I asked Robert to tell his story about how he set up his U.S. based online retail store, selling fitness equipment, while running it from his home in Melbourne, Australia. Here is his response.

“Like most people who are interested in earning a living online, I believed all those ‘gurus’ I found on the internet who all say the same thing, ‘anyone can run any business anywhere and from anywhere’. It’s a beguiling message to new online entrepreneurs but I soon found out that this wasn’t true.”

About eighteen-months ago, Robert wanted to quit his nine-to-five job and run his own online store. The only problem was he had no money. Therefore, he decided to operate his store using the drop ship model – this is where the retailer holds no stock but has signed an agreement with a supplier to retail its products. Then, when a customer places an order, the order is sent to the supplier and the goods are sent directly to the customer. Drop ship offers would-be retailers the opportunity to begin selling goods from their site without having any inventory and with very little start up costs.

However, it was when he got into the mechanics of setting up his business that it soon became apparent that the business needed to be grounded somewhere.

“In order to be accepted as a dealer for a supplier’s goods I needed to operate through a business. Without a business, real wholesalers simply won’t deal with you. Obviously, a company has to be registered under the auspices of a government agency. It was then that I had doubts on the story being peddled around the internet about how online business could be operated anywhere and from anywhere.

I wanted to retail exercise equipment and, for various reasons, I wanted to sell to the U.S. market. At first I thought I would just register a company in Australia, set up a website and approach suppliers in the States that would drop ship the goods to customers in the U.S.

But there was a big problem with this: U.S. suppliers are loath to deal with overseas retailers. U.S. suppliers want a retailer to have a U.S. EIN or reseller’s licence. Many also want to know your American business bank details. And, perhaps most crucially, suppliers in the States just feel more comfortable dealing with U.S. businesses.”

Many non-U.S. resident entrepreneurs dream of breaking into the American market but find that the technical challenges defeat them. But, not Robert.

His stubborn, Irish genes refused to give in. So, he decided to ‘locate’ his business in the U.S.

“It wasn’t easy. There are some major obstacles for a non-U.S. resident setting up a business in America – and, to set it up remotely, from the other side of the planet!

Forming a U.S. company and getting a tax ID (EIN) proved to be remarkably easy and cheap. But, the real challenge is in obtaining a business bank account and merchant account for your new business.

I spent hours phoning banks in the States and explaining that I was calling them from Australia but wanted a bank account for my American business. Many just didn’t understand and others refused on the grounds of the Patriot Act, whereby a bank has to know its customers and they would only open accounts for U.S. citizens.

Eventually I did find a bank that was willing to open an account and merchant account. Once these were in place, my business was ready to begin operation and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Today, Robert’s online store is thriving. He retails fitness gear to the U.S. market and he does this all from his home in Australia.

“But, what I’ve learned is this: modern technology has indeed made it possible to run virtually any online business from anywhere. Websites can be hosted anywhere, phones and faxes can now be run as virtual PBX’s which means my U.S. customers call my U.S. toll-free number and I can take their calls in Australia. Also, nearly all correspondence is done via email; orders are sent to my suppliers via email, I receive supplier invoices by email and I can access my U.S. bank account online.

However, the actual business entity can’t operate anywhere. It has to be formed and operated in the jurisdiction of the country it was incorporated, which means you will have to deal with that country’s tax and banking laws.

So, if you’re thinking of starting an online business don’t believe everything the ‘gurus’ tell you. A business is still rooted somewhere but, unlike before, you can now run it from anywhere.”

From now on, if I happen to mention “you can work from anywhere”, I’ll be sure to add Robert’s points for clarification. You can find out a lot more on how Robert set up and runs his U.S. business by visiting www.americanbusinesslaunch.com.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2012. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Nevertheless, I’d like to at least mention the tool and give you some of the highlights. First off, you can use parts of the tool for free, so I recommend at least giving it a test drive yourself. You may find that it will give you some optimization tips that you wouldn’t have thought of before, and that alone will be worth the zero dollars you paid for using the free bits of the tool.

