Instead of drilling him about WordPress stuff, I decided to interview him and ask him about the explosive growth on his channel.

Adam grew his channel from 60,000 subscribers and then pretty much doubled his subscriber numbers in one year.

Almost... his channel is sitting just below 120,000 subscribers as I write this.

Adam runs WPCrafter, a channel about WordPress for non-techies. You can also find more about it on the website.

Watch the interview to catch some tips, and just some tech talk about running a channel, growing it, avoiding rookie mistakes and more.

Adam is also the creator of CartFlows which I'll be reviewing soon I hope. Think of CartFlows as ClickFunnels for WordPress.

Something odd about this interview. See at the bottom of this post, you should see a list of all the equipment I have.

It's not fancy or sophisticated equipment, but there are a few pieces. I try to use it all when it's necessary.

It was necessary during this interview because there were people everywhere so the background noise would be high.

I was prepared I thought. I brought my Zoom recorders, a splitter, two microphones and I set everything up. Adam was wired, I was wired, everything was going according to plan. 

Then a few minutes later after we finished the interview I realized that the recorder hadn't been recording the whole time! My heart sank. I thought I had wasted that entire interview.

Luckily the camera microphone worked pretty well and only picked up minor interruptions.

It's not perfect but it still captured us really clearly most of the time.

What do you think? Also, what do you think of the interview? What other questions would you like to ask Adam? Or what did you learn from this?

Please let me know in the comments or over on Twitter. 

The post Interview with Adam Preiser from WPCrafter, CartFlows, and More. WordCamp Orange County 2019 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is a fair question, especially if you're not very well versed in how search engines work and what roles WordPress and other website builders play in the whole process of giving people information they want and need.

Companies that my friend was inquiring about to do SEO for her local brick and mortar business were pushing her to move to WordPress. Some even made it a requirement to do business with her.

And how convenient that they also offer the services to move websites to WordPress, I thought. I can't blame them for wanting to get more business out of a customer. That's how you grow your business, but moving your entire business website to WordPress just to do SEO may not be the right move.

Many SEO companies will tell you that you have to move to WordPress if you want to do search engine optimization for your content and if you want to rank higher.

This is partially true, but you have to look out for your best interests as a business owner and don't be too quick to jump into WordPress.

My answer is in the video, but I also elaborate a little bit more after the video, below.

Additional considerations

Many companies that do SEO services will steer you to move to WordPress. Are they wrong to do this? Do you really need to move? Do you HAVE to move?

So many questions. Hopefully the video was helpful, if so, would you mind sharing this post out to your social networks? I'd greatly appreciate it!

They're not evil, per se

A company isn't bad for recommending insisting that you move to WordPress. As I mentioned in the video, it's really more about the intentions and the reasons why they want you to move to WordPress.

As a professional and as an entrepreneur, I would advise that you first look at all the stuff that can be done for SEO on your website before moving to WordPress.

Maybe they're greedy

Many companies will take advantage of the lack of knowledge available for small business owners in regards to SEO. In fact, many budget search engine optimization agencies will recommend moving to WordPress because they want to be able to install a couple of plugins that automatically make your website more visible to search engines.

This is great, but they're going to charge you several hundred dollars for that service, in addition to all the costs of moving to WordPress.

What do you want from an SEO then?

What you want is someone that can review your site, the way it is and recommend how to fix or improve the SEO in the current hosting and current framework (the website builder).

Moving to WordPress is definitely an improvement, and 99% of the time, I would tell you that your website should be in WordPress. But if you've already built your site on something else, it's okay, you can do SEO there and work on moving to WordPress as a future project.

Concern for your business' well-being in the long term

You don't necessarily want to start an SEO campaign or start doing SEO and make a major move to WordPress at the same time, anyway. It can get complicated and distract your focus.

A good SEO company will be honest with you about your aspirations and expectations. They'll explain how SEO works. A good SEO company will not push you towards moving to a platform that they feel comfortable with, but will help you make the choices that are right for the longevity and growth of your business.

You have a business to run, and many website platforms work just fine, systems like Squarespace, or Magento, or Joomla, or even with something like Godaddy's website builder, work fine if you do the basics for any SEO strategy. 

Make sure the company you're considering can help you take care of those things and they can work with your platform. This means that they're a true expert in SEO, not just a "WordPress SEO expert."

But you're always pitching WordPress!?

Yes, like I said, most of the time I recommend WordPress, and even in this case I would recommend it. But I consider moving to WordPress to be a project in its own and not something that SEO should be dependent on.

A good SEO or marketing agency will be able to help you do SEO no matter what platform you are using because they understand the overall vision of your business and understand how search engine optimization works independently of any platform. You can start optimizing your website today, with or without WordPress.

What to do next?

Work with a company that understands you and doesn't force you to move to WordPress if you're not ready.

Go over the basics of SEO for your small business site and make sure that's all taken care of. Create great content. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospect and try to see what they see when they come to your website.

Are you answering their questions quickly and efficiently? Are you keeping them interested in your products or services? Have you given them a chance to sign up to your email list? Connect with you on social media?

Take care of the basics before you hire an SEO company. It will save you hundreds of dollars and it might even teach you a thing or two about SEO and your business.

Here's a quick list of things to look out for, but I'll expand on these in future blog posts.

• Titles and headings. Use proper descriptive titles for each of your pages. Also, break down the content within the pages with headings and sub-headings.
• Link to other content within your site to enrich the experience of the reader and to denote the importance of certain pages.
• Organize your content efficiently.
• Educate, guide and ask. Educate the reader about your product, guide them to where or how they can do business with you or take action with you. Then ASK for that action, ask them to buy, order, schedule or whatever, but do it. 
• Create amazing content. Write content about your niche, about your products, about your services. Try to write the best content you can and if possible the best content available in the subject.
• Try to get people to link to you. This is the holy grail of SEO, getting people to link to you. Talk to other business owners, join social networks, directories, or try to get written about or talked about and get links going to your website from other websites.

