Eileen Lonergan

These are bits of advice sent to me from my community of Expand2Web Experts.

My question: Does anyone work with Photographers? Or how do you guide people who have lots of images on their sites and have a slow load time? Plugins? Is hosting is an issue?

From Roy Anthony Solis, publisher of WebShoo.com and the brains behind Koomohost.

1. Always format images for the web (not print), before uploading. (Important)

2. For the web bigger is not always better, usually nothing wider than 950px because of people’s screen size.

3. Add a watermark logo to all pics

3. Disable right click on site (code or plugin) Note: Plugin I found http://wordpress.org/plugins/no-right-click-images-plugin/

4. Install wp.smush it plugin

5. Install caching plugin (visitors come back or look at same pics, better to look at a cached version)

6. Optional (depends on theme), use built in Gallery and install a Lightbox plugin (e.g. simple lightbox)

7. Upload only what you want to showcase on site. For showing pics to clients who want to view all their pics, use Adobe’s Revel (http://www.adoberevel.com/) or ShutterFly.com

8. If pictures are going to be thousands, consider upgrading to their own VPS.

Other articles he suggested: Optimizing Images: http://inobscuro.com/tutorials/optimizing-images-for-web-35/

And here’s the “Save for the Web” feature for Illustrator: http://blogs.adobe.com/ivandavid/illustrator_cs6_save_for_web/

From Tim Tewalt the power behind Simple2Web.com

1. Use NextGEN Gallery and NextGen Scroll is an add on. This also does the watermark.

2. Save images as .jpg try 75 – 85% quality. 72dpi resolution. Different graphic tools produce different results. Many photographers have problems exporting for web. I use the Mac application Acorn and it does a really good conversion and size reduction.

Thanks guys for this awesome info!

JetPack is a Plugin from Automatic which gives your blog additional capabilities such the ability to allow your readers to subscribe to your posts via email. I actually don’t love using this feature from JetPack for two reasons:

• one it is hard to figure out if anyone has registered for your blog, and
• two it sends your entire blog post to their inbox.  I am a vain blogger, I want people to come to my site!

If you are trying to get your list of email subscribers from JetPack follow these steps:

1. Go to your Dashboard
2. Click on JetPack
3. Click on Site Stats
4. Scroll all the way down
5. On the bottom left, you’ll see a section labeled Subscriptions
6. Click on Subscribers.  Here you may export the list into a CSV file if you wish.

I have been using Mail Chimp to manage my blog subscriptions for a while and this seems to be working well for me. I have a few posts that you may find helpful if you are customizing your Mail Chimp Campaign:

Change the Subject Line of the Mail Chimp RSS Feed
How to Configure Auto Responders with Mail Chimp
Customize the Mail Chimp Sign Up form in WordPress

I recently launched a website for my friend and client Jennifer Allison.  Jennifer is the author of the popular Gilda Joyce  mystery series which are a bit hit with young girls.   Jennifer has written a new book: Iggy Loomis, Superkid in Training, which is for young readers. Jennifer was lucky enough to team up with the uber talented Mike Moran who did all of the illustrations. Clearly someone someplace was looking out for me, because to get a client who is a writer & has a professional illustrator means lots of cool stuff to put on a website!

Jennifer asked me to give her a site with bold colors and big graphics.  I wanted to use the SmallBiz Theme from Expand2Web.  I am really enjoying their new Responsive Layout and I thought it made sense that a website that contains content for young children should look as good as possible on all types of screens.  The one thing that I wanted to tweak for IggyLoomis.com was the header.  I wanted the logo to be prominent and only to feature the Author & Illustrator names in the header.

To achieve the look of the logo dropping below the header put this in your CSS file:

#header {
height: 240px;
}

#header {
margin: 0 auto;
overflow: visible;
padding-left: 10px;
width: 995px;
}

Tweak the height and padding left if necessary.

Then to only show the Author & Illustrators names go into the SmallBiz Options panel and add the information that you want:

Now the trick is that you want these items on two different lines – so I went into my Header.php and added <br/> after the Zip Code line:

Tricks like these really customize a website.  I couldn’t do tricks like this without the very helpful support of my team of Expand2Web Experts.  Thank you CJ and Thomas for sharing code!

Last week I was able to have a Skype interview with Mitch Joel and the topic was his new book Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It.

The book explores 5 movements within the business landscape and what you need to do to stay relevant, both personally and for your business.  If you don’t keep up, the message is pretty clear, within 5 years you will be irrelevant.

Sounds a bit fatalistic doesn’t it? Don’t believe it? Check out the commercial for the book.

