One thing that happens to some people when they “make it big” is they get an attitude like they are better than others. While that may hold true for a small percentage who portray it even on their live training calls, others retain their humble personalities. I learned this fact first hand when an opportunity arose to call Rosalind Gardner, who is considered one of the “elite”.

I was nervous and made excuses to put it off, knowing that the longer I did, the tougher it would be to get the courage. So I reached for the phone… and froze. There is was - the nervousness I did not want to raise its ugly head. All kinds of questions started racing through my mind:

• Is it too late to call, even though her time is only 7:00 PM?
• Will I interrupt her family time?
• How do I introduce myself?
• How do I get the conversation going?
• What questions am I allowed to ask? I have so many!
• How will she react if I saying something really stupid?
• Should I keep the call short and strictly business?
• What if I make myself sound like a fool?
• How will she react if I get so nervous that I start rambling on with insignificant stories?

The nervousness grew with a frenzy until it became fear. I started pacing from one end of the house to the other and back again. I decided to wait until the next afternoon, thinking she must be in her office then. Hopefully I would have composed myself enough to call. Finally I forced myself to dial the number.

When she answered, I introduced myself. Even before telling her that we have interacted on her forum, she already knew. At first I stumbled with how to start the conversation. As it turned out, that was actually the toughest part!

After just a few minutes, speaking with Rosalind was like talking with a friend. The conversation was casual, while creative ideas flowed and business was conducted. After a while I started feeling like enough of her time was taken, so with decisions made, I offered to end the call. A few more ideas were discussed and a few minutes later, Rosalind had to prepare for a consultation. I then asked how much I owed her for this one. The call ended with a laugh.

What this taught me was that no matter how successful or popular someone becomes, they can still hold a good conversation, have stories of their own, are good listeners and like making new friends. When you get the opportunity to speak with someone who is considered an “elite”, make the call. If you see them in person, walk over and introduce yourself.

They most likely started right where you are now and had many of the same questions. Hold that temptation to pick their brain with a flurry of questions though, until you either schedule a consultation, or are invited to meet again. The first meeting should be to get to know each other.

Now you are probably wondering how this opportunity came about - without an appointment. As it turns out, I am one of her forum moderators. Visit us at NetProfitsToday.com - “the friendliest forum on the web”.

Jim Hutchinson

Tessa Blakeley Silver wrote an instructional manual named WordPress Theme Design. It is intended to be a complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes, with practical step-by-step instructions for theme design.

Included are development tools for setting up your WordPress sandbox, design tips and suggestions, setting up the template structure for your theme, coding markup, tips on testing, debugging and taking it live, reviewing the best practices.

Shriharsha Bhat of Packt Publishing said, “This book walks through clear, step-by-step instructions to build a custom theme for the WordPress open-source blog engine. The author provides design tips and suggestions and covers setting up the WordPress sandbox, and reviews the best practices from setting up the theme’s template structure, through coding markup, testing, and debugging, to taking it live.”

“The last three chapters cover additional tips, tricks, and various cookbook recipes for adding popular site enhancements to WordPress theme designs using 3rd-party plugins as well as creating API hooks to add custom plugins.”

Learn more about WordPress Theme Design by visiting Amazon.com.

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Jim Hutchinson
Website Managers, LLC
Discount WordPress Blog Hosting

That means in order to update WordPress plugins, the manual method is to visit your plugins page, look for those with updates available, click the link to the plugin site, click the download button there, unzip the plugin, move it to the WordPress folder, open FTP and upload the new files, go back into WordPress Admin panel, disable the plugin, refresh to make sure the new one was seen, then enable the plugin.

That is how I normally do it. After going through that process many times, it has become easy enough to finish an update within a few minutes. That was until I got bold enough to put my website login into the Automated Plugin Updates form and let the software do all the tedious work.
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Using Firefox, the login information is saved, so all I have to do is select the SSL option, click the Proceed button and wait. For most of the plugins, the updating is painless. For others though, the connection is never made, so I can still satisfy my desire to “kick it old school”.