In Conclusion

Moving to WordPress is not a requirement for your to do well in the search engine rankings. SEO isn't dependent on WordPress, so make sure you focus on the right things when hiring an SEO company.

If you're keeping up with the Twitter Growth Case

Here's a quick update. It's working and I think I'll have 1000 followers within a week from today's post.

• Following: 1197
• Followers: 608
• Tweets: 325

The ratio is closer to .5 now which is good. I also am using the auto-scheduling tool from Hootsuite quite a bit now. My automatic tweeting machine seems to be working so I'll cover how to build that next.

The post Should I Move to WordPress for SEO Reasons? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I'm going to come out and say it directly; you should not start a blog with WordPress.com, Blogger.com, Medium.com, or other free blogging platforms. Specifically today I want to mention why you shouldn't go with WordPress.com if you want to start a blog for profit.

What's wrong with WordPress.com? Nothing is technically wrong with the service. It's reliable, it's fast and it's easy to use. However, if you want to start a blog for profit or a blog that will help your business generate income, then you should use the free, self-hosted counterpart to WordPress.com known as WordPress.org. I know it seems confusing, but if you read the points I make below and watch the video, hopefully, I will be able to clear things up for you.

WordPress.com will show ads to your visitors without your control. Also you don't get paid for those ads! The free version of WordPress.com doesn't let you use your own domain. When you set up your free blog with them, you'll need to use a non-branded address. For

For example, is not branded for you, but it's branded for WordPress.com. What you want is something like this: http://yourname.com

If you want to have your domain on WordPress.com, then you have to pay and it's no longer free. If you want to remove ads, then you have to pay more. If you want to monetize your blog you have to pay more! On top of that, you can't install custom 3rd party plugins, even if you pay at their highest plan. I explain more in the video below.

But basically, WordPress.com is free to start and what you get for free isn't what you need, even if you pay for the top level service they offer, you still won't get what you need.

WordPress.com is great if you're just tinkering with the idea of blogging. But if you want to be a little more serious about your business, or you want to make a blog that will make you money, you should go with WordPress.org.

Can't you transfer from WordPress.com to WordPress.org later on? Yes, you can but it's not easy, and you may lose followers, traffic and in some cases, you could lose content. Why risk that?

I invite you to get your blog started professionally by using my service. I explain it all in the video, so please watch it before you make a decision. If you decide you want to take advantage of my free blog setup, then make sure you use one of these web hosts:

• Inmotion Hosting - 47% off, business-centric. Great support.
• GreenGeeks Hosting - Low priced, environmentally friendly. Great support.

More details are in the video so you should watch it:

In this video, I mentioned two ways to get started with making money online. One is to apply for the 21 step online training course, click here to start. If you are accepted into the training, you'll get access to the same program that I use to make thousands of dollars, and you'll get a one-on-one coach to help you navigate through everything you need so you can also start making money.

The second one is to start a blog. I've just made the best offer I have ever made for my email subscribers that want to start a blog. If you're interested in taking advantage of that, make sure you're subscribed to my email list and I'll send you all the details. Go ahead and get a hosting account with either GreenGeeks, or Inmotion hosting, send me your information, and I'll take care of the rest.

The post The Truth about Free WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I talk about list building and how it is similar to dating. I also talk about the infamous "free, just pay shipping and handling" method.

List building is essential to any business, the tactics change over time, but the goal doesn't. You need a list and at least two segments, buyers and leads. You can always segment more beyond that and you should, but you need at least two main groups.

For the lead generation part I use two programs. But at the very basic level, you need just the second one.

#1 Optinmonster, because it integrates with WordPress beautifully. It creates intelligent lead generation boxes and helps you retain more traffic on your WordPress blog. Rumor has it that it will soon be platform agnostic so I highly recommend it. You can get Optinmonster here.

#2 LeadPages is the other app I use. This has entire websites that you can build as landing pages and they are some of the best out there. They are mobile friendly, easy to use, and will work with any website you already have or will host them for you in their blazing fast hosting service (included in the price).

They are the leaders in creating squeeze pages and I highly recommend them. You can check out Leadpages here.

#2.5 ClickFunnels. Since I first wrote this post, I've added ClickFunnels to my daily toolbox and I recommend it as well. This is a more robust platform than most other SAAS. You can create squeeze pages or landing pages, or entire funnels with A/B split testing plus they have Actionetics and Backpack. The closest to an "all-in-one" solution. Watch the webinar here.

And of course, as I have mentioned before, I use Aweber to maintain my list. Both Optinmonster and Leadpages connect with Aweber seamlessly to make my life easier. Aweber is available now with a totally free 30 day trial and you can check that out here in this link.

If you can't afford Optinmonster or Leadpages, you can still use Aweber on its own.

Aweber has built-in lead capture forms and you can even create simple squeeze pages with it. I just prefer to use better tools for that, but if you just need to start somewhere, start with Aweber for free.

The post Driving with Oscar – Episode 3 – List Building Tips appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It's pretty awesome and I've been using it for the better part of 2 years now. They keep adding new useful features but one of the things that sets them apart is their speed.

You have also heard of WordPress, I hope. WordPress is a content management platform that lets you create landing pages, blogs, pages, forms and more. It is free to use but you have to pay to have it hosted somewhere.

Both Leadpages and WordPress are standalone products and both can do some similar things, but they also work together if you use the Leadpages plugin in your WordPress installation.

Leadpages lets you use their full infrastructure to create and promote your landing pages, but you can also make it work with WordPress so your landing pages are inside of your domain even though Leadpages is hosting them.

