“In the midst of all of our u-turns, rewinds, re-runs, regrets, and re-do’s, is the mystery of this life that makes it all worth doing – again and again.“

That’s kind of what I’m doing with this thought log, also.  Starting again.  You’ll see that I’ve moved all of my old posts (59 of them) into the Retired Posts category, where they will lay to rest.  This blog has a new purpose now.  I no longer live to work, and I don’t live my work.  I work to live, and my focus has shifted not on what I do any longer, unless it is what I do for others.  Instead, my focus is on living – on breathing, on being, on loving, and for me personally, who I am in God, as well.

Several years ago I abandoned much of who I was, because really, I was frightened and decided I would live by the five senses – only what I could see, feel, hear, taste and touch.  I abandoned faith, because it didn’t give me precisely what I wanted, when I wanted.  As a result, I have been living a faithless life.  For some, that is OK, but for me, it’s led actually to even less assurance, security and peace.  I thought that by abandoning faith, I would find solid ground.  Instead, I headed down a careless, scary road with no light around me and no road signs, either.

So, like I’ve done with my old posts, I’m moving all of the old me into the Retired category, so that I can start fresh (again).  The nice thing about life do-overs is that there’s an endless amount of them.

PREVIEW THE SOPHISTICATED THEME HERE

Completely free, you can download the .zip file here.  Features:

• Theme options panel in Admin, in which you can:
  • Configure all of the ad blocks, or disable them altogether
  • Configure your RSS feed URL
  • Insert Google Analytics code
  • Point to a custom logo

The theme is basic black with a blue, transparent graphic at the header. The logo is also transparent (and if you create a custom logo, you’ll need to make it transparent as well). You could easily modify the color of the theme by tweaking the CSS.

Minimal images, 100% CSS (no tables). Have fun! Do let me know if you have any questions.

GoDaddy Woes – the cons that are getting louder

Here are some of the things I’ve noticed. I point these out specifically, because they are things that I never experience with any other web host – especially not the use who use cPanel:

• Slow page load times. GoDaddy hosted sites seem to have incredibly slow load times. Likely culprit – over-crowded servers. If you have shared hosting, which means your website sits on a server with several other people’s websites, thus giving you cheaper hosting, you’ll notice that the more crowded your server becomes, the longer it takes your page to load.
• Slow installation of databases. Normally, I can create a MySql database in a matter of seconds – no kidding. With GoDaddy – and this is happening as I write – I am STILL waiting for a database to be created and it’s been over 30 minutes. In my opinion, that’s unbelievable. I’m still a bit in shock and awe.
• Broken installations of Wordpress. This is the biggest issue I’ve seen. It’s a little bit like Twilight Zone. No one knows how or why, but “things” just happen. Like passwords that get “reset” and never come back, and you aren’t able to re-set using Wordpress – so GoDaddy tech support (God bless them) must do it for you. Or, the most recent one, bum database installations that occur during GoDaddy’s auto-install of Wordpress. These are the most perplexing and equally as difficult to resolve.
• Slow set up of hosting. It should not take longer than one hour to get your new website up and running. With GoDaddy, it can sometimes take half a day to an entire day for them to complete the domain registration and hosting.
• Lengthy e-mail set up process. There’s always some configuration when setting up e-mail accounts on your new website, but GoDaddy makes it like a maze. Too confusing.
• Lengthy FTP user set up process. Again, there’s a recurring theme. I don’t know if making changes in GoDaddy simply requires so much time, or if they’ve bogged down the process with too many checks or what, but it shouldn’t take that long. I’ve had to wait over 2 hours for a new FTP user to be added to an account with GoDaddy. With Siteground, it takes less than a minute.

What the experience should be like

This post is not meant to be a plug for the web hosting company that I use, Siteground, but I do want to point out some major differences and why I think Siteground is better than GoDaddy. Note, I also believe that Lunarpages, Eukhost.com and West Host are also better than GoDaddy. I’ve used the latter three in business and I must say that I strongly encourage past and present clients to consider a variety of options before jumping onto mass products like GoDaddy.

