Original post – I’ll be teaching a basic social networking class with the “From Muse to Market: How to Write and Publish Your Book” workshop at the Montrose Regional Library. The workshop takes place over two Saturdays on April 17 and April 24th. The social networking class will take place on April 24, 2010 at 1:45pm and again at 3:15pm.

The workshop and classes are FREE! (although there is a suggested donation of $20 for the two days). Sign up by calling one of the co-sponsors:
Montrose Regional Library District, 964-2548
Lifetime Chronicle Press, 240-1345

It will take place at the Mesa State annex associated with the Montrose Regional Library located at 320 South 2nd Street in Montrose, Colorado. 

A schedule of the two days is below. Download the pdf of the event Muse to Market.

Keya Lea Horiuchi has spent most of her professional career as an educator, teaching on the Navajo Indian Reservation in New Mexico, at Columbine Middle School in Montrose, as well as in Denver. She made a rapid transition into the world of film and video production after spending four months traveling in ten countries filming a documentary about how the rest of the world views the United States. She is the producer, director, editor, cinematographer and narrator for Considering Democracy, 2008. Although a small, independent project, the film was self-distributed, went on a nationwide tour, was picked up by satellite TV, was selected as a film of the month with IronWeed Films, and it continues to sell online and through national library distributors. Independent distribution was possible because of the internet, creative marketing and social networking. This hour and a half segment will focus on social networking to promote, amplify and help you to distribute your book, or any other project.

Schedule:

• New Office Location
• Video Tutorial on RSS Feeds and a Reader
• New Services Offered (SEO) Costs and Free Search and Detail Mission
• April Class on Social Networking – Free, Montrose Library, April 24, 2010

Hello!

I wanted to catch up with news and wish you a Happy Spring! The days are thankfully getting longer as the tulips, daffodils and other green shoots are bringing some color into the bleak winter landscape. Finally, the rivers are thawing and leaves are starting to show. I’ve also been checking your websites and have been taking note of your page and traffic rank, which I am finding lots of fascination in.

New Office Location

After debating about where I’d be going, I will stay in Montrose, although I frequently travel outside of it. Because I’m frequently on the move, I will be moving out of the 12 S. Cascade office, but will have a virtual office (working from home) and will continue to have a base in Montrose, Colorado.

Video Tutorial on RSS Feeds and a Reader

You’re one of the lucky ones to have an RSS feed in your website! I’ve created a video and post so that your customers will know how to subscribe to your content with a reader. If you have any questions or comments about RSS or a reader, please post them to the website.

Here is a link to the post with both a written explanation and larger video:
How RSS Feeds work with a Reader

Here are two websites that are doing a good job of utilizing their RSS Feed:

http://accesschinatours.com/news/ – A tour company out of Denver and Vancouver giving information about China to encourage new website visits and offer tours to China. Notice how pictures in the feed make the post stand out.

http://montrosesteakhouse.com/specials/ – Ted Nelson’s Steakhouse in Montrose, CO is using the feed for their rotating specials.

Pictures and good content will always help a feed post. Encourage people to subscribe to your feed, and you have an ‘automatic’ audience. Content must be regularly posted while offering good tips or information to readers. (The next video will be on how to create content for your feed.)

New Services Offered (SEO) Costs and Free Search and Detail Missions

I offer support for your websites and online presence. Your have websites have RSS feeds and offer more flexibility and content power. I can help to manage and update content along with explaining, the performance and analytics of your website.

Newly added services associated with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
With the coming of Springtime and new growth, new helpful services are here.  SEO is a fascinating, dynamic and strategic area of the internet. Services now offered range from sending a monthly update of your analytics ($35) to monthly optimization of your text and tags (starting at $50 depending on the size of your website) so that your website can surf the tide of changing customer searches.

If you’re feeling a little competitive with your online competitors, a Search and Detail Mission can be arranged. This is where your competition’s online presence is sought out, scrutinized and detailed, then synthesized with an analysis of your analytics. Based off of the findings, your website will be optimized so that it has a greater chance of showing up in front of your competition. Search and Detail Missions start at $95 and are dependent upon the size of your website.

With a referral (where someone else gets a website with ZoomlaDesign) you’ll get a free Search and Detail Mission, along with analytic comparison details.

Other Services
If you want new pictures, content, or changes to your website, they can be done. If you have new content that you’d like to upload, spring prices start at $35 dollars for a half hour for current clients. If you have spring changes that you want to your website, new uploads, text or pictures, just get in contact.

Class on Social Networking – Free, Montrose Library, April 24, 2010

For people who are wondering about social networking to benefit their business, I’ll be teaching a free class at the Montrose Regional Library on Saturday 24, 2010. As part of a workshop “Muse to Market: How to Write and Publish Your Book”, sponsored by the Montrose Library and the Lifetime Chronicle Press, I’ll be teaching a class that will focus on online social networking, and how it can boost your web traffic, your web presence and others’ awareness of a writing project. The same principles hold true for a business.