Take for example my new landing page for my book. Here are two examples of pages that illustrate what I said before.

1) Using ONLY Leadpages: https://websystem.leadpages.net/work-anywhere-profit-online-free/
2) Using Leadpages on my own domain: notagrouch.com/work-anywhere-profit-online-book

Those two pages are identical except for one thing. One of them is displayed through my Leadpages account, while the other one is displayed here on my notagrouch.com domain.

The benefits of using option 1 is that you don't need a website of your own. You pay for Leadpages and you can start building pages immediately, like option 1. The downside to this is the URL branding; notice it says "websystem.leadpages.net." Some people would prefer to have it like option 2, under their own domain.

The key benefit of having your pages hosted in Leadpages exclusively is that you'll get the fastest speed possible. When you use the Leadpages WordPress plugin to bring in your landing page under your own domain, like option 2, then you will give up some of that speed.

In my testing, the speed difference has been significant, between 1 and 1.5 seconds.

One or two seconds may not seem like a big difference but in the world of websites, speed can make or break your business. Most people will wait about 3 - 4 seconds for a page to load, that number is decreasing fast as websites improve. It is critical for your pages to load as fast as possible.

Check out the test between the two different methods of loading the same page.

Method 1, Leadpages directly.
Load time 1.99 seconds, size 729.3, grade 86/100

Method 2, Leadpages using WordPress plugin.
Load time 2.74 seconds, size 756.6, grade 86/100

Almost a second slower when using WordPress. This could be for a number of reasons which we won't get into, but the important part is that Leadpages is built for speed; use it for your most critical time-sensitive pages that need to be served fast.

Use Leadpages with WordPress when you want to extend the branding of your own domain to your promotions, but a slightly slower speed may not be a big deal.

Overall in a simple test like this, page to page I have found Leadpages Always performs faster than Leadpages with WordPress. If you think you want to check out Leadpages, I would recommend it for sure. I use it and recommend it to most of my clients.

The post Is Leadpages faster than WordPress? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

When you start your empire online, there are very few technical skills that you will need, but when you hear "no tech skills needed" or no "skills required" there is always still some skill level that you need to start with. No tech skills needed really means it is very simple and easy to do.

If that wasn't clear enough, let me be more forward. Let’s be clear and honest with each other, you need at least some basic skills.

If you have ever sent an email out, or if you have ever filled out a form online, that’s about all the skills you’ll need to be able to start with an online business.

The rest you’ll learn as you go. Don’t get me wrong! By the time you start making some money, you’ll have some really good tech skills under your belt. These newfound skills are not needed to start, but you’ll develop them as you go, that’s for sure.

And once you learn a few tricks, you will be able to continually learn more and improve. This will happen naturally, but as I discuss on the Hype vs. Facts section, you should have a desire to also continue and improve.

Always push yourself to find the next thing to improve, or work on after you overcome a challenge.

But that’s not enough, Oscar! You say!.

You’ve heard this before, you’ve heard “no tech skills needed” and it wasn’t true. It turned out to be really complicated and I quit!, you're going to tell me.

The truth is that you will need some technical skills but they’re very simple to attain and very simple to use on a regular basis so you learn them forever.

If you can write an email, search for something in Google and fill out a form like you do when you want to buy something, or answer a questionnaire online, you have all the basic skills you need to start a business online.

I know people that make great money online but started knowing less less about computers and the internet than my elderly neighbor. She’s 66, but they simply follow instructions and formulas and make several thousand dollars each month online.

Some people I know that make tons of money online can’t even touch-type! Really, hunting and pecking two-finger method is good enough to start.

If you say that you are not technical or techie-type, or any other excuse about having technical skills, after having read this post, then you are simply afraid and don’t want to be free, or maybe you're a duckliner.

If you still think you can't start a business online because of lack of tech skills, then  the desire isn’t there. Or the desire isn't strong enough to drive you through this silly misconception.

I know many people that are afraid of failing when they use WordPress, what if they chose the wrong theme? Give me a break, don't worry about it. Everything can be changed and fixed in WordPress. Just make sure you always have backups handy.

Or email marketing, what if you forget to include your signature? or email, or you're afraid of sending the wrong link on Aweber. You know what? all of the big marketers I follow have sent me a mistake at least once.

If the big guys are allowed to make mistakes and still run a successful business, then so are you, and this includes technical mistakes!

Really, it's not a huge deal. Do try to minimize these mistakes and learn from them when you make a mistake so it doesn't happen again, but it's not the end of the world by any means.

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s part of it. Deal with it. Move on and forward!

I once met this great lady named Peggy at an event in Long Beach. I have an interview I did with her and I love her spirit and enthusiasm, you should watch the interview, I'll give you a video link to watch in a moment. The thing I really like about Peggy is that she wasn't involved with anything online before she started.

She didn't know much about anything online really, she came from the healthcare field and didn't have any computer skills or even knew where to start. So she asked a few people what she should know, what she should learn, and where to start.

Can you guess where she went to learn most of the stuff she knows now?

By the way, considering that I teach technology for a living, I would say that Peggy is an advanced computer user at this point and she did it all on her own. And she learned most of it for free! She has even attended some of the free video training I provide.

Can you guess where she learned everything she knows?

Youtube.

Well, maybe not everything she knows, but like she says on the interview, she needed to know excel so she went to Youtube, when she wanted to learn word, she went on Youtube and she gave me many more examples even off-camera.

Update: I found her video and posted it on Youtube, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mje_Gcpcd0M

And it's true. I have created some tutorial videos out on Youtube and i know they help a lot of people. If you need help with something, a great place to look first is Youtube.