Hosting should be semi-automatic. I love Siteground because I can go on the site, sign up for a domain and hosting, and literally – right away – go in, upload my site and be good to go. I can do all of this within 30 minutes. It’s fantastic.

Setting up e-mail or a database shouldn’t require a call to customer service. It should be simple – easy to find and easy to change.

Great customer service…but you have to use it too often

GoDaddy is notorious for excellent customer service. The only problem is that you actually have to use it. A lot. I’ve never had to use customer service as often with any other hosting company – ever.

Siteground doesn’t have great customer service. You can’t call them on a phone. They don’t have a chat feature. You have to submit a help desk ticket. It’s very old school.

But guess what? You never need them. Ever. It’s literally an auto-pilot hosting solution. The same goes for LunarPages, which is even better than Siteground in terms of dollar for dollar value. These companies offer something that’s the most valuable – a good product.

You can dress up a product all you want. Put a pretty face on it. Set up fancy customer service lines and offer a ton of variety. You can price it just right, too. But at the end of the day, if your product is broken, all of the marketing in the world cannot make up for it.

If you’re looking for alternatives to GoDaddy, I strongly suggest:

• Siteground (www.siteground.com)
• LunarPages (www.lunarpages.com)
• West Host (www.westhost.com)
• Eukhost (www.eukhost.com) if you are located in the UK

Beth Lane

Last year, I designed and developed a website for Beth Lane, a certified coach specializing in sales. Her website – Peaceful Selling – was great, but she wanted to be able to manage simple changes to text and images herself. My solution? Wordpress, of course! It was so easy to simply conver the existing html and php framework to a Wordpress site (ask me if you’d like this done for you, too). We didn’t need to find a whole new look and feel – I just put the existing design into Wordpress and voila. It’s perfect, because now she also has an integrated blog that looks exactly the same as her website, creating the ultimate streamlined integration.

Kenn Darling

I started working with Kenn last year, just doing some edits on one of his online jewelry store sites. He later came back and asked me to create an entire new gift site template for him – GiftArray – which was a really fun project. He’s still in the process of getting all of the data together, but the template and foundation is there. I also created the logo and six others for him.

Matthew Watson

Matt Watson is creator of the FPSystem Automated Betting Bot (UK horse racing). Matt and I go back awhile as well, but recently I’ve been setting up three blogs and making a ton of changes to his current site. I also created a great squeeze page for him for another product – ProLayingProfits.

He’s trying to streamline everything (shopping cart, affiliate site, blog and website) for easier management. Working with Matt is fantastic and even though we’re separated by an ocean, I’ve had one of the simplest and best working relationships of all time with him.

Joe Hage

Joe Hage wanted a whole new look and feel for his site, so he asked me to work with him to install a blog framework – Wordpress – with a Woo theme – to create a blogsite that works perfectly for him. We made minimal customizations to the fabulous theme (one of many that Woo has) in order to create a custom look for Joe’s site. We also worked with Bruce of Bruce Colhart Creative to customize the site even further, adding color and a great header to finish the look.

Karrie Kohlhaas

Karrie is my new favorite friend. We had some great discussions early on about fixing some rather annoying problems she was encountering with her Wordpress site (ever have those?). She was able to get her site so far on her own, but like many blog owners, there were a few issues she needed extra help with to tackle. I spent just two hours and her site was almost transformed. We fixed a sidebar issue, added some plugins for social bookmarking and other great functionality, updated the permalinks, added a great background color, fixed formatting issues and updated her blog to Wordpress 2.7. She’ll eventually update her entire site, but for now, it’s made a world of difference!

Kate Phillips

I met Kate through Biznik (along with Joe and Karrie, above). She needed a few changes made to her blogsite – Garden of Plenty. We morphed her site from a  traditional blog which was hosted at Wordpress.com to a full blog blogsite so that she could have more sophisticated functionality, such as a newsletter signup form (which you can’t have at Wordpress.com). To accomplish a streamlined integration, we used a static front page from her blog and re-directed her main URL to it. The result is great – Total Wealth Coaching links to her main front page, while Garden of Plenty links to the blog on her site – two “websites” using the same content and hosting. It’s a great technique!

