Community & Conversation

WordPress: A Strong Foundation for Your Blog or Web Site

Edward F. Gumnick — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:30:08 +0000

WordPress is an open-source web application that was initially built for creating blogs. Through seven years of updates and the addition of static pages and loads of customization options, it’s grown into a small-scale content management system (CMS). It’s now the foundation for 200 million web sites.

You can use WordPress either of two ways: have your blog hosted for free at WordPress.com, subject to some limitations on storage space, bandwidth, and the amount of customization that you’re allowed, or you can download the free, open-source software and install it on your own web server. (You can also pay for premium features at WordPress.com.) I’m going to speak specifically about custom installations, because I haven’t experimented much with WordPress-hosted sites.

Installation requires PHP Hypertext Preprocessor and MySQL, as well as administrative access to your MySQL database, but these apps are included in most web hosting packages.

The power of WordPress comes from its huge community of developers. WordPress is open-source software, and it’s been designed to be extensible. Developers are constantly working to design themes and plugins. (“Themes” are packaged site designs; “plugins” add more functions to WordPress.) A huge community of users regularly beta-tests the software and suggests improvements. In recent versions, WordPress is even designed to update itself, as well as any properly designed plugins you’ve installed. The administrative interface offers prompts to let you know that an upgrade is available, and you only have to click a button to install it.

Once you’ve installed WordPress, you can download and install any of thousands of free themes that are available, or if you have some expertise in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and PHP, you can design your own. There are also a few themes that have been programmed to contain their own suites of customization options. (I’ve been very pleased with one called “Atahualpa,” which offers a panel of about 30 menus from which you can customize hundreds of details of your site’s design.) You can download many themes for free and install them manually, or use the “Add New Themes” tool within recent versions of WordPress to find and add themes to your site with a one‑click installation. There are also sites that sell themes, and lots of designers you can hire to create custom themes.

Here are some sites that I’ve designed and constructed (or assisted with) on the WordPress platform:

Contact me at 713-562-1813 or by e-mail if you’d like help setting up or using a WordPress blog or web site.

Don’t Let a Great Blog Post Idea Get Away

Edward F. Gumnick — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:23:17 +0000

Today I had the frustrating experience of sitting down to write a blog post about a web site that I’d visited recently, only to discover that I hadn’t bothered to bookmark the page. I probably assumed that I would have no trouble finding it again. I was mistaken.

I’ll track down that site again and write about it later. Meanwhile, I’ll tell you about a handy tool for WordPress blogs that can keep you from finding yourself in the predicament of wanting to write about a web page that you can’t find. It’s called Press This, and it’s part of the default installation of WordPress in at least the last few versions. Press This provides a simple mechanism for creating a draft blog post from any web page you’re visiting.

You’ll find Press This in the “Tools” section of the administrative area of your WordPress site. It’s a toolbar widget, a small snippet of code that you install by dragging the linked text (“Press This”) from the WordPress Tools page to the bookmark bar of your web browser—also called the “bookmark toolbar” or “favorites bar,” depending on which browser you’re using. You may be prompted to assign a name to the widget, or you can leave it as “Press This” or assign a name by editing it later.

For a simple way to create a draft blog post from any web page you visit, drag the “Press This” linked text to the bookmark bar of your browser.

Once the widget is installed, you can use it from any web page you visit. Click “Press This” in the bookmarks bar, and your browser will pop open a window with a draft WordPress post that contains a link to the web page you’re visiting. If you aren’t already logged into your WordPress site, you’ll be prompted to do so before you see the draft post. At this point, you have some options: write the post now, assign categories and tags, and hit publish; write a few notes to remind yourself why you plan to write about this page later; or just hit “Save draft.” The next time you visit the Dashboard of your WordPress site, you’ll find the draft article in your list of recent drafts as well as in the full list of posts.

If you like writing about things you find online, Press This is a nearly effortless way to collect ideas for blog posts. Give it a try!

Just @#$%ing do it.

Edward F. Gumnick — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:11:36 +0000

I’m working on business development with a client who has a new blog. It’s been a long time coming. She dragged her feet for more than six months before publishing her first post last month. Back in November, over coffee one afternoon with a mutual friend, I listened to her rattling off excuses and objections. I found myself thinking, Just @#$%ing do it already!