Simply use some of these special starting phrases and just add the topic you're interested in:

• how to + topic
• lessons + topic
• "for beginners" + topic
• tutorial + topic
• "video series" + topic

Like this: "how to" record a podcast. For more detailed examples and a full search guide and cheat sheet, don't forget to download the free workbook (Sorry my loyal readers at notagrouch.com the workbook is in progress as well, but if you stay tuned, you'll be the first to know when it's available for download).

The reason I like using "for beginners" and "video series" is because the results from these phrases tend to have more than one video to give you more information you may not even know you needed. This is when you start learning about how much you don't know you don't know. This is a great thing!

I bet you know more about the internet and how to use it than you realize. And I'm being literal there, you don't realize how much you already know.

The stuff you need to research will lead you to some technology based decisions. I bet you're not afraid of doing something like that. Or when you pick up a new hobby or take on new roles at work. You are often faced with technology based questions this thing we're talking about here, it's no different.

Don't be afraid of starting a business online because you think you don't know anything about computers or the internet. That's just plain nonsense.

The post No Tech Skills Needed to Start a Business Online appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I cover some of the features Optinmonster has for you there.

My favorite is the exit intent feature, but they have added quite a few others that are worth checking out, so I show you a few in the video. More info about this whole thing on the link after the video too, where I published this originally. But here's the video in case you missed it.

This video originally published here: http://wp.me/p3Sinl-lr

The post OptinMonster Features and Exit Intent appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I can only assume that because of the way the files are named. wpid-longass-id-with-date-and-time.jpg So anyway, enjoy.

The post Random Pictures From Last Year appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

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The post Instagram Goodness appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

A huge mistake I see by people trying out their e commerce shops is to offer discounts. They offer coupons, probably because shopping carts today have very easy ways of integrating coupons into their checkout systems. And people think that by offering coupons they'll attract more customers. And all of these reasons are probably partially true.

But the biggest mistake I see is that the coupons are crap. When you're offering something online, and you're not known, you've got no brand, you have to believe in what you're doing. So much so that you should almost give away your first product for free. After All, wouldn't you give away your first product if you knew that the customer will come back for more products after? That should be your mentality.

Give away a taste, a freebie then sell more products to that customer. Find out more about them, learn why they wanted your product, how can you make it better? The first product is often called a loss-leader. So why not go balls out and give a 50% off coupon? or a $60 off from your first $100.00 purchase? Now those would be coupons that get my attention! And I'd be happy to Tweet, Facebook, share and Google+ the crap out of that offer, bringing you more clients.

I'd even send an email out to my friends or family members that might be interested in that offer. And guess what? You have now attracted the attention of buyers willing to spend some money to get your product.

I believe another reason that people do the crappy 5% or 10% coupons is because they're too lazy to figure out how to market to them again. Here's the secret sauce to that... email marketing. Before you give away a product or offer a 50% discount like I am suggesting, make sure you have a sytem in place to help you promote more products or services to that customer. Get them to share their email address with you and then use it!

-- Believe me, this is cheaper than any advertising campaign you can concoct. Do it. Next time skip the bullshit 10% off coupons. Give them something to chew on, something substantial. And milk it. Ask them questions, ask them to share the amazing offer in social networks, and follow up with them by offering other products that will also benefit them. That's how you do business online and how you acquire new customers.

The post Giving out coupons? Don’t be a cheap ass. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But menus are special because they can be organized very differently based on the website owner's vision or the needs of the company or product. Thankfully, WordPress makes it very easy to customize the menus on the themes. At least the order and naming of each menu tab, or menu item. Things like colors or font or other design-type of cusomizations may or may not be available on your particular theme. You could always customize a lot of those elements using CSS, but we're not going into CSS today.

So the menus on WordPress can be arranged in whatever order you want, simply by clicking and dragging. If you want a menu that has other sub-menus that appear only when you move your mouse over them, then you just click and drag that menu so it is indented in the menu structure. If you want to change the "About us" Page, to "Learn About Us" or simply "About" you just click on the name and edit it. It's that simple.

Go ahead and give it a try, or watch this video and see how it's done.

The post How to Customize the Menus on your WordPress website appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

For this month, if you check out my free website deal and take advantage of it, I'll build your website or blog, or transfer an existing one, for FREE and I'll transfer your site like last month too.

[box]If you didn't know about this, just check out free website the deal here. But on with the post to tell you about the special.[/box]

So just like the deal says, if you buy hosting plan I recommend, I will install and setup your website, then you design it. But for May's special, I'll throw in the content transfer from your website to a wordpress website. So if you have a static website with about 20 pages or less, I will convert it to WordPress for free in adition to installing just like the deal says. This is only for May.

Seriously, this is a good deal

Yes, you read that right, I will convert your existing website from any platform into WordPress. Keep in mind, you still have to find a theme that you like. But I will take care of moving the content from each page over to the new website. With the free website I offer, you save time and headaches. Most of the work is done for you. You won't don't have to worry about all the technical stuff like DNS, and hosting, databases and FTP or even Permalinks. I setup all the aspects of WordPRess for you. Backups, best security practices, essential plugins, and more.

The special for May is unheard of. I will save you even more time and trouble because I'll copy your content over. I'll even include a contact form and one additional data collection form if you need it or have one already.

Once the blog or website is up and ready, you'll be able to use any theme you want to use and customize it further just the way you'd like. Just like the original free offer.

The benefits of the free website & May's special

Remember the amount of themes available for WordPress is in the thousands, and I give you over 20 of the top free themes and access to my private collection of premium themes for you to pick one. I can also recommend a few paid themes that I really like. Ultimately you can do whatever you wan to your website and make it look any way you want, but I will have taken care of the most technical part of the whole thing. Moving your content and setting up WordPress for you. And did you see that all this service is free?

