Ladies Who Launch

Design/Tech Stuff :: Widgets - What They are and Why You Want Them

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl, Spammy Scammers, and Katie James

Widgets are free and happy little design elements to add to your blog. They come from trusted websites you use already, and are created to make your blog or website look good, and to market that website. You can usually create one in 10 minutes. Granted, you need an account at the website that offers the widget, and you'll need to fill it with stuff, but to actually get the code to put onto your website, you'll need 10 minutes.

What is a widget and why do you want one?
A widget is a chunk of code that you can embed into your website and usually displays a slide show of images, or other arrangements of images you have selected. You get the code from the website offering you the widget. Let's look at a Flickr widget, for example. You upload pictures into your Flickr account. You "tag" them with words that have to do with your pictures, like "Paris vacation" or "birthday party" or "friends." You go to the Tool area in Flickr, and create a badge (some websites call widgets a badge...I know, it's hard to keep up). You tell it you want a badge, or widget, of all the pictures you tagged "paris." Then it will create this small slide show of pictures that pop out at your users, who can then click on it to see all of your wonderful photos.

Here's a free widget from my Flickr account of my Paris pictures:

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from KT Flicker tagged with paris. Make your own badge here.

This widget is generating my photos using a program called Javascript. You don't need to know anything about Javascript to use this widget. Just know that not all blogging programs will accept it. Most will, but if you run into weird trouble with it not showing up, it could be that the coding language is not supported by your blog or website.

You can also use widgets for ecommerce, like if you had a store in Etsy.com, or just for fun with StyleHive. And, if you have affiliate accounts with websites, like Amazon where you make a commission of whatever anyones buys from Amazon once they click on a link from your special Amazon affiliates link (here's a write-up of the Affiliate program from an LWLer), those websites might also offer widgets to you. Amazon rolled out some cool ones, like this slide show that I made just now:

Are there drawbacks to using widgets?
Sometimes setting up the widget can be buggy. Amazon's navigation, at times, is not the easiest, so it's very easy for me to click on the wrong link to get my code, which causes me to lose all of my work. What work? Selecting which books I want to appear in the slide show, for example. That's it. So I just need to re-invest the brain power to remember which books I wanted to add.

Also, you are pulling data from another website, so that can cause your load time to run more slowly, especially if you have many widgets on your site. Like all things, though, companies providing the widgets will improve with time as they invest more in their ability to serve you faster.

And finally, a widget can sometimes not fit very well into your website design. So if you are going to build a website, keep in mind that you want room for these sorts of things. Certain designs, like my blogger template of the moment, look clunky with some widgets. I'm widget-happy, so I will continue to use them until I give blog a major make-over. Come visit if you want to see some more widget examples and ways I've used the widgets.

Happy Widgeting!

bling your ping: some blog terminology basics

Still on the fence about the value of a personal/professional blog?

I've compiled some basic terminology. No excuses, now. Even my 94-year old grandfather has a blog. You can learn, too:

http://www.beecre8tive.com/bee-design-blog/2007/10/9/bling-your-ping-how-and-why-to-rss-whats-rss.html

Katie McCaskey
Bee Cre8tive Design

Design/Tech Stuff :: Easy Way to Think Up a Blog Post - and is SEO Yummy

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl, Spammy Scammers, and Katie James

Stumped for a blog post idea? Chances are, you're like Dorothy with her ruby red shoes - you have the answers the whole time. Instead of clicking your heels three times, just log into your your site stat program and check your Keywords.

What are site stats? They are the statistics of who is coming to your blog, how they got there, which websites sent them, which keywords or keyword phrases they used in a Google or Yahoo or any kind of search. Most hosting companies provide these for free, but there are better ones out there, also for free. Look into Google Analytics and StatCounter. Both stat programs are free and invisible.

The Keywords people are using to find your blog are actual words typed into search engines by people interested in what you have to say. You may be scoring on the term "best ceramic flat iron" or "moms who make a million dollars" (I just made these up), but what are your smaller searches for? When you look into your keywords for which terms you're getting, look for the terms that are bringing in 1 search, or 7 searches, or 20 searches.