I am publishing the series My Squiggly Line on WebShoo.com, where you can find the full interview with Mitch Joel.

If you leave a comment you will have a chance to win a copy of the book!  I have a fresh copy of the hardcover that I will stick in the mail just for you!

Also, check out my blog series My Squiggly Line in which I highlight people who have adopted technology into their careers not just to stay relevant but to prosper.

I was recently connected with Ingrid Drago, owner of South Shore recruitment firm, ID Staffing Solutions who needed a simple website for her business.

I loved working with Ingrid because she is smart, has a great eye, and playful sense of humor. There are times during every project where you either need to laugh at your self or deserve to be laughed at, Ingrid was great at going with the flow, making suggestions and not afraid to share her opinions.  I am sure it is those characteristics that make her such a valuable professional recruiter to her many corporate clients.

For ID Staffing Solutions website I used the SmallBiz theme for WordPress from Expand2Web.  I choose the blank canvas layout (the SmallBiz theme has 14 layout options, including a responsive layout with a drag and drop widgetized homepage).  I also used my CSS Tricks to Add Social Media Icons to the Navigation Bar and created a custom header.

If you are looking for professional employment in or around Boston or the South Shore, or if you are a company trying to fill a position with local talent. I highly suggest that you contact ID Staffing Solutions. Ingrid has been in the business for a long time and is a proven professional.

If you are looking for a website, well then please contact me.

Put *|RSSITEM:TITLE|* into the Email Subject line.

Notes:

• You need to pause your Mail Chimp RSS feed campaign in order to make any edits.
• You will need to resume the campaign once you have made the edits
• You can include text next to the code in the email subject line so if your blog has a title – feel free to put that after the code

Other blog posts I have published on Mail Chimp that you may find helpful:

• Customize the sign up form with MailChimp
• How to set up a Pop Up Subscription form with MailChimp
• How to configure Auto Responders with MailChimp

PS Thank you to reader Vicente for making the suggestion that I change this feature on my own RSS feed campaign, I never even gave it a thought.

A byline or author link for blog posts isn’t set up by default with the SmallBiz theme.

I think the byline is an important connection for your rel=author Google markup and if you have guest bloggers on your website it let’s the reader know right away who is writing the post.

You can place the code in one or two places, depending upon where you want the line to show:

• Single.php (for individual posts – put the code beneath the title)
• Posts.php (for the blog roll – put the code next to the date)

Copy this code and place it just after the title

<p>Written by: <?php the_author_link(); ?></p>

Those steps will just give you a byline.  If you want that to link to your About page you need to go into your Dashboard ->Users ->Your Profile and in the bio box add the link.  You can also use the Biographical Info space to link to Google+ or other places where you can be found on the web.

To

Back in the 90′s I was at a dinner party in Hong Kong having a lovely chat with the man to my right when he asked me what I planned to do with myself once my babies were no longer babies. At that point I had two babies under 18 months old. We had moved our little family of three + a black lab from Singapore to Hong Kong when I was five months pregnant with baby #2 and the instant his question hit my brain my eyes filled up with tears and all I could come out with was, “I think I would like to sit down for a few minutes”.  Fast forward 15 years, and as every Irish mammy worth her salt will tell you, “careful what you wish for”, because now I sit endlessly: at my desk, in my car, watching the children during sporting events, same position different venue.

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I don’t use Instagram a great deal, but the power of it is undeniable. I was recently contacted by the guys at SWSTemplates who built a new plugin called Social Roll, which they are selling for only $12 over at Canyon Code.  They asked me to test the plugin, and I wanted to share with you my impressions.

First, for some reason I had it in my head that the plugin was something that would display as a widget and show your latest Instagram posts in a page sidebar.  The reality is that by connecting the plugin you get a subtle Instagram icon on the right of your page in the header.  Truthfully, at first I thought, this is it?  But as I thought about it I sort of like how it isn’t very intrusive and it doesn’t really compete with the rest of your site design.  I tried using it with the Eileen Layout of the SmallBiz theme, and the rotating images displayed over the top of the Instagram, so that is a bit kludgey, but I asked the guys about this and the developers are looking into a fix, on other pages it worked great.

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I follow a really great woman on Twitter, Kristi Hines who posted a link to an article, Facebook Tools That Lead to Results. There are lots of interesting bits in the article, but specifically I want to share with you the tool, LikeAlyzer it is a simple tool for analyzing the performance of your Facebook page.

In two seconds you can easily get some good feedback on areas that you could improve upon, which could improve Likes and engagement on your business Facebook page.

