Here’s that email explaining WordPress conversion:

Your website was made at a different time time in web history, when it was customary to create a website and then consider that task ‘done.’

Meanwhile, discussion, information and news about the work of the organization continued to be created in the offline community, perhaps on a daily basis, but this information was not visible to an online community because it resided mostly on paper and then later, in emails and online via 3rd party sources. The organization website would not reflect these discussions.

Now these discussions are also held on social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, etc.

For an organization to maintain control, they need to have a website that can serve as the official center of their message at all times.

A website needs to stay flexible, current and connected.

The content – the words and images – need to stay separate from the presentation, the structure of the site.

On your current site, knowledge of html is required to make the smallest change or addition. The pages mix content and presentation in their static code, and changes can only be done by editing each page by hand. This means that adding another page to the site would require the image link for the new page to be added to the menu sections for each page manually.

Almost all current websites no longer use this method, but instead are database driven, using a website software that allows a one-time change to propagate across an entire site.

Website software choice is generally divided between proprietary (licensed paid) and open source (license free) choices.

There are many choices for proprietary website softwares. One problem with this approach is that the site will be completely dependent on a small group of developers for new features and support. This tends to drive up ongoing costs.

If the site is also hosted by the developers, this can place further restrictions on flexibility. In some cases, the proprietary route makes sense because the unique needs of the business require it, and the software is focused on that aspect, for example, a wholesale business site.

I work in many proprietary website softwares, but recommend and specialize in using WordPress open source software as the basis for almost all of the informational sites I build.

The basic functions of this license-free software continue to evolve. A world-wide community of developers contribute improvements to the core software on an almost daily basis. It is one of the most popular softwares in the world.

With the addition of add-on free and premium plugins, it is possible to replicate the kinds of functions found on high budget/high traffic sites using WordPress. In fact, some of these sites are using WordPress.

A feature such as donation capability can be relatively easy to add to a WordPress site, and if a new and better service or integration comes along for this function, it is also relatively easy to upgrade.

For your project we would be looking at a conversion of the existing page content, or your updated content, into the new WordPress version of the site.

Accessible via the famously easy to use Dashboard, you would have the ability to edit or add to this material in-house or continue to use my services as a webmaster.

Some of my clients update their sites daily on their own, only needing my help when they would like a new feature or strategy for their promotion efforts.

The existing site presentation graphics can be replicated as a WordPress Theme (a collection of files that controls the position and display of information on the site) or we can engage in a new Theme design process.

I have worked with outside graphic designers to realize WordPress Themes and on other projects I have been both the site and custom Theme developer.

The cost for a WordPress conversion is generally divided between setup of the site structure and function and Theme creation. I can provide prices when I have a clear understanding of your requirements for both.

This scenario allows you to have an attractive and useful web presence, while saving costs by using in house staff to make changes to the site.

I hope this overview helps to understand the process. Please let me know if you require more information.

The post Still True Today appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

Here’s the definition of a virtual telecom. “A virtual network operator (VNO) is an entity that does not own a telecom network infrastructure but provides telecom services by purchasing capacity from telecom carriers.”

In my case I needed to transfer the number from a virtual telecom to a real telecom – ATT.

The phone number was bundled into the plan with our Internet Provider. At the time, this was a great setup. We were able to dump the $65 monthly charge with Verizon for the bundled $12 a month phone plan with the Internet provider.

One drawback was giving up a physical landline for a virtual phone that only worked over the Internet connection, in a rural area that had at least one major power outage a year. That Trimline phone had it’s own power!

The other drawback became apparent when we needed to leave our Internet Provider and take our phone number with us.

This resulted in a protracted process of contacting the previous Internet Provider, who in turn needed to contact the bundled virtual telecom, and then contacting a REAL telecom. We were only able to ‘rescue’ our phone number after the situation was escalated to the highest levels at all 3 companies. This took twenty phone calls.

This virtual scenario also happens in web hosting and domain name registration. Many hosting companies make things easier for customers by allowing them to purchase hosting and a domain name at the same time.

Some hosting companies, such as, say, CartoonHosting (not a real host) are not real domain name registrars. So, in CartoonHosting’s case they farm out your domain name to a real registrar – say, Launchpad – and CartoonHosting becomes your ‘virtual’ registrar.

In this virtual setup, the customer has no direct login to manage their domain name at Launchpad. They need to manage the name in CartoonHosting’s rudimentary domain options panel. I know of one instance where renewing the domain in CartoonHosting’s panel did not actually renew the name at Launchpad. This resulted in downtime for the website the domain was attached to.

Some other hosting companies who act as virtual registrars have no options panel for managing domains. You need to call and spend time on the phone with their virtual support for any change.

