Archive for Internet Tips
New Word Press Install and adding a premium theme – Builder
Posted by: | CommentsHere is how to install Word Press – and a new premium theme in this case I will be covering iThemes Builder.
First of all WordPress can be installed directly to an empty domain or it can be installed as a sub directory of a domain. It does not matter if the domain is empty or not it just has to be active.
If you are new to WP it is best to install to a sub directory so you have a place to learn, experiment and play. You can always do a new install to where you actually want the site to be later.
How you name things is important for example one of my sites is yardgardenwindmills.com — That is the domain and for a very long time I actually had nothing there. Just a blank but active domain.
My Word Press blog in fact the 2nd Word Press blog I did when I knew very little about this is at yardgardenwindmills.com/blog – my WP blog is there and that is where I tell people to go. You will see this one in my emails and on my Google Profile. It is my main blog where I talk about windmills and weathervanes, after all that is what I do is sell windmills and weathervanes.
So you want to name the sub directory with something that is easy to type and remember when you install WP – also something that the Search Engines can easily find and index.
One of my new WP installs is on my domain ronaldheadley.com – there is nothing at ronaldheadley.com at all, however if you go to ronaldheadley.com/oxford you will be at a community site I did in WP and if you go to ronaldheadley.com/sandbox you will be at my site I just set up as a place to play with and demo WP
You can have as many WP sites as you want as add ons to a domain. You pay only the $10 a year to renew the domain. You could have hundreds of sites if you want on the one domain at $10 a year. (I am talking about Blue Host here – where I host all of my domains and sites – your hosting very well may be different)
So when you are first starting out, pick an active domain and decide what you want to call the add on file. Make is simple and something that is easy to remember.
Next go to your hosts control panel. Hopefully your host has CPanel – your host is where you have your domain name and present web sites. If you have no clue what I am talking about then you will need to see some ones instructions on how to get a domain name and choose a hosting service. I use and recommend highly Blue Host. Other people may recommend others. See my resource page on why I recommend Blue Host and there is a link that will take you there Geezer n Geek Resources
If you need to get hosting and or a domain name I can walk you through that. Plus I will be doing an intro to Blue Host as one the Guides here.
Note the address of the link – the address is the very top window of your browser – it is where on the internet you went to get to a site, or location on a site. In this case you will see geezerngeek.com that is my domain and in this case a full installation of Word Press is there. Next you will see /category/resources – what this means is on the Word Press install I have a category named resources. Categories are blog posts. I also have sub categories. The theme here is iThemes Flex by the way.
Now to step ONE Install Word Press- go to you hosting sites CPanel it looks like this on Blue Host
Go down to the bottom of your CPanel – you have a Word Press logo then installing WP will be amazingly easy. If not there are other ways to install WP – email me if you are not seeing this -
Click on the Word Press Link that says Install a brand new version
Next choose what WP version – actually leave this alone – you want to most resent version of WP that is Stable and that will be the default.
Choose your domain – the domains on this site will be in the drop down – if you want your WP install on the domain itself just choose it. If you want it as an extension (or add on) put that in the blank box – caution here if you already have a site on your domain and you install WP directly it will over ride you existing site. (over ride as in it can wipe out or damage your existing site. If the domain is just a blank – there is nothing there and this is where you want your new site then just go ahead.)
It is best if this is your first time with Word Press to put it in as an add on so add something to the extension IE blog or test or whatever. When you do it this way even if there is already something on the domain it will not damage it. And even if it is blank – nothing there if will give you a place to learn and experiment before you put up your actual site.
AND THIS IS IMPORTANT – Click on advanced Click the box – name your site – you can change this later – use something that is SEO friendly when on a real site. For now you could call it something like my first blog, or my test site whatever.
The really important step is the next box that has username and password. Once you enter a user name you cannot change it. DO NOT CHECK the box – IT WILL GENERATE A RANDOM ADMINISTRATOR USERNAME WHICH YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO CHANGE!!!!
It is important to use something other than admin as a user name. admin is the WP default and so if you use it a potential hacker is halfway into your site. use something else such as yournameadmin remember Caps matter here.
Choose a password – you can change your password later.
Check again and make certain that you DID NOT check the check box – that creates a random user name and password.