Now, if you happen to have people working for you, then you’ll probably love Linkdex. The ability to assign tasks to people via the tool is pretty awesome, and you can correlate those completed tasks to ranking changes as well. Another thing I noticed during my tour (and remembered) was the ability to place a value on various tasks and rankings, so you can see monetarily how things are going. You can read more about the features on the site, but I’ll summarize them a little below.

• Assign tasks for link building, content, and technical issues to team members, and then track how ranking changes correlate to those completed tasks.
• Track rankings, of course, and see how those rankings affect monetary value changes.
• Get lots of backlink analysis and tracking
• Good competitive analysis and tracking
• Page analysis and suggested tips for optimization

There’s lots of summary dashboards that can be set up, with a different set of information available on each dashboard, so different groups of people can quickly see a summary of what they are most interested in. I think what impressed me the most with this feature-rich tool was the ability to assign tasks to people and then match up those tasks with changes in rankings for the pages affected by those completed tasks. It’s hard to describe really, but not hard to understand once you see it in action.

So you know me…if it’s free, I try it. Since Linkdex has the ability to show you some things for free, I recommend you give it a go. See what you think of it. See if it can help you with your own site, or client sites if you have clients. If you try it, let me know what you think of it.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Today was my birthday, and although I hardly ever go to the home page of google.com (I usually just search from the address bar), I went to the home page today because I wanted to use my microphone to search by voice instead of typing my query. (My hands were full).

Here’s what I saw when I went to google.com today.

Aside: Sorry for the poor image quality. I couldn’t easily capture the tooltip that popped up when I hovered over the logo – the one that said Happy Birthday, Donna – via screen capture, so I just snapped a pic of the screen with my cell phone camera. Hey, don’t judge me. It was easy and it worked!

Anyway, back to the point… Right there on the home page was a special logo wishing me a happy birthday, and the logo links directly to my Google+ profile page. How cool is that! Actually, I believe they’ve been doing the birthday logo thing for a while now, but I didn’t remember about it, so it was a total surprise when I saw it. Granted, the link to my profile is kind of a waste, because it’s not like anyone but me would ever see either the logo or the link to my profile, but it’s the “feel good effect” that matters.

Sure, the entire process is automated, and Google didn’t have to do anything “special” to make me feel special, but the effect is the same no matter how much or how little effort went into it. I’ll continue to harass Google any time I think they are being boneheaded about something, but they’ve earned some serious brownie points from me today, just because they bothered to show me a special logo on my birthday.

As my brother recently reminded me, “it’s the little things that matter”. I felt pampered by Google today, and they’ll earn some brand loyalty in the future from me for that. Now, not all of us have departments filled with programmers to create these “feel good” website components for us, but we should strive to pass along some feel-good pampering to our visitors when we can. I know I’m often too busy to reach out to every visitor. I don’t always take the time to respond to every single comment here for instance. I should. I don’t, but I should. I can’t promise I’ll respond any more often in the future than I already do. But I’ll try to occasionally pamper my visitors more than I have before.

I think you should consider pampering your visitors a little more too. I know first hand now how good it feels to have that little bit of automated luv thrown my way, and if you can throw some at your visitors, they’ll appreciate you more, I bet.

Just thought I’d pass that along.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Each person listed here is someone I know and trust. They each have incredible skills, big hearts, and reasonable prices. If you’re looking for help to make your site better, your traffic grow, your conversions rise, or your site’s emergencies solved, you should consider the people on this list.

Kim Krause Berg

This is who I’d want analyzing all of my sites for usability and user experience issues. Why does usability matter? If you want happy visitors and increased conversions, you want a site that has been optimized for usability. Kim is the goto woman for making that happen at the most reasonable price in the industry. Why Kim? First, she lives and breathes usability, so her knowledge is top notch. Second, she truly cares about what she does, she cares about her clients, and she cares about site visitors. Finally, combine her knowledge and caring with her creative spirit, and you’ve found the perfect usability expert.