A bigger issue becomes apparent when you want to leave your hosting company and take your domain name with you. That process will put you right in the middle of the same three way tug-of-war I described with virtual and real telecoms.

I’m no fan of GoDaddy, but they are a real domain Registrar. They have a good do-it-yourself options panel for changing domain name settings. You just have to avoid all their endless marketing.

If your web hosting company provides virtual domain registration, don’t use it. Keep your domains registered with a real Registrar like GoDaddy.

Remember that Registrars are only required to contact you at an email address you likely used 10 years ago to setup your account.

Remember also that short domain names are very valuable, and Registrars would much rather  make thousands of dollars compared to the $20 or so they make when selling a long, hard to remember domain name.

The post Virtually Stuck appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

They don’t Like. They don’t Retweet. They don’t do nothing. They just.. keep… rolling alonggggg…

They are not doing what you had hoped they would do, which is Like your darned social media post!

Wikipedia says:

“In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of an online community…who observes, but does not participate.”

Tom Stier

Lurkers avoid the tools they are supposed to use to let you know their reaction to what you are spending a not inconsiderable amount of time to put out.

Is a Like too much to ask?

They stare at your post. They might cringe. They might laugh. They might get mad at what you are saying.

But in the end, they just scroll or swipe away to the next bright shiny posting.

Come On, Do The Lurk

Why do Lurkers Lurk?

For some Lurkers I know personally, they simply don’t trust anything online.

That is a valid point in this age of privacy concerns.

Some think any action they take will put them immediately on the radar of a Government Agency.

Or worse, somebody they had a grudge with in High School!

The 90-9-1 Lurkers Rule

This article by Jakob Nielsen,  from the Internet of 2006, is still relevant to social media today.

“In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.”

As this graphic pointedly shows, those at the top are tiny with pointed heads.

What Do Lurkers Mean To My Business
Or
When A Tree Falls In The Forest Does It Land On A Lurker?

Lurkers are still a good thing for your business social media campaigns.

If the Lurker clicks through to your website from a Facebook or Twitter post, your website Analytics will pick them up in a way that lets you know where they came from. (Don’t have Analytics on your website? Contact Me).

Since Lurkers represent the largest demographic (90%) you will definitely want to keep posting on social media to connect with them.

Even if the relationship is very similar to Unrequited Love. If you are persistent, it might someday get upgraded to Pen Pal!

Measuring The Lurk

Social media platforms can now tell you through Analytics or Insights the likely quantity of Lurkers you are attracting.

For most of your postings it will be a much larger amount than Likes.

But even if you have not yet attained that level, consistency will continue to be your best ally, so keep right on posting.

If you keep up with your social postings on your chosen platform, you will someday Convert a Lurker with that Irresistible Post!

The post Lurkers Rule! appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

This was easier for them and for me because they avoided the domain-name-connection-to-website routine, let alone explaining Registration versus hosting, DNS, Nameservers, unwanted tote bags and water bottles added to the cart at GoDaddy, etc, etc…

Tom Stier

I paid attention to renewal notices and made sure I kept a current credit card on file at my Registrar for auto-renewals.

I don’t do it anymore because of two reasons.

• People should own their domain names directly
• Legalities

Now, I help clients with domain registration and, on occasion, domain expiration.

Your Expiration Is Important To Us

Domain Registrars are the fine folk knighted by Lords of the Domain Names, ICANN, to parcel out and keep track of domain names.

The title of this post refers to Domain Registrars fun and profit. Not yours.

You see, if you want a website that people will actually be able to visit, you need to purchase a valid domain name.

That’s where the fun comes in for Registrars selling all those variations of a domain names dot com, dot org, dot net, dot edu, dot this, dot that, and the new dot much-more-expensive extensions. Dot dot dot.

My first website had no domain name. It was a generic host-provided url with umlauts after the name of my host, my username and their server, which they named “Titanic.” Very apt name as things turned out.

Anyway, you need a domain name without umlauts. Even if you are Swedish.

And, you need to pay attention to emails from your Registrar.

That is because Registrars can charge outrageous restoration fees depending on how long the domain you want re-instated has been expired.

They are also in the business of selling expired domain names.

If it is a three or four letter domain name, they would just love to make thousands or more selling the name to the highest bidder.

One client of mine let expire a four-letter dot com domain name. I had a four-letter response when I found out about it later.

Another client let their non-profit dot org domain expire, only to see it picked up for use by a porn site. I helped the non-profit get the domain name back.

Even though Registrars abuse your special relationship with them by sending you spam emails about offers of tote bags and water bottles featuring your domain name on them, if you miss a renewal notice, they can take your domain name away from you.