Below is a check box to create a new data base – Make sure this is checked – you can create a data base later but it is not easy and you most certainly need one or WP will not even open.
Step 3 check the legal Information box and click on Complete
That is it – you are done – WordPress will be installed on your site and will be ready to go. The installer will tell you when it is done. There may be an activate button when it is done, or not whatever it will be obvious.
Open a new browser tab – go to you where you just put Word Press – yoursite.com/your new WP location and you will see your brand new site it will look like this.
There is something called meta and a link on the right that says site admin – open this in a new tab and you will see the WP login in screen. Or open a new tab and enter yoursitename.com/yourWPlocaton/wp-login.php
Something to learn, memorize, write down is wp-login.php – you add this to any WP site to get to your dashboard. You may not have the Meta and login on you site on the Home page once you install a theme.
Now if you forgot you new user name and or password to get to your new site – just go to the email address you have set up to get emails from your host site. Simple Scripts – the thing that just installed WP will have sent you an email – the subject is WordPress Access Information and it will have your new Word Press site location, your user name and your password
After you login you will be taken you to your WP Dashboard – this is where everything is done in WP
A good practice when working with WP is have one tab on your site and one tab on your dashboard. To see any changes you have made just click on the site and refresh it. To make more changes click on the dashboard tab.
BTW you can close your CPanel Window now – you will not need to use CPanel any more for the rest of the install and work with the themes. Now that you have a working WordPress Install and can log into your WP Dashboard all is well and so you can leave your CPanel.
WP will have a choice to view you site when ever you save anything – it is really faster and easier to just have the site on a tab – click on the tab and refresh to see your changes.
This ends installing Word Press – it is really easy and your can do it. Here at Geezer n Geek we say “You can do this we can help”
If installing WordPress seems to be a challenge, or intimidating, or you just do not want to do it or you are really uncomfortable with CPanel (I was terrified of CPanel for several years. I found a great training course on CPanel and now I am perfectly OK there.) Remember if you need or want help with installing Word Press – I can set up a webinar in a way that I can “watch over your shoulder” as you install WP and I will be able to see what you are doing and simply walk you through it.
Internet Access – High Speed – What is available
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have a business, it does not really matter if the the business is an office, store or you are working out of your home you really need to have internet access and that access pretty much must be something other than dial up. I know there are large areas of the country particularly rural areas where high speed internet access is just not available and dial up may be the only choice. Or is it?? Here are the options.
There are two basic ways you can get to the internet from your business be it an office, store or your home. The first is DSL; this service comes from your telephone company. Actually I should say your wired (landline) telephone company. The phone companies are continuing to extend the “reach” of DSL, in other words making it available further and further away from the towns or cities. Even if you have checked with your phone company in the past to see if DSL is available and you have been told it is not, keep checking with them. Call your phone companies DSL provider number and continue to call. Ask if DSL is available and when might it become available. Get people living or working close to you to do the same thing. Numbers matter, if the phone company is aware that there are a number of people in an area wanting DSL they will “upgrade” those areas that will bring them the most new business first.
DSL has a serious limitation it can be only a certain distance – a few miles – from the DSL equipment. We had and still have that situation where I live. The people at the very tiny town of Oxford could get DSL the people living 2-3 miles away could not. We actually got together and kept calling AT&T our local phone company, asking about DSL. On each call we each told the DSL people that there were at least 30 people in our immediate area who would buy DSL service today if AT&T would make it available. It took a couple of years but finally AT&T did upgrade their equipment and they did make DSL available in my rural area. (they got 45 new customers within days after the upgrade) There are however people on up the road (further away from the phone company equipment) that are still too far away and they cannot get DSL.
The phone company just recently put in a new underground phone cable on up the road and so once they connect the new lines those neighbors will also get DSL access. With DSL the physical phone lines must be there and they must be able to handle DSL. Old phone lines often will not work.
The next option for high speed internet access is cable. If you live in an area where cable TV is available the chances are High Speed Internet is available from your cable TV company. Of course in most cases if you have high speed internet available from your local cable TV provider you will also have High Speed internet available from you phone company via DSL.
