I hope y’all are taking advantage of the Thirty Day Challenge hosted by Ed Dale.
Even if you don’t “get it all”, you’re still going to learn a lot.
I’ve compiled a list of links and added some to those found in the 30DC forums on a static page here Thirty Day Challenge Links (and more).
Also we recorded our Internet Development SIG meeting that was broadcast on Ustream.tv on August 12, 2008
A number of our meetings are broadcast live. You can view them here.
This years Thirty Day Challenge Started today, Aug 1 2008.
It’s not too late to get started! Read about the TDC.
Best of luck with your 30DC!
Tuesday, September 11, 7PM the Internet Development SIG will be host to a Internet Business Roundtable Discussion.
While all are invited, this roundtable will be of special interest for those
who have been taking June Hollister’s Online Business Classes. The
objectives are:
To share what is and isn’t working for each participant
To critique each other’s sites (if so desired)
To elicit ideas on improvements
Other brainstorming topics
This is a Roundtable, not a class or course. We will view sites live online
of those who want to participate so that the group can discuss.
Participants are welcome to bring their laptops to take notes, and in case
your site isn’t published to the web yet. Please feel free to bring
anything: handouts, notes, questions, etc. that may be of benefit to the
group.
Click here for a handy form you can fill out before the meeting.
We explored a lot of territory on Aug 14th, however, I was a bit disappointed with the sparse attendance. Serious webmasters need a maintainable and successful web site, whether it’s a blog, a conventional site or a combination. The material covered, while not always appearing relevant, is in one way or another. I hope that those who attended were able to find at least a bit of take-home information that will better their sites. As promised, here are the PowerPoint slides from the session.
Tom Kiehl
Tuesday, July 10th, we’ll investigate how to take your basic Wordpress installation, add widgets/plugins, tweak it, massage it and make it reflect the individual look and feel to make it your own.
We’l also cover viewing stats for your blog (or any web site) and what they mean, and what they don’t.
If you have any personal tips and success stories on what works well for you, please share them with the group!
If you have any outstanding issues in either installing, hosting, or modifying it, make sure your voice is heard so we can help.
See you there!
When it comes to hosting your Wordpress blog, you generally have just two options: Windows with IIS running PHP and MySQL, or Linux with Apache, PHP and MySQL.
For the most part, neither has an advantage over the other, except for one biggie available on Linux/Apache, and that is mod_rewrite.
Mod_rewrite allows for friendly URLs for your permalinks.
What is a permalink? It is a permanent link, or shortcut that is used to bookmark blog entries.
The default permalink looks something like this:
http://blog.vbsig.com/?p=10
As you might have noticed, it’s not very intuitive or descriptive.
A “pretty” permalink might look something like this:
http://blog.vbsig.com/index.php/2007/06/13/sample-post/
The sample-post at the end would be the title of blog entry.
Not that you personally would spend much time looking at the permalink itself, but guess who does?
——— SEARCH ENGINES! ———
Search engines will include page names in their keyword indexing. The result… a better chance that your site will be higher in the search results.
So to maximize your blog’s station in the search engines, I’d recommend using a Linux server such as 1and1
See the tutorial “Wordpress Step by Step“
After a successful demonstration of installing Wordpress, I’d like to mention my favorite Wordpress plugins.
All in One SEO Pack does so much for helping search engines index your site. It provides for custom page titles, meta keywords and descriptions on the landing page, static pages and posts.
WP-phpMyAdmin gives you full access to your MySQL database. You can do whatever maintenance you need to do through the easy to use web interface, right from your Wordpress control panel!
Google Sitemaps Generator creates industry standard sitemaps in xml and optionally the gzip format. The Sitemaps standard has been adopted by most major search engines, and many of the search engines accept what’s called Pinging with your sitemap which tells the search engine that your site has been updated.
wp-Table Displays nice tables (use the css option) that you can type in online, or upload as csv files.
To use the plugins, be sure you’re using a Wordpress Theme that supports plugins/widgets.
Happy blogging!
Installing Wordpress on Web Hosting - June 12th 7PM - ish
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007, after Doc releases his deathgrip on the podium, I’ll be doing a live session on installing Wordpress blogging software during the TBCS Internet Development SIG,
Wordpress is a customizable blogging application that is run on a web server (this blog is currently using Wordpress).
It supports installable Themes that allow you to choose from many color settings and page layouts. Many themes support widgets which extend the functionality of the application as well as personalizing the content on the sidebars.
Many users load it on a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server, however it works just as well on a WIMP? (Windows, IIS, MySQL, PHP) server.
This blog and the live install and setup will be demonstrated on a Windows hosting server.
We’ll cover where to get the FREE Wordpress software, setting up the hosting account, creating the database, installing the software, configuring and customizing, installing themes, plugins/widgets and more!
