In addition to powering this blog, I use Wordpress to run a number of niche websites I have created as well. These are mostly focused on attracting targeted readers with a collection of topical articles and then generating revenue with a combination of Adsense ads and affiliate promotional products. Over time, as the website matures and the domain starts to grow in traffic and page rank, I determine whether to sell it off or develop it further.

There are a lot of excellent reasons for using Wordpress as my publishing platform. It is easy to manage, open source (so I can transfer ownership of the site without licensing issues), there are a ton of very valuable plugins to optimize the sites, and I can crank out professional sites in no time.

Part of the reason I can develop a site so quickly is that I create a ‘customized’ installation package on my local computer. This package includes all of the plugins that I typically install along with my preferred template (the Semilogic template system is amazingly versatile) and any code tweaks I’m using. When the time comes to create a new site, I simply upload the contents of my installation folder, link it up to a new database, and then switch on all the plugins and start tweaking the site.

I could speed this process up a little further if I also built a full online installation from the package and then saved a copy of the database (which would preserve all of my standard settings for the live installation too!) I could just install this to the database when I created it. Then, I would only need to modify the database settings in the configuration file and update the blog’s domain name, etc. once everything was installed.

On Saturday of this past weekend, I installed and customized 3 new sites (www.AuthorityMembershipSites.com and www.e-BookMarketingSecrets.com - the 3rd doesn’t have any content yet and I don’t want to post a link to it and have Google spider it before it is ready!) I uploaded several weeks worth of content updates on each using the ‘post in the future’ option in Wordpress. It will be a week or so before most of the content goes live (this is to give the search engines a steady supply of new content so that they check in regularly for updates.)
Creating sites in this fashion is ideal. I can move from idea to finished site with amazing speed. Once the domain is registered, I copy the installation to the server and start working on content. By the time the domain registration is complete, I have the basics in place and can have a really nice site live for the world to see.

Do you have any tips or tricks for speeding up your Wordpress installations? If so, leave a comment.

If you want to hire my to install a site for you from my custom package, click on the contact form and send me a message. I charge $65 for the basic installation and $65/hr for any additional customization - but my availability is limited to a few installations per week (I’ve got to keep my own sites going too!)

The Go-To Guy!

Are you trying to print out the contents of a PDF document in booklet format?

A colleague of mine just told me about a very long and drawn out process he went through to create a booklet for his work. The original file he was given for the project had been created with Microsoft Publisher. He, being a Mac Guy, was using Quark for page design. Overall, it just did not go well.

He copied and pasted elements from the original file into his new Quark file, but ran into trouble trying to impose the pages for printing (this is the re-ordering of the individual booklet pages so that the printed pages, when stacked together and stapled down the middle, will be in the correct reading order.)

To print a typical booklet, 4 pages are combined and printed onto a single sheet of paper - 2 pages on the front and 2 on the back. When all of the printed pages are stacked together and folded, the individual booklet pages should be in the correct reading order.

My colleague went ‘old school.’ He printed out all of the individual pages and taped them together in the right order for printing. Then, he photocopied the results and sent them to the printer to print the finished copies. Technology to the rescue.

Watch The Complete Process Demonstrated

Simple Method To Print Booklets From PDF Files

A much less labor intensive, and higher quality, method is available. This is what I recommended to him:

1. Print a copy of the booklet in normal reading order to a PDF file (this is easy to do and can be accomplished with free software)
2. Using a program like CutePDF Pro ($50), or the PDF Snake plugin ($340) for Adobe Acrobat, open the file and use the booklet function to reorder the pages
3. Print a test copy by printing all of the odd pages first, flipping the paper stack, and then printing all of the even pages (each page in the file will contain 2 booklet pages side-by-side and alternate between the front and back pages)
4. Send the new PDF file to the printer

The computer can do all of the hard work and the results are great. Whenever I want to print out an e-book, I do this step first. I have stacks of books created in this fashion.

If you are creating the book in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice, you can set up booklet printing inside the software for each new document. The pages will automatically be reordered when you print. There is also a product called Clickbook* that intercepts the file when you hit the print button and reorders the pages before sending them on to the printer. It will work with any program that is capable of printing. The price is comparable to CutePDF Pro.

