Our Blog About Blogging

Now, as much as I love other miniature schnauzers (we're the BEST!), I gotta say that elephants are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

My family supports The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust - here's the link to their website. https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/

We've adopted a few baby orphan elephants and helped out in other ways. When someone adopts a baby elephant, they get monthly updates about the elephant and a watercolor from Angela Sheldrick - a talented artist. Here's one of the watercolors she sent us! TOO CUTE FOR WORDS!

I'm "Mr Schnauzer" and I'm here to bring joy, happiness, and humor - with thanksgiving for wonderful things. You can follow me for interesting tidbits about animals, humorous things, and just simple things to bring a smile to your face.

Here's "me" working for The Missing Website Bureau, a division of Wheat Communications, LLC - working to help your website get found! I've got my treats ready in my pocket, in case I get hungry!

Welcome to the technology blog of Wheat Communications, LLC.In this blog you'll find a full range of information about Internet Marketing -- and, yes, even traditional marketing. So, read our posts, post your comments - and let's all learn from each other! (By the way, in case you\'re wondering: this type of blog post is set as "sticky" so it stays...

You can allow comments on a page or not allow them. In the discussion section select how you wish to handle comments.Here's more information: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-allow-comments-on-pages

SocialMedia Examiner has some tips to increase your blog comments. But - watch out, they have a popup that loads in immediately upon arriving at their site.http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/7-tips-to-increase-your-blog-comments/

Here's a great plugin to help you work on your SEO for your blog.You can configure meta-data (that's the stuff viewer don't necessarily see but search engines do see) in your posts, pages, categories, etc. You can define your tags, keywords, meta descriptions, site name, and more. You can even add Google Analytics, Google Webmaster, and more...I se...

Some say this is the top plugin you should use. Why?It makes your pages load in more quickly...but hey - read the description on WordPress...it's a good, full description.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/ 

Here's something nice to increase the security of your WP (WordPress) site:http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/secure-wordpress/Here's an article about keeping your WordPress securehttp://wordpress.org/news/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/

Raise Your QR IQ More and more people are starting to associate the codes with action, “Smartphone interactive, scan here.” but never assume your customers will know what to do. Make it a point to spell out how to scan the code, and help instruct customers on where they can grab scanner apps. Also, remember that digital codes should provide some ki...

Raise Your QR IQMore and more people are starting to associate the codes with action,"Smartphone interactive, scan here."but never assume your customers will know what to do. Make it a point to spell out how to scan the code, and help instruct customers on where they can grab scanner apps. Also, remember that digital codes should provide some kind ...

 Hey - quick note here. We're partnering with a technology company for whom we'll be distributing a cool, time-saving product: a WordPress multiple site log in piece of software!This software will allow you to log in with ONE log in to MULTIPLE WordPress sites that you manage.Check back soon for updates and information!

 You might look at trying HootSuite for managing multiple social profiles.Here's some info about it...you can:Manage multiple social profilesSchedule messages and tweetsTrack brand mentionsAnalyze social media trafficThe free service for HootSuite. OK if you have up to 5 social network accountsBasic - FREEFree Quick Reports5 Social Profiles *2...

Talking heads, animations walking across a website, and audio files...all geared to engage the listener/viewer and (hopefully) get a desired response.Videos are really hitting their stride these days. I remember back to the early days of website development in which you had a choice of two things: an expensive (thousands of dollars) video for your ...

A friend of mine, Jay -- owner of JJH Media, writes a great blog about video techniques. Here's the link: http://jjhmedia.com/?page_id=108This fellow has some good information:http://www.problogger.net/archives/2011/12/07/the-technical-setup-behind-my-videos-on-problogger/ 

From Codecanyon - this widget gives: 10 fancy pins, tapes & icons10 beautiful handwriting Google fonts6 fancy background textures – wrinkled paper, sand paper, paper with lines …adjustable corner shadowsworks in any sidebarover 1,000 possible graphical combinationsunlimited background and font colors with color picker Here's the link: Click her...

CodeCanyon has a lot of resources...not too expensive either! For WordPress plugins and such: click here

With options, options, and options: http://www.popupdomination.com/live/ I know that popups can be very annoying, but they can actually work well to help promote whatever you're trying to promote -- and generate leads...This one does it well!

Want to control what widget you put in a page? With this widget, you can determine which widgets appear in the sidebar area of any page...you can create different sidebars for different pages, determine it based upon category, page placement, etc. Cool, eh? This one helps make your site stand out from the run-of-the-mill blog. Link: http://wordpres...

Tweet Old Posts is a plugin designed to tweet your older posts to get more traffic to them. Tweet Old Posts randomly picks your older post based on the interval specified by you. The primary function of this plugin is to promote older blog posts by tweeting about them and getting more traffic. This helps bring "back to life" some of your older twee...

