If you have an old non-CMS site lying around that you wish you could convert to WordPress, without too much hassle, this is the guide for you. Essentially, it boils down to 2 main steps, which involves moving your static content into WordPress’s database as pages or posts. STEP ONE: Get your static HTML pages gathered together in one place, using HTTrack to build those static pages, if necessary. STEP TWO: Import those pages using an easy WordPress plugin.

Let’s start with some basics. No matter how your site is coded, once a visitor loads a page on your site, the browser takes all the bits and pieces (server-side includes, images from another directory, etc.) and puts them all together in what amounts to a final static HTML page. Even if some elements on the page are still dynamic, the code itself is all together in one spot that can be moved into a WordPress page that would still work. There may be some exceptions to that which I’m not considering, but for most of the sites out there, that would be true. So, even if your site consists of somepage.php, which calls a file named header.inc, and a file named footer.php, once the user views somepage.php in her browser, the resulting source code is all in one place, as though it were hand-coded as a static HTML page. This is the type of code that is needed to convert a site to WordPress using the method I’m outlining here.

If you already have an old static HTML site with no server-side includes, then you have everything you need to get your content right into WordPress. If that’s the case, you can skip the next section, and head straight to the section titled “Import Your Content Into WordPress”.

Convert Your Dynamic Pages To Static Pages Easily

HTTrack Website Copier lets you download an entire website onto your computer. If your pages are dynamically put together, using server-side includes to automatically insert chunks of content into each page (like the header, footer, and menu), then you’re going to want to have HTTrack mirror the site – with all content already inserted – and recreate it on your computer. It doesn’t take very long, but of course, how long it will take depends upon the size of your site. Luckily, you just run it and go do something else, and eventually, the entire site will be recreated and waiting for you. There are lots of options for how you can run this. Most of you will simply use the graphical interface instead, and if so, then you should be able to determine what to do pretty easily. The manual has lots of screenshots to help.

Personally, I like running this from the command line on my Linux computer, and I like using the -K option to use absolute urls in the links. When I run this from the command line, I use something like this:

httrack http://www.yoursite.com -O /home/you/somefolder -K

But I can’t guess at what your exact code should be, if you decide to use the command line instead of the graphical interface. You’ll need to read through the documentation to determine what’s right for you.

Regardless of how you run HTTrack, or what options you choose, once you have a folder that contains your entire site, all in a static HTML format, you’re ready to move it into WordPress.

Import Your Content Into WordPress

Start by installing a fresh copy of WordPress. Then add the following plugin and activate it.

Import HTML Pages WordPress Plugin

Once activated, open up its options page and make a few choices there. You can choose either to create pages or posts (not both). When I used it, I chose pages. Now you need to tell it how to recognize “just the content” (without all the surrounding template code, sidebar, footer, etc.). My content was surrounded by a div with an id of “content” (<div id=”content”>all my content was here on each page</div>), so that was easy, but as long as your content is surrounded by some sort of consistent, unique HTML tag, you can just specify that.

Once you’ve set all the options, you’re ready to run it. Very quickly, you’ll have a new WordPress blog with all the pages of content that match the content of your old site.

At this point, you may need to either recreate the template as a WordPress theme or use a new design. Personally, I think using a new design at this point is a good idea. It’s probably time for your old site to get a fresh new design facelift, right? In any case, converting an HTML template to a WordPress theme is beyond the scope of this post. There are tons of tutorials on how to do that on the web, so I won’t try to reinvent that wheel here.

You may also need to make a few tweaks including possibly some redirects if needed, but all in all, in probably just a few minutes, you’ve converted your old static HTML site to a new, easy to maintain WordPress site.

Final notes: Before you attempt this, you should carefully consider all the possible ramifications of making this change.

1. While WordPress makes maintaining a site very easy, and comes with some powerful modern advantages, there are some possible reasons to reconsider. For one thing, a static site is almost always going to load faster than a dynamic one, especially one that involves a database. If your site receives tons of traffic, a less-than-great server can probably handle the load if it’s serving static pages much better than it can handle serving a highly-traffic’d WordPress site. If this sounds like it may affect you, you might need to consider also upgrading to a better server and/or hosting company.

