Apr 24
Okay, so I’m still learning more about websites and blogging, and I got a comment about “feedburner”. Huh? So what’s that?
Off to my favorite pal…google.
So I found out it the word “feed” was a way to provide “subscription” to a website so that people can keep up on the updates. I [...] [...more]
Posted: under Blogging, Marketing, WebDesign, WordPress.
Okay, so I’m still learning more about websites and blogging, and I got a comment about “feedburner”. Huh? So what’s that?
Off to my favorite pal…google.
So I found out it the word “feed” was a way to provide “subscription” to a website so that people can keep up on the updates. I saw those types of things on website before, little buttons or links for Twitter, Facebook, RSS and you click on it to subscribe to the site so that you’ll know when there’s updates. I’ve never played around with that. And since I randomly post (trying my darnest to post at least once a month) that would be a very good feature so that people would know when I’ve added something new.
So I went to WordPress to find a Widget. I found “Fixed Social buttons”. Not sure if that’s going to do what I would like it to do, but it looked neat.
I selected RSS, Facebook and Twitter, since I know those sites. I also wanted to find out more on “feedburner” so google had something where I entered my site. I had to sign in with my gmail account, of course. So I created a Feedburner.
After all that, then I realized that I might just need a Facebook, Twitter and MySpace account. I already have a personal account with Facebook, but Unfortunately, DARN IT, facebook/zhollis is already taken! So I create a page off of my personal account. And then went back to Google Feedburner and clicked the “Publicize’ and then “Socialize” thingy on the side and added a Twitter account so that I can have Feedburner updated my Twitter with my blogs and then have Twitter update my Page on Facebook (using the “Smart Twitter for Pages” App in Facebook). Round Robin kind of thing.
Twitter Setup Issue
I was needing to get the confirmation email from Twitter…and that took a very long time! And, of course, I got like four (4) confirmation emails because I kept resending it. And in the mean time, my password for Twitter didn’t work! I tell ya! Trying to make a STRONG password and I messed up on something. Twitter didn’t have me retype my password to make sure I was typing it correctly. So, I tried to have Twitter send me an email, clicking the “forgot” link. I pressed it a couple of times and looked in my email. Hmmm. Of course, I should have waited the same long-time-period that it took to send me the confirmation email. Duh. So then, of course, I got four (4) password reset emails. But when I got the first one, I was able to reset my password and then I had to go back and pick one the confirmation emails to get the account up and running with all the access. Whew!
The things you do and learn.
And so now I’m officially on Twitter and have a Facebook Page to help with Marketing. Unfortunately, now I’ll have to remember to type just 140 characters of interesting first liners in my Word Press so that it will good in Twitter.
And once I submit and Publish this post, I’ll look at both sites and see if it gets updated (Feedburner only begin working on new posts). And so the testing begins…. And I had to make some adjustments. I had Feedburner send “Title and Body” to Twitter. I just need the body sent to meet my 140 character limit correctly. Unfortunately, when I did an update on the same post, it didn’t re-do my Twitter. Oh well. But my Facebook Page got updated! KEWL!!!! IT WORKED!
IT”S ALIVE!!! IT LIVES!! HURRAY!!! HURRAY!!!
Hours of work and got something accomplished. I think I deserve some popcorn….
Jan 03
So, This ENTIRE time, I just thought people weren’t visiting my blog, and I was just posting away on my monthly way thinking that maybe later on I would start getting some visits. Well someone emailed me after I posted my Lightning Source PDF horror (he took that extra little step to go to [...] [...more]
Posted: under WebDesign, WordPress.
So, This ENTIRE time, I just thought people weren’t visiting my blog, and I was just posting away on my monthly way thinking that maybe later on I would start getting some visits. Well someone emailed me after I posted my Lightning Source PDF horror (he took that extra little step to go to my book website and used my Contact Page), and told me that he couldn’t leave a comment. I was like, “What?” So, sure enough, there was this stupid error talking about cookies and java scripts and such. If I got that error after writing a comment, I was just leave too and wouldn’t be bother with it. Who wants to bother with fixing your cookies and java stuff. Well it took me a few hours and I figure out that one of my plug-ins was being blocked by .htaccess, which I had used for additional security.
