublesome and outdated facets of his niche, as the time taken outweighs what he can earn from it. This may be cruel for those who still use those products, but efficiency is the order of the day, and concentrating on the more profitable aspects of his business has brought in the best results.

With WordPress.org blogsites it is the hosting packages that matter. Many hosting companies will say they are compatible with WordPress. In their eyes, if WordPress can be safely installed and used using their system, then they are compatible.

If you are thoroughly technical, then which method you choose to install WordPress probably isn’t an issue. But for me, and a lot of my clients, this could present itself as a problem. We want to use a system that installs WordPress with just one click. We want all the database installation and other technical stuff done for us. We want to be able to upgrade our contents and plugins also with one click. We want reliability and good functional processes, with no worries about how to do it and what to do when it all goes wrong.

That’s why I use a hosting package that uses Fantastico. This application allows me to install WordPress.org into my server with no extraneous functions. I can install WordPress using the traditional methods, but it takes time and requires technical know-how, and if I am going to pass on WordPress blogsites onto my clients, they need to be able to use, upgrade and backup as easily as possible.

This means any hosting package that doesn’t use Fantastico is not considered by me. In this busy world, and with non-technical clients, we have no time available to be battling with technology when the answer has already been created and is available at no extra cost.

So whenever someone approaches me to create a blogsite for them, and says they have already bought a hosting package, my heart often sinks into my boots, as the ‘compatible’ host for WordPress usually is only what I call ‘semi-compatible’, resulting in a waste of time and money. Stick to the systems that work best, which Fantastico certainly does.

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Blogging is sometimes easier than conversation

Written on Thursday 19 April 2012 by
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

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For those who find it difficult to speak in public, a blog is a good fallback to being able to express yourself. It is not a barrier to hide behind, but a valuable tool to enable exposure of thoughts, ideas, concepts and observations that would otherwise go unnoticed, unrepresented and neglected  through lack of publicity.

I’m sure there are lots of people who prefer to write than speak. Embarrassment and shyness are just some of the symptoms that prevent speaking in public, and a blog allows intelligent conversations to happen that would otherwise be permanently silent.

Listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, an interesting item came up. A lady with Tourette’s Syndrome was interviewed. This was interesting not because of the variety of tics she uttered during the conversation, but because of the fluidity and intelligence of her normal speech. She could easily have become a vocal advocate for Tourette’s if she was not so bothered by the extraneous noises she involuntarily uttered.

Because of her condition, which was actually quite severe, she had created a blogsite about the humorous value of her tics, accompanied by entertaining cartoons (created by her friends) to provide a pictorial element. This was her method of drawing attention and awareness of Tourette’s Syndrome in a way that did not undermine her situation.

But what intrigued me was that in her blog she is able to express herself as fluidly as her normal speech, but obviously without the tics. I only know this because I had had the opportunity to listen to her on the radio.  So many people who don’t understand Tourette’s would ridicule her outlandish tics, including the swear words, and if they bothered to spare the time to look beyond these anomalies, they would see, and hear, and now because of her blogsite, read about the intelligent person behind them.

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How to upload audio files (podcasts) onto your blog

Written on Tuesday 22 March 2011 by
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

Fairy Blog Mother

One particular blogsite I’m designing at the moment consists of a lot of coordinated elements that work in conjunction with each other, of which some are podcasts.

Uploading audio files such as podcasts onto your blog is easy, as WordPress has done all the hard work for you behind the scenes; they have made it so all you need to do is to click some buttons and not have to worry about any coding or whatever.

So this post will show you how it’s done. First start with the words that are linked to the podcast:

Podcast page

Go into the Dashboard (via http://URL/wp-login.php and then type in the username and password):

Dashboard

Click on the ‘Pages’ link in the left sidebar and find the relevant page:

Choose your page

When you mouse over the page title, you’ll get additional links such as ‘Edit’ come up, which when clicked opens the page:

Podcast page revealed

Highlight the words you want to become a link, and then click on the podcast (or audio) icon (which looks like two quavers) after ‘Upload/Insert’ above the contents field:

Choose how to get your audio file

Click on the ‘Select Files’ button to bring up your computer’s browser:

Computer's browser

Find the right file that corresponds with your link on the page and open it:

Podcast uploading

Wait for the podcast audio file to download (the length of time will vary according to size):

Podcast crunching

When it’s finished ‘crunching’ it will be stored in the Media Library:

Media Library

Here you need to check the name of the file as it will be seen as the link, and click on ‘Insert into Post’:

Podcast upload complete

The podcast’s name is now a link. If you click on ‘Update’ you’ll be able to see it live:

Podcast link live

If you want to find it in the Media Library for future reference, go back to the Dashboard and find Media >Library in the left sidebar:

Finding Media Library

And there you will find the audio file you have uploaded:

Show audio file in Media Library

Now if you go back to your published page and click on the link for this particular podcast, you’ll be directed to its own page (with its own URL or permalink) which has been automatically created for you by WordPress:

Podcast's permalinked page

And if you click on the podcast’s link it will open up and start playing for you:

Podcast playing

Enjoy! Now all you have to do is to repeat this process (only updating after all the podcasts have been uploaded) and your podcast library will be complete!

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Break it down into manageable chunks!

Written on Friday 15 October 2010 by
Fairy Blog Mother: blogging help

Fairy Blog Mother

The beauty of WordPress is that anybody, with the appropriate username and password, can easily access their blog to make changes; this is because as the content management system (CMS) Wordress uses is designed to be very easy to use.

The initial reaction of new blog owners, on seeing the Dashboard for the first time, is usually of horror – this is a normal reaction from untechnical users. I presume the word ‘dashboard’ was derived from what you look at when you sit in the driver’s seat of a car; I would prefer to call it the ‘Main Menu’. It is the first point of call when editing or contributing a blogsite, and is actually well designed, once you get used to it (see my e-course Understanding the main dashboard).

All is needed is a quick run through of the most important elements to get an understanding of where to click, and really updating is almost self-explanatory. OK, there are some elements that need to be clarified (permalinks, categories and tags, how to upload and place a picture, etc), but once these are under your belt you really can get blogging straight away!

I use the Wordpress.org version for professional reasons (to create blogsites), as it allows me to adapt the designs to suit my clients’ requirements. Ideally the blogging page’s main purpose would be to contain posts that become additional resources to enhance and explain the business. 

Even so, it is still vital to post as consistently as possible. Most responses I hear are: “Well, what do I say?” – something I have heard many times before. I forget it’s easy for me to reel off a number of post subjects, because my brain has become accustomed that way.

The answer is to segment the main subjects of your business, a task particularly important if you want to have categories or topics in your blog (extremely useful for later reference). Once accomplished, then you need to divide each topic again into ‘manageable chunks’, which not only makes it easier to explain them in more detail, but also eliminates the daunting revulsion experienced when confronted with a blank post page. If necessary, break down these portions even further if they still contain a lot of pointers. This means you need only write a couple of paragraphs or so for each post – not such a terrible experience for you, and quick and easy for your readers!

It also prevents a long-winded and rambling post, like this one, with the main reason for writing it buried at the bottom – not a good idea.

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How can a blog become a business?

Written on Friday 27 August 2010 by

Fairy Blog Mother

Someone on LinkedIn asked a question if blogs are businesses. Many of the answers wittered on about affiliate and sponsored advertising, as if making money made your blog a business. I sometimes wonder how much money these blogs actually do make… I personally ignore all advertising I see on blogs and just concentrate on the posts.

There is also the old adage that a blog can help your business (and I’ve written plenty about that before), but have you considered how a blog could be adapted to become an integral element of your business, rather than a useful accessory?

You could adapt your blog to become a blogsite (a website using a blogging platform such as WordPress that is self-hosted) to become a more substantial business tool. The alternative to having irritating adverts would be to write the pages to incorporate e-commerce (shopping carts) for visitors to buy e-courses, products, services, etc, because the blog is self-hosted, you can include any kind of HTML or web-programming for money-making functions.

Your entire blog can be adapted to become a very effective website, suitably programmed to attract SEO, internet and audience traffic, and RSS feeds to social media and elsewhere. The blog news-stream will attract a readership which can be directed to the other pages on your blogsite, which in themselves should be transformed into effective landing pages for email and Google Adword campaigns. I note there are effective sales pages programmes available for WordPress now.

Why not take advantage of a blog’s ability to become a membership site. The privacy and password protected posts and pages will enable you to gain paid-for subscriptions for members to view certain elements of your business. You could also build up a membership or forum, like a sort of ‘Inner Circle’, or even provide individual page access for particular subscribers or customers. This feature is extremely easy to set up, even for a WordPress.com blog (see my e-courses on the sidebar).

This proves I don’t see blogs merely as somewhere to post up your thoughts, or even somewhere to put up advertising, but certainly occupying a viable position for making a business successful.

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