Learn more at Kim’s site: Cre8pc

Gail Gardner

Gail, aka GrowMap, is the small business person’s hero, advocate, and champion. I know of no one who puts her heart and soul into helping small businesses more than Gail. So what can a small business hire Gail to do? Gail is an expert in various areas, including blog outreach, writing and/or promoting custom content, local and social optimization, and more. Her rates are insanely reasonable, and you can be sure you’ll get plenty of heart and soul thrown in for free.

More info on Gail’s site: GrowMap

Michael VanDeMar

Keep Michael’s information handy. You’ll want to find it quickly the next time your blog is hacked. What? You think that will never happen? Well, I hope it won’t, but it happens – a lot – to even the most tech-savvy among us. Luckily, Michael has made a name for himself as an expert at cleaning hacked WordPress sites. Michael is very thorough, making sure he completely cleans sites, so they don’t get re-hacked from some backdoor left behind. Like the other experts in my list here, his pricing is extremely reasonable, and you can feel comfortable trusting Michael with your site. His goal is your goal – to get your site back to its pre-hacked glory.

Learn how to clean a site, or hire Michael to do it for you here: Clean Hacked WordPress Sites

Donna Fontenot

Me – Ok, sure, you know of course, that you can hire me for a variety of things. Need an SEO audit? Looking for WordPress help? Social media guidance? You’ll find many of the services I offer on my About page, and on my Hire me page. One thing I’ve been doing lately is being put on retainer for what my clients call their “Dear Donna” requests. Depending upon how often you might need me to help you with urgent but perhaps small problems with your site (maybe you can’t figure out why some text or an image isn’t lining up properly, or you need help with CSS or HTML, etc.), I can be on retainer for you to call upon throughout the month as needed. Typical charges for this service might be $200 for 20 “Dear Donna” emails.

If you’re looking to hire someone to help with something else outside of the services offered by the people on this list, feel free to ask if I know anyone. More than likely, I can recommend someone who can help with whatever site issue you have. I’m sure there are quite a few others I could have included in this list, but many of them are in narrow, specialized areas that may not be needed by a broad spectrum of people. So just because I didn’t include someone doesn’t mean I wouldn’t recommend them.

Before I end this post, I just want to reiterate that each of these people are people I trust and believe in. Often we are too close to our own sites to really see how they could be improved, or we need an outside creative push. Hiring someone on this list will give you that expert, unbiased help that you need to move to the next level, or solve problems that are just outside of your own areas of expertise.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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So I downloaded and checked out the course. It’s all laid out pretty simply. There are 7 videos that aren’t too long, so your mind doesn’t tend to drift. Each module is accompanied by an outline and additional resources. It’s a good yet simple course that explains the whats, whys, and hows of setting up and marketing a paid email newsletter to subscribers in your niche. Nothing elaborate, just the information you need to know to put it all together.

It’s one of those topics that I thought, “Huh. Why didn’t I think of this before?” I’m not sure it will work for every topic or niche, but it’s at least worth thinking about as a possible additional monetization method. The course doesn’t cost much, either in money or time, so if you were thinking of new ways to get paid for writing great content, it’s worth considering this. Here’s the link to the course. Let me know if you try it and how it works for you.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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You have everything you need, right?

• Photoshop (or Gimp), check.
• Sources for stock images, check.
• Design elements such as Photoshop brushes and vectors, check.
• WordPress itself, check.

That’s everything, right? Well, maybe not completely. There are a few things that freelance WordPress designers need but never think about until situations crop up, and these problems usually surface over and over again before they are finally dealt with consistently. Here are some of those issues, with suggested ways to handle them.

Problem #1: Client Training and Support

Teaching clients how to use their new WordPress-based site and supporting them every time they have a question about WordPress is at best a time-suck, and at worst, an excruciating grind. Many designers are not prepared for the customer service side of things, and may not have the best “bedside manner” when dealing with client training.

