Websitetology

If you believe the time stamp on the message from Pope Benedict XVI- he not only says that members of the cloth should blog- but he says it from a few months in the future- May 16, 2010:

Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.

via Message for the 44th World Communications Day, Benedict XVI.

And with that message from the big guy- and from the future- we proudly present our next Websitetology Seminar on Feb 16, 2010.

To make it even more interesting- I’ll extend the discount of $99 for the day to any members of the Clergy in attendance.

Sign up ASAP because, well, the big guy is watching you.
And don’t worry, this seminar is also great for anyone that needs a website that works- that they can self-manage and self-update.

A local site is using Dolphin 7 to build a community site. Check out www.themiamivalley.com and see what Dolphin can do.

While the installed base of Drupal and Joomla both exceed where Dolphin is today, with the way things change on the web, it’s hard to say what will be the leader tomorrow.

From the Dolphin site:

Open-source, independent, downloadable, scalable, customizable, full-featured, free software for building social networks, dating sites and web-communities.Loaded with video chat, recorder, video player, forums, groups, events, video messenger, mailbox, desktop app, video sharing, photo sharing, iPhone app and much more. Build your own business or advance your hobby with Dolphin!

via BoonEx Dolphin – Smart Community Builder.

They have an intro video that has a voice over that’s almost comedic in it’s tone- but, shows a level of sophistication in marketing that other Open Source CMS systems have yet to reach.

Note, Dolphin isn’t entirely free- to remove links back to their site and totally own the brand you have to pay- but, compared to the cost of trying to assemble the whole thing in another CMS- it may be worth it.

We haven’t crawled under the hood of Dolphin yet- but we plan to. If you have any experience with Dolphin compared to Drupal or Joomla, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Need a quick introduction to the new features in WordPress 2.9- watch the video:

For the first time, I didn’t need to use viper007bond Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin to post this, since embedding is covered for a number of video sites. However- it’s still not as easy peasy as they say- I had to switch to HTML view to paste the “embed” code- to get it to work. The little filmstrip button which is supposed to “embed” media- still asks for the user to figure out what type of file they are embedding.

Somehow, even with Automattic (the publishers of WordPress) having a UX person on staff- the user interface is still more complex than it needs to be. I’m still looking at the four “Upload/Insert” buttons- and wondering why they need four buttons for the same controls (I thought I’d written a post about this- but, couldn’t find it).

Other cool features are the ability to crop and rotate images, update and compatibility check all plugins, and a few other cool little fixes. We’ve installed it on our sites- without problem so far (5 days). We’ll report any changes on that as we find them.

If there has been one glaring problem with WordPress for new users- it’s been the posting of pictures- from, like, day 1. While the tools have gotten better, there are still way too many steps and choices involved in “insert picture here” – 2.9 hopefully is going to solve some of those problems:

Images now feel more at home in the publishing process, thanks to the integration of image editing.

For example, you’ll now find a built in image editor. To edit your images, head to your media library, choose the image you want to change, and click on the new “Edit Image” button. There’s a crop tool… which you can also set the aspect ratio for… in addition to image rotation, and horizontal and vertical image flipping.

Media embedding has also undergone a major makeover. Support for the oEmbed standard makes copying and pasting video URLs right into your post super-simple.

Now all you need to do is paste the URL onto a line of its own… Use the new embed shortcode if you don’t want to separate it onto it’s own line… Or “Add Video From URL” from the visual editor icon. And you’re good to go.

By default you’ll find that there’s support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, & WordPress.tv, with more on the way.

via Version 2.9 « WordPress Codex.

No more plugins to insert videos, editing of pictures including cropping and manipulation of image position. Now, let’s hope there is only one “Media” button instead of four to click. Simplification is key if you really live the Wordpress developers Automattic’s tagline “code is poetry.”

We’ll be hosting our next Websitetology Seminar in Dayton Ohio on Wednesday December 9, 2009. Come spend a day and learn how easy it is to not only be able to maintain a website yourself, but get to the top of Google by just spending an hour or two a week updating your website (as if cold-calling could have the same effect).