CutePDF Pro and PDF Snake both offer a free trial version. Hardcore users will appreciate the features of PDF Snake, but most folks will do fine with the cheaper CutePDF Pro.

The Go-To Guy!

P.S. If you have questions about this process or want a more detailed tutorial, leave a comment and let me know.

Click To Play Flash version Get Your Copy Now!* Read My Review of this Book

I am a huge fan of Wordpress. It could not be easier to setup, it is simple to use, it has a great set of features built in, and there are dozens of great plugins available to help you optimize your website. This is a list of some of my favorites:

Administrative Plugins:

Akismet - (Automatic-Kismet) (Comment Spam Blocker)This plugin needs a wordpress.com api key to work (free and commercial versions available.) Have you ever heard of comment spam? Start a blog and you’ll find out what it is - fast. It is a sleazy technique that uses software to take advantage of the open dialog nature of blogs. The software auto-posts irrelevant text comments, stuffed with links, in the comment sections of posts. This plugin will save you hours of clean-up work removing comment spam. I use a modified version of the plugin created by Rich Boakes. This version will automatically create a list of the IP addresses used by the spammers and write them in a ‘deny access list’ in your .htacess file. Any attempts by those computers to access your server get denied. This addition really cuts down on the spam and also the bandwidth used up by spammers searching your site.

Auto Links - This plugin searches for specific text on your pages and inserts preset links. Very handy way to reduce tedium and make sure you get relevant links connected up.

Adsense-Deluxe - If you are using Adsense to make money on your blog, this is really helpful. You can assign Adsense code into a list of presets in the plugin’s settings page. Then, a simple tag dropped into a post will insert an Adsense ad block. You can modify the ad blocks on your whole site by making changes to the settings in the plugin. I also use this plugin to insert Amazon affiliate links.

Adhesive - From time-to-time you may want a post to stay at the top of the page. With this plugin, you’ll have a check box on the post editing page that will allow you to make a post ‘sticky’.

Dashbar - When you are logged into your site, this plugin will display a header above your site pages with Admin links. Save a lot of clicks on the back button.

ToDo List Plugin - I like to keep notes of the work I’m planning for my site. Since I can work on the site from any computer with an Internet connection, it’s important to keep the notes online. This plugin integrates the notes right into my Wordpress admin pages.

Khanh’s Instant Notepad - It might be redundant to have both this and the To-Do list plugin, but I use this one for research and article idea notes and focus the to-dos on task oriented items. The notepad does not show up on the dashboard, like the ToDo list items, when you log in.

WP-ContactForm - If you post your email address on your site, get ready for spam. A better feedback tool is a contact form and this plugin will let you drop a contact form into any page by adding a short tag into the post or page content. The format of the contact form is configurable through your admin page.

WP-Amazon - If you have an associate account to generate sales through Amazon, this plugin will add a link on your page/post editing interface that launches a pop-up search tool. Search the Amazon database, choose a product and this plugin will generate the link code with your associate ID embedded in it. Saves a ton of time (unfortunately it doesn’t always find everything – but it’s still a big timesaver.)

StatCounter - I use www.StatCounter.com to track user statistics for my site. This plugin automatically inserts the tracking code into my pages to link up with this service. You don’t have to modify your template files. A nice bonus is that you can set it to not include the code when you are logged in and working on the site. No code, no tracking – no need to filter out your own activity from the Statcounter results.

Site Functionality Plugins:

Search Everything - By default, Wordpress’ search tool only searches through posts. I uses pages to hold a lot of content, like my resume, and found that important content wasn’t showing up in search results. This plugin includes page content in the search results too.

Media Plugins:

Audio Player - If you plan to post audio clips on your site (specially if you plan to podcast), this plugin is a must. Once installed, all you have to do is wrap an audio tag around the address of the mp3 you want to play and this plugin will automatically insert a Flash audio player into the post ready to play the file. It is an elegant solution.

vPIP - The name stands for ‘Video Play In Place.’ This means that your page will load with a still frame representing the video. When the user clicks on the still, it is replaced by the video - no pop-up windows, launching an external player, or loading a new page. An added benefit is that you don’t waste bandwidth sending the video until the user selects it. Once installed, this plugin adds an entry box on the ‘write post’ page. You enter the relevant data about your video, click the ‘generate code’ button, and it displays the appropriate code to copy and paste into your post.