Consider the following scenario. You’ve given your client a once-over of the WordPress dashboard, yet every other day, you get a call from the client that goes something like this.

“Joe, I don’t remember how to stick a picture of my dog on the right side of the stuff I want to say today. How do I do that again?”

You say something like like:

“Nick, remember what I showed you a couple of days ago? How you click on the toolbar icon to upload an image, and …

If you only have one client, that level of support might not be a big issue, but if you have several clients – or hope to find time to market yourself and obtain more – you need to minimize that kind of interaction as much as possible, while still giving your clients everything they need to succeed with their new site. Some questions are ones that only you can answer, but in most situations, many of the questions could be better handled by written or visual documentation. If you have the time and patience, you could create documentation and videos that answer all the most common questions that might arise. Of course, that kind of documentation takes a lot of time (and some talent), and would have to be revised every time WordPress makes major changes, which happens pretty frequently. The better option is to make use of what someone else has already done, especially if it is high quality and always updated to reflect the current WordPress version.

Of course, you could use my Beginner’s Guide to Blogging with WordPress, but that’s only the tip of the training iceberg, so you’ll probably want to use something more comprehensive. You should check out the WordPress User Manual Plugin because it covers pretty much everything needed to train your clients. It has over 35 high quality video tutorials that teach your clients how to use the site you developed for them using WordPress. It is installed just like a normal WordPress plugin, and once installed, the plugin creates a “Manual” menu item in the WordPress dashboard that lets your clients get their questions answered without having to contact you.

It will answer all those questions such as “How do I upload pictures?”, How do I add a page to my site?”, and “What do all those toolbar buttons do?” In addition to the videos, the plugin also includes a Word and PDF manual with screenshots.

One thing that is really cool is that you can brand the plugin and manuals with your own logo, as though you created it yourself. In addition, you can even add your own videos to the plugin! This makes it ideal for those projects that you created custom functionality for, that needs a little more explanation than the average WordPress user needs.

Of course, the plugin videos and manual get updated with each new stable release of WordPress, so you know your clients will always have instructions that match the current version of WordPress. That saves a ton of time and headache because WordPress changes the way the back end works pretty frequently.

Probably the best feature: You get a developer’s license, which lets you install the plugin on as many of your client sites as you want.

Most new freelance designers will never think about how much time and effort is involved in after-design training and support. After the third or fourth client that knows nothing about using WordPress, though, the advantage of something like this becomes blindingly obvious.

Problem #2 – Proposals, Contracts, Forms, Checklists, etc.

A new freelancer quickly realizes that he or she needs to find some sample forms to handle the business side of projects. Contracts, proposals, disclosure agreements, invoices, etc. all become a necessity, and no one generally has those things just lying around when they are just starting out. Finding free ones on the web is a major source of frustration, and while some freebies can be found – eventually – in the end, it’s a lot easier to just pony up a few bucks for a nice set of templates.

There are probably tons of web design business documents available for purchase. A quick search will let you find whatever you’re looking for. I like this particular web design document pack because it’s a set of ready-made templates that enable you to just fill in the blanks and be done with it, but I’m sure there are plenty of other choices available as well. I happen to like the types of documents included in this one, though, so I’ll list them here, and you can compare to others you find, and determine which is best for your situation.

Work Request Order Form – Defines and clarifies each ADDITIONAL task requested of you outside of the original agreement. This lets you handle scope creep in a way that’s fair.

Credit Card Authorization – Lets your client give you the credit card info needed to purchase items on her behalf such as domain name registrations, hosting, etc.

Confidentiality Disclosure Agreement – Gives your client the reassurance needed that the information they give you will not be disclosed to the competition.

Web Design Proposal – The document most requested and most difficult to deal with… It lets you present a proposal to a prospective client showing the project overview, recommendations, benefits, functional specs, technical specs, information architecture, etc. and details the project with regard to both cost and timeframe expectations.

Lite Proposal – Same as above but a lighter version that’s great for smaller projects.

