Learn how to create your own website without a webmaster.

The Website Creation Workshop is an 8 Module Online Teleseminar/Webinar training series by Christina Hills that takes students through the process of creating their own website without a webmaster. Using the self hosted WordPress software students will learn how to create a blog or a website that is easy to update, great for the search engines, and does NOT require webmaster skills. Students learn hands on by having their own “student project” WordPress Website Installed for them.

Registration will start March 16th  2010, class begins March 30th, and the course is ALL ONLINE!

From the comfort of your home or office, you listen on the phone or computer and watch online. We meet Tuesdays via Telelseminar (70-90 min) and you have a choice of Two Webinar Workshops (2 hours each). Plus online mini videos, online study guides (PDF), an interactive student area to mastermind with fellow students, plus a WordPress Website installed for you so you can get started learning WordPress immediately.

Special BONUS Offer

In addition to the terrific training that you will receive from Christina, you will get 3 personalized one-on-one 1-hour coaching sessions over the length of the course. Scheduled at your convenience…it’s your opportunity to ask questions and gain additional support. We’ll work together to build and market a site you’ll love. That’s 3 FULL HOURS of additional time to get all your questions answered!

Sound like something you’d be interested in? Then watch this short video…

It’s the story of Alice in WordPress Land and how she tumbled across a new. almost magical way of building websites without that Mad-as-a-Hatter Webmaster.

This website creation class is so full of information, you will have a website complete, up and ready by the end of the class. By signing up for the Website Creation Workshop under my affiliate link you will get an additional 3 FULL hours of undivided attention and coaching. For more information about this class watch this video.

I was about to write a step-by-step guide for backing up your WordPress site…backing up your database is only part of archiving the entire WordPress site…when the Backup Buddy plugin was introduced last week.  I immediately purchased the developer’s copy of this premium plugin and I have to say, I’m impressed!

Does it backup everything? Yes. It backs up the database, plugins, files, themes, scripts, and everything else in the WordPress database and directories.

Is it easy to use? Yes. A few clicks backups your entire WordPress install – including the widgets, themes, plugins AND SQL database … the entire package! The restore function is quick and easy too..upload a script and your backup files and it reinstalls WordPress, your themes, widgets and plugins … everything. You can migrate to another domain easily, with no fuss. You can even schedule BackupBuddy to do daily, weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly backups … and includes email and FTP options to another server.

BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration.  Click on the graphic to find out more…

The Backup Buddy replaces the DB-Backup on my list of recommend plugins.

What is a plugin? A WordPress plugin is extra software code that you can easily add to your website from within your admin area that give you extra functionality.  Many plugins are free, but sometimes you may want to pay for a premium plugin that is more advanced and complex. With Backup Buddy you are paying for the plugin as well as upgrades and support from iThemes.

Following these quality guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your WordPress site.

The quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It’s not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn’t included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

Quality Guidelines – Basic Principles

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”

• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users?  Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

Quality Guidelines – Specific Guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

• Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.

• Don’t send automated queries to Google.

• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.

• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

• Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.

• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

• If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

Following these design and content guidelines will help Google find, index, and rank your WordPress site.

• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

• Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.

• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

• Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.

• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the “ALT” attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.

• Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate (use the All-in-One SEO Plugin).

• Check for broken links and correct HTML (use the Broken Link Checker Plugin).

• If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few (choose a Permalinks structure under Settings in the dashboard).

• Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

• Review Google’s  image guidelines for best practices on publishing images.

Next time…a review of Google’s Quality Guidelines

It’s part of a series of free trainings for the Website Creation Workshop. This one will focus on your website design, and planning out the user experience when they come to your website.

It will be a non-techie call.

Use this link to sign up (name and email address) for this training.  Christina will email you with the call details and if you can’t make the live class, you’ll get a replay link.

You’ll also be given access to her other free trainings…

• Using WordPress as A Social Media Site
• Having Your Picture Show up in WordPress

Website Creation Workshop Details

What? – Website Creation Workshop: An 8 Module Online Teleseminar/Webinar training series

The Website Creation Workshop is an 8 Module Online course that takes you through the process of creating your own website without a webmaster. Using the WordPress software you will learn how to create a blog or a website that is easy to update, great for the search engines, and does NOT require webmaster skills. You learn hands on by having your own “student project” WordPress Website Installed for you.

Who? – Christina Hills (your teacher/mentor/coach)

Why? – To create and update websites yourself without having to rely on a busy webmaster

When? – Registration will start March, 16th  2010.  See Full Schedule here.

Where? – All Online! From the comfort of your home or office, you listen on the phone or computer and watch online. We meet Tuesdays via Telelseminar (90 min) and you have a choice of Two Webinar Workshops (2 hours each). Plus online mini videos, online study guides (PDF), an interactive student area to mastermind with fellow students, plus a WordPress Website installed for you so you can get started learning WordPress immediately.

How? – You have a 10 day window to get registered for the course. Space is limited so register as soon as possible. Each week you will get a phone number to call in on the Tuesday Teleseminar calls, and then on Wednesday and Thursday you will get links to join the webinars with Christina

How much? – Details will be released in March 2010

CateLoughran.com

The artist Cate Loughran had a vision to share her art with the world.  I helped her set up a Fickr account where she has been busy uploading images of original paintings, photographs, and mixed-media pieces.  Flickr provided the solution to display her art work, but she wanted a web site as well.

Cate wanted her site to be as easy as possible to maintain, she was not interested in learning a new technology.

the plan

The solution was a WordPress web site that integrates with Flickr.