In this case you will have two choices – DSL and Cable TV to give you High Speed access. Ask your neighbors what they use for internet access and what they think of the services provided. While Cable TV access is in general faster than DSL, it does you no good if your cable company is in the habit of not fixing a cable outage quickly. (phone companies can do this also – take a day or two to fix the phone if it goes out) The thing to know is that with most Cable and Phone companies you will sign a contract for internet service and that means you are stuck with with you get for a certain time period and that time period is often two years. Before you sign for internet access make sure you know what is in the contract. How much will it cost, what services are provided, how reliable is the service and the company. There is nothing more painful than high speed internet service that sometimes works and sometimes does not work which costs you money every month working or not. Occasional failures can and do happen – you may loose your internet service for a few hours sometimes. Loosing your internet service for more than a day is totally unacceptable, so be sure to ask your neighbors about what they are using for internet access and about the providers service and support.
What if there is no cable TV and there is no DSL service? Does this mean that the only thing available is dial up? Actually no, there are several more choices.
An interesting choice for sort of high speed internet is cellular phone services. Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and other cellular services have high speed internet services available. You can get something called an Air Card on your computer that can get to the internet using cell phone providers. The most common way this is done is with laptops although you can get wireless and wired modems that work with the cellular services and Air Cards.
How in the world do you find out if this will work in your house or business? Actually it is pretty easy, do you have a smart phone? Do you know people that have smart phones? (iPhones, Blackberry, Droid, and so on) Have people that have smart phones come to your business or house and see if they can connect to the internet and at what speed. Find out which cellular provider seems to work the best. Most of the smart phones have a so called data plan and smart phone users are on the internet with their phones.
The thing to know with cellular service as your internet provider is the cellar services have different levels of data service. I use an iPhone which means I have only one choice of cellular provider and that is AT&T. AT&T has two levels of cellular data service – EDGE and 3G. The other carriers are similar, they just have different names for their levels of service. The highest speed service tends to be available only in cities and urban areas and along the interstate highways. In my case I will be talking about AT&T 3G, however the same applies to all of the cellular providers. 3G is available in cities, in and near urban areas and along most interstate highways. If you go a mile or two away from the city or urban area or interstate you will loose 3G service and go to EDGE. EDGE will connect to the internet however it is slow, actually not much faster than dial up. In your house or business you might have areas where 3G works and other areas where it does not and you can get only EDGE and still other places where there is no cellar service at all. With the iPhone there is an app called Speed Test and with other smart phones there are probably similar apps. Get this app if you use the iPhone or iPad 3G it will tell you if and how well your smart phone will work. It will also tell you if you can use you device when you travel.
So if cable or DSL are not available to you check you smart phone and see how well it works at you business or home. Get other people with different smart phones to come to your house or business and have them check the internet access-make certain you get people using different cellular providers. A major hint here – get to know the young people IE high school age, college age or young adults, they will have smart phones and will know how to really use them and they can tell you if their device works at you home or place of business. Choose the company that works the best at your location.
What you are attempting to learn is if there is cellular high speed internet available and which cellular provider works best. Each of the major cellular providers has coverage maps on their websites, you need to find the data coverage map on their web sites, the phone coverage map is not helpful. There are lots of places where your cell phone will work just fine but the data part (the internet) does not work at all. Here is the AT&T cell phone coverage for my area – Notice the 3G Voice and Mobile Broadband Coverage and box just below the map? Check that box – this will tell you what 3G data coverage is available. Whether or not it will work for you is a different story – at least will know if you have a chance using cellular internet with your business. Here is the same area with the data map AT&T data coverage – be sure to zoom out on these types of maps to understand what is possible around you. In my case the AT&T map is totally blue which indicates high speed 3G cellular service is available at my business and at my house. The reality is 3G does in fact work at my store and Speed Test on my iPhone shows it is actually pretty good. It also works at my house most of the time in every room, however at my machine shed which is down the hill 100 feet from the house I get either EDGE very poorly or no cellular date service at all and the cell phone is really marginal – even though on the map it is solid bright blue. Also at the house Speed test is usually slower than at the store (the store is close to an urban area – the house is rural)
So if you are considering using a cellular service for your internet connection at your business or home check it with smart phones. With cellular data you will be paying for the Air Card service and you will be in a contract with the cell phone company. This charge is over and above or totally separate from your wireless phone billing. Make sure you understand how they bill. If you use an Air Card with your computer you can very quickly use a lot of data and if you go over what is available on your plan this can get very expensive very quickly.
