The Spinning Donut

Yaro Starak from Entrepreneur’s Journey has released 10 free videos on becoming a blogger. Yaro teaches the very popular BlogMasterMind course.

Here’s a list of the 10 videos that are available:

Video One - Why You Should Use WordPress
This video provides a brief introduction of what a blog is and WordPress. Yaro opens the video and let’s screencast presenter Gideon take over.

Video Two - How To Get Your Own Domain Name
Gideon explains how to go about signing up for a domain name. He presents information on a keyword tool that will help you brainstorm what domain name you would like to use.

Video Three - How To Get A Web Host
Video Three walks you through the details it will take to sign up for your web hosting account.

Video Four - How To Install WordPress With One Click
A few topics covered in this video include:

• cpanel - what’s it for
• Fantastico Deluxe - how to use
• Perma Links - what they are

Video Five - How To Upload Files To Your Webhost Using FTP
Gideon defines FTP, where to get FTP and how to use FTP. Again, a very detailed walk thru of FTP to get the beginning WordPress blogger going.

Video Six - Choosing A WordPress Theme For Your New Blog
Different avenues to consider when selecting a WordPress theme. A website where you can browse and view themes to your heart’s content. Details on how to get the theme you choose up to where it needs to be.

Video Seven - How To Install And Use WordPress Plugins
Excellent video on what plugins are, where to get them, how to use them, and some of the standard plugins you should install when you start a new blog.

Video Eight - How To Create Your First Blog Post And Blog Page
What’s the difference between a post and a page? You’ll find out in this videos why you’ll probably want both. How to enhance a post and a page, and organize them.

Video Nine - What RSS Is And Why You Need It

• A definition is provided
• a how to use is provided
• a why is provided
• an example is provided

Video Ten - How To Use Feedburner For Supercharging Your RSS Capabilities
This top will help you get readers to your blog and stay informed and up-to-date on all the great blog content you’re going to provide your readers. They will also be amazed at how you did it all.

A lot of great information for beginning bloggers and how to do the initial tasks to start a blog using WordPress blogging software. These videos will get you over that technical hump that can cause some new bloggers to abandon blogging altogether.

In addition to the videos you’ll be able to download Yaro’s Blog Profits Blueprint. The blueprint is absolutely fantastic and packed with information that will provide you with blogging ideas for your blog content. You will refer to it over and over again for a long time. YOu’ll also have a chance to sign up for Yaro’s weekly newsletter which is always packed with top-notch blogging advice.

Overall I like the videos. Gideon might talk a bit too fast at times for beginners, but you can certainly “rewind” the video to spots that you would like to listen to again.

Other detailed videos that would be good to see is a bit more information on using the keyword tracking tool in video two and more keyword hows and whys for beginners to understand maybe why they need to use a keyword tool.

For me the videos were not too long or too short. Also, don’t forget to browse around at becomeablogger, especially the resources page. Great job Yaro and Gideon.

[techtags: Blogging, Domain Name, Web Host, WordPress, WordPress Plugins]

Filed Under Blogging | Be The First To Comment »

When you start to consider blogging and you want to use WordPress for your blogging system, one of the first things you think about is what should I call my blog and what domain name should I use?

Even before that, some folks might not know what a domain name is.

So what is a domain name? A domain name is the address of your blog or a website. The address is also known as a URL or Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is also known as the less popular URI, which stands for Uniform Resource Identifier. The URL, URI and the domain name of this blog is www.thespinningdonut.com.

Tip: If you’re using the ever-popular Firefox 2.0.011 Internet browser, press Ctrl-L and your cursor will jump into the address bar where the URL lives. Ctrl-L also works in Opera 9.25. I like keyboard shortcuts a lot since I like keeping my hands at the keyboard and don’t like moving between the keyboard and mouse all the time. In Internet Explorer 7, press Alt-D and your cursor will jump to the address bar.

If you’ve been hanging out for sometime on the Internet and you’ve been typing in addresses in your browser’s address bar, you’ve been typing in the URL as well as a domain name. There all the same, pretty much. You can break the domain down into the domain name which is www.thespinningdonut.com and then break it down some more to what’s called the registered domain name which is thespinningdonut.com for this blog. And that’s all the technical I’m going to get on the domain name because for the purpose of this article you’ll need to pick a domain name and register it. If you can even register it. We’ll get to that shortly.