Other interesting feedback http://likealyzer.com shares:

• which type of posts works best for your Fans
• the time of day that garners the most interaction from your Fans
• links to articles which you may find interesting

Pages that are crushing it on Facebook that you may want to learn from:

• Style Station scored 98!
• Ellen DeGeneres Show a 93
• Audi Deutschland 94

Are you using any special tools to analyze your performance on Facebook?  I know that lots of business pages out there are Liking Other Businesses on Facebook, which is a factor in measurement on by Likealyzer.  How are the pages you manage doing? Brag below in the comments please!

There may be some instances when you want to space out the items on your navigation bar so they aren’t aligned to the left. In those cases put the following code into your Custom CSS.

#access li {
padding-left: 60px;
}

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The great thing about working on a website for a wedding planner is that they really love to play with a look.  Christine March, Toronto based wedding planner and I had a lot of fun working on colors for her recently launched website.  She has a lovely designer who had given her a logo and from there we played around with a lot of schemes (we are both pretty visual and needed to see lots of options before we could commit).

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You may edit the content background area of the SmallBiz Theme Responsive Layout with these simple steps:

• Upload the new background image to your media library
• Copy the url
• Put this code into your CSS
• Add the URL of your image
• Save + remember to refresh your homepage

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With the recent launch of the SmallBiz responsive theme I have been spending time considering the functionality of the websites I design.  I am a trifecta Apple user, and I sincerely use all three devices to consume content.  I had it in my head that by using a responsive theme the sites that I am building would look and work exactly how I intended on my big giant desktop as they would in the palm of my hand.  After laying out a recently designed site for a local restaurant, I realized that some tweaks needed to be made because elements I liked on my big screen just didn’t look as I expected on the iPad or smart phone. 

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This is an article that I originally wrote for my newsletter list.  In case you don’t subscribe, I thought I would share it here on my blog.  If you have already ready it, thank you!

I have a client who I really like. She is smart, clear in the direction she wants to move her business, open to new ideas and is specific about a budget. In our recent annual meeting we were discussing marketing. Per usual I was encouraging her to blog and use social media. She is in real estate and I felt like my ideas were clear and tangible:

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My client coined the headline Teaching an Old Dog New Clicks, so I can’t claim credit for being clever.

Through the magic of chit chat and social media JP Powell, half owner of local icon Salt Marsh Pottery, and I were connected.  The Powells and their staff create hand made ceramic pottery that is made by pressing flowers from the south coast of MA into clay, hand cutting, shaping and drying the pieces, then ultimately hand painting, glazing and finishing them.  They also have a process for capturing baby feet and hands in clay.  The Powell’s are told repeatably that if the house was on file the baby prints are what

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Local University is a nationwide series of Search Engine Optimization seminars created specifically for small business owners. The panel of educators are the best, very approachable, knowledgeable and they really want to see local businesses succeed with their digital presence.  I was lucky enough to attend their most recent event last Friday in Baltimore.

At the end of the event attendees are given a 12 month road map, manageable tasks to complete in a reasonable amount of time which will help them navigate to digital success. Success = showing up HIGH in Google.

Some of these tips you may know, some may be new, but I had the vantage point of being in the very back of the room and could watch when people were scribbling notes and at some points I could literally see light bulbs going off over heads. This list is in random order.

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I recently put up a post on How to Verify Your Website in Pinterest which required you to access the back end of your website through an FTP client.  I had more than one person tell me this was a bit daunting, BUT lucky all of us, you can now Verify Pinterest with Meta Tags.

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A while back my friend Thomas, developer of the SmallBiz theme for WordPress told me that he was building a responsive theme.  Because I love to be on trend I could not wait to get started with the theme and build a site, which I did for the Cherry Building in historic downtown New Bedford, MA.

The homepage has lots of flexibility for layouts, as it is all based on widgets.  I had some really beautiful images (thank you to my photographer mother), so I really wanted to use those in a rotating slide show.  I love using large rotating slides and back in the day I would have to login via FTP and modify the theme files if I wanted a slideshow this large. With the new responsive theme I don’t have to do any FTP work (which I know was daunting to some of you out there).

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I recently taught a class as my local library, Starting a WordPress blog. I am on the board of the library and volunteered to teach the class as part of an effort in offering some Adult Education programs. I have to be honest, I was really hopeful that I would get four people to come out in January in New England. I really would have been happy to help only one person, but in my mind, four felt popular – turns out I had ten! The students were delightful and it really is fun to be the one to empower them with the skills to become their own publisher. I will share links to their blogs in a later post.

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