2. There may be some issues with URLs changing. There’s a good chance that you’ll need to adjust every page’s slug to match your old page URLs, or you’ll need to deal with redirecting all the old URLs to the new ones.

3. Some things may not work. It’s impossible to really guess at what those things might be, but maybe you have some pages on your site that use some sort of script to output some sort of crazy whatchamacallit. That script or whatchamacallit may not play well with WordPress.

The best idea is to do this conversion first as a test on a development site to see what gotchas might crop up. Since it’s fairly quick and easy to do, running a test first might save some headaches later on.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2011. | Permalink | 51 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: HTML, HTTrack, static site, WordPress
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CSS and Templates: Separation of Content From Presentation

At some point, and no I don’t remember when, the movement to separate content from presentation via the use of CSS stylesheets took hold. With the added convenience of using templates and themes in content management systems, the separation was complete. It was a tough transition for the old-timers, sure, but the rewards were many and worth it. One of those rewards involved the fact that the presentation / layout / design / style of the site could be dealt with once and then the site would essentially autogenerate that code in the future. All we had to do from then on was concentrate on writing content, and we could forget about including all the design code each time we wrote a new article.

This kind of automation (the use of stylesheets and templates) is extremely valuable because it eliminates tons of time, without sacrificing quality.

Monetization: Another Aspect We Can Separate / Automate

I think it’s important to also separate and automate the monetization of your site as well. What do I mean by that? Well, I’m not just talking about placing ads in your templates, although that counts too. That’s just another aspect of separating your content from your presentation though. What I mean is that the entire concept of monetizing your site should be a completely separate thought process, and should be automated as much as possible, once the monetization methods have been chosen.

Just like you’d spend a fair amount of time setting up the design of your site before you start adding lots of great content, you should also spend a fair amount of time deciding how to monetize the site. Make those decisions early on, implement them into the template when possible, and know ahead of time how you’ll integrate them on an ongoing basis. If you plan ahead, and automate the process as much as possible beforehand, again, you’ll be left with the ability to concentrate on the really important stuff – the content!

Why I Spend So Much Time Talking About Monetization

I spend a lot of time on this site telling you about all the different ways you can monetize your site. I don’t spend nearly as much time talking about your site’s content because I don’t have any way of knowing what that is. Your content is what makes your site unique. Whatever that content is (text, audio, video, games, web apps, etc.), it’s the meat of the site. I can’t help with that in a general way, because it’s all very unique to you. (Note: I do help with that in my one-on-one coaching, but that’s just not possible in this broad scope). So instead, I focus on the things that can be generalized, and much of that involves methods of earning money from your sites.

If I had more skills as a designer, I’d probably also spend a lot of time talking about design and CSS, because that kind of information can be generalized easily as well. Luckily for you, there are plenty of very talented designers and developers who love to share their knowledge, so I know you can find that information very easily.

The Quick Takeaway

The first and most important thing you can do for your site is provide outstanding content to your users. What that outstanding content is … is totally dependent upon you. You’re the one with the knowledge, interest, and skills to determine what you can offer to the world via your site. That content should be the one thing that is so unique and so outstanding that it can’t be automated. Only you (or your company) can deliver it, and no automation is possible in its creation. (Actually, some content can be automated ONCE it’s initially created, such as a web application, but let’s just assume that we’re talking about “most” content here).

All other aspects should be separate events, separate thought processes, and automated as much as possible. This includes design, style, presentation and monetization. Try to make decisions on all of this early on. Sure, you can and should tweak, adjust, and change as needed in the future, but the majority of the decisions should be dealt with early on, and utilized in such a way that the system automates the process in the future. You shouldn’t be thinking about monetization very often, any more than you think about your site’s template sidebars or footers very often. Once you do, you’ll find that your focus can be shifted to creating great content, and everything else follows naturally.