Small potatoes, right? Yeah, well, it also shows that your blog is coming up deep in the search engine rankings for this term, but you need to do a better job of optimizing for it to bring in an easy 50, 400 or 900 new searches. And chances are, you didn't meant to optimize for it at all. A combination of words from different posts, or you side panel, made your post rank for this particular term. Now all you have to do is write a well optimized post for it.

Example:
One rainy day, I was sifting through keywords, curious as to how people were finding FashionMista.com. A keyword phrase caught my eye: "do I have to be a good drawer to be a fashion designer."

Excuse me? No, of course you don't. But you had to ask a search engine that question? Fine, I thought. I'll give you the answer. I titled my post that exact question because the Title is the Page Title for that web page, and the Page Title is a very hot ticket for optimizing for SEO. Next, I made sure to weave those phrases throughout my copy in a way that made sense, and I included a picture, filled in the alt tag for that picture, and linked the picture. All very important steps for SEO. Search engines do look for images, and if the image has an alt tag, and is linked, the engine considers those terms especially important, which give you more exposure via higher rankings.

The result? FashionMista is at the top of searches for related queries (yes, people continue to ask the question), and the image I posted is on page 1 in Google Images for "fashion drawing".

So, it pays to sift through your keywords for a quick and easy blog post idea. Happy hunting!

ps: if you do want to learn how to draw for fashion, get the fashion drawing book, 9 Heads, which is fabulous. There are lots of poses, pleats, and ruffles to chose from as you practice.

Consider Your Website Host Carefully

Website Source has hosted both of my business sites for several years.  Recently, the company began "offering" additional storage--for a price, of course.  I began receiving several email messages per day from Website Source, telling me I was in dire need of the additional storage.  I inquired and got 10 different elusive and evasive responses.  I never learned how to "delete old messages from the server" (or which server they were referring to.  I have diligently removed old messages from my Outlook and Roadrunner accounts since I've had them.  Since the Website Source accounts forward to them, there shouldn't have been a problem.  Right?)

To make matters worse, I also started getting occasional notices that mail sent from various false email addresses ending in "@nschicklaw.com" had bounced.  Since Website Source hosts the email accounts @nschicklaw.com, and there are only a small number of them, I inquired.  This time, I was ignored.  At least twice.

Still worse, since I submitted my domain and hosting transfer request, I am getting nearly 1,000 of these fake failure messages per day!

I am told by my techie friends that this was common practice in hosting many years ago, but companies with integrity and high ethical standards now recognize they do not have to hold you hostage to get or keep your business.  I have moved all of my accounts to GoDaddy.com.  I will not use the "old timers" and subject myself to their dilatory tactics again.

Design/Tech Stuff :: Hotlinking Awareness and Your Bandwidth

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl, Spammy Scammers, and Katie James

Every now and then, my Google News Alert for my website exposes something fishy in the online world.  This time, Google sent me a News Alert for a website that offered free blogging software to users was providing code to a blog that allowed her to use my desktop wallpaper as her background. You can see a picture of it on my Spammy Scammers blog, where I've exposed them. Now, as you all may know, I do offer pretty, feminine free desktop wallpaper. So, as with any file, purchased or not (like an e-book), it is subject to being thrown online somewhere without the owner knowing.

I was flattered that this girl, who had a "private" blog for special chats (ahem...for boys only), wanted to use my pretty desktop wallpaper. What I was not pleased with was the fact that this blogging company had provided her with the code to pull my wallpaper  from my site - meaning that the file she was using to display my wallpaper was being pulled from my website using my bandwidth. This is called "hotlinking"  or leeching. It's when you steal an image and the bandwidth from one website and to display it on your website.

Bandwidth is basically the invisible stuff you pay for that shoots from your server at your hosting company through fiber optic cables and into people's computers to allow them to view your site. That's not the exact definition, but basically what it does. You know how when Daily Candy features a website, and sometimes you can't get to it? Well, it's because it crashed because it exceeded its bandwidth. There were too many people trying to access it at once, trying to pull images and text from it just by viewing them. You can prevent this by contacting your hosting company to ask them to increase your bandwidth (and your monthly charge). Or, if you know you're going to be on Daily Candy, increase your bandwidth for that month. But if you're doing well, then you'll have to keep that bandwidth increased for good...hopefully! A hosting company that has a technical system in place to provide more bandwidth on demand (like an overdraft safety account with your bank) is MediaTemple.