Plus with the SSL option, my login credentials are encrypted while passing through to the WordPress plugins site. The updates now take even less time so I can get back to researching and writing. Note that this function is in WordPress 2.5+. For those who have not upgraded yet, this is just one of the many options that you are missing out on.

A robots.txt file tells search engines what you do not want them to index. It can include commands that pertain to all search engines, or targeted to specific crawlers.

Example:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /eklog
Disallow: /images
User-Agent: MSNbot
Crawl-Delay: 10

The first 4 lines are directed to all crawlers. The last 2 lines tell MSNbot to delay indexing 10 seconds between pages to prevent overloading your site.

In contrast to a robots.txt file, a sitemap file tells the search engine crawlers what you do want them to index. The search engines are very picky about the format, especially if you use the XML type. That one lists the file name, date of last change, revisit schedule and the importance on a scale of 0.1 to1.0

Example:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84″>
<url>
<loc>http://www.websitemanagers.net/</loc>
<lastmod>2008-05-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

There are online tools to help you generate that file. Google and Yahoo have them, plus a plugin for WordPress is available free that will automate the process on your blog.

A much simpler version is a plain sitemap.txt file that lists just the URLs within your site.
Example:

http://www.websitemanagers.net/
http://www.websitemanagers.net/bloghosting/
http://www.websitemanagers.net/color-hex-codes.php
http://www.websitemanagers.net/sitemap.php

For more information on creating and managing robots.txt files, visit Wikiedia. Sitemap instructions can be found at Google Webmaster Tools.

Note that both the sitemap and robots.txt file require using either a file manager, such as the one built into cPanel, or a text editor combined with an FTP (file transfer) program.

Jim Hutchinson
Website Managers - Discount Website/Blog Hosting with cPanel

There are many blogging platforms from which to choose, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Having a blog on your own website has many more benefits than most of the others. The two main benefits are branding and control. You want the link to your blog be one that people remember and relate to you, such as your own domain name. Control is important so you can do anything with your blog that you want, without the fear of having the site removed due to inappropriate content.

Once you decide on a blogging platform, which is hopefully WordPress since it installs on your own website, you need to get some things in order.

1) Create a Good Name and Tagline for Your Blog.

You should put some thought into your blog title and address name. You want something easy to say and type so that when you give out the address to other people, they will easily remember it. You also want your title to help remind people what you are blogging about. If you are mainly writing about yourself and your daily activities, find a catchy name that helps draw people in. If you are writing about business-related issues, make sure the main keywords are in the blog title, tagline and if possible, in the domain name itself.

2) Select Your Theme Template

Test multiple templates until you find one that works for your purposes. Sometimes having all the cool gadgets right away takes away from other parts of your website. I have found that most people look at your top two most recent posts and only venture into clicking on your blog roll and other fun gadgets if they are regulars to your site. I think the simpler and aesthetically pleasing your blog is, the more you will find people sticking around. I personally do not like sites with tons of flashing ads, links and text everywhere because it distracts the readers from what you are really trying to do there. For some good WordPress themes to start with, visit Weblog Tools Collection.

3) Choose Your Blogging Style

Content blogging focuses on informational articles within a certain niche, filled with content that helps inform your readers about a specific topic (typically something you know something about). Journal blogging is a collection of your daily activities and what your opinions are on all kinds of topics. You have to be exclusively one or the other, but you should have a focus one way or the other to establish consistency.

4) Write Your About Page and Profile

Your first post can be a practice run to say a little bit about yourself and what you hope to do with your blog. Create it as a page instead of a post. That way it will always show on the menu bar. You can refine it as you go along. Having a good About page very important. Use your real name, let people know what your interests are, how you got started with your business, what you like to do for fun, etc. Let your readers get a good broad picture of who they are dealing with. My about page is the second most popular page on my blog, because people want to know a little bit about who this writer is.

5) Get A Contact Page

You can find plugins for contact pages in WordPress which makes it really easy for people to contact you. Whether you leave a link to your email address, or have a contact page, it is really important to make yourself easily accessible to your readers.

Dustin Diaz is a User Interface Engineer for Google and author of JavaScript Design Patterns. He wrote a nice contact plugin for WordPress.