One Caveat

DON’T completely forget about style or monetization forever and ever and ever! While I recommend focusing mostly on content on an ongoing basis, and letting the system handle the style and monetization as much as possible, I don’t want you to think that you should never ever think about either again. Of course, you should be analyzing traffic and income, and making adjustments to either presentation or monetization as needed. The point I wanted to emphasize, however, is that the processes should be separated and automated as much as possible, so the content creation process is the main focus on a daily basis. Periodically, however, you should analyze and adjust so that your income is maximized, and your users needs are continually met.

The One Thing That Can’t Be Separated (In My Opinion)

I don’t believe you can separate marketing and promotion from the process. Promotion of your content should go hand-in-hand with the creation of the content. You should know who the content will be promoted to before you ever finish creating the content. Once the content is created, the promotion of it should begin in earnest. You may even start promoting it before it is finished, by posting “teaser messages” ahead of time to build excitement. In addition, the promotion of each piece of content may be unique to that content, so while you may be able to automate portions of it (such as automatically tweeting a blog post), the bulk of it should be unique to the individual content piece itself.

Want to know what inspired me to write this particular post? A really great post at Viperchill started the wheels churning and eventually it turned into this post. So, thanks, Glen, for getting my thoughts spinning.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Cascading Style Sheets, content management, HTML, monetization, separation
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But try remembering even those two things when you write posts for several blogs. If you’re anything like me, you never remember and you end up digging through old notes or View Source on blog posts to see what the format is. Don’t you wish you could just jot down a note on the WordPress admin dashboard to remind you of those little things? Guess what?

There’s a plugin for that!

Actually, there may be several, but the one I use is Dashboard Post-It. Here’s how it’s described:

Adds a simple ‘Post-it’ widget to the Dashboard that allows you to leave yourself or other authors a note. The plugin can be configured and moved around as any other Dashboard widget. It will accept plain text or (sanitized) HTML.

If you own a multi-author blog, this is a great way to make sure everyone remembers all the little rules you have. If you’re a blogger who posts for someone else, let them know about this little plugin. It can make things easier for everyone.

Sometimes it’s the tiniest things that increase productivity and keep us from tearing our hair out in frustration.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dashboard, HTML, plugin, WordPress
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UPDATE: I’ll try to update this post occasionally as time goes by.

Be The Go-To Blogger for Topical Event Curation

Your blog can become the “go-to guide” for event news curation in your niche. When an event occurs, you can be the one to build a collection of content that is worth a reader’s time. Here are a few tips on becoming a great event curator.

SEO Dojo Radio – the totally Dazzlin edition!

In the second half hour of this SEO Dojo Radio Podcast, I talk shop with David Harry and Terry Van Horne about SEO, making money online, marketing, and various things as we hold an informal industry discussion.

Discover What Google Really Thinks Of Your Pages

What does Google REALLY think of your site’s pages? Determine the rate of importance that Google places upon each of your pages, not by PageRank, but by analyzing crawl rate. Grab a free tool that tracks Googlebot and learn how to massage the data so that you can focus attention on those pages that you think are important, but Google apparently doesn’t.

Exhale Creativity: Inhale Buzz

Sometimes you jut get lucky and buzz spreads about your company, product, or service seemingly out of thin air. While it’s truly exciting when that happens, I wouldn’t sit around waiting for it. Sometimes you have to make your own luck. Buzz usually requires an excellent product or service that just knocks the socks right off everyone. If yours can generate that WOW factor simply because it is so great and solves a problem that everyone has, then you’re definitely ahead of the game. However, even WOW products can be overlooked in the daily stream of our lives. That’s when you need to help get the buzz started, and creativity is the best way to make that happen.

Streamline Your Content Creation Process With Time-Saving Systems

I run sites that are mostly informational in nature, and since informational sites need lots of actual … well … information, that means I spend a good deal of my time creating content. Creating good content takes time, and like most of you, I have very little time, so over the years I’ve created a “system” that helps me shave off as much wasted time as possible during the process. Here’s a glimpse at the content creation system that works for me. Feel free to use any parts of my system to streamline your own content creation process.

