Categories
Geek Love

Feed My Inbox – Tasty RSS Feeds, That Is!

RSS Feeds can make your life so much easier when it comes to reading blogs, but sometimes I don’t want to open mine because I know I’ll end up following breadcrumbs around the internet trail for hours on end. Yes, I’m definitely prone to the “Oh, Shiny! Sparkly!” distractions. So I don’t tempt fate if it is a busy production day – I just keep NetNewsWire closed.

But there are a small handful of blogs whose posts I absolutely do NOT want to miss. Some are industry trendsetters. One or two may be friends that I know will mention their latest post when we talk so I want to make sure I get it, and some are just things I want to keep a close eye on. I want to get those select feeds in my inbox, even when I don’t read all my other RSS subscriptions. I use FeedBurner, which offers this service (you can sign up to get my posts via email over in the far right column there … hint, hint). But not everyone uses FeedBurner, so this isn’t always an option.

I needed something else.

Then I found Feed My Inbox! Just like the name says, it will feed your inbox for you. All you have to do is give it the URL for the feed you want to subscribe to and your email address, click the link in the confirmation email, and then magically once a day you’ll get your most important RSS feeds right in your inbox.

The once a day is key – if someone writes 20 posts in a day, you’ll still only get one email.

Seriously, how cool is that? LOVE it! Hope you do too!

PS – Sorry about the site being down. We’re now on a zippy fast server, and the site shouldn’t fall over anymore like it has been the past week or so. Let me know if you see anything unusual, ok? We think we’ve got everything back where it belongs, but it is always possible to miss something!

Categories
Creative Geek

Looking for a Studio in Houston?

I figure I just posted it to my other blog, so I should include it here as well — I’m looking for a studiomate for my space in the Heights here in Houston.

You: A creative type. Most likely a freelancer. Photographer, Graphic Artist, Wedding Planner, Web Designer, Invitation Designer, or something most likely along those lines.

Me: A wedding & boudoir photographer, who does geeky stuff as well like blog & SEO consulting.

The space: Adorable. Too awesome to keep it all to myself. Perfect for someone who isn’t looking for conventional leased office space but instead wants an affordable shared space that comes with an incredible studiomate – ME!.

Let me know if you’re interested! The best way to reach me about it is my contact form here.

Categories
Geek Love

What To Look For In a Hosting Company…

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine went through what might just be my worst nightmare — her hosting company’s servers were hacked. They told her that she needed to download all of her stuff, but by the time she got the message and got online, her site was GONE.

GONE. Every last single bit of her work, sites she paid for, a custom designed blog, her blog posts, all of it – GONE.

Needless to say, she was in a bit of a panic at first. Me? I was FURIOUS at her hosting company. Livid. Stunned that in this day and age, a hosting company could be run so poorly.

I ran the front end of a hosting company for over 4 years. I’m pretty darn picky when it comes to my hosting. When I got out of the hosting business, I sold my company to Hosting Matters, who had been running the back end for me all along, because I trusted them 100 zillion percent. When you’re putting your business website into someone’s hands, you need to have that much faith in them. (Want an unmetered hosting account with them for $10/month? Click here.)

Some companies cost $2.95 a month for a good reason — they aren’t running a proper business. And if you’re putting your online image in their hands, is shopping for the cheapest deal you can find a good idea? No, it isn’t. You need to make sure your host is the best, that they will keep your site up and running no matter what. Because in the end, that is all that matters to your clients. And you don’t want to be like my friend and out hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars because your hosting company isn’t running their business on the up & up.

Some things to look for:
– Where is their data center at? What are they set up to withstand? HostingMatters is in Florida. My site has been on their servers through countless hurricanes. BIG storms. It has never once gone down due to natural disaster. You can learn all about their facility here – and I love that they are transparent about this information. Is your hosting company?

– What is their backup policy for their servers? How often are they backed up? HostingMatters does daily, weekly & monthly backups. I’ve had to have them pull daily backups before for clients, and weekly backups as well. Only once in 7 years have they pulled a monthly backup, and it was due to a site being overwritten by a client on just the right day and time so that the daily & weekly backups had the new data, not the old. Definitely not the norm.

– Do they charge you to pull a backup? I learned a few weeks ago that GoDaddy charges $150 to pull a daily backup. I’ve never paid to have a backup pulled, and I think $150 is a rather high price.

– What happens if your server gets slammed with traffic? Can they handle the load? Yesterday I saw someone’s site go down because the traffic that they got was overwhelming to the server. They couldn’t recover fast enough. If your business is online, you’re dead in the water. You want to get traffic. They need to be able to monitor the load hitting the box and recover – it is a scramble for them (and you should let them know you appreciate their hard work!), but make sure you won’t be shut down just because you got discovered on Digg.com or you blogged about a celebrity wedding.

– How can you reach them if your site is down? Do they have a helpdesk? Is it hosted with the rest of their servers? Do they have a phone number you can call? I’ve always contacted HostingMatters through their Helpdesk, and their responses are always timely. They have a status page that isn’t hosted with all of their other sites. They have ways that you can contact them if everything else is down.

You are trusting your hosting company with a lot of responsibility. Make sure they deserve your trust. And no matter what, find out what you can do to do a FULL site backup – including Flash sites, MySQL databases, your entire blog including your blog theme, comments and posts – so that if your hosting company lets you down, you’re prepared.