So. How can you prevent Bandwidth Theft, as I call it? You can get hotlink protection, and block every domain from displaying images from your site, except domains you specify. And this does not prevent people from "grabbing" images off your site, uploading them onto their servers, and displaying them. Which isn't always a bad thing for PR reasons. For example: if you have a blog, and you want to display images that are housed on your website's server, you would allow your domain in your hotlink protection code. Social bookmarking sites like StyleHive kindly displays and shows off your images if someone socially bookmarks one of your product pages. BUT, if you have hotlink protection and did not allow for StyleHive to be an accepted domain, then your images won't show up there for people to drool over. Get it? So just make StyleHive an accepted domain in your code for your hotlink protection.

How will this affect random bloggers who periodically want to showcase your products or logo on their blogs? Well, unless they email you to alert you that they are about to feature you, then the image won't show. They can always grab the image from your website by right clicking and saving to their computer, and uploading it to their server. Or you could put a message in a convenient place that says: "Hey bloggers: if you want to show off my stuff, contact me and we'll arrange something."

I went the route of hotlink protection because I was getting monthly alerts from my server that I was exceeding bandwidth, but my traffic was remaining the same. Mysterious, right? I attributed it to the fact that I stored and served all of my images for my blog, FashionMista, on my Katie-James.com server. As FashionMista started to pick up, particularly one image in Google Images that was doing particularly well, I was basically stealing from myself. So I got real hosting for FashionMista and started putting images over there. But, I was still getting the alerts! And now I think I know why. Hotlinking.

Hotlink protection may not be for everyone. It is right for me, for the moment, because I offer free images off of my website that people grab all of the time. For example, I have not added the LWL blog to my list of accepted domains. So I can't post an image in this post from my site. I can post an image that I've got housed at FashionMista.com. See?

(this is the latest wallpaper from Katie James,
but I've got it on the FashionMista.com server so that it will show up here)

I'm posting this image here, but technically, I'm hotlinking from myself via FashionMista.com. Right click on the image and you'll see what I mean. But I gave myself permission, so it's ok. So, there are pluses and minuses to hotlinking. So before you go blocking everyone from posting your images using your bandwidth, make a list and think it through. It's easy to undo, though, if you jumped the gun.

If you need help with this, you can email me at Katie James Pixelated and we can set up some hotlink protection for you.

Design/Tech Stuff :: Spam Awareness

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl, Spammy Scammers, and Katie James

There's nothing I hate more than tricks to get you to do something, like give away your social security number, or to trick you to going to a website you didn't expect. Ok, there are things I hate more, but this one really unnerves me. Gets under my skin. So. What would an IT Girl do if something unnerves her? Start a blog about it, of course. Save the world. That sort of thing.

Working in different positions in my life, it's amazing to me how easy it is to trick a higher up - to trick the boss, or someone who holds the purse strings. From web savvy kids to trusting adults trying very hard to be cautious, they can still fall for scammy spams. That's what I'm calling them on my new blog: spammy scams from Scammy Spammers - the title of the new scam awareness blog. Here are two of the latest posts:

Why You Should Not List Your Email on Your Website:
There are spammers out there who "troll" the web via search engines and other techy methods and copy emails right off of websites. So if you say: Email me at [email protected], chances are, you will receive a lot of spam. How do I know? From experience. And from this confession to me from an email spammer.

Instead, you can place in a link an email.  For example, I could say: email me to set up an appointment. If you click "email me" it would launch your email program and email me. If you are using a content management system (CMS), chances are you can click an envelope icon right next to the chain link icon and create a mail link. But, just in case you don't have that and are working in straight code, here's the code:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]">email me </a>

Another Reminder NOT to Respond to Bank Emails, or Click on Anything
Even if the email is from your own bank, they will not be emailing you about getting information about your account. This bank email scam (I posted it in full on the blog) had me going for a while until I called the bank to confirm that it was a spam, and they actually knew about it. It was late. I was tired. I got nervous.