Presentation Plugins:

Fold Page List - If you create a site with lots of pages and sub-pages, Wordpress displays them in a fully expanded list. This plugin will cause the list of pages to only show the parent page links. Click on a page with child pages and it expands only that branch. You have to open the parent page before the list of child pages expands (no fancy twirl-down or expand on mouse-over), but it is better than a huge side navigation list on the homepage.

Post Teaser - I usually write long posts. This plugin automatically truncates posts in a title/teaser style. This keeps the home page manageable. Other solutions exist for doing this, but I find this plugin easy to use with excellent results.

Website Promotion Plugins:

Wordpress Email Notification Plugin - Not all visitors like to use RSS feeds to stay current on your site’s updates. This plugin will give users a simple sign-up link to receive email notices. It handles all of the list administration duties and adds a Notify option on the ‘write post’ interface. Choose yes and it will send out an email to everyone on your list when you click publish. You can also send emails to the list through the plugin’s admin page which can be used for simple newsletters, etc.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Plugins:

Crawl Page - Making sure search engine spiders index all your pages is vital. The more levels the spider has to dig to find something, the less likely it is to get indexed. This plugin creates a single page with direct text links to every page in your site. Add a link to this crawl page in your template footer and a link to every page will be one level down from your homepage. Whenever you add new content, the crawl page is automatically updated. Check out the results by following the site map link in the footer of this page. (This plugin is no longer available from the author’s site. The copyright info says it is free to distribute, so I have placed a copy on my server for download. Right-click on the title and save the zip file to disc. I make no warranty for the reliability of this software and provide no tech support.)
Head META Description - Most search engines ignore the META Description tag when evaluating a webpage. But, there are still a number of directories and search engines that will display text from this tag on their search results page. I believe it’s important to make sure it is relevant to the page content and this plugin takes care of this by automatically generating descriptions based on the page content.

Related Posts - This plugin belongs under the promotion category as well as SEO. The best way to encourage people to check out your site is to let them know what other related content is available when they read a post. This plugin automatically inserts a list of links to related article at the bottom of each post that is based on the keywords in the post. A side benefit is that search engines like internal linking.

Google Sitemaps - You don’t have to guess what Google wants to know about your website. They’ve told you – Sitemaps! They want maps of all the web pages on your site and indications of how frequently you update them. This plugin will automatically create and update a map for your whole site and tell Google every time you update it.

Social Promotion Plugins:

WP-Email - This plugin requires a little template hacking to setup, but then automatically adds an ‘email this post’ link to every post. Click on the link and it opens a email form page for visitors to enter their message. The messages are captured in a log file and can be read when logged into your admin pages.

Sociable - Automatically add links to the most popular social bookmarking sites at the bottom of each post.

I wouldn’t start a new installation of Wordpress without these plugins. If you have found better ways to handle the tasks and issues I’ve mentioned in this article, leave a comment and let me know. I’m always interested in finding a better solution to streamline my work.

The Go-To Guy

I’m always on the lookout for a content management system (CMS) that is powerful, flexible, and doesn’t require me going back to school for a degree in computer science to set it up. I’ve found one that has gotten me pretty excited. It is called MODx CMS.

My computer background is pretty solid. I have studied programming before and done well at it. I’ve been building and repairing my own computers for nearly 10 years and am very comfortable pulling open computers and working on them. I’m a self-taught web designer/developer and have had the good fortune to work with some gifted people who have guided me into standards-based web design. I even know my way around a server well enough to set-up databases and install software. But I still get stumped - often!

Most Open Source CMS packages have frustrated me. Many are incredibly powerful, allowing all sorts of automation and customization, but are just complicated enough that I have trouble getting them customized to my needs. It is usually the templating portion of the process that brings me to my knees.

I can design and code a beautiful standards-based web page, but usually get frustrated trying to translate the page into a template that will work in the CMS. At heart I’m more of a designer/developer than a coder.