You can get an Air card that will work with your laptop and there are devices that you can get that allow you to plug your air card into a router so you can set up a wired or wireless network at your business for more than one computer that connects to the cellular service and internet.
With some phones and smart phones it is also possible to “tether” your phone to your computer. You often will have to pay your cellular service extra to do this and again you may have limits as to how much data you can use without getting charged more.
Something to know about tethering – your cell phone is connected to internet and your computer is connected to your cell phone. That means in most cases you WILL NOT be able to use your cell phone at all and if you do elect to tether your computer to your phone make certain you do not loose the ability to charge your phone while it is tethered. The batteries will die on your cell phone in about an hour if you are not able to recharge it while tethered.
So with cellular I am talking about two different things here. First using your cell phone to connect to the internet then and tethering it to your computer or router. While this can and does work it is really a temporary connection to the internet.
The second way is with an Air Card – a device that plugs into your computer that allows it to connect to the internet. Here I am talking about laptops primarily. There are devices that you can plug your Air Card into called routers (these are special air card routers – not the router that you would use to connect to DSL or Cable) these routers are normally wireless and will have at least one wired port so you can set up both a wired and a wireless network at you home or business.
Using cellular services as your internet provider will work as long as you can get reliable cellular high speed service. In the case of AT&T this is called 3G. If all you can get is EDGE the cellular solution is not worth messing with. EDGE is a little faster than dial up but not that much. Remember that the fastest cellular internet service at its best will be a lot slower than the slowest DSL.
OK so what if you are in an area where there is no cable, no DSL and no high speed cellular service? If you have a clear view of the southern sky and or if you use Direct TV or Dish network for television, there is another choice – there are satellite Internet service available. You will need a special satellite dish – Your Direct or Dish network dish for television will not work. You will need some special equipment and you will need to learn how to maintain this equipment. You can get high speed internet via satellite. You need to know that quite often the equipment is costly, the monthly charge is higher than other internet services and you have to know how to re aim your satellite internet dish. If it is your only choice it does in fact work and thousands of people use satellite to get to the internet. You can connect a router to the satellite modem and set up a network at your home or business so you can use more than one computer.
A final thing that is available in some areas and starting to appear in other areas is called broadband internet. This is wireless, the providers have transmitters and receivers called transceivers set up on high places, you have a transceiver at your home or business. This way is very directional, your transceiver must be in direct line of sight to the providers transceiver on a high place or tower. They are able to get people connected at 8 miles or less from where they put up their transceivers. I used a service like this at home for several years while waiting for AT&T to extend DSL to my house. Broadband is not as fast in general than the other internet services such as cable or DLS or even cellular it is a whole lot faster than dial up and is usable. In my case the broadband provider put a couple of antennas in my attic and a broadband transceiver which I connected to my wireless router which gave me internet all through my house.
QUICK NOTE and this is really IMPORTANT!!!! If you have wireless internet at your home or business – WIFI – make certain that you “lock” your wireless router. WIFI normally only goes 300 feet or so – it can go further. If your WIFI is open anyone can use your WIFI by simply having a laptop or other WIFI device in their car and parking close to your house or place of business. You ask what is wrong with that? Very simple – if you have an open wireless network that others can use with WIFI from their laptop or other WIFI device they could be involved with illegal activity through your internet connection. When illegal activity is tracked the authorities will “see” your internet connection this is called your IP address. The enforcement people will come to your house or business because to them it looks like the illegal activity is coming from your computer(s) and you will get arrested and they will take every computer you own for analysis. The person using your open wireless connection from their car and doing the illegal activity will not be there. This is especially true if you live in an apartment house, or any area where there are other homes nearby. LOCK DOWN your wireless router, put in a hard to guess KEY – DO NOT use these things open EVER.