These days, Wordpress can be installed, updated and maintained without ever opening an ftp (I’ll explain later) program or uploading files to your server (where your website lives) through your website host’s control panel. These days, you could – within reason – completely manage your own blog or website without the help of a website developer or virtual assistant.

But some tasks still do require access to the server. This is where a number of my clients get stuck. Although there are fancy plugins that allow you to install other plugins, sometimes they break or don’t work. In most circumstances, installing new themes still requires access to your server (some website hosting companies make that easy through a control panel). Sometimes, you need to move pictures and files from your computer to your server and you don’t have all day.

This is where ftp comes in. Ftp stands for file transfer protocol. It is not a complicated process or idea at all. It’s just an acronym, which makes it scary, right? If you can move files from one folder on your computer to another, you can use ftp.

Why You Need to Learn This

So we’ve covered some of the very basic reasons you would need to use ftp to access your server. Let’s look at a very short list (you can add your own as you start to get a better understanding):

1. You want to install a new Wordpress theme and your website host doesn’t provide a way to do it
2. You need to remove files from your server that are outdated or problematic.
3. You need to upload a bunch of photos or large files and the File Manager on your website host control panel takes way too long.
4. You need to install the Wordpress plugin installer plugin  (go figure – you need ftp to do this first!)
5. After someone’s installed the plugin installer plugin, you need to install a plugin that is NOT in a .zip file.
6. You need to upload a new logo or banner.

The reasons go on and on. Here’s what you could do: you could hire a website developer or virtual assistant to do it for you and pay them, or you could take the next 10 minutes to learn FileZilla and start managing files on your website server yourself.

How to Use FileZilla

I’ve used a few different ftp programs and I believe that FileZilla is the easiest to use. This is a matter of opinion, entirely. But since the assumption is that you aren’t using anything right now, go ahead and try FileZilla and once you understand how it works, you can shop around for something better for you.

What You Need

You’ll need the ftp login information – this is a host name or address, username and a password. Sometimes you will also have a port number. This information is usually given to you WITH your website information. It comes from the hosting company. For me, it’s always been included in the email that I get whenever I purchase new hosting plans. If you have absolutely no idea where this info is, just call your hosting company and ask them for it.

Tips:

• the ftp address is usually ftp://yourdomainname.com/org/net, etc. This is not always the case. If your domain name isn’t linked to your hosting account yet, that won’t work. In that case, you’ll usually have an ftp address that includes your IP address. Again, if you don’t know what it is, call your hosting company.
• the port number is usually 21.

Ready? Let’s move on.

First, download FileZilla. (Note: this is the latest version as of the date of this post. To see what the very latest version is and make sure you have it, visit http://filezilla-project.org). FileZilla is a free program. It allows you to move files from your computer (local site) to your website (remote site).

After you’ve downloaded and installed FileZilla, open it up (it will usually open up right after you install it). This is what you will see (click the image to enlarge it):

You’ll notice a left side box labeled local site. This is your computer. You’ll also see a right side box labeled remote site. This is your website (once you connect, that box will fill with files and folders).

There are TWO ways to connect to your website using FileZilla – QuickConnect, and the standard way. QuickConnect allows you to pop in the login details and connect. It keeps a history of connections you’ve already made and allows you to just pick them from a drop-down box. This is a great tool for people like me who manage a number of websites, but for you, you probably will not use it.

We’re going to skip QuickConnect in this tutorial, but this is what it looks like (click to enlarge):

The standard way to connect to a server using FileZilla is to go to File>Site Manager:

Once you’re there, you’ll add a New Site. This is where you will enter your website’s FTP login information. Where it says Logontype, choose Normal, unless you know that you are specifically not to use that setting. Make sure to Rename the NewSite but highlighting it and selecting the Rename button.

Once you’ve filled in all of the details, choose Connect. This will automatically save your setting as well as connect right away. Once connected, you’ll see the list of files that are on your server (click to enlarge):

Looking at the files on your server

None of what you see probably looks familiar to you. That’s OK. For the vast majority of you, you’re looking for one thing only: the folder called public_html. Some of you have hosting companies that set up your website in different ways. I won’t go into all of the various places your website files could be located. Just look for public_html and if you can’t find it, call your hosting company and ask them specifically, “in which directory on my server are my website files stored?”