The stated mission of MODx is to make a CMS for people like me. Within a few minutes of installing MODx on my server, I managed to create a basic template based on the HTML from one of my sites. I simply dropped a couple of simple tags into the existing code to replace the content and navigation areas, and hit save. And, when I viewed the finished page, it worked - how gratifying! This is a CMS made for me.

MODx is a breeze to install. Just unzip the files and FTP them to your website’s root directory. Set-up a new MySQL database and copy down the login information. Then run the setup script, plug in your database info and hit enter. The script creates your database structure and loads in all the initial data required. Now, you’re ready to start building your site.

My plan is to do a little more experimenting with MODx focussing on understanding how the system works, how to extend and customize the functionality of the CMS, and exploring how it handles user permissions for content managers and site users.

If it performs well, I’ll convert a site that currently has no CMS to run on MODx. I’ll keep you posted.

The Go-To Guy

Email autoreponder software is a powerful lever to move your online business ahead.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
-Archimedes

Leverage. Using a tool to magnify a small effort into a large result. The Internet is a powerful leveraging tool. One person can spend a few hours creating a webpage and find hundreds or thousands of people around the world to read it and be influenced by it. And, as long as the page is online, it can continue to be discovered and read by new audiences - month after month, year after year.

Another powerful tool of the Internet age is the email auto-responder (also known as a sequential emailer.) With one, you can leverage the direct communication power of email with the set-it-and-forget-it cababilities of a webpage. You can use auto-responders to deliver a carefully constructed sequence of emails at precisely controlled intervals, with no human intervention.

Why Would You Want to Send Automated Sequential Emails?

There are a number of reasons to send out emails in this fashion.

Auto-Responders for Sales and Marketing

If you are marketing a product or service, you may already be aware that it can take 6 or 7 contacts with a potential customer before they make a purchase. It’s not easy to get someone to visit your website 6 or 7 times and you never know what pages they’ll choose to look at.

What if you could persuade this same visitor to sign-up for your 5 part email course or a series of special reports? These emails would teach them a little information aimed at answering the need that brought them to your site. But, in this case, you decide what messages they receive, what order they are delivered in, and how much time will pass between each email.

Step-by-step you will be demonstrating your expertise, building a relationship with your visitor, and creating the trust required to convert them from lookers to buyers. It’s like having an automated salesperson greeting everyone who expresses an interest in what you have to offer.

One well written sequence of emails can be leveraged, using an auto-responder, into hundreds or thousands of sales.

Auto-Responders for Content Delivery

Selling is not the only use for an auto-responder. It can also be the delivery mechanism for content you sell or give away. If you offer your visitors a daily inspirational message, or a reminder service, your auto-responder will deliver the goods. It is also an excellent way to deliver an educational course.

Other Uses for Auto-Responders

Another creative use that occurred to me is using your auto-responder to send blog updates when you are on vacation. Instead of posting the usual ‘on vacation’ message, letting the site go idle, or finding a guest blogger to fill in, write a special series of posts and load them into your auto-responder. Set the responder to deliver messages every day and then, when you get ready to leave, add your blog’s email posting address into the subscriber list. (Many blog software packages, like Wordpress, allow you to submit posts via email.) Everyday a new entry will be posted to the site and your readers (and the search engines) will keep checking in for the latest updates.

You might also set one up to email your mother every year on her birthday, anniversary, and Mother’s Day! (Or at least email yourself a reminder to buy a card.) The Journal of Medical Internet Research even has the results posted about a study to “assess the feasibility of using sequential email messages to promote physical activity and increase fruit and vegetable intake among employed adults.”

I’m sure there are other creative ways to use an auto-responder. If you’ve got a clever one, leave a comment and share it.

Where Can You Get an Auto-Responder?

There are 3 ways to get an auto-responder. You can pay to use an auto responder service provided by a 3rd party, you can license a commercial software package and load it (or have it loaded) onto your server, or you can scour the open source community looking for free stuff and then tweak and customize it - guess which route I’ve chosen?

