Designs with WordPress

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I've decided to take my site design in a new direction. The design is striped down to almost the bare essentials. And yes, it looks pretty bland.

The idea is to, every month or so take each part of the site redesign it and document how and why.

With the help of a white board & forward thinking and not too many re-dos the site should be completed by the end of the year.

Website Strategy:

Here are some of the goals of the redesign.

• Have the brand standout and be memorable
• Reflect who I be
• Easy constructs
• Increase viewers and build a email and rss feed base
• Take advantage of Web 2.0 services

If you have any design suggestions or ideas please leave them below.

Here are 4 ways to back up your Wordpress (wp) website. Some are redundant and when you run into a problem you'll want to have several options to restore your pages.

From Inside of Wordpress Tools

1. Export from the tools menu
This will let you export all posts or posts by authors in an .xml file. This will be exported as am xml file and check to be sure you received the whole file. Once downloaded count to 12, then look in an asii editor (like Homesite or Dreamweaver) for the complete closing tag </rss> . Sometimes the file does not get downloaded.

Use this before making small reversions, or to be used as a last resort for restoring a site.

2. wp-dbManager plugin,
Once installed go to your tools menu and click on backup. This plugin will back up the database and let you schedule automatic backups. Do this before changing versions. Or once a week ( or what ever).

From Outside of Wordpress

1. From your ftp software (fileZilla or Core FTP Light , Free programs) create a new folder label it with a date example: Backup 100324.

Down load the wp-content folder and all the root files. This should be done before you start working on styles sheets or making any changes like themes or versions updates.

This will not copy your post or pages just additional stuff you add on: Themes, plugins, languages and etcs.

2. Back up your data base from the phpMyAdmin. Your best bet is to have your hosting company walk you through this process. It is pretty simple and painless, a redundancy of WP-DB-Backup, but worth the time if something goes wrong.

Having trouble managing home cell and business phones? And what about managing different answering machines and services.

Some days at work I'm on the phone 70 plus % of the day. So any way I can combine services, save time and make it easier, I'll do it.

Google Voice(GV) gives me the ability to give out 1 phone number and direct individual calls to specific phones, answering service and can even direct apam calls to a number out of service recording.

Just down loaded and installed the Google Voice(GV) app on a gPhone so out going calls use the the GV number and those receiving the call see the GV number.

All the Google Voice videos

Sunset Resorts Jamaica has several videos on YouTube that are packed full of information for travel agents.

OK, so Steve is very excited about his property. And he does a good job providing plenty of sales information for travel agents, but I wonder if he could have provided the same info for the travelers, so agents could also use the video as a sales tool?

Every year I offer a free web site to a none profit organization as a community service.

It’s important for all businesses to give back to the community whenever possible, to support social services and programs, education, spiritual or religious beliefs, the arts and other activities that add to the community.

What to expect from your web site:

• A simple website to explain your organization’s goals & mission, and that can expand as your organization expands.
• Photo albums
• Blogging, including rss (real simple syndication) feeds.
• Access for 1 or several employees or members to add to or change information.
• Form pages for creating an email list (managed by you or someone else), or gathering information from viewers.
• A donation link with Paypal or a bank of your choice.
• No limit on how many pages you can create or pictures (well maybe not over 10,000 pictures) you can upload.
• 50 free email addresses, more can be purchased at a minimal fee.
• Off site links.
• A Calendar for listing events.

Our guarantee is simple and to the point. From the date of publication of your web site, WebSailingDesigns.com will modify all pages to meet your final satisfaction for a full year. We will modify text, images, colors and links to assure your goals are met for your web site.

The only requirement is that you are a nonprofit
community service organization.

If you have a community service organization in need of a website, please contact us so that we can discuss the project and whether or not we can be of assistance.

WordPress is adding a new description to their Resume:

I Always thought blogging was social, but now Wordpress will take it to a new level. The goal is to leave MySpace and FaceBook in the dust.

Matt Mullenweg says; The world doesn’t need another social network, it needs a thousand networks that let you own your data and interconnect using open standards. We invest countless hour giving our data to networks like MySpace, essentially sharecropping on their land for the privilege of being able to connect to our friends. It’s our friends, our time, our connections, our data — it should be our software.

It make sense to have control of the look and feel of your design, but also what and who you share your pages with.

The update has been extended for another week to March 17th +/- a day or more, and it maybe a couple of more days before it finally gets to your browser. You can expect there's going to be some work to the themes and plugins to upgrade to the new 2.5.

Because of the extra time it will take before all the plugins and themes are ready there will be some time to do some preparation & cleaning including:

1. Change and clean the navigation: I always recommend a well thought out navigation system and looking at my own sites, well Its a good time to re-think the categories.
2. Fix broken links internal and external links.
3. Make sure each page has all the meta tags, title, keywords, and description tags.
4. Check for missing image tags: alt, height and width tags.
5. Add a contact pages.

I do back ups weekly and it will be part of the requirements for upgrading to the new WordPress 2.5 so it you haven't done that in a while know is the time, and check it to make sure it's readable.

from Brian Mundy:

In 1991 I had the honor (with a group of American travel agents) of hosting IQOTC’s first St. Patrick’s Irish fam trip, and to participate in our first live Parade in Limerick. My wife and I have returned every year since, taking with us over those years almost 800 travel agents from almost every state in the USA. It has been an amazing 16 years; with more precious memories than we could have ever dream’t about.

Last year Cheryl and I decided that the 2007 St. Pat’s fam would be our last – BUT WE LIED! It was such a success that we have bowed to enormous pressure from many sources in Ireland and have decided to give it one more blast!!

We’ve selected all 5-star hotels (the Dublin accommodation on the last night is being kept as a “surprise” for the moment) for our little jaunt – check them out on their websites. And our Irish office is working on many other “surprises” that will be included in the final program.

I hope you can join Cheryl and I on our 17th consecutive trip. We will take spouses/companions at the same cost providing space is available. However, the trip will be strictly limited to 30 guests.

Contact Brian Mundy at www.iqotc.com

How to use Flickr

There’s a lot of good reasons to use an online photo service. Online photo services make it easy to save and organize your photos for later. Have you ever tried to find a picture from your last trip and had no idea where it could be? Ever had your hard drive crash and were not able to recover anything on it? I have, and it’s not fun.

Sharing your Photos
Sharing your photos online is a lot easier and faster than emailing your photos to all your friends and family. And your friends and family can also keep up with your new pics.

Networking your photos
This maybe a little extreme: I just came back from Barbados and saw about 20 properties, and yes I have plenty more to go. Some unique features: These pictures are sized to fit on any area of a web site, each picture has a description, and are copy righted as creative commons so they can not be resold, anyone can use them, and there must be a reference that I am the photographer.

I liked Club Med so much I set up a Club Med Group on Flickr where others could share their vacation photos as well. What a great way to see other Club Med locations than through the eyes or photos of others that have been there. And if there are more questions there is a place to start a discussion or ask questions.

Came into Greenville SC a little early and went to Port City Java for a cup of coffee and to get a little work done online. There were already several people working on their laptops. The connection was good and never had a problem with speed or being kicked off.

1941 Woodruff Rd.
Greenville, SC 29607
864.289.9890
www.portcityjava.com

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