Here are some of the sites I've built for free recently:

• SmilingThroughTearz - http://smilingthroughtearz.com/
• Seal Beach Tutoring Academy - http://sealbeachgetsmartacademy.com/
• Surf City Family - http://surfcityfamily.com/

These are being transferred now and we're either waiting for the design to be finalized or we're waiting for a specific date to release the new site to the public:

• Estilofamiliar.com (This is a transfer and Mayra from Eslito Familiar is having her theme designed so it is still in transition)
• Health Care Today - http://healthcaretoday.info/ this hasn't been designed, but it's ready and the owner is working on the design.
• Urdigitalmedia - http://urdigitalmedia.com/ - Also in transition. I'll update you guys when we're finished.

I'm also helping a few other people in their transition, and they're still deciding what theme to use, but they took advantage of April's offer. Smart folks.

So that's what's unique about my service. If your site is already live somewhere but you want to transfer it, I'll take care of everything related to the transfer so you don't disrupt your visitors. When you are satisfied with your design after I install the website and transfer your content, I'll "flip the switch on to your new website" so your visitors never have to see a  "maintenance" or "under construction" notice.

If this sounds like a good deal, go ahead and follow the five easy steps. If you can't or don't want to use this, perhaps you know someone else I can help? I'd hate for someone to see this post in June and wish they had seen it earlier. It's a great opportunity, I don't think anyone else out there can offer you something like this so if you like this deal even if you can't use it, please share it!

The post Free Transfer – Blog & Website Special for May – Amazing appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

First, an intro to the problem

Ever since the beginning of the Internet, websites have been displayed in a variety of screens. Mostly different sizes, but eventually we'll have other display mechanisms, like a 3d system or a virtual display, we'll get into that later.

Almost everyone that visits a website now does so on a tablet, a phone, or a traditional monitor like your desktop monitor or even a tv. Back in the day, the sizes for screens were more or less uniform. You had a uniform ratio of maybe 4:3 (like old-school televisions). Then wide-aspect became popular and over time, we've added so many different sizes and ratios to our display systems that it has become nearly impossible to keep track.

As a designer, this can be a nightmare because something that you built and looks awesoem on your screen may not look so good on someone eles's screen. Put aside color variances, and pixel sizes and resolution, the size of the screen makes a huge difference. I've experienced this first hand. I have a big 27" monitor with a high-resolution. So when I make graphics, they look awesome, but if I then go to a smaller screen or one with less pixels then it may not look so good.

Previous attempts at solving this problem

Designers, programmers and web geeks have known about this problem for a while and several solutions have been put in place to address it. For example, you could have your webserver detect if someone is coming from a mobile device, and instead of showing them your normal website at http://www.example.com you could show them or . Functionally this is an acceptable solution and many current website do this; Facebook, Twitter, and others. But this approach requires a lot of technical ability and resources to maintain.

Another approach is to have your website serve an entirely different website but on the same domain. You can accomplish this easily with a plugin if you are using WordPress and the plugin pretty much takes care of all the technical details for you. You just need to configure the plugin, adjust the settings to your liking and you're done. It's also a good approach but the downside is that you require some expert level knowledge if you want to customize the experience for mobile as much as you have for your desktop.

There are also other less popular approaches to fixing the problem, like having javascript re-write the page on the fly when a mobile device is detected, or having a totally different application serve as the website in certain scenarios. But these aren't very popular and they're so laser focused on a specific issue that I won't talk about them much.

Both the first two  solutions I mentioned are still in use today and I don't think there's anything wrong with them. I use them from time to time depending on the application. But responsive design offers another layer of customization.

So finally, what is responsive design?

So the newest solution to the problem I mentioned earlier is to make your web applications or websites be responsive. This in short, as the title implies means that the design isn't static but instead it "responds" to its context. Primarily and today, the context is really just the size of the screen. One day when we have a different system for viewing or interacting with websites and applications, the experience may be totally different but the idea will be the same. The application and or website will adjust to the location where it is being accessed from.

[pullquote position="right"]One website, multiple versions. - Copyblogger[/pullquote]

To explain a little bit more in detail, when you find a website that is responsive, you'll notice that the overall look and feel of the site is similar across your big screen browser, your iPad or tablet, and your iphone. Notice I didn't say that it's the same. But your colors, your text, the layout and the content is easily accessible in a way that makes sense for that device. This website is responsive, although I've not adjusted it to be perfect, the theme I'm using is responsive out of the box. (side note, don't use this theme, I don't recommend it but I'm stuck with it until I have time to rebuild)

The main thing being done with responsive design is adjusting the elements of a website to fit the screen, or morph entirely so that the visitor can find the information they need. It's easy to test and see what I'm talking about. One of the cool things about responsive design is that it reacts in real time, there is no need to reload a page to see the differences.

For example. Right now, on this blogpost that you're reading, take the bottom right hand corner of  your browser and make the window smaller, make it narrower and do it slowly and you'll see how things get moved around for you as you reduce the window size. After you get to certain width, things start changing completely, for exmaple, you'll notice that the Menu at the top changes to just "navigation" and you can then click on it to have the menu items drop down. You'll also notice at this point that the sidebar is no longer visible and has been moved to the very bottom of the page instead (scroll down).

So how do you get responsive design on your website or blog?

Currently, this is still a new technology that has only been adopted by cutting edge designers and agencies so you'll pay a pretty penny to have this applied to your website. But you can also find some really great themes that are responsive out of the box and do a really good job at this. Newer Studiopress designs have responsive built in, and in the free side of themes, a theme called Responsive shot up to the top of the charts recently, it does a really good job of helping you implement a responsive design. So  you can pay someone to do it, see if your theme has an update that implements responsive, or you could move to a new theme that is responsive out of the box.

So What's the Big Deal?

