Entries Tagged 'Techno Mumbo Jumbo' ↓

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I have been stressing the move to Bluehost for about the past month.  I have been digging up everywhere looking for the answer.  Cheryl has started playing with WP.org and offer some advice…ALL THE ADVICE HAS BEEN VERY HELPFUL, but it didn’t answer my the specific question I had in my mind…Ya See, here was the situation…I spent soo much time on my wordpress.com blog and google was loving it, Everyone was reading my blog via readers, and accessing it through my domain http://focusonfrederick.com/  My domain was a part of Wordpress.com.  My mind was racing…how do I get this over to Bluehost without disrupting service and risk losing my google juice.  I first ran a couple test blogs on Bluehost, but I never took that last step…make the change to the domain!!!  Well, it turns out…that is the first thing you do and the rest falls into place…whew!!!  So here you go:

1. On your wordpress blog (you can move others here too) go to manage
   1. Click export 
   2. Save this xml file on your hard drive (remember where you put it)
2. Move Nameserver to bluehost on your godaddy domain.  You can click either one to change it.
3. In cPanel goto manage domains 
   1. Create Addon Domain
   2. This is your domain with godaddy
   3. Get EPP code from godaddy 
   4. Paste it in the space & hit verify.
   5. Close that new window if you aren’t transferring the domain
   6. Scroll to the bottom click accept or ok.  (I forget what this says because at the time I created a ticket for my “problem” The problem was me.)
   7. Verify that your domain was just created as an addon domain.
4. Now go to your cPanel and find Fantastico De Luxe 
   1. You will see Wordpress on the left hand side
   2. Click New Installation
   3. Pick your domain
   4. Follow the instructions for creating your account
   5. Now you are set
5. Open a new browser window and type in your URL.  You should see a generic looking blog.
6. On the bottom right you will see the admin link.
   1. Click on it and sign in with the name you used in the set up with Fantastico
   2. Bookmark this page.  This is how you will go back into it.
   3. It looks just like your wordpress.com panel with some changes.
   4. Click manage and then import this time
   5. Browse for your file.  The one you saved in the 1st step.
   6. Wahlah… you have all of your post and comments
7. Now you have to set up your themes and widgets.  That will be a different post
8. All of your pictures will be links to your old blog…so don’t delete your old blog until you transfer all of your pictures.  Otherwise leave it up.

The process was pretty painless (20/20 hindsight)  If you don’t have an outside blog yet, I would suggest Wordpress.com as a place to start.   If you already have an outside blog, I suggest Bluehost.com as a place to host it.  There is a lot of bundled up software in there…I will have to figure it out and get back to you.  (like photo gallery software to create your own gallery website) See below for more information.

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE]

How are you relating to people? This is our future…be a part of it.

Edit: I decided to add the rest of Mike Wesch’s videos. The theory is amazing. You don’t realize it until you really see it.

Introducing our YouTube Ethnography Project This is the beginning. You have just watched the first project above.

A Vision of Students Today The one that Cheryl mentioned. Sucks, I was in school before this was popular. I can so relate to this.

Informations R/evolution This is his latest project.

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If you follow Cheryl Johnson or Kristal Kraft(whenever she writes here again…KK did your google alert go off yet?), you have seen the uses of Screen Capture or Screen Prints.  They usually use Snagit.  Everyone using a PC with windows has a screen capture program built-in.  (MAC Users I am sure have something more elaborate than this…write your own post Turner!!! :-)) The “Prnt Scrn” button will work for you.  By pushing that button you now have captured a copy of the whole screen.  You can paste that into any MS program like Word or Publisher, etc.  If you need to doctor it up, you can paste into  Paint to modify it.  (Crop and write text on it)  Save it and use it in any program as a picture.  Let say you don’t want the whole screen but only one window.  Click on the window to activate it and Push ALT+Prnt Scrn and this will only copy the active window not the whole screen (providing the active window isn’t the whole screen)

If you read my post before, you know I like FREE.  Especially Free Software.  I usually get it at the Give-Away-Of-The-Day (today is a Photo to Film Software)  I picked up along the way a program called TNT Screen capture.  I used it to capture the finger on the keyboard and the Snag It picture.  It has built in feature like the Print Screen but you can also adjust what you what you really want instead of the whole screen.  It will also add nifty little features like torn corners or rounded, shadows, etc.  You can add pictures and arrows to this also right in the program and save it for use in a blog post or marketing material to show off a feature of your website.

Since I have become addicted to Flickr, I have found another FREE program offered by them called Flickr and Webimager.  It is not as fancy as the other two, but you don’t have to send to another program to crop it.  It will let you take what you want.  You can save directly to your harddrive or straight to your Flickr Account.  They have plenty of third party software for you to manage your photos.

Short and sweet…Just a couple of programs to help you get your point across with illustrations.