6) Find and Link to Other Blogs

You can learn how to blog and what to write about by reading other bloggers. You can find great blogs by searching Google.com for blogs in your industry or topic of interest, or by going to specific blog search engines like technorati and sphere. That is really important, especially if you are focusing on a content blog, to find other bloggers who are writing about your topic. It is good to engage with people who both agree and disagree with your points of view.

7) Set A Regular Blogging Schedule

How often you write is not as important as how consistent you are. If you post once a week for a while and then wait a month, people will stop checking your website. Being regular in your writing will help engage your readers and keep them interested.

Experiment With Writing Style and Content

Experiment with different types of posts, content, template styles, and see what works best.
Do not expect to get it perfected and remember that it takes time to get interaction on your site. Play around with ideas and topics. Going through your website traffic stats each week will help you see how people are using your site and which pages are most popular.

9) Let Others Know You Are Online

Send out a friendly email and tell all your friends and co-workers about your new blog. Inviting people into your conversation is a great way to get started. Also announce it on social networking sites like MySpace and Twitter. Commenting on blogs like Problogger (http://www.problogger.net) will get some people to click over to see who you are and what you are about.

10) Get Additional Training On Using Your Blog

When you order blog Hosting from Website Managers, your blog is set up with some of the most popular and beneficial plugins. You are also offered training on how to use your blog and manage the plugins. By the end of that training, you will be ready to get started blogging on your own and generating traffic to your website.

I hope this has helped guide you through getting started blogging. Your comments are welcome.

Jim Hutchinson
Website Managers

Inside your cPanel website control panel, there is a link to Web Disk. Note that you must be using cPanel version 11 or higher with the x3 theme. In the Files section, click the Web Disk icon. On your first visit, you will Create Web Disk Account. Enter a username and password.

If you have trouble creating a password or want hints on making a more secure password, there is a big button named Generate Password. The default is 12 characters with upper and lower case, numbers and symbols. You can change and one of those options. Longer passwords are more secure. When you are happy with the generated password, click the Use Password button to put it into the two boxes.

In the Directory box, the default is to access the root folder for that site, signified by a forward slash (/). You can enter any other folder to access upon connecting. When done, click the Create button and your new Web Disk is created. You will be asked to download a file to your desktop. That is a shortcut to the folder you selected. You can choose between standard or secure login. I recommend the secure option if your server has it, although the connection could be slower.

A new icon will be listed on the Web Disk page in the Web Disk Account Management section. It will show the Login username, the Directory to access and a button to Access Web Disk. You can access Web Disk from there, or from the icon you downloaded to your desktop. That is a quicker method and bypasses the cPanel login.

One thing I noticed is that the security warning box shows up behind the Explorer window. You have to minimize the window, click OK to close the warning, then enter your username and password to log in.

Once you log into Web Disk, you will see that the interface looks like Windows Explorer. To transfer files, click the Folders icon on top and navigate to your files. You will see the default folder being NetHood. That is a listing of all the folders and files on the website.

To see both your computer and the website files, minimize the current window and either double click the Web Disk icon on your desktop again, or open Windows Explorer. That will open a new window so you will be looking at the files on your computer. Resize the two windows so they are next to each other. In one window, usually the left side, navigate to the folder on your computer where your local files are stored. In the right window, you should see the files on your website. You can then turn off the folders view so the files lists will be next to each other.

The thumbnails view on the server side will not show icons like they do on your computer. Instead, either use the List or Details view by selecting it from the button bar. If you choose Details view and see the Internet Address column, right click on that column heading and deselect it. You already know which Internet Address you are accessing, so make that column will disappear.

To transfer files, just drag and drop them where you want them to go, just like you do in Windows Explorer. When done, close the server-side window to log out.

Web Disk is a good option to access your website files through secure connection. It is easier to learn than some of the FTP programs. If you do not have cPanel, ask your web host to install it, or move your website to a website Hosting company that has it already.

Jim Hutchinson
Website Managers Web Hosting with cPanel

Along with that, most affiliate links are very long and many are obscure, making them not real useful in everyday marketing. To combat that problem, there are many services that allow you to make shorter links.