When you have a responsive design, your website is more accessible. We live in the age of mobile and people are accessing websites on mobile devices more often than they are from their desktops. Many times people will leave the site or close their browser if the website doesn't load and fit their screen. If you don't use responsive design, your website will not load or it will load in a way that is so small on your screen and you have to pinch and zoom a lot and scroll all over the screen to see what you're looking for. The website experience without responsive design is pretty bad in most cases and bad experiences will make your visitors leave and probably not come back for a while, and by a while I mean ever.

When you get a chance, invest some time in learning and hopefully applying a responsive web design to your website. I think you and your readers will appreciate the efforts. I have to make a few adjustments myself, but I'm 3/4 of the way there.

Here are other resources you may find useful:

From mobile browsers to netbooks and tablets, users are visiting your sites from an increasing array of devices and browsers. Are your designs ready? Learn how to think beyond the desktop and craft beautiful designs that anticipate and respond to your users’ needs. Ethan Marcotte will explore CSS techniques and design principles, including fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries, demonstrating how you can deliver a quality experience to your users no matter how large (or small) their display. Responsive Web Design (Thanks Steve!)

Wikipedia says this about Responsive Web Design: Responsive web design (RWD) is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)

Responsive Design on Twitter

Responsive Design Newsletter: A free, once–weekly round-up of responsive design articles, tools, tips, tutorials and inspirational links.

Mobile Responsive Design 101, an essay by Copyblogger.

Designing for a Responsive Web, by webdesign tuts+

On a side note, this is day #3 for the 31DBBB that some of us are running on my blogging group. Today's task is to promote a previous blogpost so I'm promoting my previous post, the list of 10 reasons nobody ever told you of why you need a website. 

The post What is Responsive Design? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Well let me tell you, there's plenty it can't do. Gravity Forms is by far the best form maker system I've used in WordPress.

I know it may seem pricey, but when you really explore the form making capabilities, you can do almost anything with Gravity Forms. If you couple it with some custom post types you can create any kind of website you need. Check it out when you can, it's worth every penny. I use it on all my sites and it comes included in our packages at OscarsTech and OC Web Pro.

You can get Gravity Forms right here.

So far I've used it for a restaurant menu, for standard contact forms, surveys, and for a donations collection page. In a few weeks I will show you how I integrated Views, Types and Gravity Forms into a really cool Wedding registry. Views & Types are two other plugins I'll tell you more about soon.

But you could start a free WordPress website and with Gravity Forms, you could start taking surveys like the one in the picture. You're not doing paper surveys still are you?

I've heard of some amazing sites and tools built on Gravity Forms, have you done anything exciting or out of the ordinary with them?

The post Gravity Forms a must have Premium Plugin for WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Some tweets and commentary from Wordcamp Orange County

I got to attend Wordcamp Orange County, and here are some of the highlights in forms of tweets and commentary. I tried to do this earlier this rmorning but the wifi at #wcoc wasn't working.

Ross Teasley - @RossTeasley
At #wcoc @notagrouch is plugged in, literally n figuratively. http://t.co/n67W0O98

Jeremy Lehman - @jeremylehman
Looks like all the cool people are in the end-user awareness session #wcoc #imnotcool

Jason Tucker - @jasontucker
Playing around with some query and some instagram libs: #WCOC Instagram wall http://t.co/SFbjKONn

Jason put together a nice streaming wall of instagram photos from #WCOC. check it out, definitely cool stuff.

alex vasquez - @alexjvasquez
I like hearing people say my name. #wcoc preso @zengy

Steve Zenghut from Zeek saved the day and presented on WP-Multisite and Alex became the example for the user, sites and stuff. Alex liked this. :p

Oscar Gonzalez - @notagrouch
This broken wifi business is starting to suck at #wcoc

The WiFi system was unavailable for a long time, just around 2:00 @thefrosty seems to have fixed it. Woot... live blogging and curation with @dashter is now live!

Kathy Burckhardt - @kmburck
RT @perezbox: My WordCamp Orange County 2012 – WordPress Security Presentation http://t.co/rKq5DsUX #wcoc #wordpress #security

Recap in case you missed the security session at #WCOC "End-user Awareness"

This post was generated by Dashter

The post Wordcamp Orange County recap. WCOC in Tweets. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

For me, one of these issues came up when I tried to work in the media dashboard. I was just uploading images so I could use in my new facebook page, but after uploading each file, the images just wouldn't show up on the dashboard.

They were still visible if I went to their URL, but I couldn't access them from the media gallery view, or when trying to attach an image from a post or page.

But... they were working... just fine, earlier.

Turns out this is a bug with a recent update in WordPress and it may show up or may not show up for you depending on certain plugins you could be using. For me, the plugin that made this surface was WP-ecommerce.

It was easy to determine this because I saw a thread about this problem at wordpress.org, and then a thread at the getshopped.org forums indicated the problem and solution.

The easy way to get this fixed for now is to get the plugin called "hotfix" by Mark Jacquith. Hotfix provides quick and small updates to WordPress that haven't yet made it onto an official WordPress release.

Install that plugin, activate it and you should be good to go! By the way, this is my new facebook fan page: http://facebook.com/oscarstech and I'd love it if you checked it out, and if you like it... well, like it!

The post Media library not showing images on WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've been working with several people, helping them with their websites. I have also been doing this as my part of my day job for years. I also provide regular technology services to select clients. Recently I noticed that there aren't many services available out there that do what I do for individuals or small businesses. In fact there are some companies that do this but they charge an arm an a leg and don't really provide the world class service I put into my work. So I thought I'd change that a little bit.

I am now offering this service for free.  You'll still have to buy your own hosting. You must buy a hosting plan from one of the service providers I recommend, AND you must purchase it by using the link or code on that page.  You also must buy your own domain; I recommend Godaddy. These two items are the only things that will cost you any money. To be sure, Buy Hosting  from one of my recommended vendors, and a domain from Godaddy.