Web Development Contract – Once you land the client thanks to a great proposal, you need a contract that covers code ownership, payment terms and conditions, change requests, scope creep, expenses, liability, cancellations, etc.

Technical Specifications – This is a good place to log all that important information such as site usernames and passwords, domain and hosting account information, etc.

Invoice – This invoice template includes your business details, accepted payment methods, payment terms, due date, itemized list of work accomplished and hours billed, and total of outstanding and paid items.

Project Handover Form – When the project is complete, and it is time to “hand over the site to client”, this document allows the client to sign off on the completion, take ownership of and responsibility for the new design, and gives you proof that you’ve satisfied the project requirements, in case anything is disputed in the future.

Problem #3 – Tracking The Time Spent on Projects

Just like you can find tons of contract documents online, you can also find tons of time tracking apps online as well. No matter what you use, you should use something other than the clock in your taskbar to keep track of the time you spend on client sites, especially if you charge by the hour. I like the free Paymo Time Tracker that lets you create tasks, start/stop time spent on a task, mark tasks when completed, and send out invoices based on the time spent. As I mentioned, it’s free for most freelancer’s needs, and it includes options that allow you to download a Windows or Mac desktop timer widget, use a browser-based web timer, or even use a mobile app timer. It also lets you connect the invoicing to your PayPal account so your clients can just click a Pay via Paypal button on the invoice that will take them right to Paypal to pay, and after paying, the invoice will automatically be marked as paid in Paymo.

Those are three problems most new freelance WordPress designers encounter, that they never considered having to deal with before they started their freelance career. If you’ve been wishing you had a way to train your clients, track your time, or handle the paperwork involved, one of these three tips might solve your problem.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: freelance, resources, web designers, WordPress, WordPress Designer
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I’m Luvvin’ It!!!

Let me tell you why you should be thrilled that I’m using CommentLuv Premium. I’m using this brilliant WordPress plugin so I can help YOU shine, and I hope you’ll soon see just how it can make your blog shine too.

You see, if you’ve known me at all over the last few years, you know my motto is, “You’ll never shine if you don’t glow”. I won’t get into the details right now of why that’s my motto, but I’ll tell you this. My goal over the years has been, and is still, to help you shine.

CommentLuv Premium helps me do that.

Comment Luv Premium gives me tons of control and lots of customization options that enable me to offer you the opportunity to showcase your content. The reason I’ve always been crazy about CommentLuv was that it gave everyone the opportunity to share their content with others in a meaningful way.

When people see the title of one of your posts next to your name when you comment, they see a fuller you. They no longer just see a name. They get a feel for who you are, and they can learn more about you by hovering over your CommentLuv card. Even better, they are very likely to click your link and head on over to your site to read your post.

I know what you’re thinking. CommentLuv did that anyway, so what’s the big deal about the Premium version? There’s tons of “big dealness” about it, but I’ll let you discover most of that yourself. I want to focus on one feature that makes it kick … well you know what I’m about to say.

Social Enticement

Social enticement. Let me repeat that. Roll it around your tongue for a moment. Social enticement.

When you use CommentLuv Premium, you can choose to give extra goodies to those people who give your post some social luv’in. What’s that all about?

If you choose, you can give all commenters the ability to display a post from a list of their last 10 posts. You can also give all commenters dofollow links. Or…

Or… you can give them all a choice of just ONE – their last post with the OPTION of letting them choose from their last 10 posts if they tweet, like, or plusone your post, as is shown in the screenshot below.

Think about that for a moment. You aren’t penalizing anyone. Everyone gets a little CommentLuv goodness. But those people who choose to give your post some extra social love, will get in return, some extra CommentLuv functionality.

Who wins?

• They win.
• You win.
• Everybody wins.

That’s the CommentLuv Premium feature I love the most. Yep, there’s plenty more to luv about CommentLuv Premium, but I’ll let you discover all those things on your own. Watch the video on the CommentLuv page to help you understand all the reasons it rocks.