Picking A Domain Name

You can certainly pick a domain name and register it so you can start blogging, but I recommend you think about it and possibly come up with a domain that reflects what you are blogging about and what your users will use your blog for. Here are some good tips to use when thinking about what domain you want. I’ll use the topic of napkins for my examples. I don’t know if there are any red hot blogs out there talking about napkins.

But for this example let’s use napkins as if they were all the rage and something that you’d love to write about for a very long time for free, providing extreme value to your million blog readers who can’t wait to come to your blog and read about all the insightful napkin information that you’ll be espousing to them every single day of their lives.

Use a short meaningful domain name like:

www.dailynapkintips.com - tells your readers that you’ll provide daily napkin tips, driving them back to your blog every day.

www.viralnapkins.com - a very strong name for napkins and the value your blog will provide napkin lovers world wide.

www.napkinmarketing.com - tells your readers they’ll get great marketing advice on napkins by reading your blog.

www.napkinpro.com - tells your readers that the information you provide at your napkin blog is of professional grade napkin knowledge.

www.napkintreprenuer.com - tells your readers you are the napkin entrepreneur.

www.pronapkinblogger.com - tells your readers you are the napkin pro and you are providing the level of napkin expertise that is unparalleled.

www.napkinsnow.com - tells your readers that you’re blogging about napkins and snow. No, no, no. It’s napkins-now, providing up-to-the minute napkin news.

www.readwritenapkins.com - tells your readers you provide news, reviews and analysis about all things napkins.

www.smashingnapkins.com - tells your readers that you’ll provide concise information about napkins and filter out the other napkin noise.

www.napkinsmakingmoney.com - tells your readers how they’ll make money with napkins.

Ok, all the above is tongue-in-cheek, but don’t miss the point. Something that identifies your domain immediately to your readers and what they’ll expect when they visit your napkin blog. The name of your blog might even rank you higher in a Google, Yahoo or MSN search. There is a whole topic on Search Engine Optimization that I won’t expound on here but the domain name of your blog might help you rank higher in the big three search engines and other more niche search engines. But don’t feel overwhelmed picking a domain name. Don’t feel like you have to pick the best name or wait forever and do research forever before you pick a name.

Another domain name you might want to consider is your own name or totally meaningless name like www.thespinningdonut.com. Although it doesn’t tell you anything there is a story behind it that people might remember. If you have a unique name and you expect to be the authority figure for what you are going to blog about, you can certainly use your name - www.YourNameGoesHere.com is totaly acceptable. But think about it and make sure that is what you want people to know your blog for - your name and the power it carries or will carry. Another domain name could be a nickname or pen name you’d like to use. Skellie has a blog called Skelliewag. I absolutely love the name - very distinct and memorable.

A domain name is just like your address where you live. It tells people how to find you and your blog. So keep it memorable and short if you can. Sometimes unique aspects of a domain name are memorable. Yaro Starak’s www.Entrepreneurs-Journey.com is unique to me because it has the hyphen in it, which is questionable by some but it allows you to remember it by saying to yourself, “Hey, I know that guys domain name had a hyphen in it. I know it was about Entrepreneurs (which by the way you learn to spell really good over time) and you know he’s providing guidance to your Journey of becoming an Entrepreneur. Now, Yaro has a very distinct name and could have certainly used that since he has become an authority figure.

I’m Excited!! How Do I Register My Domain Name?

There are websites called domain registration websites. One that I have used forever, because it was extremely popular at the time is GoDaddy.com. Another domain registration site that a lot of folks seem to talk about and use is ProudDomains. And yet another domain registration website is namecheap. Either way, pick one or do a Google search and find a domain registration site. This is where you can look up your favorite domain names that you decide on and see if they are available.

Below is a screenshot of GoDaddy’s homepage. This is an extremely busy page but apparently this type of page works for them because they haven’t changed it too much in years.

When I first went to GoDaddy I had a hell of time figuring it all out. It’s so busy that you can pick services that you might not want but end up paying for. So make sure you just register your domain. In the image below, I’ve highlighted the domain search box that you can use to find out if the domain name you want is available.