Once you’ve located public_html, open it. Just double-click it and it will open. You’ll see a file called index.— – that’s your home page (unless you’ve re-directed it elsewhere).

Finding Wordpress

Wordpress is installed in three folders (also called directories): wp-admin, wp-content and wp-includes. You are most likely only going to be working with wp-content, because this is where themes and plugins are located.

Look Around

One word of caution: look but don’t touch right now. Just click around and see if things look familiar. Perhaps you’ll see an images folder, or surveys, or newsletters, archives, etc. For we Wordpress people. it’ll look different. If you open wp-content you’ll see themes, plugings, uploads, upgrade and maybe some others.

Test Our Your FTP Skills

Believe it or not, you’re about 90% of the way there in this tutorial. You see, what you’ve done is opened a window into your website so you can see the files that are there. Now we’re going to cover the three most basic functions of FTP: uploading, downloading, and deleting files.

Uploading a file to your website

In the local site window on the left, browse for a file you want to upload as a test. Just double click in the window to navigate somewhere, such as your Pictures folder.

In the remote site window on the right, make sure you are  in the public_html folder (see image below; click to enlarge):

Back in the local site window under Filename, select the file you want to upload and DRAG it to the remote site window. In my test, I’m uploading a file called avatar.jpg to my public_html folder (the main directory on my website):

This will begin the upload. You’ll see the file you’re uploading in the bottom window, called Queue. You’ll see a green bar that lets you know it’s uploading. That’s it!

To see if it worked, visit the URL of the file, which is your main website’s address + /thefilename. In my example, it would be http://www.tiadpeterson.com/avatar.jpg:

Download a File from Your Server

Occasionally there may be a file on your server that you don’t have or need a copy of. Perhaps you’re working with a website developer who’s made some changes and you don’t have their latest version.

To download, simply find the file in the remote site window that you want to download. In the local site window, find the folder where you want to put this file. Then, back in the remote site window, select the file and DRAG it back to the local site window – be sure to drop it in the exact folder you want. To assure this, OPEN the folder you want in the local site window by double-clicking it.

That’s it! You’re done. If you want to be sure you actually downloaded it, find the folder in your normal fashion your computer (perhaps by going through Windows Explorer or MyDocuments).

Deleting a File from Your Server

Caution! Please don’t do this unless you’re sure this is what you want or need to do.

To delete a file from your server, navigate to the file in the top remote site window (not under Filename), select it, right-click and choose Delete:

Again. I am strongly cautioning against doing this unless you know why you’re doing it.

You’re Done

Hopefully this tutorial was easy. I think it’ll help a lot. You may not have an occasion to ftp into your website right this moment, but I promise you there will come a time in your website-owner life where someone will say, upload this via ftp to your server. When that happens, you won’t have to say “huh?” because this lovely tutorial helped you out!

Have a great day! Leave a comment here if you have a specific question so I can answer it and benefit everyone.

Stay tuned!

I’ve used other tools – CollectiveX, Dolphin, MODx, and played around with Joomla and Drupal, too. But they don’t come close to the ease, or as in software development speak – user-friendliness, that Ning has.

If you can set up a Facebook profile you can create a social network with Ning. I’ve configured them for clients who actively use it for business. There are hundreds and hundreds of them that are use for parenting, cancer survival, and everything else in between. It really is a fantastic tool.

If you’re like me, with a technical background, you won’t need to worry about pulling your hair out because you can’t configure it to your liking. It’s completely customizable. You can get access to the source code and hack away, if you like. And there are even Ning networks just for Ning developers to get advice and tutorials.

(Can you tell I love it?)

So if you’re looking for a social network tool that works, Ning is the one. And if you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask me!

But I read an article today that just blew my mind – the way the contributor links wellness and hunger to desperation for clients. Are you desperate for clients? How does your hunger show?

Anyway, it’s a worthy read – have a look at it. Hopefully you’ll come away with a desire to have a true wellness plan for business that will keep you well-fed and therefore a stronger magnet for prosperity.

Article: http://biznik.com/articles/are-you-too-hungry-to-go-shopping-for-clients

Warmly,

Tia