I refer a lot of my clients to the site and is the reason I don’t have any instruction videos myself - it is difficult to get better than this! However Yaro and Gideon, both of who I have the pleasure of knowing, are going one step further and launching Become A Blogger Premium on December 4th. It’s a six month course and is only $27 per month in the first week. There are no confusing upsells, downsells or one-time offers that usually plague these sort of launches. A straight plain offer.

To promote it, they have released a FREE blogging roadmap report that goes live today. It describes and teaches you about the 5 milestones you must reach to become a successful blogger, and I’ve read a sneak preview. If you think you’ll have read/heard it all before you couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve read a LOT of free (and paid-for) blogging reports, courses and information, and this report had at least 3 “new-to-me” actions that I went and did immediately, taking less than 15 minutes. For most there will be several “that’s a great idea” moments, and even some “that’s brilliant!” - and all for free!

I’ll write with more information before the launch, in the meantime, grab the report and watch the free videos if you feel you will learn something. This will give you an idea to how the course will look and feel if you did decide to go ahead and take it. Any questions, as always, please let me know.

Post from: Blog Tech Guy

Post from: Blog Tech Guy

Second, how do you get one on your site? The easiest way I have found for people to do it themselves is to follow these steps.

1. Find/create the image you want to be used as your favicon. It doesn’t really matter what the size of this image is, but a square image is best. The final image will be 16×16 pixels so bear in mind it’s going to be small when finished, so see if it looks good that small first.

2. Go to HTML Kit here. This is a great FavIcon From Pics generator.

3. Simply upload your image here and it will then provide you with an example of the image and a link to download it from. I highly recommend NOT using the animated version, unless you want to annoy your visitors.

4. The image will be in a zip file, so extract favicon.ico to somewhere you will remember on your computer (the Desktop is usually easiest).

5. Upload the favicon.ico to your website, either via FTP or through Wordpress (simply go to Write as if you were writing a post and Add image. You don’t need to save the post after it uploaded). Either way remember/copy the URL to the file once it is uploaded.

6. Finally you will need to edit the header of your website to tell the browser where the favicon is located. In Wordpress you can do this through Design > Theme Editor and selecting header.php. Some themes will already have a line mentioning favicon.ico so you simply need to edit that line, else before the closing tag insert this line:

The image does not always appear first time, browsers are a little picky about displaying them, but you can always try in a different browser, or delete your browser cache/temporary internet files, closing the browser and restarting. If you have done steps 5 and 6 correctly it WILL work, have faith. You can even ask a friend if they can see it on their computer.

It’s a nice little touch to a website that can add an air of professionalism and branding.

[Thanks to my client Oriana for the idea for this post!]

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Weblog Tools Collection has further details and a great list of links to answer more of your questions. You can also check here to see if you host can run Wordpress 2.7.

Post from: Blog Tech Guy

Now, you can not only read my testimonials, but see and hear them too! Oriana Green, owner of Green Meditations has left my first audio testimonial, which is very much appreciated and a great surprise. Just press the play button below.

Then Christy Cuellar-Wentz from The Official Mommy-Muse™ Blog sent me my first video testimonial.

So the challenge is on to my past and current clients, if you would like to leave me a testimonial and gain a backlink to your website (and some self promotion) them please simply email and let me know, I would be very happy to hear from you. Text testimonials are absolutely wonderful too, so if audio or video is not your thing then never fear, all are welcome!

Post from: Blog Tech Guy

I’ve finally found time to write a blog post since returning from vacation/holiday. I’m currently working my way through my backlog of work and emails, so apologies for the delay getting back to you. On with the post…

My client, and good friend, Patricia Cliff is a business and personal coach. She has a website and blog in one that shows what work she offers, and the values that she does that work by. Working with many qualified health practitioners and therapists, she provides them with the support and framework for success in their chosen field.

Her site also showcases her latest book, Pure Growth for Reflexologists, and promotes her free email newsletter. The blog is simply inserted into the website template to have an almost seamless transition from one to the other.

Her latest blog post is all about value based marketing, so if you’re a health practitioner or therapist (or someone who is interested in those areas), why not take a look and see if you can answer the two key questions she poses. There is also some great information in her four part series on What everybody ought to know about Market Research, plus Patricia shows you how easy it is to create a business plan.

Take a look at Pure Growth Books.

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I will reply to you as soon as possible, so please be patient. In the meantime good luck with all your blogging!

Post from: Blog Tech Guy

The Fresh News Theme from Woo Themes can be used in many different ways. Ask The Boater is a blog that loves boats! Written from French Bay (Clayton, NY) in the 1000 Islands the goal is to bring you resources, interesting information and fun items to improve your boating experience. Boat sightings is at the top of the list, and they will gladly show a picture of your boat if you want to send them one!

The theme has been customized, tweaked, upgraded and knocked into shape both by myself and my client who has learned a great deal about how the theme works and how to make changes herself. Showing larger featured posts at the top of the blog, showing the boats in detail in an image gallery, and even free boat wallpapers, the site has everything boat lovers could want.

Woo Themes have a variety of “premium” themes, and the Fresh News theme has a variety of options. Features include:

• Three homepage layouts to choose from
• The ability to use Fresh News as a traditional blog layout
• Extended Author Profiles
• Integrated Theme Options (for WordPress) to tweak the layout, colour scheme etc. for the theme
• Built-in video panel, which you can use to publish any web-based Flash videos
• Automatic Image Resizer, which is used to dynamically create the thumbnails and featured images
• Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments;
• Integrated Banner Management script to display randomized banner ads of your choice site-wide
• Pretty dropdown navigation everywhere
• Widgetized Sidebars
• 8 gorgeous colour schemes!

I’ll be showing you some other blogs based on the Fresh News theme in the coming weeks. In the meantime if you love boats, check out Ask The Boater.

Post from: Blog Tech Guy

Available in six great different color schemes, the Citrus theme can switch between schemes using the built-in admin panel. It also allows you to change the logo, use it’s built in advertising system, and change the layout between “blog-style” and “landing-style”.

One of the best features is its auto-image resizing. No need to create a differently sized thumbnail image for the homepage, the theme will do it for you.

There are many premium themes out there, such as Revolution, Solostream and Woo Themes, so if you’re thinking of a new premium theme, also take a look at the new Citrus theme from Unique Blog Designs. If you use it already please, let me know what you think!

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Sheila, another client of mine, has created a great website over at Live Well 360° that I thought you might be interested in.

Previously on a different blogging platform, we moved the blog onto the much easier (though yes, it’s still tricky sometimes!) Wordpress format, and customized a new theme. She made this switch not just for design purposes, but for efficiency as well. It is now much easier for you to find specific content on the site, and easier for her to provide it!

The site has a great number of delicious looking recipes that are easy to print out and try. Sheila is a “self proclaimed foodie on a mission to live a life of health and prosperity, who over the past 4 years has finally realized how much the food we eat affects our overall well being”.

So, please take a look at her new site, it could be your path to wellness. She has started writing about her life story too. If you like what you read, why not leave her a comment, I’m sure she would be happy to hear from you!

Plenty more client blog profiles will be coming soon.

Post from: Blog Tech Guy