Two examples, when I had the broadband connection at my house and a WIFI wireless network one of my neighbors more than a half mile away was actually able to get on the internet with his laptop from the upstairs bedroom of his house, actually it was OK with me that he was using my wireless network however I did lock down my router at that point and gave him the key so he could use it. The problem was if he could use my WIFI at that distance than others could use it from nearby “parking places” in fields and driveways.
The other example, a good friend of mine with a business had an open WIFI network-he simply had no clue, he went bought a WiFi router and just turn it on and it worked. Turned out was easy to access from a parking lot across the street as well as a fast food place. Some people were coming to this parking lot at night after his business was closed and were using his open WIFI network for illegal activity. The authorities became aware of the illegal activity, they “busted” him, it got into the newspapers and on local television news, they took every computer he had to the state forensic lab and took him to jail. After several weeks the state lab could find nothing on any of his computers but he still had to go to court. He had to get a lawyer that knew how computer work. It was dismissed – it cost him thousands of dollars in legal fees and he spent time in jail because of the press he actually lost his business and reputations and had to move and start over. They never caught the person or persons that were using his open WIFI network for illegal activities on the internet.
Finally if dial up is your only option or you have no options at all for internet access there is always BFS – (Business Form Starbucks). Get a laptop that has WIFI – these days I think every laptop or netbook does have WIFI. Do all of the work you can from your business, office or home including answering emails and go to someplace with internet access. The coffee shop, the fast food place, the library, wherever you can connect to the internet, download your email, upload your email and do what ever business work you need to do that requires the internet, get the updates current on your computer and software, in other words get all your internet work done while on public access. Then go back to your office. While going someplace with internet access is not a great solution it is a far better solution than dial up. With all the updates to your operating system, software and security these days dial up can literally take days to get these updates to you. It can take hours and hours to just get your email. Sometime BFS is the only efficient way.
How am I getting these blog post to more than one site?
Posted by: | CommentsNormally with WordPress you log into your dashboard and click on Posts Add New to add post to the blog part of your site. Remember that with WordPress you can have posts and or pages. These are Posts – you put posts into categories so later on when you set up your navigation people viewing your site can click on a category to follow a topic.
I use a free tool called Blog Desk to post – I can put the same item on different sites and in different categories on those sites. I will be showing you how to use this and other tools on the Small Business Guides site later on.
Here is why you NEED to be able to totally control your web site
Posted by: | CommentsMy new website on Small Business Guides is certainly not ready for public viewing. I am still playing in the “Sandbox” working on the look and feel and learning the Builder theme. However I do have several articles that have come up and will be a part of the new site.
If this were a traditional website – getting these articles up would not even be considered – I would have to contact my webmaster and get them to put these up.
The absolute beauty of WordPress and doing you own site is you can put up articles and information NOW on the new site. No matter what you do with the appearance and function of the new site – the articles will be there, they are available.
I have linked up with some truly amazing people over the past year, one of which is Bob Jenkins aka Bob the Teacher. I will be talking more about what I have learned from Bob later. For now one of the things Bob teaches is TARL – Take Action Revise Later. He even has a great book out there about this concept.
The basic concept of TARL is to get the material and content out there, one can make it look better, or revise it later. If you wait to get content, information or material out there until your site looks great or until the content is perfect it will never get out there, you will not have communicated your information. You can always change it, fix it, make it look better later.
So even though the site is seriously under construction I am doing TARL and starting to put articles on the new site. Remember that one of the ways I write is if you see something that is a different color and underlined it is a link that will take you to the place I am writing about. Just click the links for more detail or to see what I am talking about.
A couple of people have asked do I teach WordPress and what is WordPress
Posted by: | CommentsAs I develop the Small Business Guides I will be able to help and teach you the basics – how to add posts – how to add pages – how to manage your site and your theme. I can help you get a domain name, get a hosting site, set up WordPress on your site for you and set up your theme for you.
If you have no clue what WordPress is or how to use it or if you have some experience with WordPress and REALLY want to learn how to work with WordPress – I highly recommend Christina Hills – She does a couple of classes on WordPress a year. Clicking on her name will get you to where you can sign up for her list so that you can be notified when she does her next class. I highly recommend her Word Press Creation Workshop!!! – I keep going back and reviewing what I learned there.