Intelligently Crafting Content

I could start off this article by saying that to succeed with SEO, you should create high-quality content, but if I did that, you would immediately think, “same old ‘content is king’ blah, blah, blah”, and you’d probably not read any further. So instead, let’s just start off by stipulating that creating great content is a given. So often, however, no one really goes beyond the phrase “good content” to discuss how to create that content, and just as importantly, how to plan it out, and effectively create a flow throughout the site.

Analyzing Your Text Content from a Graphic Point of View

“You can’t see the forest for the trees” is an old saying that holds much truth when we are trying to analyze our own content. You’ve looked at your own content so much you probably no longer see it the way your visitors do (or the way search engines will). Sometimes I find it useful to look at the words on my site in a completely different way. By viewing your content differently than you’ve ever done before, you open up the possibility of seeing the individual trees within your content forest again. Here’s a little exercise I like to use now and then.

Link Bartering

Link bartering is NOT the act of trading links (reciprocal linking), but is the act of trading services, which usually results in acquiring nice links and recommendations.

Creating Subliminal Connections Between Your Site and Hot Trends

What if you could associate your site, your niche, or your product with a hot new trend? What if the search results showed your site for that popular new gizmo or movie? What if I told you that you can create a subliminal connection between your site and any hot new gadget/movie/song/toy/etc. no matter what niche your site or product is in? And what if you stood a good chance of ranking well for that hot trend?

The Swirling Vortex of Social Networking

Social networking is increasingly becoming a vital aspect of our search marketing efforts. The connections we form amongst our online social communities can provide ever-expanding avenues of awareness of our sites, brand recognition, and ultimately buzz and link-love.

Sadly, however, there is a dark side to social networking. This dark side is one that we’d rather not talk about because we are afraid we might see it within ourselves. What could possibly be so scary? I call it the swirling vortex of social networking.

Using the Science of Social Proof in SEO

I’ve written about Robert Cialdini in the past and how his six persuasion principles can be used in search marketing. Briefly, the six principles are Liking, Reciprocity, Social Proof, Consistency, Authority, and Scarcity. All six are worth spending some serious study time with, but today I want to focus on just one – Social Proof.

Tracking Site Page Importance Via Crawl Cache Dates

A discussion centered around the realization that Google cache dates were the new PageRank and that crawl frequency is an excellent indicator of the importance of a page, which leads to an explanation in how to track this metric.

How To Create No-Fail Hot Content

Would you like your site content to rank well? Would you like your content to draw links like nails to a magnet? There is one strategy you can use to make sure the content you create is almost guaranteed to be a hit – and in the process it gathers backlinks and ranks well. This strategy isn’t some secret ninja tactic that would get your site banned if the search engines found out about it either. In fact, it’s a tactic that the search engines would be happy to recommend to all site owners.
And while the actual creation of the content may take some time and effort, the concept is extremely simple. So what is this awesome strategy?

Blueprint of a Successful SEO Campaign

The surest way to successfully construct a building is to follow a blueprint. A blueprint contains detailed plans and designs that enables skilled personnel to build the structure just from the blueprint. In the same way, a detailed set of plans is the surest way to build a successful search marketing campaign. And just like construction blueprints, while each SEO blueprint may be unique, each will also contain similar details to ensure success. What details should a search marketing blueprint contain?

SEO – Vital Inclusion to the Overall Marketing Mix

Companies are beginning to embrace SEO as a legitimate means of marketing, but they often throw a paltry amount of marketing dollars towards it, or they allocate most or all of the search budget to PPC only. That is a mistake, even for companies that don’t sell products or services online. Let’s take a look at some interesting statistics that will help show how important it is for companies to concentrate significant resources towards ranking well in the search engines’ organic rankings, which are the natural listings returned on the left side of the search results page.

When A Good Idea Goes Wrong – SEO Oopsies

If you search the Internet, you can find at least a few dozen lists that outline the common mistakes a newbie SEO might make. Just to make sure I don’t leave out the obligatory list, I’ll present it below. After that, however, I’ll detail what really happens when a beginner starts to see results from his or her first search marketing experiments.

This next batch is a series of posts I’ve done for SEO Chicks. Keep in mind that the SEO Chicks blog is a sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes just plain goofy look at the search world, so if some of these posts seem a little “less than professional”, that would be why.