Registrars are only required to contact you by email. In fact, if you ever get a call from someone about your domain name you can trust that it is a scam, or a lonely Customer Satisfaction Associate crying out for help.

Cascade Of Failures

Allowing a domain name to expire causes failure all down the line, from Registrar to Hosting service. Restoring a lapsed domain is a task that usually takes a knowledgeable person several sessions over 2 or 3 days, multiple calls or chats with Registrar and web host support, and dealing with well-meaning techs who will tell you all is fine, only to find that propagation has not even begun.

Propagation is the time it takes the world to see your domain name connect up with your website.

Until then, your site and domain-based email stay DOWN.

How To Avoid Expiring

Call your Registrar and negotiate a discount for paying 5 or 10 years of renewal up front. That reduces the cost and the chance of expiration happening to only every 5 or 10 years!

Notices about domain or hosting renewal should not come to an email address on the same domain you have registered with them.You won’t get emails when that domain is expired. Use a Gmail or other address for your contact info at the Registrar.

Contact information on each domain also needs to be checked to make sure your registration is not under some long gone-email address, or ‘disappeared’ webmaster. The Lords of the Domain Names, ICANN, are getting more picky about contact detail being accurate.

Use one Registrar for all your domains.  Registering domains at two or more Registrars is confusing and you will never remember where a domain is registered.

Note all your domain expiration dates in your online calendar, with reminders several weeks before the renewal date.

And remember to Keep the Aspidistra Flying!

The post Domain Expiration For Fun And Profit! appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

You resolve to use the ‘sweat equity’ method of promotion by dedicating your time to promoting your endeavor exclusively via a social media network.

Tom Stier

You decide that setting up a website and getting a domain name is just too much to take on. You know that a domain name is less than $15 a year and there are ways to setup a basic website for just about the cost of a restaurant dinner, but you just can’t be bothered with all that right now.

Now imagine that the social network you picked for your music promotion efforts was MySpace “the largest social networking site in the world from 2005 to 2008.”

All your music info and audio is on their servers and it is difficult directing interested parties to specific content.

In the interim, your band domain name was acquired by another band! You now need to setup a website using a much less-useful domain name.

Imagine GooglePlus as the social network you chose for your business promotion. You posted daily on GooglePlus, only to have all that effort sucked into the black hole of the web.

In the impermanent world of the internet, websites and domains are still just about as rock solid as online things can possibly be.

But, don’t take my word for it, listen to what the experts say about the social media/website nexus:

• Why You Need a Website No Matter Your Industry—8 Non-Negotiable Reasons
• Do You Even Need a Website in a World of Social Media?
• Faceoff: Website vs Social Media Profile or Page (Updated 2019)
• Website vs. Social Media: Why Your Business Needs a Website

“Post it on your website, then share/promote it on your social media” is what you are seeing as you swipe through your Facebook and Twitter pages. Social media is still but a tease for outside links (websites).

The goal of promotion on social media is to entice you to leave the social platform and visit these other websites!

While many things can be done on social media, websites are still the one destination for presenting your unique story, totally under your own control, with something more solid than just being part of an ever-swiping ‘feed’ frenzy.

It is literally the ‘master of my own domain‘ thing!

If you’ve had a domain attached to a website for any length of time, that domain has a ‘grandfathered’ status on the web, pages indexed by Google, and a record of visitor stats (which you would have if your site is tracked by Google Analytics).

Your website is there working for you, even during those ‘fallow‘ periods when your enthusiasm for self-promotion wanes. That happens to everyone at some time.

At the very least, make sure you get that killer domain name before somebody else does

Hedge your bets and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

The post I’m Only Going To Use Social Media To Promote Myself appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

WordPress knew that this would be something best handled by Plugin developers, so they left meta tag management OUT on purpose.

Do you know what meta tags are and why they are important? Well, since Google is the monster finder of things on the internet, lets listen to what they say about them.

“Description meta tag provides a short description of the page. In some situations this description is used as a part of the snippet shown in the search results.”

For example, when you search for “aardvark” on Google, you will see a list of search results, like this:

The light gray text under the green web address is your Description Meta Tag!

The blue text is your Title Description Tag.

Lets see what Google says about that.

“While technically not a meta tag, this tag is often used together with the “description”. The contents of this tag are generally shown as the title in search results (and of course in the user’s browser). “

Woah! I didn’t know that Title was not ‘technically’ a meta tag!

I have a tip for you on the Title tag. When I write the Title for a WordPress post, I usually only do it AFTER I compose (and maybe think a bit about) what I have written in the BODY of the post. That way, I can be sure it fits what I have talked about.