I would also recommend going for the .com extension of your domain name. They will suggest to you to buy the .com, .net, .info, .biz and on and on but don’t do it. Stay focused on your domain ending in .com. If you can’t find a .com you really want, I would start looking at the .net version.

Again, don’t get to caught up in the domain name that it stops you from going forward.

[techtags: Domain Name, Domain Registration]

Filed Under Blogging | 3 Comments »

In the arena of “How many ways can we watch stories arrive at Digg?” Here are 5 fun things to do at the Digg Labs. This is as much fun as when I first discovered and started using StumbleUpon.

stack - Diggers fall from above and stack up on popular stories. Green stories have more diggs.

swarm - Diggers swarm around active stories and make them grow. Yellow stories have more diggs.

bigspy - upcoming stories appear at the top when people digg them. Bigger stories have more diggs. The digg count is listed in red. I like this one.

arc - Stories arrange themselves around the circle as users digg them. Larger stories have more diggs.

pics - Images are organized by topic and flow in from the left as they are submitted and dugg. You can click each row to expand the row and once expanded you can drag the row to scroll and browse.

[techtags: Digg, Social Media, Social Bookmarking]

Filed Under Social Media | Be The First To Comment »

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. What is a Social Bookmarking site? Social Bookmarking is a way to share the bookmarks in your life with others. Some of you might remember loading up your bookmarks in your Internet Explorer browser years ago or - just yesterday. Trying to organize all those bookmarks. The reason they became “all those bookmarks” is because the Internet grew and grew and grew. Now bookmarking has taken on - Social life.

You can now set your bookmarks at social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. del.icio.us allows you to store bookmarks and access them from anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection. I like that because of that fact, and because the inevitable crash or rebuild of your PC could leave you bookmark-less. If you don’t backup regularly, save or export your bookmarks in your browser(s) then you could be in a world of trouble losing all your bookmarks.

When I started saving my bookmarks on the web, it took me a long time to get used to the fact that my bookmarks were on the web somewhere and I had to have a connection to the Internet to get at them. I’m from a time period where a 24K modem was the way to connect to the Internet. When 56K modems came a long I was in heaven. Now for those of you who don’t remember those days - count your blessings. For those of you still dialing up to the Internet, well, sorry. For those of you who used to walk 5 miles barefoot in the snow to connect to the Internet to your PC, well, ya’ got me beat.

What is del.icio.us?

del.icio.us is:

1. A place to tag your favorite bookmarks in such a way that you have complete and total control. Tags are one word descriptors that you can assign to your bookmarks. You can use as many tags as you like, rename or delete them as well. A tag for this blog post might be “blogging” or “bookmarking”.
2. A place to keep you bookmarks to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes.
3. A place to share your bookmarks with your friends, family, coworkers and the del.icio.us community.
4. A place to discover what everyone else is bookmarking.
5. A system of bookmarking that allows you to do whatever you want with it.
6. A place to keep your bookmarked materials for research.
7. A place to keep your track of your wish list so you can email friends and family a link like this - http://del.icio.us/your_del.icio.us_username/wishlist - when it’s time for you to provide those folks in your life who ask you, “What do you want for…?” (fill in the blanks or dots) .
8. A place to check out podcasts. Visit the tag mp3+podcast to start listening.
9. A place to plan a vacation. You can create a tag that resembles your vacation and bookmark all the resources under that tag for your vacation.
10. A place to create a “Linklog”. Linklogs are a way to bookmark your favorite places and add commentary to create a “lightweight linklog.” You can use “linkrolls” or the “daily blog posting” feature to include your del.icio.us bookmarks on your blog or website.
11. Want to create a cookbook? Whenever you find a recipe, save it to del.icio.us. Tag the recipes any way you’d like - by ingredients, style, breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.
12. You can use del.icio.us as a collaboration tool for your friends, coworkers and other groups by sharing an account to store relevant links.

The list is only as short as your imagination - or as long as your imagination. del.icio.us is definitely a bookmarking site to spend some time at and use during your daily or weekly surfing time.

Check out the del.icio.us tag cloud. The larger the tag, the more popular it is. This tag cloud is sorted alphabetically.

