Finding Local Services Online

April 28, 2009 — Mrs. Mecomber

Gotta love the Internet! It’s not only a vast communication and entertainment portal, it’s a huge virtual Yellow Pages. I have thrown all my phone books away (except for one I use in case the computer isn’t working) and rarely use them anymore. I’ve got the Internet! How about you? Do you use the Internet to search for local services? A well-built website has much more information about a business than a small ad in the phone book or newspaper– and small and local businesses are getting online more and more. It’s so much easier to find and support local businesses with the Net.

How about this: College Pro Painters. They are a North American painting company, made up of college students, who are very happy to do all that back-breaking house painting for you. This particular franchise is based out of Seattle, WA, but College Pro Painters has operations in 29 states! The Seattle group has built a really impressive website, and are getting the word out about their services via the Internet; they have a very informative blog about what they do and how they got started. You can search the site for locations and contact information, and watch some videos about the College Pro Painters. This organization is very active in charitable work, too, and College Pro Painters offers student franchise opportunities and a painter scholarship program– the website has all the details. This is a great website to bookmark and pass along!

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]
Posted in business services. Tags: , . Comments Off »

Bad Behavior is a GO!!

April 19, 2009 — Mrs. Mecomber

To the non-blogger, that title may look strange indeed…

I’m referring to Bad Behavior, the WordPress plugin. I installed it. Remember how I lamented my spam problems? How I was inundated with hundreds of spam comments per day? Well, I installed the plugin called Bad Behavior, and LOOK at my spam count for the past two days!

Photobucket

I am impressed, indeed. Thumbs up for Bad Behavior!

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]
Posted in blogs, Wordpress. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

Web Design For Idiots

March 10, 2009 — Mrs. Mecomber

Hmm, well I sure hate to classify myself, but… this looks like a site I will need to frequent! ha! This is a site by fellow Entrecarder and CMF member, Lindsayanng. She’s a “girlie geek” who has tutorials about web design, and often reviews other blogs. She’s turning the tables a little– holding a contest for people who will review her blog! It’s the web design for idiots 500 free business card giveaway contest. Try your hand at reviewing her site, it’s not a difficult task — she’s looking for honest reviews! And the prizes are very nice: First prize is 500 business cards designed by the girlie geek herself. Second prize is a free 8×10 fine art print from bscphoto.com.

I like the blog, I recently came across it. I am a “self-made” geek as well, learning everything by trial and error and through tutorials on the Internet. I think there are a number of us gals around the ‘Net like that. :D

Back to the contest: the winner be chosen by Lindsayanng, who will use her incredible geeky powers of discrimination and taste, and she will judge according to your content, suggestions, and writing style. Use good grammar and spelling, too. Be sure to email Lindsayanng (reviews@webdesignforidiots.net) and leace a comment at the blog post to ensure she is aware of your magnus opus. Have fun!

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]
Posted in blogs, web design. Tags: , , , . Comments Off »

WordPress 2.7 Is Available

December 12, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

The latest version of WordPress, the much-acclaimed and much-publicized version 2.7, is finally available to the general public. I’ve been a WordPress user for over a year now, and I’ve suffered through six or seven upgrades to the software. I REALLY hope this is the last upgrade for a while. It has become quite a chore to do major upgrades on six blogs every other month.

With that said, WordPress 2.7 is OK. It is a complete redesign of the Admin pages. It’s really how WordPress should have been designed ages ago. So I like it, but it will take some getting used to. You can catch a sneak-peek here, with this video.

Since this release is a major, major upgrade, I have a few recommendations. Hopefully, you can avoid the major bumps and hurdles.