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Of course, this isn’t something new if you have checked out Kristal Kraft’s blogs before.  She has a camera phone photo blog.  I thought this was really cool.  I tried finding a post explaining this since she is the “unofficial tech support” and found nothing.  I checked Tool Boy’s Blog for information since he knows all of the gadgets, but nothing.  I thought, how can you email a post to your blog?   I am new to all of this blogging stuff and my idle time is spent reading the master bloggers like Kristal Kraft, Teresa Boardman and Jeff Turner.    There are plenty others, but I just don’t have enough hours in a day to read them all.  (You are probably wondering, why in the heck do you need a camera phone blog in the first place?)  Well it helps with your blogging addiction… a quick fix when you start to shake.  And also, when you’re bored hanging out somewhere your wife drags you and want to be productive or atleast creative, you can tap out a quick post.

I dug around and found out that you couldn’t do email post directly with Wordpress.com but there is a work around in Flickr.  In your Flickr account (create one if you don’t have one yet) Under account settings is the “email” tab.  There, Flickr will allow you to create a photo upload email address AND a blog email address.  It will walk you through the steps to marry your blog and flickr accounts.  I created a new blog just for photos like Kristal.  So, now when I am sitting around doing nothing, I can do two things, snap off some photos and send them to my Flickr account or blog about it on my Wordpress Blog.  Either way the photo is stored on your Flickr account.  If you decide to blog about one of your pictures later, there is a “Blog This” button above each picture in Flickr.  You will be able to post directly from Flickr.

Here again to help me with my mobile craving.  I found out that Wordpress.com has a mobile version and yes you can post from your internet capable phone.  You just have to goto http://m.wordpress.com  Flickr offers the samething… just go to http://m.flickr.com  Both fit on your screen nicely and are very functional.

Hope this helps you get your blogging fix…I am sure it will mine.

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Ok, you have all these names in your contact database in Outlook. What can you do with them? Did you know you can send out form letters to all of them? Put them on Mailing Labels? Below are a few steps to make this happen. Practice makes perfect, just try this and some different things with the Mail Merge function…It could eventually save you some time…

These steps are only to show you where to find everything. You will have to cancel the menu to go back to make some choices that I mention below.

1. Open up your Contacts
2. Click “Tools” in top toolbar.
3. In the drop down you will see “Mail merge”

This will have your options on what you want to do next. Do you want labels or letters? I am going to explain labels. You can play with creating letters on your own. You can see you have a few choices in your Contact section. Do you want to create labels for everyone in your database or did you only have a few in mind? Document file? That’s for letters for the most part. (If you typed up a fabulous letter to one client and would like it to sent it others in your database, you would find and select it here)

Contact data file. Did you want to keep this group of contact, grouped together to use again? You will need to give it a name and a location to save. This does not remove them from your database, only makes a copy.

Merge options. This is where you make the choice of labels or letters. (envelopes or catalogs) Envelopes are similar to labels, but it prints right on the envelope. Merge to… New document. If you save to a new document you can retrieve the document later and print more labels. The other options are printer and email. They go straight to the printer or email, as they suggest.

OK, cancel out of this. Now you know what you questions to ask yourself… What am I doing and who am I sending it to?

You can see I categorize my contacts. (a little OCD) I think it makes it easier to view. In this case I want to send something to all of the Home Inspectors in my Contact database. I click on the first one in the list and then hold the SHIFT button and click the bottom one. That selects the whole list. You can sporadically select contacts by holding the CTRL button while clicking the contact. Now you have them selected go back to the Tools>Mail merge menu. You then need to select “Only selected Contacts” and all fields. Drop down to the bottom and select Mailing Labels. Click OK and then it will open up Microsoft Word. You will have a pop up telling you select “Setup” on the next window. When you select “Set up” it will be looking for what type of labels will you be printing to. Most common is Avery 5160. This in the 3 wide and 10 high sheets of labels. Now click “Close” at the bottom.

Next, you can start making the labels look like you want. You should now be looking at a blank sheet with the cursor blinking in the upper left hand side. This is label number one. This will be the only one you work on. Here you will set the Font, the color, the format for the rest of them. Make up your mind NOW before you proceed…It is much easier going thru this once than having to back and fix.

Above is the tool bars on your document. The bottom one should be used for your merged data. Hoover over top of each button. Here you should see one that says “Address Block” This is the quickest way to build the list. Otherwise click “Insert Merged Fields” and insert the data fields that you want to be on the mailing label. YOU WILL NEED TO FORMAT THE LABEL AS YOU WERE TYPING IT. Like spaces between first name and last name. Enter after the names and enter after the property address. Commas after the city and spaces after the State. The “Address Block” will show you this menu.

Pick and choose what fields you want on the address block. The example will show in the preview window. IF YOU DON’T WANT THE CUSTOMERS NAME, uncheck the block. But now you will have to type either… Current Resident, Neighbor or Friend etc. On the line above ((Address Block))

Now does it look like you want? If not, change it. Next find the button that says “propagate labels” Wahlah!!! If you click the “view merged data” button and you will see what your labels will look like. Next you will need to print. Click Merge to New Document button on the Mail Merge tool bar. It will create a document of labels with all of your data on it. It will give you the option to merge all of the data or certain number of labels. When you are done you can save this file and print again later.

Play around and see what you can create. This will not ruin your database in your Contact list.

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