DUH!!
I was wondering why my Counter plug-in never worked either. Well, needless to say, I think I solved my problem…I think. 
We’ll see if this fixes things and I may see some responses in the year 2010.
Hopefully this doesn’t open up that onslaught of SPAM that I was trying to prevent.
The things your learn as you go.
Until Next time!
Apr 12
BUSINESS CARDS
I went to VistaPrint and made some business cards and some postcards with the image of my book cover on it. It came out very, very well. I like them. I put an image of me on the back of the business card with the words “Thank You.” I saw that on [...] [...more]
Posted: under Self Publish Progress, WordPress.
BUSINESS CARDS
I went to VistaPrint and made some business cards and some postcards with the image of my book cover on it. It came out very, very well. I like them. I put an image of me on the back of the business card with the words “Thank You.” I saw that on one of my husband’s old business cards, and I thought that was a pretty nice idea.
I got the postcards so I can sign them and send them out to relatives who want me to sign their books, but they live in different states. It just costs a lot to ship books back and forth; so my mom suggested this idea where I can write a nice thingy on a postcard, mail that out, and then whenever I actually see my relative, I’ll sign the book. They can place the postcard in the book in the mean time.
WORD PRESS HEADER
Man! That took forever to just change the header for my blogsite!
STEP 1:
First I tried to make some kind of background image to lay (or is it lie) my book cover on. I took parts of the book’s cover and kept copy/pasting it over and over using the program PAINT (standard in MicroSoft).
I look at several ways of doing this backdrop.
1) I tried recreating the sky, but it just look like plaid.
2) Then I tried to just do simply stars that looked random. It was o…k….
3) Then I just went for plain, but it was just not the right background…
So none of them would do (I sound like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. LOL!!) None of them looked right with the book cover. So I decided just have plain ole Black.
STEP 2:
So then I went to WordPress on how to update the default theme and its header. Not easy for me at all. I tried replacing the image “kubrickheader.jpg” with my image, but first you had to upload your image. And where might that be? I had no idea. So, I decided to upload it to my Folder: wordpress\wp-content\themes\default. And I used my Dreamweaver to upload just that file. Well that got it working, but it still had the stupid blue background because my image, I guess, wasn’t big enough. At least I got the “display:none;” to work to get the Title and Subtitle out of the image.
Here’s where I put it in Word Press APPEARANCE > EDITOR > STYLESHEETS CSS.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ h1 {display:none;
@@ font-size: 4em;
@@ text-align: center;
@@ }
@@
@@
@@
@@ Headerimg .description {display:none;
@@ font-size: 1.2em;
@@ text-align: center;
@@ }
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
STEP 3:
But I still couldn’t get that darn blue area out of the way. So I went back to my metamorph_tropicforest theme, took a look at it and decided to change the “header.jpg” name to an image I just created with PAINT.
I renamed the orginal “header.jpg” to
STEP 4:
So THEN I had to resize my “header.jpg” to be exactly 791 X 182. I used PAINT using IMAGE >ATTRIBUTES and resized a blank canvas, and then pasted my book cover, which expanded the length, but not the width. I just grabbed a side of my book cover image and on the PAINT bottom corner, it tells you, while you resizing, what size it’s making it. So I made sure it was 182 and then squeezed it to coordinate the image so that it wouldn’t look so stretchy.
FINALLY DONE:
So I uploaded the images and it looks okay. My book cover looks pretty small, but it’s up there. Resizing the images to match existing images that was use in the theme, was much easier than trying to figure out the default theme for me. I had to re-edit the metamorph_tropicforest Stylesheet to take out the title and subtitle that was going over my header like this..
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@ }
@@ #logo a {display:none;
@@ text-decoration: none;
@@ text-transform: lowercase;
@@ font-style: italic;
@@ font-size: 18px;
@@ color: #ffffff;
@@ }
@@ #logo H2
@@ {display:none;
@@ font-size: 12px;
@@ color: #ffffff;
@@ }
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
So there you have it! I’m done. So, yeah, the book cover is too small, and I couldn’t get it “Just Right” like Goldilocks, but it will do.
Till Next time!!