Now we know what the Title and Description meta tags are, and how Google uses them. Next time, I’ll talk about a Plugin that will give you automatic Title and Description meta tags!

And, what about that Keywords Meta Tag?

The post Never Meta Tag I Didn’t Like appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

“According to the marketers, it’s easier for authors to develop followings on already established social platforms and they shouldn’t waste much effort maintaining a website.”

Since we create and maintain websites for a number of authors, this did get our attention!

To musicians who relied solely on MySpace to promote their band efforts, we might ask ‘How is it going over there?‘ or we could ask anyone trying to promote their efforts on other failing Social Media the same question.

Any social media platform is based on the business model of generating enough views to sell targeted advertising. Social media is not there to help you, and while you are using it for your purposes,  they are using YOU for their purposes.

They can change their terms of use any time, they can block you and they can fail.

And while it’s OK to be social on social media, it is still a no-no to actually push your particular product too much. It’s an indistinct line, but you’ll know when you cross it.

On the other hand, it is perfectly alright to boast and shout about how great your book or music is on your OWN domain. And, its also OK to have nice big BUY NOW buttons there as well. And then add some more!

In our work with authors, artists & musicians we stress the importance of social media as part of a campaign effort that always includes YOU being the master of your domain. A domain can be your name, or if you are an author it can be your protagonist or pseudonym. We believe that any commercial concern has to have their own personal marker on the internet, totally under their control and not subject to the whims of the owners of the giant social media platforms.

We also believe that the website attached to that domain name is important. It is possible to not “waste much effort maintaining a website” but we have seen it is a good thing to develop a routine amount of posting on your own website and then use social media to maximize the return of those efforts.

From here, it looks like Digital Book World is doing just that.

The post Are you master of your domain? appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

In some instances, the customer has taken the site to a certain level of completion, knows that  they can post on it, but perhaps feels uninspired or even embarrassed about the current presentation on the site.

In these situations, we like to start with reviewing a clients lineup of services – domain names, site installation, 3rd party services, etc.

This gives us a picture of what is in place now and best way for the customer to proceed from there. It is also a good idea to inspect and upgrade the site’s WordPress Dashboard and Plugin setup.

We can then turn our attention to the way the site is presented to visitors, the site Theme. Here we will offer different scenarios and options for making the site appealing to the customers’ potential audience.

This process can give the customer a site that they  can feel comfortable with and resume posting on, often with only some minor tweaks or assistance from us.

The post Reworking Your Existing WordPress Site appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

Social giant, Facebook, is trying to follow the money.

Facebook has eyeballs, but  Facebook’s investors have doubts about the credit cards connected to those eyeballs. Facebookers are sitting on their wallets while they post & comment.

We have seen some attempts by large corporations to inveigle Facebook users to ‘Like’ their corporate pages.

We have seen them use ploys, such as ‘voting’ for a charity.

Many of these are not so obvious attempts to use the concerned individual’s ‘Like’ for their own evolving purposes.

We don’t believe that a corporation can behave like a corporation on Facebook. No matter what the Supreme Court says

Facebook is a party. If you are chatting with a group at a party and Mr. Sewer Slopper Stopper® walks over and starts telling you about the new and improved Sewer Slopper Stopper®, how would you feel about that?

Of course, if Mr Sewer Slopper Stopper® were to pass out a few 10% Off coupons, you might grab one.

But would you take it if while driving one day you saw a huge billboard with your face on it saying “I Like Sewer Slopper Stopper® ?”

Facebook can be used to promote business. The secret is that, in order to be effective, the promotion has to be informal and welcome. As if you’re at a party.

The post Facebook follows the money appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.

What are the reasons for this?

Social posting tends to be shorter faster thoughts, with less composition involved.

Cute kitty!

Sometimes it’s just a picture. Cute kitty!

The interactivity factor – knowing that your friends will see what you are sharing, and possibly comment on, is an exciting proposition.

However, when faced with the prospect of doing the same kind of thing on their own domain, their own website, they might feel daunted.

One common complaint I hear is “I’m not a writer.”

In fact, I actually hear this from people who have published!

I believe that the average person may be writing even more than they did years ago, due to the explosion in blogging and then social media.  And, what’s tucked away in your email folders?

I am also seeing development in ways to merge the social interactivity element between social media sites and yourownwebsite.com.

The instant feedback is coming.

For business websites this also presents opportunities.

Business owners view what appears on their product or service website as a more formal endeavor than just posting a photo with a short caption.

A ‘hard sell’ element can creep into their message.

Hard sell definitely does not work in social media.

What does work is friendly, non-political (or political if you want to define yourself that way) and interesting.

The post Social Media and Your Website appeared first on Tom Stier-Promote Globally.