Click image for larger view

The same tag cloud sorted by size to give you a sense of popularity.

Click image for larger view

How to Tag

Below is a screen shot of tagging a blog article while at that blog. There are toolbar buttons at del.icio.us that you can drag to your browsers “Bookmarks Toolbar” making it easier to bookmark sites. I used Internet Explorer 7 for this example. While at the blog article, I selected the del.icio.us Tag button and the following screen popped up. The notes were empty and the tags were blank but I’ve filled them in for this example.

Your Blog and del.icio.us

If you have a blog and you want people to bookmark one of your blog articles and tag it at del.icio.us, there are a few ways to do this and I’ll talk about a couple now.

The first way is to add a Bookmark button to your blog from AddThis.com. Open up an account and you’ll have a choice of buttons to choose from. The AddThis.com site also keeps statistics for you which is kind of cool. To place your AddThis button on your blog, you can use their WordPress plugin or add the code that is generated for you at their site and add it to your Main Index Template of your blog’s code before the end of the blog post loop. Use the comments here at this blog post if you need help.

Another way to provide bookmarking for your blog article to del.icio.us is to use the ShareThis button. ShareThis also has buttons for folks who browse the web and want to bookmark sites they visit. You can get the ShareThis buttons for Internet Explorer and Firefox if you’re just interested in reading websites and want to bookmark them. You can get the Firefox add-on here and the Internet Explorer button here.

The del.icio.us Blog

Check out the del.icio.us blog here. Here’s a video explanation of del.icio.us.

TechCrunch has a nice preview of Delicious 2.0 here. Apparently the new design should be here soon but it’s been quiet and everyone’s anxious to see.

There’s a bunch of stuff to check out at del.icio.us so the best way to get going is to - get going.

Go here to learn more about tags at del.icio.us

Go here to get started with del.icio.us

More excellent resources on del.icio.us and bookmarking:

3 Reasons Why Delicious Bookmarks Beat Digg Traffic Hands Down by Brian Clark at Performancing

How to Get More Bookmarks and Better Links by Chris Garrett

[techtags: Social Bookmarking, Bookmarking, Tags, Tagging]

Filed Under Social Media | 4 Comments »

If you’re a beginning blogger or someone who is starting to hang out online, you eventually start seeing various social bookmarking and media sites out there as you roam around Al Gore’s Internet.

In this article I’ll present a summary of one of those bookmarking sites, how it’s used and how you can use it as a blogger, if you are a blogger.

Technorati

Technorati currently tracks over 100 million blogs and over 200 million tagged blog posts. They organize the blogoshpere. They state that 175 million new blogs are created every day. Bloggers update their blogs to the tune of 1.6 million posts per day. That’s one blog post every 18 seconds. Yikes!!

In their own words:

Technorati is the leading monitor of the world of weblogs. Technorati is a real-time search engine that is the largest source of fresh information about the global and local conversations going on all across the Web. Technorati allows you to find out what people are saying about you, your company, your products, your competitors, your politics and, other areas of interest, on the Internet in real time.

Technorati organizes their site topically by channels:

• Business
• Entertainment
• Lifestyle
• Politics
• Sports
• Technology
• Search
• Blogger Central

Technorati’s Percolator technology looks at various attributes of how blog posts are linked including photos in blog posts and using other attributes to determine the “Attention” of blog posts. This allows Technorati to determine what’s hot and new, and what’s demanding the attention of the blogosphere.

There is an Authority Rating on Technorati when you find blog posts from various blogs. This Authority Rating is the rating of a particular blog based on links.

Import Your Favorite Blogs

If you use an RSS reader that allows you to export the blogs that are in your reader as an .opml file then you can import that file into Technorati. During the import process Technorati will discover what blogs you already have as favorites and ignore them. When you import, you’ll also be told how many blogs were imported and how many were websites and not blogs.

Why Would People Use Technorati?

For readers, Technorati is a great way for people to track what’s going on in the blogoshpere. By reading their favorite blogs that they add to their favorites at Technorati, a reader can filter through what’s important to them.