Builder – Page Layout and Style
Posted by: | CommentsThis is what the Builder and Astro Style looked like “out of the box”
What Builder lets me do is design a layout and to create a style- I can make every page the same or I can make every page different or any combination.
A really important note – this is all done in menus – I am not messing with the code – I am not a programmer – what I like to see in Premium Word Press themes is the ability to change things and never have to look at or mess with the code.
What I have done is designed a page – I put in an image – put areas on the left and right of the image that I can add things, I added a navigation bar, put in a place for content – added a right side bar – a widget area below and a footer.
Next I played with the style creator and changed some of the colors and so now this is what I have
So here we go – I am “playing” in my Sandbox
Posted by: | Commentsthe very first thing to know about DIY web sites is you need a place to put your site. This is called Web Hosting. I use Blue Host and on the Resource page is a link to Blue Host.
You also need to have a domain name. In this case I am using a domain name in my name. If you go to ronaldheadley.com you will not find anything – I do not have a site there. I do have some information on the Geezer n Geek site about domain names. For now all you need to know is a domain name is an address that the internet can find. You can get domain names from Blue Host – you have to renew your domain names every year and a good practice is to set up you domains so that they automatically renew. Blue host charges $10 for a new domain name and the renewal is $10 a year.
If your domain name is costing more than $10-$12 a year or less you are getting ripped off!!! There are lots of places that will charge you a lot more. Do not use these places.
So in the case of the Sandbox it is an add on to my domain ronaldheadley.com – I pay $10 a year for the domain. I have two add ons at the moment to that domain. ronaldheadley.com/oxford is a community site and the new one ronaldheadley.com/sandbox are addons, they are separate site, Blue Host does not charge extra for doing this and I pay only for the one domain.
The same thing is true for geezerngeek.com the Small business guides are an add on at geezerngeek.com which is this site and geezerngeek.com/sbg is the add on that I am working on.
Remember if you are following this just go to where I am working and be sure to refresh your screen to see the changes. Right now as I learn Builder I will be working in the Sandbox so bring it up and hit the refresh and you will if I am making any progress.
What I have done so far is put Word Press on my domain, uploaded the Builder Theme and a Child theme to make it look like it does.
Next I will be using Builder to set up some pages and layouts.
Small Business Guides
Posted by: | CommentsA few months ago I started with the Geezer n Geek site with the idea that there a lot of people out there that just do not know much about how to use their computer – while the site is really a TARL (Take Action Revise Later) site there is at least some material there – the tabs work to take you to various places. The Resource Page and the computer and internet tips tabs work – the menu tabs below the header (the thing that changes colors) work and there is some information there.
The idea of putting together some small business guides is a place where I will be sharing a lot of things, information, how to do things, places to go to learn things.
There a lot of things about the internet and about how to sell your products or services on line that as a small business person you probably do not know. I will be first putting the site together and then adding various guides to help you be visible on the internet.
My main focus is doing things yourself. In this modern age using a web master just does not work. If your web site is managed by a webmaster you are not in a position to make changes your self. You have to contact your web master, explain what you want changed, they make the changes, you approve or not the changes, you suggest more changes, and on and on – you webmaster charges you for the changes, even changing a word or a price or adding a sale or new product. This just plain is totally inefficient.
I am not a webmaster – I actually attempted to learn to use Front Page and Dream Weaver and found they are far beyond what I can do. I actually do have a site run be a webmaster. The content is stale, needs changed and updated and because I cannot do it myself just does not get done.
I learned how to put up a Word Press blog and since I have been learning a whole lot about working with Word Press. This is a Word Press blog site. I can do everything myself, that means if I want to change, add to, modify my site I can do it and it only takes a few minutes.
The small business guides on the new site are all about doing things yourself. I will not be teaching you much on how to use Word Press – I will recommend a couple of places for you to learn. What I will be doing are guides to doing things on the internet related to your small business.
You can put up your own site, or add to your present site, you are in control so if you want to add or modify a product or service you can do that.
The small business guides will consist of things that can help you move your business so that you are visible on line.
One of the main things to think about is being visible on mobile site. No one uses the Yellow Pages for anything other than door stops these days. They use their mobile device to find local businesses and to get local business information.