If you're ready to have your own WordPress website, here is your chance to get it all done. I am ready to help you. Check out all that you get, and its free:

• WordPress installed and configured with standard settings, based on best practices.
• 6 Essential plugins installed & configured.
• Your choice of Up to 10 additional plugins, installed and configured with standard settings. Choose from a list (being finalized).
• 1 Month of maintenance support & administration. For 1 month, I will keep your plugins and wordpress up to date, as well as moderate your comments (optional) and make sure all administrative points of your website are taken care off. After 1 month, you can take over or hire my services or negotiate a deal.
• 3 - 5 Static pages (About, Contact, Mission, and two additional of your choice) All configured for SEO.
• FREE Standard SEO for 3 - 6 pages. (You must complete the SEO form I have over here: http://j.mp/fuSYUY (google form).
• Free Statistics Report in email every day. Using Google Analytics
• Twitter and Facebook Buttons.
• Caching configuration to improve the speed of your website.
• Standard Social Media configuration.
• Nightly WordPress Backups.
• Standard Security Configuration.
• Pick from about 30 different themes, or virtually any with good ratings and good feedback.
• Help you with a Premium Theme you already purchased.

Who Needs this?

• Anyone that wants to have full control over their website but isn't ready to commit to a very expensive solution or big investment.
• Someone that wants to have a website that they can build out themselves. This is ideal for do-it-yourselfers that just need a little help
• Bloggers that want to move to their own hosted WordPress site and want someone to run their website. usually moving from Blogspot, or WordPress.com or Tumblr, or other blogging platforms
• Bloggers that want to have their blog all setup, optimized and configured in a few months and then take control over it.
• Small Businesses that need an easy to use and publish CMS system, not to mention FREE.
• If you want to have your own website, where you control the hosting and every aspect of it, this is for you.
• This is especially attractive for web designers that don't want to bother with installation and maintenance issues.
• Anyone that is a do-it-yourself kind of person but just needs to get started.

Why Should you get this over one of your paid plans or someone else's services?

1. You should not get this instead of one of my paid plans. If you have considered my paid plans for the features included and you want those features on your website, you should not get this plan. I do not do custom code or custom design or custom development for free.
2. You should get this if you're interested in setting up a professional blog without any investment at first.
3. You should get this if you're in a low budget situation.
4. You should get this if you like tinkering with your theme, plugins, and settings and like the do-it-yourself approach.
5. You've got nothing to loose. When you decide to move to self hosted  --some people call it wordpress.org, you will need to buy your own hosting. The offer I'm giving you costs you nothing more than your hosting fee and your domain; if you look hard enough, you can even find free domains out there --Just make sure they let you change DNS records and be sure to ask before you buy.
6. Generally, your website will be ready for you to customize in 48 - 96 hours depending on my workload. I treat each one of these in a first come, first served basis. If you're interested in priority services, please check out my services info.
7. And because people like my work. See Testimonials for Oscarstech and Oscar Gonzalez.

Really, what's the catch? This usually costs HUNDREDS and sometimes Thousands of dollars.

Of course there's a catch, but I think it is reasonable. If you think you have a better offer or details, please present them to me.

Question:You yourself sell websites at thousands of dollars. WTF?
Answer: Some websites require a high level of customization, or integration, beyond normal, or the delivery of the website  includes personal training, or some of the services I offer. Please read the Free WordPress Installation FAQ for more info, and  the disclaimer page. And please don't be afraid to Ask me via Email or @notagrouch on Twitter.

All of the services I offer above are free, please note that some of the services are only for a limited amount of time. Other services are limited and customization is limited with the free options. When some of the free services expires I will ask you about it and you can provide feedback. Based on your feedback then you can choose to renew an agreement by buying a maintenance and hosting plan. If you want to negotiate an exchange of services or links or collaborative effort, please, I'm all ears. If you have a great idea and need help getting started, we can also talk about a free arrangement in exchange for interests in your project --often called Revenue Share. Just let me know what's on your mind.

In fact if you want to get that, simply fill out the free SEO interest form form listed above and here: Free SEO Evaluation (Only serious inquiries please).

The post Free WordPress Installation and configuration appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

So far these are the ones I've found:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fblikebutton/ (out of date)
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-like-button/

The post In search of the perfect Facebook plugin for WordPress appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I wanted to take a quick minute to update you on what I've been up to. Last December I quit everything that was great with my career in order to pursue my dreams of running my own business. As some of you know, I've been running my own sidebusiness since early 2004. I focus on small businesses and individuals and help them surpass different technical challenges they face in their everyday operations. That's really a fancy way of saying that I'm an IT and Technology consultant.

It's been a bumpy ride, to say the least but I am determined to persevere. After December, I accepted a long term contract with oen of my clients but that fell apart shortly thereafter, for reasons I can't go into. I then found myself out of a job and without the biggest client at the time. Fear set in and instead of panicking and freaking out I decided to embrace this challenge and take time to enhance my support offerings and properly start running my business. That in itself is a monumental undertaking and one that presents many challenges. I thought I was prepared for these challenges but Boy... was I wrong.