Another feature is the Technorati Top 100 Blogs, where readers can browse the top 100 bloggers and what they’re blogging about. Two ways you can view the top 100 is by Most Linked and Most Favorited. If you’re a blogger you should be reading these articles to see what it takes to get on that list or what people are reading and respecting.

The Technorati Blog Directory

Technorati has a blog directory in which they list blogs by the tags that a blog uses most often. You can add your blog(s) to Technorati through their Claim your blog feature. You can Ping your blog and Technorati will send its crawler around to your blog and index for you. You don’t have to ping your blog constantly. Technorati eventually comes around to your blog as you update your blog with new content. If you use WordPress or Blogger there is an option that you can set to make sure Technorati stops by and takes a look at your blog so it gets indexed. In WordPress it’s under the Options-> Privacy menu. Technorati provides other configurations here.

You can provide a badge or button on your blog that allows your readers to add your blog as one of their favorite blogs on Technorati. Various Technorati Widgets are here.

You can put the Add This Blog To My Technorati Favorites badge on your blog to make it easy for people to add your blog to their Technorati favorites. The code below is one to do that:

<!– Add to Technorati Favorites –>
<!– ===================== –>
<a href=”http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=PutYouBlogAddressHere” style=”margin-left: 10px”><img src=”http://static.technorati.com/pix/fave/tech-fav-1.png” alt=”Add to Technorati Favorites” border=”0″ /></a>
<!– ========================== –>
<!– End of Add to Technorati Favorites –>

There is a way to index your blog post automagically when Technorati comes around to your blog. If you use the following WordPress plugin you can tag your blog posts at the end of each post and Technorati will know how you want your blog posts indexed under what tags. You can use up to 20 tags. The WordPress plugin that I use is located here. I altered it a bit to act the way I wanted it to.

If you don’t use WordPress here is the code you can use:

Technorati Tags: [ <a href='http://technorati.com/tag/YourTagGoesHere' rel='tag'>YourTagGoesHere</a> | <a href='http://technorati.com/tag/Another+Tag+Goes+Here' rel='tag'>Another Tag Goes Here</a> ]

Here’s a link to Technorati Tag Guide.

You can create your Technorati account here.

[techtags: Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Technorati]

Filed Under Social Media | Be The First To Comment »

In the following articles I show how you can:

1. Keep Your PC Save From Viruses Automatically (runs at 1:00am)
2. Keep Your PC Free From Spyware Automatically (runs at 2:00am)
3. Shut Down Your PC Automatically (runs at 3:00am)

Once you’ve setup the three tasks above, the management of your PC becomes a bit more less time intensive for you. In other words, what we want is to manage our PCs automatically so they take care of themselves without too much involvement from us.

You might have to check log files to make sure the programs run at the time you think they’re running or you might need to perform some further investigation if you find something of concern in a log file, but for the most part this is an automatic system. I typically browse log files on the weekend or even once a month. Sundays work best for me because for years I’ve done summary type tasks on Sundays.

Sunday mornings I run the following two free programs as well:

1. LavaSoft’s Ad-Aware 2007 (download here)
2. SpywareBlaster 3.5.1 (download here)

Click image for larger view

Why Sunday mornings for me? I like watching some of the Sunday morning shows on TV - the various arts and political review type shows, so why not let your PC do some work of its own while you enjoy something else besides gazing into your PC monitor. I fire up LavaSoft’s Ad-Aware 2007, check for updates over the web and run a scan. There are two types of scans you can do in Ad-Aware:

1. Smart Scan - Shortest in duration, this scan scans the most critical parts of your system. I perform a Smart Scan every Sunday.
2. Full System Scan - Longest in duration (could take hours), this scan rips through your whole system - files on your hard drives, registry entries, the whole sha-bang. I do a Full System Scan twice a year. I used to do it quarterly but found it to be a bit too munch.

Lavasoft’s website has a short but informative section that talks about what spyware is, how it works and how to perform preventative tasks to help reduce spyware hitting your PCs.

Talking about a bit too much, some folks might think my process is a bit too much. You have to remember that I’m in the IT world so I don’t mind doing these tasks and I have the time to do them. I also have the experience of system restores, server restores and the benefits of preventative maintenance. These tasks are important to keep your system safe and secure and not waste time later down the road when there are problems with your PC because you didn’t take preventative measures.