I created this web site with the use of a few plug-ins which are discussed below. Plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress.

On the home page I installed the Flickr Slideshow Wrapper, a plugin to embed flickr slideshows into your WordPress site. This plugin displays the entire photostream, every image.

I also wanted to take advantage of Cate’s image organization so added the Flickr sets page with the  Page Links To plugin.  (This plugin allows you to point  to a URL of your choosing.)  She had already organized the images into sets on Flickr and so I provided an easy way to access the Flickr page from her site.

On the contact page I used Contact Form 7, simple but flexible.

the result

The result is pretty much a maintenance free web site…all the work is done on Flickr.

This week we completed the training portion of the WishList Certification (first mentioned in this post), and I’m impressed with how versatile the WishList Member plugin is. WishList Member can be used for different types of membership sites as I learned in the Planning Strategies module.

Here’s a summary of the different membership models using WordPress and the WishList Member plugin.

• Publisher Model: where you are creating fresh new content on a regular basis, very much like an online magazine. When somebody joins your membership, they typically get access to not only the new content that you published this month but they also get access to the content that you published in previous months.

• UPS Model: where you are delivering a package of content on a regular basis. It’s called the UPS Model because it is like a package of content that is being delivered each and every month (week, etc.). Each month that a person remains a member, they get a new download area where they can download a package of content for that specific month.

• Micro Continuity: a fixed term membership. The major distinguishing factors between this and most other membership sites is that it is there is a definitive end to the membership and it’s set up all at one point in time, “set it and forget it.”

• Modular Course: where you are delivering your course one module at a time over a period of time. The Modular Course is perfect for those people who teach courses delivered in a modular format. The content is delivered one step at a time so everyone coming in starts at Level 1 and progress from there.

• Protected Download Area: where you create a page with download links to your various tools and resources or products that people are purchasing. Put the product you’re selling into a Protected Download Area, which means that after payment, they have to set up a username and password in order to access that content.  You can set this up so that this access expires after any number of days.

• Project Management: where you create a membership level for each type of person within your company, non-profit, or committees within a community group.

• Community Center: it is a protected communication center like a forum. It’s a use of WishList Member not necessarily to deliver content, but as a foundation to be able to communicate with like-minded people who share a similar interest in the same subject matter. Essentially creating a protected forum or a protected communication area for people who belong to a particular community.

• Private Members Area: where you create an area where you can have resources, materials, and communication for a private group of people. A private members area is a way for you to create a membership where people can not only communicate with one another, but they can also download materials and resources and perhaps even interact with you or with each other.

• Coaching Site: you create a membership level for each client. If you are a coach or a consultant and you are working with clients, you might want to create a private area so you can communicate and can deliver resources and materials that are specific to their particular needs. You can also create a shared members area where if you have resources that all of your coaching clients are going to use.

• Combo Model: a variety of different elements from each of these. You are never going to be stuck with one particular membership type model. And more often than not, you are probably going to have components of multiple membership levels all contained within one site. So, be creative and enjoy!

Contact me to discuss your own membership site!

A newly discovered (at least by me) plugin to check any and all links on your site is the Broken Link Checker — it automatically checks your posts for broken links and images and reports its findings in the dashboard.

Features

• Monitors links in your posts, pages, the blogroll, and custom fields (optional).
• Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
• Also detects redirected links.
• Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
• Link checking intervals can be configured.
• New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
• You view broken links, redirects, and a complete list of links used on your site, in the Tools -> Broken Links tab.
• Searching and filtering links by URL, anchor text and so on is also possible.
• Each link can be edited or unlinked directly via the plugin’s page, without manually editing each post.

Basic Usage

Once installed, the plugin will begin parsing your posts, bookmarks (AKA blogroll), etc and looking for links. Depending on the size of your site this can take a few minutes or even several hours. When parsing is complete the plugin will start checking each link to see if it works. Again, how long this takes depends on how big your site is and how many links there are. You can monitor the progress and set various link checking options in Settings -> Link Checker.

The broken links, if any are found, will show up in a new tab of WP admin panel – Tools -> Broken Links. A notification will also appear in the “Broken Link Checker” widget on the Dashboard. To save display space, you can keep the widget closed and configure it to expand automatically when problematic links are detected.

The “Broken Links” tab will by default display broken links that have been detected so far. However, you can use the subnavigation links on that page to view redirects or see a listing of all links – working or not – instead.

There are several actions associated with each link listed -

• “Details” shows more info about the link. You can also toggle link details by clicking on the “link text” cell.
• “Edit URL” lets you change the URL of that link. If the link is present in more than one place (e.g. both in a post and in the blogroll) then all instances of that URL will be changed.
• “Unlink” removes the link but leaves the link text intact.
• “Exclude” adds the link’s URL to the exclusion list. Excluded URLs won’t be checked again.
• “Discard” lets you manually mark the link as valid. This is useful if you know it was detected as broken only due to a temporary glitch or similar. The link will still be checked normally later.

Have you tried this plugin? Please comment below.

The developers at WordPress are rolling out version 2.9 “Carmen”, named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae.  If you need to edit images I recommend that you upgrade now to take advantage of the new built-in image editor.

Some of the other headline features are…

• global undo/trash,
• batch upgrades,
• plugin compatibility checker,
• and easier embeds.

And of course it wouldn’t be a major release without a short video summarizing some of the cool things about the new version:

WordPress Version 3.0 (due out probably this spring) will have a new default theme, better upgrades, dynamic image resizing, and more.