And I almost forgot this one:

The Domain Registry Solicitation Scam
For you website owners out there, this is an annoying one because it sounds so commanding. Sometimes people just do what it says because they don't know what it's talking about. There are similar solicitation scams out there when you register your trademark. Read about this one from Domain Registry of America (message posted in full on the blog). If you're going to register a domain, it's best to go with LWL Partner Network Solutions, or Dotster.

iLive, iLove, iWork, iPodcast

iLove Quote:  "There are many wonderful things that will not be done if you do not do them."  Honorable Charles D. Gill

All this "i" talk started with the wildly popular iPod and it's the ultimate reason I started our company Wedding Podcast Network with the man iLove, love, love.  Working with my husband Robert Allen, everyday is challenging and rewarding.  Our commitment to working hard on an innovative startup company plus our extensive knowledge of weddings along with the almighty iPod we are truly enjoying the world of podcasting.

Why podcast?  It's a reliable way to create, connect, share and communicate.  Podcasting is easy, cost effective and is revolutionizing the way we do business.  In a world where multi-tasking has become the norm, it is important to be able to get information wherever and whenever.  It's ideal for our very on-demand and mobile culture.  In the same way that the DVD recorder and TiVo has revolutionized the way we handle the time shifted world of television, podcasting is doing the same for audio.  Listening is by invitation only, from your lips to their ears.  It's a warm, educational & intriguing conversation between two friends.

Podcasts go wherever you can take an mp3 player which makes it a much more intimate medium.  Engaged and motivated listeners are more likely to spend when they hear something that relates to their interests and passions.  So many businesses are adopting podcasting for different types of communications because it's an extremely adaptable format.  You don't even need an iPod to listen to podcast.  Click here to find out more about podcasting.

Podcasting, especially, "niche" podcasting, is clearly the wave of the future.  There are podcasts for people interested in business, child care, cooking, crafts, dating & relationships, fitness, social commentary, sports and my personal favorite - weddings.  I invite you to listen and subscribe to my podcast so you can automatically download the programs you want.  Explore iTunes to discover your preferences.  Close your eyes while commuting to work, treating yourself to a mani & pedi or make the half hour at the gym on the treadmill really fly while listening to a podcast!

Podcasting can bridge technology and marketing needs for forward thinking companies.  WPN offers such services and I'd be delighted to help you reach your target audience with informative and entertaining content.  Podcasting after all is the fastest growing technology since email.

iLove LWL and the LWL women who embrace creativity and exciting, new promotional & marketing ideas.  It's time to incorporate this new audio technology to make a difference in your market.

Holli Ehrlich
Co-Founder, Director of Marketing
Wedding Podcast Network

Is Your Advice Worth Some Money? Amazon Says It Is.

Since many of us Ladies are website-oriented, I wanted to pass along some techie news about a new service from Amazon. You may already have an Amazon Associates account, which allows you to cash in on the purchase of any Amazon item simply by recommending it through a link on your own website.

That's just the start of what you can do with an Associates account, though. Amazon now has a beta feature called "aStore" that gives you the ability to setup a customized page full of items you recommend. To get an idea of what it looks like, you can look at my aStore, "Your Business Writing Coach Recommends."

aStore gives you the code for anything from a simple link on your website or  blog that leads to your store, to a customized frame full of your product recommendations that you can insert easily into a page on your site or a sidebar in your blog template. I've inserted a frame into the code for this blog post to show you what it can look like.

You could use aStore like I do, to give visitors and potential customers advice about great books to read in your industry, but the applications of it are only limited by your imagination.  You could recommend yarn in your knitting website, silver cleaner on your jewelry design site, running shoes on your fitness support group site, etc.

The best thing about it for me is that it's a reciprocal gesture: you offer free advice in an area about which you are passionate as a gift to your site visitors, and you get a little money from Amazon for your trouble. Look at you, building a bridge between your customers and some great products! You're a connector.

--Rachel Carroll Whalley, Seattle-based Business and Blog Writing Coach
www.writewithmeaning.com