FYI, the last successful ‘daily backup’ of your site was Thursday at 1 am EST, so if you are planning big changes on your site (and then regret them), the last backup we can restore is the Thursday at 1am.

Of course you can make a backup of your site at any time through your control panel (see a short video here).  I suggest that you only keep one on the server at a time or you will fill up your disk space.  You can download the backups to your hard drive if you want multiple copies.

If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact me.

PUBLIC:
For those of you who are not my hosting customers, I have uploaded the graphic to Photobucket and coded the widget for Americans & Canadians.

Cut and paste the following blue HTML code in a Wordpress ‘TEXT’ sidebar widget.  Sorry, I cannot provide support for other blogging platforms.

AMERICANS:
<a href="http://www.stampinup.com/us/documents/Holiday_Extravaganza_GGG_US_1009.pdf" target="_blank"><img src="http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss329/websbyamy/GGGsm.gif" border="0" /></a>

CANADIANS:
<a href="http://www.stampinup.com/ca/documents/Holiday_Extravaganza_GGG_CA_1009.pdf" target="_blank"><img src="http://i588.photobucket.com/albums/ss329/websbyamy/GGGsm.gif" border="0" /></a>
 

Some widgets are ‘pre-made’ such as ‘Categories’ or ‘Archives’ and you can just drag them, but what if you want your own sidebar widget with a photo and text and links, etc.?

I have created a video that shows how you can use a Wordpress post to create a custom sidebar widget and then use the HTML generated from it to drop into a text widget.

Clear as mud?  Watch the video!

I am very excited about making this video and I think that a LOT of you have wanted the ability to create galleries of your work on pages or in posts.

This video shows how to import and use the NextGen Gallery plugin for your Wordpress site and use it immediately. 

This plugin is capable of way more than I am showing, so I recommend that you get to know it better by going to the website provided by the plugin designer, meanwhile, see how easy NextGen gallery is to use right out of the box!

DemoToDemo.com is now a Wordpress ‘magazine style’ content management system.  Not only is this much easier to maintain than the HTML site that I created for her in ‘08, the entire thing is actually a blog but the content is delivered to look like a website.

Unlike her old site, she now has an RSS feed and you can click on and subscribe (even by email).  That way when she has a new planner to announce, you can get notification of the post via email (or feed) and the ‘post’ itself becomes the latest listing in the ‘Category’ header in a structure not unlike a page.

Andrea had wanted a change and so several months ago, had her banner redesigned by Michelle Laycock along with an entire matching ensemble that Michelle did for her (Twitter, etc.).  However, she wasn’t decisive about what she wanted for final layout for the new DemoToDemo.com.   Fate took that out of her hands when Frontpage Extensions on her site got corrupted last week and she was no longer able to update her site the way she was used to.

Not wanting to learn a new web authoring software, I brought her to the ‘dark side’ and into Wordpress.  This site is a bit more sophisticated than the custom theme I created for her at AndreaWalford.com, but just as easy to take care of. 

For my members also, I have taken the liberty of uploading and re-coding Michelle Layock’s sidebar widgets… she made a fabulous one for the announcement of My Digital Studio and the October ‘Deal of the Week’.

If you are not my customer, click here to go to Laycock Designs (that is a link that pulls her ’sidebar widgets’ category for Stampin’ Up! demos).  Keep that link in your bookmarks!

And I realized after I made the video that I spelled YouTube wrong (I typed it as two words, LOL!).  So, trust me on the method (if not my spelling)!

I will be featuring more videos in the coming week(s) on most asked questions… so send me your questions!

However, you can also use this idea to create an ‘archive’ of your newsletters by creating a “Newsletter” page and providing links to your latest newsletter(s) for your customers who cannot receive email.

You can use this trick to upload a newsletter to any free space you have on the web (if you aren’t with my hosting) that you can then link to.

With any Wordpress site,  use the ‘upload media’ button from a post or page to import the ‘Newsletter.html’ (the name for my example file in the video) to the web and then just copy the link to where it was uploaded to the server.

I am sure you must be able to do that with Typepad or Blogger, I’m just not familiar with how.

I designed this site for Tamye Dunbar with matching buttons (and a matching downline password protected site) just last week.  This was a design that was conceived entirely in Photoshop, while I was looking to take a header ‘out of the box’ of the usual rectangle banner.

I designed the site layout in Photoshop CS3 and rendered it to pieces (header and background) that I brought back together in a custom coded Wordpress theme.  So, while it doesn’t look ‘out of the box,’ the header actually is a large rectangle that I lined up with the background to appear to be one big piece. This site is so ‘brand new’ she has not really begun blogging yet!  

This replaced the HMTL website that I designed for her several years ago… it is easier to keep in touch with both your customers and downline in the format of articles that come to their inbox! As part of my ‘full service’ site design, I set up her pages which include an ‘Events’ page (which in this case redirects to her DBWS calendar), a recruiting page (again, links back to sign up online), a Specials page and a ’spam and robot free’ Contact Form. 

I added all the promotional ‘widgets’ and since she is a full service customer, I will be maintaining her specials page and sidebar.  She has all the usual lineup of plugins for SEO, a Feedburner feed and a ’souped up’ post and page editor that will easily import photos and documents for faster posting. I know that using Stampin’ Up’s My Digital Studio (MDS) is getting more popular by the day and gals want to have their blogs reflect their own unique banner and background. 

Contact me regarding a custom theme (2 or 3 column) with your designed banner and background… are you an MDS superwoman… you’ll be surprised to see how fast I can get you online with a privately hosted Wordpress blog with your banner!  Read more about that  here.

Chad’s ‘home’ page has a ’side’ navigation panel that features descriptions with links well as simple (traditional) top navigation bar.  There are also three ‘featured’ areas at the bottom that direct you to other pages on his site.

This layout combines to give a ‘website’ look and feel BUT is configured for an RSS feed for the pages and the posts.

For the ‘look,’ I created a montage of photos to highlight his areas of expertise and ’socialized’ him with links to his social media sites.  His Twitter feed (or latest Twitter post) is streamed through the main page as well.  Michelle Laycock worked her magic on a logo banner (plus business cards, etc.) for him, using his site’s ‘colors’ (black and hunter green).

He still isn’t using his blog yet… but the blog ‘page’ is purely an option that can be turned on or off easily.   Since his site is more ‘page’ driven, I have configured PAGES in his RSS feed (hmmm… can your Typepad do that?  I think not… .

As is standard these days, I have included a ’sitemaps.org compatible’ sitemap of his blog (which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO) and submitted it to his Google ‘Webmaster Tools’ account for statistic monitoring.

That and the All-In-1 SEO plugin, he’s ready for the world!