We’ll teach you how Google works, how the web works, and how to manage a site without having to learn HTML, PHP, XML or any other code. We’ve helped hundreds of companies get their message out cost effectively through our seminar. Sign up now, http://www.websitetology.com/?page_id=247, and reserve your seat today. $139 covers the full day.

Seminar will be held at The Next Wave, 100 Bonner Street Dayton OH 45410, but could be moved to a larger facility nearby depending on sign ups. It’s possible to have hundreds of people visiting your site every day- without spending thousands of dollars. Come to the Websitetology seminar and learn all the tricks to make it happen.

Yousendit.com is a great service- they give you a free trial- but then they want you to pay. It allows you to send files to people that are too large for e-mail, and when you don’t want to set up and manage an FTP site.

Just discovered a free site that does the same thing, senduit.com it’s supposed to be ad supported, but, I just stared at a blank screen. It gives you options on how long you want your files to be shared until deleted and allows you to distribute the same file to as many people at once.

It’s a pain checking out every follower, but, generally, if no one is following them, or they don’t have tweets to match their followers, they’re a spammer.

Just followed a friend who was moving his account- and got this verification tweet: Joe X ” uses TrueTwit validation service. Please follow this link to validate your profile. ”

Heading over to TrueTwit there is this:

Twitter spam is a drag. What if you could know for sure that your followers are truly human, and not some cyborg? TrueTwit is designed to help you: Verify people from robots Avoid Twitter spam Save time managing your followersBy signing up now for free, all of your new followers will get a validation notice via direct message. If they too are TrueTwit users or pass the CAPTCHA test, you get an email indicating they are a TrueTwit validated human!

via TrueTwit Sign Up.

Granted a Captcha isn’t a guarantee it’s not a robot or spammer, but, it’s an extra obstacle.

Now to go check on all my new followers.

I’m not going to tell you how- I’ll let AJ do it for me.

Want to link your Twitter account to Facebook so that your status updates sync? Easy, here’s how:

via How to link Twitter to Facebook – A Twitter Tutorial | AJ Vaynerchuk.

Twitter to Facebook is essentially RSS for the masses. People who won’t subscribe to your WordPress site- will read your feed in Facebook- so you can link you blog- or tweet about each new post- and have your tweets update Facebook.

Seems convoluted, but I get a 20 person bump to my site by hitting my 500+ Facebook friends about updates to my site.

Learn everything you need to know about how Google sends customers your way- and how to get to that first page without using any Search Engine Optimization voodoo. If you think you need to know HTML to build an effective website- and have avoided it, this seminar is for you.

We teach how the web has changed thanks to search and building new web 2.0 sites using open source content management systems like Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal- so that anyone who has access to the internet and a browser can build and maintain their own site.

Don’t pay a “web developer” crazy money to get the site you need- take the Websitetology seminar and be up and running in no time.

Sign up online: http://www.websitetology.com/?page_id=247

We’re scheduled to hold the seminar at The Next Wave, 100 Bonner Street Dyaton Oh 45410, but, we move when we need a bigger room due to popularity of the seminar. We begin at 8:30 sharp- break for lunch around noon- and reconvene at 1:30. The afternoon is focused on using the easiest of the content management systems- Wordpress. We’ll show you how to quote other content online, build links and relationships with other high value sites- and make your site the best investment your business has ever made.

We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, Aug 25th 2009. Please sign up now, so we can verify room arrangements.

Some clients can’t understand the value of HTML- and still want pretty pictures of their PDFs. This little tutorial is the ticket if you want to actually display a PDF in your post:

These are the steps to embed PDF files into a page or post for clients, enabling a visitor to read the PDF document right from the page. The process of embedding PDF files into a WordPress post is fairly simple, assuming your using a WordPress version later than 2.6.- click the following link to see the full instructions

via Embed PDF in WordPress.

You can also make a stock icon- like the Adobe Acrobat document icon, store it in your media library- and then link to the image, which should allow faster page views.