Wondering who I think you should use? Obviously, I recommend Hosting Matters. I’ve also heard many great things about Bluehost. (Not to be confused with BluDomain – they are two different companies!)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go back up my site…

Categories
Geek Love

The Initial Steps of Setting Up a WordPress Blog…

I was talking yesterday with a client about setting up a blog for her, and she was asking how what I was going to do was different then the theme she was looking at. I was going to install WordPress. She was looking at a WordPress Theme.

For those of us that have been blogging for a long time, these things are two very different things. But you may have just started blogging. Or maybe you’ve always used Blogger or TypePad. Either way, it is unchartered territory. I want to help you out. Really, it is ok to have questions — matter of fact, please ask them in the comments, because I’m sure other people would love to know the answers too!

So when you decide that you want to kick your rankings up higher in Google, or you’re just tired of not having control over your blog (a whole post is coming on why you should host your own blog), you will want to move on to a self-hosted blog. As you might have already guessed, I’m pretty biased and I highly recommend WordPress. (I wish I got royalties every time that word was uttered. Do you realize how rich I would be?!?) WordPress is all kinds of awesome because it is open source, which basically means everyone can have access to the code and create things to improve upon the code, like plugins. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Lets focus on the basics. So the other perk? WordPress is *free*.

But before you can set up WordPress, you need a hosting account. I’ve been with Hosting Matters since 2002 and they make my heart sing. They are among the very, very best. Personalized service that just can’t be beat. More importantly, they pay attention to what their clients need. Photographers? Well, we need a LOT of storage space, especially if we host our own image galleries for client photos. So Hosting Matters has come up with the perfect solution, virtual data room … but you have to know the right people to get in on the deal. Lucky you, I’m one of those people! Click here to learn all about their “Unmetered for $10/month” plan.

You may already have a hosting account if you have a Flash portfolio for your website. Some, but not all, of the portfolio hosting companies can host your blog as well. Last I checked, BigFolio and BluDomain can. Livebooks can’t. I don’t know about ShowIt. This is why some people have separate URLs for their blog then for their portfolio. From the whole Google love perspective, I don’t recommend that. You want people going to one URL. It will help you in the long run as far as Google, and it will make things easier for your clients too.

You’ll also most likely need a domain name. I use GoDaddy for most of my domains. I don’t buy them through a hosting company because I want to make sure I own it – not them.

Once you have hosting, you can then download a copy of WordPress and set it all up. It isn’t that hard, but it isn’t everyone’s thing. There are lots of instructions out there on how to do it. Don’t want to do it yourself? Does the thought of MySQL databases make your head spin? Let me know by using the contact form — we can hook you up.

Then, once you have WordPress up and running, you can start to think about themes to use to make your site all pretty, or plugins to add to make it all cool and fancy. The hard part is over and the fun has just begun!

Categories
SEO for Wedding Vendors

Making Your Blog Savory for Clients and Delicious for Google with SEO!

You want Seo Consultant to just give your site all the love and attention that you think it deserves. You want to be at the top of all the search results. You want your site to be usable, something that has everything that your clients need so that when they find you through Google or any of the other search engines they can figure out how to book you. But you’re lost. You have no idea where to start. You’re a photographer, wedding planner, florist, cake artist, caterer or (fill in the blank) — not a website designer or Search Engine Optimization specialist. How on earth are you supposed to do it all?

That is ok! The time has come – I’m here to help! (I feel like I should have a superhero cape on as I type that.)

For over 10 years, I’ve helped people build better websites. (Garden Ridge, Canyon Ranch and even Jewel (the singer) are on my list of companies I’ve worked with.) I’ve studied, researched, attended conferences, and learned so much over the years. Now it is your turn. I want to share my knowledge with you. This is your chance for your very own SEO, Better Blogging & Site Review! YAY!!!

SEO, Blog & Site Reviews will consist of an initial conversation to discuss what your target market is and who your primary competition is, and any goals you might have for your website. I will then review your site from top to bottom and behind the scenes for SEO, usability, and overall things that can be improved.

With Amazowl’s Amazon Marketing Training, you need to have a process for handling shipping, providing tracking, responding to emails, and every other aspect of the interaction between yourself and Amazon, and yourself and Amazon’s customers (most important of all).

When all that is done, I’ll prepare a CUSTOM report of my findings, going over different specific things that you can do to improve your site immediately, and boost your Search Rankings for the long haul. Full of tips to make your blog and your website better, from best practices to things that will make your business rock. We will then set up a 1 hour call (or meeting if you’re local) to discuss the report and any questions that they might have. It is all about you and what you need!

SEO Site Reviews will be $500 through the end of 2009. Want to sign up right now? Just can’t wait? Want a special deal? The first 10 clients to sign up and pay for their review will get a special rate of $250!

If you set up a One-on-One Workshop with me, even after those first 10 spots are gone, you’ll be able to add on the SEO Site Review for $250 through the end of 2009. All sorts of business goodness in one package!

Ready to have your site reviewed? Don’t want to sit in a workshop or read books and learn about things that have nothing to do with what you specifically need? Feel like you need more support along the way? I can’t wait to work with you! You can use this form to contact me. You can click here to learn more about me and click here to read about other things I can do for you. Want one of those 10 half-price spots? Hurry up before they are GONE!

Update: THREE of the first ten spots remain! (as of 10/9/09 at 3pm)