Then I felt like a hypocrite. I thought about all my own half-baked writing projects. I kept my mouth shut.

Last Friday, at our weekly consultation, she still seemed to be struggling to find the time, the motivation, the inspiration—or maybe just the confidence—to write. She’s received kindly feedback on the articles she’s posted. But she didn’t have anything new ready to publish, so we talked about some other projects she’s contemplating. When we’d worked our way through the meeting agenda, she had some time left before her next appointment. I asked her if she’d like to try to write something.

I guess I caught her off guard, because she couldn’t come up with any excuses not to write. I set a timer, and she clacked away on her laptop keyboard for 20 minutes.

If you have something to say, why wait to get your message out there?

At the end of the timed-writing period, we were both delighted to find that she’d written something pretty good. Pretty darned good, in fact. While she browsed her photo collection for an image to decorate the post, I made a handful of very minor edits—punctuation tweaks, a word change here and there for emphasis. We plugged in the photo she’d picked out, gave the piece some tags for the search engines, and posted it to her blog.

As she headed out to her next appointment, I said, “You should think about what you just accomplished.”

I closed the door behind her and thought, YOU should think about what she just accomplished.

Why do I make this so hard? I write thousands of words a day. I speak hundreds of thousands of words per week. People seem to enjoy hearing what I have to say. Why is it so hard to sit down and write a few hundred words that I’m willing to share with the reading public?

I should take my own advice once in a while. And if you have a great message, but you’re struggling to get it out there, so should you: Just @#$%ing do it already.

YouTube

Edward F. Gumnick — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:49:31 +0000

Anyone who’s been online for more than a few weeks is likely to be familiar with YouTube. The enormously popular video sharing web site got its start in early 2005, and within a year of its official launch, was receiving a hundred million video views per day. The company was purchased by Google in late 2006.

YouTube permits registered users to post an unlimited number of videos and to share, rate, and comment on other users’ videos. Unregistered users can watch and share videos. The ease of sharing has turned some YouTube offerings into “viral” videos—clips that spread around the Internet like wildfire (see Evolution of Dance, for example)—and has made some obscure producers into Internet celebrities.

As a registered user, you can also set up a “channel,” a user page that organizes your own videos and others that you’d like to feature. If you’re producing video content, YouTube can be a great way to find an audience and to lead them to other elements of your online presence. Google also offers the option of designating your content as a Promoted Video. Promoted Videos are a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system for driving viewers to your channel.

Your channel can contain a photo or logo image, information about your business or organization, and a link to your web site, blog, or Facebook fan page. The channel can be customized to coordinate with other branding efforts. For example, we’ve configured the font and color scheme of The Clutter Fairy’s YouTube channel to match the client’s web site:

YouTube channel
[Click to open in a new window.]

Web site
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Learn More

Anne Swanson Graphic Design

Edward F. Gumnick — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:11:54 +0000

Anne Swanson Graphic Design is the freelance design business of my sister, Anne Gumnick Swanson, who has also been a part‑time employee of Starfall Graphics since 2003. Anne started her own firm in 2008, but we continue to collaborate on projects as well.

Projects include:

Web site built in WordPress and featuring a portfolio of Anne’s design projects.
Facebook fan page. New portfolio posts on the web site are automatically posted to the Facebook page using Networked Blogs.
LinkedIn profile for Anne
PBworks wiki for internal communications and project management

The Clutter Fairy

Edward F. Gumnick — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 23:47:03 +0000

The Clutter Fairy, a Houston-based professional organizing business, has been the test subject for more of my experiments in social media than any other client. Owner Gayle Goddard has been a brave pioneer, and our efforts have paid off in steady growth for her business, which she founded in early 2007.

Projects we’ve launched include:

Web site—Under redevelopment in WordPress format, coming November 2009!
Facebook fan page
LinkedIn profile for Gayle
YouTube channel to showcase Gayle’s television appearances on The Ask Kim Jordan Show
Houston Clutter Coaching Meetup Group—“a community of people who want to conquer their clutter and make more room for the things they love.” The purpose of this group is to offer Gayle’s organizing expertise on a pro bono basis to people who aren’t able (or ready) to hire her professionally.
Constant Contact e-mail newsletter campaign
Speaking engagement series
PBworks wiki for internal communications and management