Those cool sidebar floaters that keep your HOT HOT links right in front of the viewer's eye...they are great to help direct traffic to certain pages and places. Here's a great WordPress plugin that gives you that ability. Lot of options; add any link to a button, left or right scrolling, similar to Mashable.com, can display all social sharing butto...

This Plugin provides automatic SEO benefits for your site...plus custom keyword lists, nofollow, automatically link keywords and phrases within your posts..and more. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-automatic-links/

From Google, "Nofollow" provides a way for you to tell search engines to DONT FOLLOW the links on this page...or to not follow a specific link. The value: tell Search Engines to NOT follow specific links on a page. Ex: dont follow links in any comments. This is because spammers use the WordPress comment areas to post links to their sites. Neither s...

First time visitors are important to any site. With this plugin, you can automatically send a "thank you" email to those who comment on your blog for the first time. Additionally, it helps keep your visitor engaged by reminding them to check back at that link for any further information/comments. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thank-me-later/

Gravity Forms has a lot of features. You can quickly build and publish your WordPress forms. You can break a long form into multiple pages....complete with a progress bar, you can create order forms...or just about any type of form you need. Here's the link http://www.gravityforms.com/

If you have a blog and allow comments, you'll get comment spam. On this page, WordPress talks about how to combat comment spam. http://codex.wordpress.org/Combating_Comment_Spam

Most people consider allowing comments to their blog as simply the way you do things. But, there are some very important things to consider. Here's a few of my own thoughts: If you have a website under your company name, or a company website, comments can reflect upon your company.If you want to allow comments: you may want to check the setting so ...

You can use a plugin or widget to put pictures in certain sections of your blog. I use an image-widget by Shane & Peter, Inc. With this widget, I can put an image in a section of my blog that allows a widget...the top of my site, a sidebar, the bottom... etc. Here's a link to some picture widgets on the WordPress http://wordpress.org/search/ima...

I can use a "sticky" widget to a post...making it stay in a certain position. Here's a link to the one we use: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-sticky/ But, here's a link to a number of sticky plug-ins: http://wordpress.org/search/sticky

Opinion polls can be fun and increase interactivity between you and your readers. They can also help folks come back often. We've got two we've been using: Wp-polls, using an AJAX poll system: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-polls/ SodaHead Polls ( frankly the name is just fun!) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sodahead-polls/ Here's the ...

Make certain you set any links to "open in a new window" when you link to another site. Try to not ever have visitors to your site move out of your site to another site...and then not have your website page still open. To link: highlight the text you wish to link, click on that link icon in your visual editor, and you'll see a pallet popup. Into th...

To help increase your site's SEO rankings, add metatags to your pictures. Directions: After inserting your picture, click on the picture. You'll see a little icon on the upper left of the image and popup text saying "Edit Image". You'll have a nice, full pallet to edit and add information to your image. Add the keyword phrase to the field saying "A...

http://CampfireNow.com Campfire is a web-based group chat tool that lets you set up password-protected chat rooms in just seconds. Invite a client, colleague, or vendor to chat, collaborate, and make decisions. Campfire is team collaboration with real time chat. It's just like instant messaging but it's designed exclusively for groups. You can shar...

http://Wufoo.com "Wufoo" – what an odd name for a web based form creation application. But I used to make fun of the names "Yahoo" and "Google" too. Guess who got the last laugh there… Anyway, we've been building forms for client websites for a long, long time. We have our own dedicated web hosting server and, until now, we preferred to run forms o...

YIKES - what's it all mean? Well, it has to do with website form security. It is an attempt to keep spammers from using the forms on your website by including a challenge-response component to a form. A common type requires users to type in letters from a digital distorted display, or do math ((((SHUDDER))). ReCaptcha a system developed at Carnegie...

In case you were wondering, Tweet size is 140 characters, Facebook is 63,206 characters (whew if I ever write something that long!!), and LinkedIn is 700 characters. Of course a blog article can be as long as you want...

Here's a quick note: Announcements always stay at the beginning at the top ... Sticky posts will remain on the top of all posts for that day.

There is a check box in the settings that can hide Captcha from Admins and registered users making it easier for them to work with comments on your site. Want to add comments to your post? On the upper right of your post edit area, click on "screen options" - select discussion and comments. Make sure you installed your Captcha key so you don't rece...

1. Blogger Blogger is one of the most popular blog websites and now it is owned by Google. Blogger is a great starting site to get to know blogging and its user dashboard is very user friendly. (aka Blogspot) 2. WordPress WordPress is another major blog website besides blogger. With its own blogging platform WordPress, you can easily choose your fa...

Testing blog category widget