While those are good services, they do nothing to brand your website. They also use cryptic codes to make the shorter links. Getting around that is easy if your web host uses cPanel.

The video below walks you through the simple process of creating and managing your own shorter links. Once you master this method, you will never again use another service.

Jim Hutchinson
Website Managers We Hosting

Finding customer support today is as simple as picking up the phone or writing an email. Even though you are not face-to-face with your customers, you will still leave a lasting impression. Do you come across as menacing and mechanical or caring and competent?

Offering service that stands out on the Internet is more rare than it is difficult. Take these simple steps towards reliable service in the digital world:

• Give Each Customer a Personal Response
• Be Clear and Sincere
• Offer Live Customer Service
• Make Sure Your Support Team Has All the Answers

Give Each Customer a Personal Response

When a customer writes email your company, it is because he/she needs help. Even though they may choose email because it is fast and accessible, their request still warrants a satisfying and personal response!

Companies often take automation too far in their customer support to save time and money. Each customer deserves a unique answer to their unique question. Change the opening of each letter to make the message appear less robotic, even if you save time by using pre-written templates for your replies.

Be Clear and Sincere

When responding to email requests, be sincere and to the point. Before sending a message, ask yourself, “Would this answer be sufficient to me if I was the customer?”

Take that extra time to give your customers the help they deserve. It could mean the difference between a satisfied customer and a refund.

Offer Live Customer Support

Even though email has become an acceptable form of communication, live customer support is still has its place. The vast amount of information available online can be overwhelming to customers, especially those new to the Internet.

Providing customers with a real person to speak with will set your company apart from the crowd. Live phone support is a great way to nurture trust. When your customers have reached the end of their Internet rope and just need help, your phone number could be the answer they have been looking for.

Make Sure Your Support Team Has All The Answers

The presence of phone support will do no good if your staff does not know your product! Customer support teams should be warm and friendly. They should also be willing to help with any aspect of your products or services.

Speaking with someone who feels confident in their product is a great feeling too. It is even better if they are knowledgeable enough to solve your problem without transferring you all around the company!

Provide Excellent Service and Gain Lifelong Customers

Too many Internet businesses skimp on customer service, hiding behind web sites, message boards and support ticket systems. Customer support is an integral part of every company, even those operating completely online. Be one of the few to offer stellar service and gain customers for life!

Customer Service is becoming a lost art, but Aweber Communications wants to make sure you find out what service is meant to be. Learn more about Aweber autoresponder systems.

Jim Hutchinson
Website Managers

Twitter is part blog, part instant messaging system. It is more discussion-oriented than social networks because it does not have the other content such as video, photos, or long profiles. Twitter is the social web on hyper-drive. You can use Twitter through your cell phone, on the web site, or through another program written like an instant messenger, but for Twitter.

Twitter is predicted to be the big ticket next year. People looking at it from the outside do not understand why they should, but once you join and start using it, every other social networking site appears to stand still. Twitter is like blogging with just an RSS feed in real time. You may not have a question or need to get a particular piece of information, but the stream of real time reports from across the event allows you to know about everything as it happens.

Using Twitter

Twitter is more like a 10-second digital advertisement. You are limited to 160 characters in each message. People most often use it to broadcast short bits of info. Twitter is taking off like wildfire for its users and for developers who are creating applications to work with it.

Twitter is at its best when you connect to a lot of different people. However, if someone is annoying, I do not feel obligated to keep them in my Twitter list. Twitter is helping me get exposed to new people, ideas and online resources I would have never known about without Twitter. The popularity of Twitter continues to expand at an amazing rate. Twitter is always on and is much faster, provided the person you want to reach is paying attention.

Adding Friends

A good rule of thumb is to follow everyone who follows you. If for no other reason, it makes for fun twit discussions when you are referencing each other’s posts. Follow people who you find interesting and if you keep your messages interesting, they will follow you.

If you want to relate to others in a particular niche market, use the search box and scan through the results. Look at their bio if they wrote one and add them to your friends list. They will get an email saying that you are following them. In turn, you will get an email when someone follows you. That way, you can visit their Twitter profile to see who they are.