Behavioral Based Ads Bad for Publishers and Scary for Users

Google just announced that it would start providing interest-based Adsense ads. I have a bit of experience with being a publisher that serves ad based on past user behavior and interests. That experience isn’t a very good one. If you are in the mood, follow along as I tell you my little tale of how behavior-based ads can be bad for everyone. (*names changed to protect the guilty and the innocent)

Dr. Phil Would Tell You That Stubborness Won’t Get You Higher Rankings

(A semi-fictional tale)

Despite the many changes, some folks just refuse to let go of the things they long to hold onto. Let’s consider the case of someone I like to call “Mr. Stubborn”.

If Google Is Unable to Remember Its Own Rules

Google, really, you just can’t expect everyone in the universe who owns a web site to follow your rules. You’ve just proven that by not following your own rules.

Finding SEO Inspiration

To be successful with your SEO campaign, you need to see beyond the simplistic ABC’s of search – looking past the typical optimization rules to get inspired. Find inspiration outside of the (chiclet) box, and you’ll likely find ways to improve both rankings and conversions!

Lets Call This Hypocrite Day Shall We?

There’s nothing new about this post. It’s been said before. But for those who still confuse ethics with believing whatever line of bull the search engines might be throwing out for their own betterment, I wanted to just put out a little reminder on this fine April day.

Link Building Ideas for the Link Building-Challenged

Since link building is about as fun as ripping off your own toenails with pliers, I thought it might be useful to spark some creative ideas into the heads of poor, depressed link builders. You know who you are. So without further ado, or maybe with lots of further ado, it depends on my mood …

The Evolution of a Newbie SEO

All the stages a noob goes through while learning SEO

SEO Conferences: Good Deal or No Deal?

I love SEO Conferences, but there’s a good possibility I’ll never attend another one. Why? Well, for one thing, after I tick off all the conference hosts today with this post, the SEO bouncers might block me from entering. But in reality, I may never go to another conference because the prices are just too freaking high. (please bear with me on this long rant, because really, you’ve GOT to read it all – seriously)

The Long Cold Wintery Days of SEO

The long, cold wintery days hold the same lures for SEOs. Trapped inside, bundled in warm, fuzzy pajamas or long-johns, the SEO prepares to strut his stuff. The goal: to seduce a bot into believing he holds the key to its spider-heart. Unfortunately, his mastery of the SEO process can be broken down into the same three primary stages as the lover.

Also, since most of these are SEO related, I thought I’d throw in a few posts that I wrote on my old SEO Scoop blog that might interest anyone interested in the above…

The 5 Goals of a Search Optimized Page

“How do I get my site to rank well?”. Start with understanding these 5 goals of a search optimized page, and then expand your knowledge with the resources compiled in the Beginner and Comprehensive Guides to SEO, Link Building, PPC, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing and Blogging post.

Beginner and Comprehensive Guides to SEO, Link Building, PPC, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing and Blogging

A quick roundup of ebooks and guides, both free and paid, that would be useful for anyone wanting organized how-to info to study on SEO, affiliate marketing, etc.

SEO for WordPress

The HTML version of a presentation I did at WordCamp Birmingham in 2008 which was all about, well, SEO for WordPress.

Finally, you might want to check out some of the back issues of Personal Branding Magazine to read my articles that focus on combining personal branding with SEO, along with fantastic articles from lots of other writers as well. Hope some of those are useful to some of you.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ABC, Birmingham, energy, Google, HTML, king, Link Building, online social communities, player, Robert Cialdini, search budget, search engines, search marketing, search marketing blueprint, search marketing campaign, search marketing efforts, search marketing experiments, search results, search world, SEO, SEOs, social media attention, social networking, Vital Inclusion
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.

So my first question to you today is this: Is your site easy on the eyes?

My second question: Are you sure?

My creative exercise for you today is to come up with your own top 10 list of the most beautiful site designs.* These lists are popular, and you may even choose some favorite designs from these lists if you like. In any case, once you choose your top 10, make small (400-500 pixels in width) screenshots of each. Now, make a screenshot of your own site. Look at all the screenshots side-by-side and answer the above questions again.