There are a number of companies who provide subscription based auto-responder services. They usually have a very rich set of features and are simple to use. GetResponse is one such company. Aweber and Intellicontact are 2 others. These companies often offer extended features like list splitting, campaign tracking, and click-through tracking. If you are looking to do sophisticated online marketing, the extra features and reduced technical maintenance requirements may be worth the monthly fees. GetResponse and Aweber both offer a free 30 day trial to let you test out the service before subscribing.
My Autoresponder Pro, SendStudio, and Follow-Up Mailing List Processor, all offer commercially licensed software that you can load onto your server and run yourself. Most of these packages offer plenty of features and are reasonably priced. If you have trouble with the installation, you can expect some level of technical support. The costs are usually pretty low and, if you know your way around your server, installation isn’t usually very tough.

Being the Go-To Guy, I like to hunt down open source solutions and customize them to my needs and whims (I’m even thinking about making my own software as a PHP/MySQL learning project!)

Open source means no fees, but also no guarantees and no tech support. I’ve found an open source package that I like called Infinite Responder! The interface isn’t beautiful to look at (it was designed by a programmer!!!) but it handles double opt-in sign-ups and unsubscribes, HTML and plain text email options, and multiple lists.

Installation was pretty simple (the developer will install it for you cheap if you need help.) I’m working on customizing the look of the interface to my liking and will post an video installation tutorial soon to guide folks through the installation process.

Want to see how Infinite Responder! works? Sign-up for my Web Business Building series and see it in action!

The Go-To Guy

My friend Allen came by the office today to check out the new video equipment we have recently purchased. After a while we got to talking about the book I’ve been reading called Refuse to Choose!. I recently wrote an article on how this book has inspired me. Seems he’s a bit of a Scanner himself.

One of the things I mentioned to him was a mind mapping program that I like to use called Freemind. When Allen outlines an idea, he already uses mind mapping techniques with paper and pencil, so he was excited to discover a free software package that does the same thing.

If you are not familiar with the concept of mind mapping, basically it is a visually oriented way of showing the relationships between things.

Using Mind Maps

One of my favorite ways to use mind mapping (especially with Freemind) is for brainstorming website and book ideas.

I start with a central idea or topic and then keep branching off that until I’ve exhausted my thinking on the subject. This will usually inspire some new research after which I go back to the mind map and expand it some more.

With Freemind you can expand and collapse the different branches of your map and quickly add new branches and expand branches. Some people will prefer to draw their maps with colored pencils on big sheets of paper including lots of little illustrations peppered throughout. Use whatever works for you.

You can export a mind map from Freemind into an HTML file. This outline style list can be used as the table of contents for a book or as the site structure for a website. There are other formats you can export to as well.

If you want to get the same result from a hand drawn mind map you will need to type up the text in outline format. Branches and sub-branches get indented further at each level. (Automating this process is one of the big reasons I love the software.)

You can embed all of the content for a book or website into the electronic version, but I find the tool most helpful in brainstorming the framework for an idea and then using other tools to flesh it out.

There are also a number of free web based mind mapping tools available. One that looks promising can be found at www.Bubbl.us.

Tools like Microsoft Project use indented lists to organize steps in a process. Creating a mind map is a great way to lead a team through the first stages of project planning with the results being quickly imported into the Project Management software for further development of the Project Plan.

I’m sure there are tons of other uses for a mind map. If you’ve got a cool and creative way of using them, leave a comment and let me know what you do.

The Go-To Guy

I’m putting the finishing touches on a fundraising video this week and am down to finessing the soundtrack. The range of quality on the source material I have is pretty wide - some excellent and some barely useable.

I recently upgraded my editing software at work with the Adobe Production Studio Bundle and I’m learning the ins and outs of Adobe Audition and the new audio tools in Premiere Pro. But, I needed a quick and easy piece of audio editing software to do things like remove/reduce breath sounds and trim a little off of some dialog.

Open Source to the Rescue

I found Audacity. This is a great opensource software package that does exactly what I need. It took me about 2 seconds to figure out how the envelope tool would allow me to adjust the volume on a track - it’s all visual, you just grab the envelope and drag it up or down. The output sounds great.

There’s a lot more here than what I’m using. Audacity will do full fledged multitrack recording and uses VST plugins.

If you need a great little sound utility, check it out! It’s cross-platform Windows/Mac/Linux and works great.

The Go-To Guy!