Installing the Plugin to Add Files

Click on the “Add a Plug-in…” icon on the bottom right of your screen.

After clicking on the icon, you will be taken to a web page. Scroll down the page to find the plugin called “Insert File(s).” Click “download”

Follow the instructions to install.

After installing, you should close LiveWriter and open.

After opening LiveWriter, Maximize the LiveWriter window.

You will see the new icon called “Insert File(s)…”

Using the Plugin to Add Files

Click the “Insert File(s)…” link and a dialogue box will open.

Click the “…” to navigate to the file on your harddrive.

Add text in the “Text to appear as link:” field.

Hit “Insert” and you are finished.

Well…I did everything and my file did not upload

The issue may be related to how your blog was set up. If the file did not upload, do this:

1) Select the “My Blog uses FTP” as well.

2) If that does not work, contact your webmaster and ask for instructions on how to configure the FTP settings.

I manage over 100 websites. For each site, I may have two different login identities. That is a ton of usernames and passwords! I tried RoboForm and found this tool to be invaluable! It is a critical tool I use multiple times daily. Here’s the goods…

1. When I installed Roboform, it automatically gathered all of the usernames and passwords stored in my browsers. I forgot I had created identities on certain sites! In fact, Roboform reminded me of some great sites!
2. With Roboform, all you simply do is click on a favorites-styled toolbar, navigate to your favorite and click. Roboform automatically takes you to the webpage, enters your login information and submits within a second or two! This saves time!!!
3. Are you still living in 1997 and want a printed list of all your logins? Roboform has a one-click function that prints an alphabetically organized list of your passwords.
4. “What if someone steals my laptop?!” God forbid. It happens. Roboform has a feature that asks for your overall password so no one can access your information.

The cost for Roboform is negligible when it comes to a software tool. It costs only $29.95. It comes with free lifetime updates!

To get a free, fully-working trial of Roboform, click the banner below.

Robots (also called spiders) are programs developed by Google and other search engine companies which visit your website daily and gather information from your site. These are welcome guests and must have access to your site if you want to appear well in the search engines.

Not all websites are robot-friendly. How is that? The worst websites are those which do not have any content at all. They may appear to have content (in images), but there is no actual text on the page. Some of these websites are nicely designed and have text in the graphics. However, robots are not human and cannot read text in graphics. See this nicely designed site. It only has text in the pictures. If you were a robot, you would see nothing! That is unfortunate.

We have clients that used to have websites such as these. They paid good money for a nicely designed site, only to have it never do anything in the search engines. We are able to take sites like the one above and maintain the design, yet give the robots some content that they can read.

What about Content?

Your first page is most important. If you prevent robots from getting to the content on your first page or your first page has content, but the menu is all images, you are asking for trouble.

First, is your site made in such a way that your main content is not on the first page? Have you heard of a “splash” page? It is either a graphic animation or timed initial page that lacks in content. Here is an example of a site with a splash page. Notice that after 5 seconds, the initial page goes to the most content-oriented page. While this is not the worst example, it is not good. The robots do not wait 5 seconds. They will either travel through the links on the first page or bounce right off the site. The only thing salvaging this site is that they have a link to the home page on their splash page.

Second, I find home pages with decent content. However, the links to internal pages are all graphics or complicated scripts. Robots cannot follow graphics and still stumble through the scripts. Here is a website that virtually blocks the robots from crawling into the internal pages. These things are not always noticeable to those who do not know coding. However, a webmaster should be able to identify them. In this particular example. The look can remain exactly the same if they just used some robot-friendly coding for their links.

Third, do you have a lot of content on your site? Many people do not like to see content on their site. Many people devour the content and will read through it all. From the statistics/analytics that I have seen, most people spend at least 3-4 minutes reading through the material. Do not be afraid of content. It is the ONLY way you will get good rankings and tons of traffic. One of my favorite examples of a site which has tons of traffic and is one of the most prominent dating sites is www.match.com. When you go to their site, you will see primarily graphics. Scroll down the page. Notice the content? This is huge!

Let’s visit another highly competitive website, www.myweddingfavors.com. Scroll down their page. Look at all of the links to all of the internal pages. This site is HUGE on content.

Content is for your visitors first, robots second!

Let’s face it, robots do not purchase your products. They simply crawl your content. The more content you have, the more traffic you will gain. Give the robots plenty of content. However, when you write your content, do so in a way that it sells your product or gives your visitors the information they seek. So, when you have content on your site, think about your visitors then the robots.

• As a website developer, I have to use Chrome to see if websites look and function the same.
• As an internet surfer, I love to use Chrome from the standpoint of its speed and clean interface.
• As a search engine professional, I cannot use Chrome. It is brand new (of this posting) and still lacks some valuable plug-ins and tools. I am sure that many will adapt FireFox’s plugins to adapt with Chrome.

Click Here to Get Google Chrome

Why I already love Chrome.

• Speed: Even with a 5mb broadband connection, the loading speed of webpages is significantly faster than Internet Explorer and FireFox. In fact, it is blazingly fast! I tried to install Safari on two of my PCs, but I cannot get it to run, so I cannot compare the speed with Safari.
• Forms: The boxes on forms are highlighted in a yellow/orange that makes it easy to see where I am at when completing forms.
• Spell Checking: While Chrome highlights misspelled words (unlike IE), it does not give suggestions.
• Tabbing: IE7 and FireFox have great tabbing systems which allow you to open multiple windows. Chrome improves on this and allows you to drag an open tab down to have it as its own stand alone window. This will come in handy when you have to view two different sites at the same time. You don’t have to open Chrome again. Just click and drag a tab.
• Browser Crashing: If your browser crashes, Chrome keeps in memory your last open pages when you restart.
• Hyperlinks: When you hover over a hyperlink, a cool status bar fades in on the bottom of your browser showing you exactly where the link is taking you. This fades in and out when you hover. This is an improvement over FireFox.
• Find: This is also an improvement. The field requires far less mouse movement. The find field shows up in the upper right corner of your screen (not the bottom left as in FireFox). The find feature also shows how many times the query appears on the page and on which particular instance you are on currently. When I search in FireFox, I find myself hitting “next” and not realizing right away that I already found that particular instance.
• Memory Management: Do you notice your browser getting sluggish? Perhaps you have opened a window that requires too many resources. You can simply “right click” over a tab and see the task manager.
• Generous Font Size in URL: I like the larger pixel size in the browser field.