Pay attention to the symmetry, balance and harmony of your chosen designs’ layouts, graphics, and color schemes. Then judge your own site based on those same criteria. Remember that a site can be simple and minimalistic and still be easy on the eyes.

This is your own judgement call, but if you can tweak your design even slightly to appeal to more users, you may find that you retain more users or increase conversions. There are other considerations of course, such as usability and focus, but this is just one small step that can be taken. I encourage you to take it today.

* A few “most beautiful” lists others have created in the past to get you started:

40 most beautiful and inspirational website designs of 2008

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: beautiful site, beautiful Web site designs, but I know what looks good, designer, HTML
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I like this site, not only because it’s visually appealing to me, but because the information it contains is broad and varied, but still on point. And what is that point? Well, I’ll let Jonathan’s own words explain that:

LightEcho.com is the creation of a long time philosopher, a seasoned economist and an experienced internet engineer. It has been designed to provide insight, practical advice, and a new perspective on the emerging internet and technology that inhabit our everyday lives. By imparting ideas that are both attainable and enlightening, the internet can be understood on a level other than what is offered through mass media.

I haven’t fully explored every post in LightEcho’s engaging repertoire, but of of the ones I’ve read, I’m hooked. I bet you will be too.

If you’ve won a Dazzlin Badge of Excellence Award, you can display the awards badge on your site by pasting the following code into your page. Just highlight it, copy it, and paste it.

<a href="http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/">
<img src="http://www.dazzlindonna.com/images/dazzlinbadge.gif" alt="Dazzlin Badge of Excellence">
</a>

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: economist and an experienced internet engineer, HTML, mass media
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Let’s face it, crafting a good blog post or site article takes time. If I can find ways to cut corners, without sacrificing quality, I’ve just saved money. And as far as I’m concerned, saving money is the same thing as making money.

So, here’s one way to quickly, easily, and legally find and use Flickr images in your blog posts or site articles.

First, a quick lesson in copyright issues. Flickr has tons of photos with Creative Commons licensing, which allows you to use them, without cost, but with restrictions. There are various forms of Creative Commons licenses. Generally, I like to stick with the least restrictive, so that I never have to really worry about misunderstanding the license restrictions. The least restrictive license is the Attribution (BY:) license, which means that you can copy, distribute, display, and perform the copyrighted work, as well as any derivative works based upon it, but you must give credit (attribution). In other words, you can pretty much do anything you want with it, including change it, but you must give credit back to the original license holder. In the case of using Flickr photos in blogs, for example, you would generally link back to the Flickr photographer or page it was originally listed on. (Note that the license actually says that you must attribute in whichever way the author specifies, however, in most cases on Flickr, the author doesn’t specify anything. In that case, simply linking back is considered acceptable).

To search for only those photos with the Attribution (BY:) license, just go to the Flickr advanced search page. Type the phrase you want to search for, and then at the bottom of the page, check the following:

__ Only search within Creative Commons-licensed photos
__ Find content to use commercially
__ Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon

This will ensure that you choose only a photo with the least restrictive Creative Commons restrictions.

Ok, now you’ve found a great photo to use. The problem is that it can all become annoying and time-consuming to download the photo, upload it to your site, and then create the attribution links, so I went on a search for a way to make it easier. Lucky for me, you can find almost anything on the Internet, and I’ve found a nice way to handle this.

To use this quick shortcut, you’ll need to first be using Firefox, as this trick won’t work with IE. In addition, you’ll need to download and install Greasemonkey, and then install a particular Greasemonkey script, called Flickr Photo Link. Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. More Greasemonkey scripts can be found here.

So what does this Flickr Photo Link script do? If you’re logged in to Flickr, it generates a small attributed photo link in the comment box on every Flickr photo page you visit. To post the photo in a blog post or elsewhere, simply copy the generated HTML from the comment box and paste it anywhere you like. Let’s look at an example. I’ve installed the script and searched Flickr for a photo. I found one I liked, and took a screenshot of what the page now looks like since I installed the script. (See below).