Tweeting on Twitter

Do not think of posting to Twitter as a chore, or feel an obligation to post. You should never have to search for something to post about. Post your thoughts about what you are doing, the website you are visiting, blog articles you are writing, short jokes and anything else you want others to know. If you are on a website, just leave space for the URL.

Twitter will keep a history of your posts (tweets) so you can refer to them later and allow others to see them too. You can see just your Twitter friends, your archives or everything that everyone on Twitter is talking about. To address a friend, prefix their username with @. Example: @websitemanagers

Join Twitter

Go ahead, take the plunge into the fast-paced world of Twittering. You can start by connecting with me at Twitter.com.

Disclaimer: By clicking that link and joining Twitter, you agree to hold me harmless if you end up in a Twitter Annonymous group!

Here is another interesting article about Twitter, “Why I Hate Twitter“.

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Jim Hutchinson has studied Internet Marketing from some of the most influential leaders and explores the diverse aspects of SEO. Many of those resources are available on Affiliate Referral Sources.
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Copyright © 2008 Website Managers, LLC. You may reprint this article providing that this copyright notice and resource links all remain intact.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a buzzword that has been around for several years. There are as many misconceptions about SEO as there are website managers. Most webmasters think SEO is too complex and not worth the effort. Others believe that SEO will get your website banned from the search engines. There are a few that actively practice SEO.

Fact #1: SEO can be complex if you want to compete with the big guys. SEO is all about outperforming your competitors. That means the better you do SEO than your competitors, the more success you will have.

Fact #2: SEO can get your website banned from the search engines if you break the rules. There are Black Hat tricks to SEO that will ultimately get you on the blacklist of all search engines, but that is not the focus of this article.

Fact #3: Basic SEO can be simple and effective. Here are a few steps to increase the ranking of your website. We will start with the basics.

Download Your Free SEO Made Easy eBook

1. Choose Your Niche Keyword Phrase

SEO focuses on being a little bit better than your competition on your selected keyword phrase or phrases. Each page of your website should focus on a single keyword phrase. Two or three words in a phrase work best. Make sure that people are actually searching these phrases as well. Wordtracker and Overture are just two of many methods to check for usability. If you optimize your website for the wrong keyword phrases, you are wasting your time. Not only will you not get the traffic you want, your visitors could be looking for the wrong service.

2. Set Your HTML Tags Right

Your keyword phrase must be in the TITLE tag of your page. The keywords and description META tags are not used by many search engines, but they can still come in handy on pages where a good description is not at the top of the page. Make sure to have a header 1 (H1) tag with the keyword phrase placed at the top of your page. That header will describe the page contents.

Avoid having an H2 tag with the keyword phrase. Take control over the look and feel via cascading style sheets (CSS). This way it is much easier to control the appearance of your website and it keeps the HTML code free of clutter.

Sprinkle your keyword phrase throughout the web page. Place your keyword phrase 2-3 times near the top, once within the first 25 characters and once in the last 25 characters of your text. Change the style variation of the keyword phrase. Make sure you have at least one underlined, one bold and one italic variation of the keyword phrase.

3. Check For Errors

Spell checking is a must. Search engines do not like spelling errors on your web page very well. However, you can include misspelled words in the keywords section of your META tags to help people find you. Also check for broken links. Broken links hurt your ranking.

This short introduction can improve your search engine rankings. Not all of the other SEO tactics are this easy. What we did here was start with the On-Page SEO, which is only part of the process. To really dominate the search engines you should practice a well-planned and executed linking strategy. This is called Off-Page SEO. Off-Page SEO is your most important task as a webmaster or website manager.

The details of a successful Off-Page SEO strategy are too lengthy for the content of this article. However, you can get a good start on them by downloading my book on How to Get Free Website Traffic. To get access to that manual, subscribe to my Internet Marketing Newsletter.

Jim Hutchinson is the Project Manager for Website Managers. He has studied Internet Marketing from some of the most influential leaders. Many of those resources are available on Affiliate Referral Sources.
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Copyright © 2008 Website Managers, LLC. You may reprint this article providing that this copyright notice and resource links all remain intact.