  • BACKUP your data files!!!!!! Never, ever, EVER upgrade or do anything serious to your blog without backing up your data first. I backup two separate ways– I use the WordPress admin way (Dashboard>>Manage>>Export) to download an XML file of all my posts, comments, etc. Know that this kind of backup will only backup your written data. It will not backup your theme nor your images nor your plugins. That’s why I have two separate backup systems. The second backup system I use saves all that data– through my web host’s cPanel Backup Wizard. Every host and cPanel is slightly different, so consult your web host for more details on how to do that.
  • Before upgrading, ALWAYS manually disable your plugins. Plugins can cause problems. Plugins are almost always the cause of upgrades gone wrong. There are just so many different kinds of plugins each with their own coding– do yourself a favor and manually disable them before you tackle an upgrade. After you’ve upgraded, activate each plugin, one by one, to check and see if a plugin causes compatibility problems.
  • Go to the WordPress development blog and read about this new 2.7 version. It will save you a lot of headaches later. This version is a major change, and at first look, the new interface is very complex. Get to know the software a little before you take the leap. It will make your transfer much easier.

I tested upgrading to WP 2.7 on my test blog. I used a plugin called WordPress Automatic Upgrade 1.2.2 plugin. Author’s page here: WordPress Automatic Upgrade 1.2.2, and everything went very smoothly. The new WordPress 2.7 has included its own automatic upgrade system, so according to the WordPress Dudes, we no longer need to use separate plugins to upgrade our blogs. I have not used the new WP upgrade feature.

There was some discussion at the WordPress Forums that upgrading using an upgrading plugin caused problems. It didn’t for me. Be sure to take a peek at the forums for a heads up on problematic issues and how to avoid/solve them.

Enjoy your new software!

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]
Posted in blogs, how to, Wordpress. Tags: , , , . Comments Off »

A Lesson to Be Learned

October 20, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

Over the weekend, I had some technical problems with my other blog, New York Traveler.net. The comments features on the blog were totally unoperational. A day previously, I had updated the Akismet plugin (Akismet is a software plugin that traps spam comments on blogs). I couldn’t be sure that the Akismet plugin was related to my problems, because I had updated it on my other blog and the comments were working fine. It was totally baffling.

After going through the usual recourse (disabling plugins one at a time, changing the blog theme, searching forums), I finally called my web host, Bluehost. The first call was a disaster: the technician said he couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so goodbye. :-p If you’re wondering why so many bloggers are leaving Bluehost, that’s probably a good reason right there.

But I called again, because I had discovered some odd language in my error logs, at my cPanel for Bluehost. You’d think the technician would have checked the logs?! Is he too busy watching his HDTV show or something?! Well, I read over the error logs and saw that for some reason, comments were being regarded as “duplicate content.” I couldn’t decode the language, so I called and talked with a gentleman named John. Wow, was he courteous and helpful! John looked at the error log and said that perhaps my blog needed a little housecleaning. He said blog databases sometimes get full of various extra stuff (blogs are extremely flexible, because so much happens with them- posting, drafting, commenting, moderating comments, etc). John said that sometimes all you have to do is a little database repair– and this is as easy as clicking a button for the process to go automatically.

Every cPanel is a little different for every host, so I can’t begin to address all the variables here. But know that if something has just suddenly gone awry, consider repairing and/or optimizing your database. A call to your host’s tech support can help you find out how to do this. For me, I just had to go to my cPanel’s database wizard, and click “repair database.” It took less than 10 seconds. And guess what? PROBLEM SOLVED!!! Thanks, John!

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]
Posted in blogs, help, websites, Wordpress. Tags: , , , , . Comments Off »

Google Launches Blog Tracking Service

October 6, 2008 — Mrs. Mecomber

Yep, Google is in the news again. And they’ve got a new thing going again. They’ve created a blog tracking service, which is basically a listing of blogs that Googlebot has crawled, and presents blog discussions by topics. For example, let’s say you wanted to know what bloggers were saying about a particular acne treatment; you’d enter the information and Google would give you a listing of everyone who’s talking about it, and when.

“Did you know that millions of bloggers around the world write new posts each week?” Google product manager Michael Cohen wrote in an Internet posting of his own.

“We’re pleased to launch a new homepage for Google Blog Search so that you too can browse and discover the most interesting stories in the blogosphere.”

The Northern California company applied technology from its Google News website to separate blog postings into clusters based on topics, stories or events.

I don’t like the sound of “tracking service.” Really, it’s more like a realtime topical index of blogs. It’s bad public relations and kind of creepy to use “tracking” in anything anymore.

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]
Posted in blogs, Google, news. Tags: , , . Comments Off »
« Older posts «
Newer posts » »