The road is difficult and from time to time, I think about giving it all up and going back to the 8-5 thing... but then I'm reminded of my goals and dreams. And so I keep at it. Slowly I've started working with new clients and we're getting things done. Here is the very latest website that I worked on and I thought I'd show you:

The website is for an artist named Sam Carter. He's a talented painter and he focuses on Pop Surrealism. This was a fun project to work on because it is so unique in its content. Here is the website now. It's got a few shortcomings but we are working on them. For example, we have a bit of a repetitive content going on from the store and the gallery. The highlights on the site are these:

Sam Carter Art Store options Custom Social Media Icons Sam Carter Art using a magazine style layout Custom header easy-to-update-slideshow

• Custom Design & graphics.
• A ready to buy gallery where visitors can buy Sam's art.
• Custom human readable sitemap
• Contact forms & social media integration.
• Automatic updates for visitors via RSS and/or email

The theme we used was the absolutely kick-ass AND free, AND GPL'd Suffusion by Sayontan. Shhh, don't tell anyone, but most of the features I told you about above are actually standard features of the really cool theme Suffusion. I can't say it enough. This theme kicks ass and you should check it out. We also have a number of plugins running but we tried to keep them to a minimum. We are using:
Contact Form 7, wp-e-commerce and Display widgets, along with other plugins that I consider standard plugins I use like PHP-exec, Akismet, Google analytics & WordPress.com stats.

Check out the site and let me know what you think. I'd love to get feedback on it.

http://samcarterart.com

I'm also working on a couple of cool projects in collaboration with some Twitter friends and local businesses. I'll be able to show you more later next week. In the meantime, if there's anything I can help you with, please contact me.

The post My latest endeavors appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Tumblr - http://webgineer.tumblr.com (Subscribe)
Twitter - http://twitter.com/webgineer (Follow)

Please Follow me and subscribe. It's all going to be really geeky stuff. Mainly information for technology professionals and information workers. The main topics you can expect over there are Linux Related Tips and Tricks, Apps and Webapps, stuff related to running your own website, and stuff like that.

The post Another Alter Ego appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Akismet.

Akismet is a must on any blog I use where comments are turned on. Its easy to use, simple to configure and it works well to catch most spam. Get it, be done with spam; have a margarita!. Another nice thing about Akismet is that you'll find it in the default installation for WordPress. You have to get an API key no matter how you want to use it, and technically, if your blog is commercial, you're supposed to pony up for a license. For blogs like mine, I think its free to use. Make sure you double-check, but unless you're a Darren Rowse, or John Chow, you're not likely to have to pay for a key and the free one will do just fine.

All in One SEO Pack

SEO, if you don't know, stands for Search Engine Optimization, and this is what this plugin will do for your website. Actually All in One SEO helps you configure your website so it will be easily indexed and categorized by search engines. You still need to do your research and implement the right words and descriptions. This plugin makes it easy to manipulate these options. As with any SEO program or automatic system, results are never guaranteed (no matter what anyone tells you). Ideally it will help your search engine rankings if you use it properly.

It is called "All in One" appropriately as it provides you with options to adjust keywords, titles, descriptions and additional meta information that gives your posts and website more oomph. Options can be applied to individual pages and other sections of your site. .

Keep in mind that some of the more robust themes and frameworks out there have built in SEO options. For example, Thesis (the theme currently running here) has built in options for SEO that show up on the Post Edit Panel. Atahualpa is another; before you use All in One SEO, make sure you don't have another conflicting plugin for SEO. Some themes are good about this and will actually disable their own SEO options in favor of a plugin. Check the documentation for your theme or the readme file.

Articles.

Articles is a very useful plugin that lets you mark posts with a special attribute that makes it an article; you can then create an articles page that shows all those posts marked as articles. One more way to show a group of posts besides categories, or custom loops. Find out more about Articles at Alex's site. You'll find this great plugin listed amongst the other great plugins he has made available. full photo by toby

Display Widgets

This is an easy way to show different content on your sidebars depending on what page you're on. I think of it as a lighter Widget Logic. I tend to use it to show some widgets in one page or a group of pages but not in others. It works very well and simply by selecting whether you want to "hide" or "show" on checked, then you use a scroll box to check which pages you want or don't want this particular widget to be shown. It works and I use it all the time. You can select individual pages, or category views. It's very handy.

FeedWordPress

Excellent plugin if you want to syndicate content. I use it in a couple of sites and it works great. It allows you to use RSS feeds to pull in content and use it as posts. Its highly configurable. You can use it to aggregate news, feeds, other sister sites, even use it as a lifestream plugin.

I use all these plugins first hand and I would recommend them for anyone that needs their functionality. If you have other alternatives or other plugins you'd like to see featured or reviewed, Please drop me a note.

The post My Favorite Plugins appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

mod_headers - Required to set caching information on supercache pages. IE7 users will see old pages without this module.

Under most circumstances, fixing this warning is very simple. Simply install mod_headers and reload or restart your Apache server.

The post mod_headers Required when using WP Super Cache appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Here's the best list of blacklisted words for your WordPress website. You can just go to your comment moderation options and add them there. Get the file right here. WordPress Blacklist Words.

What does it do?
Protects WordPress from Spam
Saves you time, (moderate real comments, not spam)
Reduces load times (less spam comments to display and clean up make your site run better)

This list is for English words to blacklist and protect you from spam. If you have an interest for other languages, please let me know in the comments. I'll be happy to compile one for your language.

The post List of words to blacklist in your WordPress site. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Here are a few of the things that caught my eye in regards to the new features and changes:

• Revision system! while you're writing, you can go back to an earlier version of a draft, similar to the way Wikis work. It even allows for multiple author collaboration. Enterprise... here comes WordPress!
• Captions to your images. It seems that this is now nicely integrated and actually displays the caption.
• Live theme preview before you commit. You can preview then activate if you like it.
• Gears integration - works with FF2, 3, IE 6 and 7 and support for Safari 3 is on its way.
• A lot of little features that facilitate management and a few new features like more support for social
  media badges.
• Select a range of check boxes with "shift-click." This is HUGE!

It also appears that themes and plugins were mostly left alone; this means that if your themes and plugins work on 2.5.X then they should work on 2.6 seamlessly. Well anyway, there are over 194 bugs fixed in this version so its recommended that you update, especially for security reasons.

The post Keep up with the latest WordPress version, its good for ya. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.