Why it will take me some time to really love Chrome

• Tools and Plugins: As noted above, since Chrome is so new, the currrent tools and plugins I use with FireFox are not available in Chrome.
• Spell Checking: As noted above, does not give the corrections, it only shows misspellings.
• Importing Bookmarks: I imported my bookmarks from FireFox during the installation of Chrome. They did not transfer over
• Multiple Search Engines: IE7 and FireFox have multiple search engines quickly accessible in field on the upper right hand of their browser. Chrome only allows you to set up one search engine at a time.
• NO RSS FEED INDICATOR: Now, come on Google! Get it together! Where is it? How can I tell if a website has a RSS feed? This is probably the most notorious blunder of all.

Below is a video on Google Chrome

RSS feeds have been around since 1999! However, don’t feel like you have been “out of the loop” too badly. RSS feeds became popular in 2006. If you are not familiar with RSS feeds, then this will open up a whole new side of the web!

Why Should You Use RSS feeds?

Good, informational websites are updated often. When a website updates or adds new information, you often have to hunt for the information. Why not have that information delivered to you the moment it is posted? Enter RSS feeds.

You can set up multiple RSS feeds and view them all. All of the current, updated information is sent to you automatically. Simply scroll down your RSS reader and click on articles that interest you. When you click on an article, you are sent to that website to the exact article.

How Do You View RSS Feeds?

Not every website has RSS feeds. This website has one. If you are using Internet Explorer 7, you will notice the orange button is lit up. If you use FireFox, the icon is at the end of the field where you type in web addresses.

So, how do you use RSS Feeds?

1) If you have Outlook 2007. The latest version of Outlook is set up with a RSS feed folder where you can set up a feed in the same way you set up an email folder.
2) Google Reader. If you use iGoogle for your homepage, you can include a list of your favorite RSS feeds on your homepage.
3) For more information on setting up a RSS feed, see this article.

Select “Account Settings”

Add “New” under the Email tab.

The next screen defaults with the radio button on “Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP, or HTTP. Select Next >

Complete the fields below and SELECT “Manually configure server settings…”

Complete the form below replacing “yourwebsite” with your website address.

After completing the fields above, click More Settings…

Replace the number “25″ with “26″ in the Outgoing Server field.

Click on “OK” and follow the prompts to finish the email setup.

Everyone likes the word “free.” However, the word “free” often means you “get what you pay for.” In the case of the following tools, you have found a gold mine. If you are a client of mine, you will know that I am all for teaching you how to edit and maintain your website. Not all things can be done simply with a website editing tool. Sometimes you need a program to create a graphic or just resize a graphic.

If you are serious about graphic design, you should get industry standard tools like CorelDraw, PhotoShop and Illustrator. They are definitely not free. However, the following tools complement these high-end programs.

Free Tools for Creating Website Backgrounds

Stripe Generator: Renders stripes (like the background on this site) with Web 2.0 styling.

Stripe Designer: Another great background image generator.

The tools above are useful for creating patterns within PhotoShop.

Choosing Colors

Colr.Org: Color pallet. Users create pallets of colors and use tags to describe them. Type in “orange” and you will get multiple results of “orange-based” colors.

Colour Lovers:

Color Picker: Ever have difficulty matching font colors with a picture? This small application allows you to choose a color from anything on your screen and match the color exactly. Use this tool to choose colors and create backgrounds that match exactly. My favorite feature of this tool is that you can save your own pallets.

Graphics Editing/Manipulation

GetPaint: This is a step up from the standard paint program in Windows. It allows you to edit images using “Layers.” It is not compatible with PhotoShop.

Windows Vista Snipping Tool: Under “Accessories” in Window’s Vista is a great new tool called the “Snipping Tool.” It allows you to capture images on your screen. If you do not have Windows Vista, you can still use the PrtSc (Print Screen) function to copy your screen to the clipboard.

Until early this year, I have hand-coded websites and used DreamWeaver entirely to build my sites. When my clients wanted to edit their own sites, I would set them up with a $150 companion program to DreamWeaver. This is no longer necessary. A product just came out of Beta and it is a perfect tool for editing websites (provided they are based on WordPress, SharePoint or other blogging/cms platforms). The product is called Live Writer. This post is intended to give the location for downloading the software and an overview of its abilities.

Get LiveWriter by clicking here.

Overview of the Software:

1. It is free.
2. It is WYSYWYG (What you see is what you get)
3. LiveWriter enables you to publish/edit Web Pages. You are able to insert Pictures, hyperlinks, tables and maps with ease. Also, you can arrange your pages so that they appear correctly in your menu system. Mac users have a program called MarsEdit. It does not allow you to publish/edit pages.
4. LiveWriter enables you to publish/edit blog entries. You have all of the same features you do for creating pages. You can create categories “on-the-fly.”
5. If you use MicrosoftWord, you can copy and paste your material into LiveWriter and it will clean up the code. It preserves and hyperlinks footnotes.

Instructional Video to Install LiveWriter

Basic Authoring with LiveWriter