Lots of reasons it rocks, but for me…social enticement is kick-badonkadonk! Yeah!

Get All The Info

Even if you decide not to get this plugin, I still recommend taking a look at all its features. Why? Because just knowing what is possible can spark some ideas in how you can be making your blog more enticing. So, go check it out and start thinking about how you could be enticing your users too. I bet it will be a light-bulb moment.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: comment luv, Social Media Marketing
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Lately, people have been quick to shout that Google Plus has mostly inactive users, and I’m here to say, “yeah, so?”. One of these shocking pronouncements came about in August 2011, when Bimeanalytics put out an infographic that swept the tech news and had everyone shouting that 83% of Google Plus users are inactive, or on the flip side, only 17% are active. Bimeanalytics later withdrew this stat from their infographic, mentioning that it might not be accurate enough. Still, it wouldn’t surprise me to think it is accurate. Or at least as accurate as these things ever are. But I still say, “Yeah, so?”

In any case, every time someone releases stats about some social network, in regards to active users, there’s a great hubbub about it. I think everyone reading about these stats needs to do two things:

Take the numbers with a mountain of salt. Most of the stats presented will be guesstimations at best, and possibly so far wrong, that it’s simply a load of [place your favorite "load of x" word here].

Remember that a low instance of active users is the norm for any social group – online or offline – past or present. People join things, and then fail to participate. It happens. Raise your hand if you know anyone who has joined a gym, only to stop going soon afterwards. If you want some stats to visualize this real-world group activity, various reports over the years have declared that 40% of people who join health clubs stop going soon afterwards, with 90% stopping within the first 90 days.

People Are Lazy

Pick any activity online or off that requires any effort at all, and you’ll probably find a statistic that claims a large percentage of participants are really inactive.

People tend to jump on things they think they might enjoy doing, and then quickly fall back into their previous routine. Face it. People are lazy and most people may be comfortable following or lurking but rarely lead or even participate in the smallest of ways – in anything.

Historically Speaking

So before you condemn Google Plus or any other social network that may be involved in the “Stat of The Day”, keep in mind that the same kinds of things have been shouted about every other social network – even those that are popular. Let’s take a quick look through the short history of Twitter, just to lay the foundation.

• In the summer of 2009, Hubspot reported (pdf) that about 55% of 4.5 million Twitter accounts had NEVER TWEETED, and nearly 53% had NO followers.
• In January of 2010, Marketing Pilgrim informed us that according to a study put out by RJMetrics, the percentage of active Twitter users was 17%. (There’s that 17% number again – just like the one recently thrown around about Google Plus).
• Just two months later, in March of 2010, Mashable reported that a study by Barracuda Labs showed that only 21% of Twitter users were active and 34% had never tweeted even once.
• That same month, Business Insider reported that of 175 million accounts in February 2011, 56 million Twitter users followed no one, and 90 million had 0 followers.
• Skip ahead to August of 2011, and an infographic reveals just 5% of Twitter users create 75% of the content but 52% of Twitter users update their status every day, so the active users have seemingly risen to more than 52% – possibly much more.

We could probably all find many of these same types of stats on nearly any popular or once-popular social group, but I think this is enough to make my point.

Stop jumping on every hyped-up stat that someone throws out about how many active users Social Network X has or Social Network Y doesn’t have. The shocking numbers are probably just more of the same load of [place your favorite "load of x" word here] that you’ve seen umpteen times before.

Yes, Social Network X has mostly inactive users. So does Social Network Y, Local Community Group Z, and School Groups 1, 2, and 3. All the noise about this news is not news. It’s just noise.

Stats That Matter

1. What stats should you really be concerned with? Your own.
2. Which social networks make the most difference to you as an individual, and which makes the most difference to you as a solo or small business owner?
3. Where are the conversations taking place about your niche or product?
4. Monitor your stats. Set up search alerts to inform you of brand or niche mentions so you know which social networks have the most active users that you specifically care about.
5. Then realize that even the non-active users might still be influenced by your participation there, either directly or indirectly, so be active where it makes sense for you personally, and ignore all the rest of the noise.