If the above two steps are bit too much for you, then you might just want to do the top three tasks I mentioned at the top of this article and you’ll be good for most of your computing experience.

Javacool’s SpywareBlaster Here are three bullet points from the SpywareBlaster website:

• Prevent the installation of ActiveX-based spyware, adware, browser hijackers, dialers, and other potentially unwanted software.
• Block spyware/tracking cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox.
• Restrict the actions of potentially unwanted sites in Internet Explorer.

Here’s a screenshot of SpywareBlaster:

Click image for larger view

With SpywareBlaster you click on the “Download Latest Protection Updates” link, download the updates and “Enable” them. That’s it. No need to leave the program running by minimizing it when it’s done, just exit the program and you’re good to go.

A lot of the free software I talk about here and implement have paid for counterparts. Companies that offer free software usually have a version that has more features to entice you to pay for that version. So I encourage you to pay for the versions that you find useful in your day-to-day computing experience. The version you pay for might even save you more time managing your PC.

[techtags: Anti-Spyware, Free Software]

Filed Under Free Software, PC Maintenance | 4 Comments »

Shareaholic Support More Web 2.0 Sites by CyberNet

Making Money Freelancing eBook by self made chick

Top 10 Hallmarks of Outstanding Content by DailyBlogTips

Digs’em WordPress Theme Information by Garry Conn

Speed up and clean up your WordPress by Joost de Valk’s SEO Blog

Best of January 2008 by Smashing Magazine

Edit To Done: Revision and the Art of Being Concise by Write To Done

Animate Your Gifs On The Web With Gickr by Mashable

Understanding Affiliate Marketing From The Perspective Of A Blogger by Entrepreneurs Journey

How to Change Your Perspective by Chris Garrett

Filed Under Links | Be The First To Comment »

Climbing the Project Mountain

Photo by Hamed Saber

This weekend I’ll start to combine an art gallery website with a Blogger blog into a WordPress blog. Here are some of the project’s initial tasks:

1. Determine what the best domain would be and create a new one or use the existing art gallery website name as the new combined art gallery/blog.
2. Review and determine where we’re going to host the new blog.
3. How are we going to get the six months worth of Blogger blog posts over to WordPress?
4. What kind of WordPress theme should we use? The owner of the blog really doesn’t want to pay for a premium or custom theme just yet.
5. What existing gallery software can we use? The owner of the blog doesn’t want the typical thumbnail images where you click on the thumbnails and a window opens with an enlarged view of the thumbnail and then you have to click the large view to close it. Rather, she wants one bigger image frame on a page with thumbnails that you load the image into as you click on its thumbnails. Most likely there will be categorized galleries - Abstracts, Landscapes, Figurative, etc.
6. The main purpose of the art gallery will be to display the art which are 99% oil paintings. Each painting will be displayed in the larger view and provide the size and price.
7. To purchase prints of the art there will be a link to a third-party art print website where you can purchase prints of the art.
8. Determine menu structure - Home or Blog - Gallery - About - Contact and ?
9. Determine what should the first page be - The blog or the gallery? We’re leaning towards the gallery since that is the focus of the blog. WordPress has as nice little feature in the “Options - Reading” section that allows you to pick what the first page is that displays when people browse to your blog.
10. How will we bring the existing Feedburner subscribers over to the new blog without losing the subscribers?
11. Determine which WordPress plugins to use right off the bat.
12. What and how much monetization will we be doing on the blog now and in the future?
13. How do all the various formatting of text look in the theme - ordered lists, unordered lists, quotes, comments, how wide is the theme for displaying images?

Well, I think that’s it for now. Quite a bit to do over a weekend but it will be good to start and get some answers and direction to this project. Some of the above tasks and questions will be easy and quicker than others to get going on and implement.

I’m sure I’ll be hunting around the net looking for different galleries that will display images in WordPress. I’ll be looking at different WordPress themes as well. The artist would like specific colors for the blog so I don’t know about finding an existing theme that will work so we’ll see. There might be some WordPress theme customization in my near future.

Wish me luck!!

[techtags: Art, Websites, Blogger, WordPress, Project Planning]

Filed Under WordPress | Be The First To Comment »