If you are not visible to mobile phone users they will not find you. Part of what I will be doing is helping local businesses become visible on mobile devices.
This entire site for example is optimized to be seen on your mobile device – if you come here from your computer it will have one look, if you come here from your phone it will have another look -
As we move into this new era we all need to focus on being visible from mobile devices. I will be helping you learn how to do that.
Need help? Have things you want to learn? Email me or comment here.
One of things I will be doing is webinars – where I go over how to do things. I also will be doing some one on one webinars. Let me know what you need and want to learn.
Something to know about the “new” internet actually called Web 2.0 is when you see something in a different color click on it – these are links that take you to other pages or sites – the “different color” a few word back take you to my “Sandbox” where I am learning and playing with various site building tools.
iThemes Builder
Posted by: | CommentsPrior to the webinar, I was beginning to learn to use iThemes – Builder. I did not have the time to get back to it until today.
First problem, it is Sunday, I am at home, the computer I was using is at the store. I had been going over a tutorial on internet security where they recommended you use something other than “admin” to log into a Word Press site. So on the new Small Business Guides site – I set it up with something different, this setup happens when you set up a new Word Press site and the login user name is something that cannot be changed.
Problem was I could not remember what I had put in for a user name, that information is at the store, rather than go to the store today to get my new site login information I decided to put up another new Word Press site – someplace where I can just play around with things, see what works and what it looks like and so on. It is actually a lot faster to put up a new site, add a theme, so the basic site set up and so on than it is to drive a few miles to get the login and pass word information. The new site is RonaldHeadley.com/sandbox and you are welcome to come over there and see what type of stuff I am learning, playing around with or experimenting with.
Right after I put up the new site I got an email from my host with the new sites log in information. And then I remembered that I would have gotten a similar email when I set up the Small Business Guides site – so I now have the login information for there too.
I will be trying things on the sandbox site and then doing the same thing on the real site.
Something to know is when you start doing lots of different things on line you really need to have something that remembers logins and passwords for your sites – I use Robo Form – which is synched to my office computers, and one laptop – that means if I change login info or get new login information or a new password it comes up on my other computers. Why did it not work for the Small Business Guide site I am not certain – it does now. Robo Form is a really great way to keep track of logins, passwords and other things that can be set up to be shared on several computers. Change it here and it updates there.
Go To Meeting – my first Webinar
Posted by: | CommentsI had just started to learn how to use iThemes builder at the store, when I got an email from a friend who wanted some additional information. The only way to actually get that information to her was with a webinar so I got Go To Meeting, and actually did my first webinar. Go to Meeting is pretty easy – I did not get the chance to see any of the videos or read any of the instructions.
There are some learning points – it is not a really good idea to try something like a live webinar when one has no clue about what they are doing. If you are going to do something like that, stay with a small circle of friends.
The webinar came on, my friends could see and hear me – I could hear them that is a good sign.
Learning point – if you use a wireless microphone (1) make certain you have new batteries around. I lost my audio – my mic died – the batteries laying around were all dead. I stole some from a wireless mouse and got my audio back.
Learning point – a 1M ram XP laptop is not the best thing to use for a webinar especially if you attempt to record the webinar with Camtasia. My computer was getting erratic, I could not control the mouse unless I paused Camtasia. I fully expected a full system crash.
When using Go To Meeting to record a meeting you have to turn on the record. The go to meeting setup screens do not show up unless you have the GTM Taskbar and can right click on it. There are also places to make changes when you are actually connected to a meeting.
After that webinar I learned that if you use a laptop for GTM – not to use Camtasia at the same time. I also learned that a work around is to turn on another computer with Camtasia on it and record from the second computer. That way the computer being used for the meeting is just doing that and the capture computer is just doing capture.
Turn the audio off in Camtasia, just capture the video. Go to Meeting has really great audio in its record function (Remember to enable GTM record and start the recording in GTM.) -
Bottom line – GTM is very useful – I can not only show a group of people how to do things – I can actually switch it so someone else can show me from their computer what is happening. This is really interesting when the other person has a question or problem.
A way to learn Go To Meeting is set up a meeting. Go to a second computer and log into the meeting and have a webinar with yourself.
Use things like full screen when doing a webinar.
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