When you’re done with that, go lurk somewhere. You know you want to!

Yes, I realize the title of this post is a tad bit misleading, but it was designed to be that way to make a point. Oh hey, be sure to connect with me on Google Plus, Twitter, and Facebook. There’s a good chance I’m an active user at one, some, or all of them, at one time or another. Maybe even 17% or 83% of the time.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 49 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google Plus, social networks, stats, Twitter
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I once complained on Twitter that I could never read the things, and one of my twitter followers suggested I was simply inept because I was unable to read them. So here are a few of the many recaptchas I failed to be able to read today while trying to register for a site.

You’ll notice in that last screenshot, I thought I’d figured out what that one said. I was wrong. That was the point at which I gave up. (Remember, even though I only show 9 screenshots here, I’d actually refreshed the thing over 70 times before I gave up!)

Seriously, the usability of this is so ridiculous that if you try to shove this down my throat, I’m going to just leave your site immediately. There are many anti-spam technologies you can choose from. Some are even worse than reCAPTCHA (though that’s very hard to do), but there are plenty that don’t make me want to throw my computer out the window. Use one of them instead. Please.

And one final note. This is aimed directly at Google. Google, you ride around on your shiny white horse telling webmasters to make their sites better for users, and you systematically punish those that you believe aren’t doing so. Panda, anyone? I wish I had the power you have, Google, because I’d pandalize your sites in a heartbeat just because you own this piece of crap. Get your own house in order, will you?

If you hate recaptcha as much as I do, join me in my boycott! Feel free to use the Boycott image I created above if you’d like. Help me put an end to this madness!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 52 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-spam technologies, boycott, Google, ReCAPTCHA
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However, if that blog had wowed me with a list of well-organized content, laid out in a way that’s easy to see at a glance, the chances of having me stick around would have been much higher. The easiest way to present your blog posts in an easy-to-see format is to add a sitemap to your site. I’m not talking about the kind that is designed for search engines (XML sitemaps), though that’s useful too. I’m referring instead to the kind made specifically for humans (HTML sitemaps).

While there are a few free plugins designed for this, many are old and out of date, so I’ve highlighted only the two that I have the most confidence in. Each of these, once installed, configured, and running, will automatically add new blog posts to the sitemap without any further effort on your part.

Atlas HTML Sitemap Generator

HTML Sitemap Generator has an options page that lets you specify what to include and what to exclude. Once you’ve set the options, you simply create a new page, and place the [sitemap] shortcode into the page content. It uses your own theme’s default styles to display the sitemap, which is essentially a long list of links, sorted and grouped nicely together by category, pages, etc. Here’s an example of what the output looks like on one of my test blogs.

Table of Contents Creator

Table of Contents Creator, like the plugin above, allows you to include and exclude just about anything, but this plugin is more customizable, and can even include links to articles, downloads, or other sites, if the links are already a part of your site’s navigation. Once options are set, you simply create a new page and place <!– toc-creator –> into the page content, or click the option to let it create a page for you. The output is very nice since it doesn’t just display a list of linked titles; it also includes a summary excerpt for each item, which really helps users understand what a post is about. The plugin comes with various attractive styles to choose from, and of course, any of the styles can be edited as well. You can even give users the option to collapse or expand the list, show or hide summaries, and sort by post date, author, menu order, or alphabetically. Although this plugin hasn’t been updated in over a year, it still works well for me on my personal blog that is running the latest version of WordPress, so I have no qualms about recommending it. Here’s an example of what the output looks like on my personal blog:

Either of the two plugins are good choices, with the first being slightly easier to use, and the second being much more customizable and visitor-friendly. Help your visitors see the wealth of content you provide without forcing them to work for it. If you want to see an example of this in action, click here to check out my own HTML sitemap, which uses the Table of Contents Creator plugin.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Site map, Sitemaps
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.