See the code that I circled in red and pointed to? Without this script, that code would not be there. Normal Flickr image pages just show an empty Comments box, but this script automatically adds the code shown here. All I have to do now, to be able to use the photo in this blog post, AND give credit to the copyright holder, is to cut and paste that code here. I’m going to do that now, and the result will be below.

from Polka Dots Fill The Sky

See that photo and credit link above? All I did to produce that was copy/paste the code I was provided by the script I installed. That was so easy. Now anytime I find a Flickr photo that I want to use, legally and easily, all I have to do is copy/paste the code I’m given on the photo’s page. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

As you can see, it automatically chooses the Small version of any photo, so if you want a different size, you’ll need to go with the old fashioned route of downloading and uploading. But you can still make use of the attribution code (the part that starts with “from” in the code above).

So that’s my tip of the day for all of you who want to use Flickr Creative Commons photos, legally and easily. Have fun!

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 20 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Author, Creative Commons, Flickr, Flickr photographer, Greasemonkey, HTML, images, photos, scripts
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Want to know a little secret? My most profitable site is not a blog. It’s just a regular site. You know, the kind that has existed for years, long before the word blog was invented. I almost never update it. I hardly ever even think about it. I certainly don’t post daily or weekly like I would do with a blog. But if I had to do it all over again, I would build it as if it were a blog. I still wouldn’t update it very often or think about it very often. But when I needed to, it would be oh so much easier to do than it is right now. So unless I plan to do some extra-special, hoop-jumping, programming wizardry on my next site, I’ll create it using WordPress as if it were a blog.

But it won’t be a blog.

It will be a regular site that just happens to use WordPress as its foundation. And you probably should too. In the old days, I would have recommended something like Drupal or some other CMS (Content Management System) to you. And then you would have asked me 5,000 questions about how to use it. Keep in mind that a CMS is supposed to make life easier for non-programmers, but just using them can be a daunting experience.

WordPress is pretty darn easy to use. It might not be as easy as 1-2-3, but it’s not much harder than that. And it actually comes enabled with an option to make it work more like a regular site than a blog. It’s not completely designed for it, and some tweaking needs to be done – usually to your theme (design) – but it doesn’t take much tweaking.

Normally, when using WordPress as a blog, any time you write a new post, you are writing just that – a post. But you can also write pages instead of posts in WordPress, and these are handled differently than posts (they aren’t displayed in chronological order for example). And if you tell WordPress to use one of those pages you wrote as your home page, it will! So if you want a 10-page site, write 10 pages and assign one of them as the home page. Easy, right?

Like I said, it’s not quite as simple as that, and the biggest issues almost always center around making changes to the theme you choose. Frankly, unless you’re ready and willing to learn about HTML, PHP, and CSS, I’d probably recommend that you hire someone to make the theme changes for you. Since you might be doing that anyway in order to get a custom theme for yourself, it probably won’t cost you any more than you would have paid in the first place.

You might want to check out this Essential Keystrokes post, as it gives yet another view of someone who went through this process. You might also want to check out Drikatruu Jelly. That theme is one I’ve already mentioned that I like, and the site shows you how you can use it as a template for a WordPress CMS. If you are feeling like tackling the project yourself, it might be the way to go.

So if you want to build a site, but you don’t want to be a blogger, you might want to consider using WordPress as a CMS. If you plan to create some mind-blowing site that requires lots of custom programming, then this probably isn’t the way to go. But if you want to just a build a regular site, put some pages up, maybe throw some affiliate links around, and then let it stand on its own, this might be a great way to make that happen. When you do need to add a page, or change something you’ve written, it will be a breeze to do it through WordPress’s admin panel. And over the years, that ease of use will be something you’ll come to appreciate very, very much.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CMS, Content Management System, HTML, mind-blowing site, profitable site, regular site, WordPress
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© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: HTML, Joanna Young, writing coach
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.

If you’ve won a Dazzlin Badge of Excellence Award, you can display the awards badge on your site by pasting the following code into your page. Just highlight it, copy it, and paste it.

<a href="http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/">
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© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blog awards, HTML, online
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.