It will be held in the Mesa State – Montrose Library Annex Building. Admission in free, but space is limited. The class will be 1.5 hours and be held sometime between 9:30 and 4:00pm. I’ll post more information on this class as soon as I find out more about it.

Happy Spring!

Best regards,

Keya Lea Horiuchi

Written guidelines and an explanation of RSS feeds and readers are below the video.



If using a slower internet connection that causes the video to skip during its play, simply pause the video and let it load. (As it loads, a faint red line will precede the actual play position.) As you wait, open up a new tab, do other work, clean the kitchen or do as you wish, then return in a few minutes to play the video.



Tutorial RSS Feeds and Reader Tutorial

The video above explains what RSS Feeds are and how they interact with a Reader. You’ll see how a reader is set up, how to subscribe to content and learn how to customize it to your liking. If you go online regularly having a reader can greatly simplify your life.

What RSS Feeds Are

RSS feeds work together with readers. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary, but there are also atom feeds, or they can be designated by XML. While they have different names, feeds interact similarly with a reader. Feeds allow recent posts and content in a website to be pulled into and displayed in a reader.

Why You Might Want a Reader

Using RSS feeds together with a reader can save you valuable time and simplify your life. For example, let’s say that you go to the same websites every morning. Having a reader can save you time because instead of going to the different websites, whether you search for them, type the address in the address bar or bookmark them, if the particular website has an RSS Feed, commonly symbolized by these symbols, you can instead subscribe to new content and have the website’s recent content delivered to your reader. So, instead of going to 20 different websites, the recent information from 20 websites will feed into one page in your own customized reader.

Step 1 – Set up an account or log in to a reader

There are many different types of free readers. You may not even need to set up a new account. It’s easy to set up an account if you don’t have one. It’s simple as supplying some basic information: pick a user name and password, then log into your account and find some RSS feeds to subscribe to.

Here are links to different suppliers of readers.

Yahoo
Google
Pageflakes
Newsgator
Netvibes
Pluck – This reader is no longer free.
MSN

Step 2 – Find the Feed and Subscribe to It

When you’re surfing the web, when you see these icons, it lets you know that there is a feed available within the website. Sometimes the feed shows up in the address bar or near the top or bottom of the page.

Feeds can be represented in different ways, usually with a blue or orange square with a dot and a couple of lines radiating out of it, or by the letters RSS or XML.

News outlets typically have different feeds for different sections of the papers that they publish. This allows you to subscribe to the specific section that you want.

Sometimes feeds aren’t readily seen on the website. Feeds could be located on a different page, for example, a “Multimedia” page tab.

When you see a RSS feed symbol on a website, click it, and if you’re logged into your reader, the new feed will typically show up within a module, box, or section on the front page of your reader.

Once subscribed to a feed in your reader, you can read through the different headlines and titles. If you click on the title, the reader will typically show you more information and allow you to click through to the website.

If a feed icon is accidently clicked on, don’t worry, you can easily cancel or delete the feed.

Note: Not all websites have RSS feeds. Sometimes websites do not have a way for people to subscribe to new content. (Especially if a website is older, even if new posts are created, the website wasn’t designed with a feed. Some websites don’t create new content, thus do not have a feed.)

Step 3 – Customizing your Reader / Delete Feeds

Once you’ve subscribed to a feed, it’s very simple to customize a reader to your liking. When you first subscribe, even through you may have different pages, new feeds will load to the front page. The little modules or boxes that represent different website feeds are easy to move to place them where you want them within your reader. If you want to move one, place the mouse on the top of the module, click and hold down the button on the mouse, drag it where you want it, and let go of the mouse button to drop the feed module. This applies to anywhere on the same page, or to another page.

Changing the Appearance of a Page

If you want to change how a page appears, click on “Change Appearance”. You can change the look of a page by changing the theme, choosing different colors, change the layout or even make the font appear larger. When you’re finished, hit “I’m Done”, and the changes will be made.

Deleting Feeds

If you’d like to stop a subscription to a feed, simply click on “Options”, then “Remove” or “Delete”, depending on the reader.

Summary of RSS Feeds and a Reader

A reader is a program that can read RSS feeds. Feeds have information about new content for a specific website.

Feeds are typically designated by this symbol.  When logged into your reader, subscribing to content is usually as easy as clicking on the feed icon.

Once subscribed, new posts will show up within a module on your reader. To configure a reader, click, drag and drop the feed module where you’d like it to show up.

A reader is essentially your own, custom news organizer that helps you stay up to date and in contact with the information and websites that you want to follow. When you find websites that you like, if the website has a feed, you can subscribe to it. Whether it’s from a major news source, a business, your friends’ blog, or any other website that has a feed, with a reader you can stay up to date. Even if you don’t look at your reader everyday, it still works behind the scenes to automatically pull in feeds. When you log in, you’ll get the latest news and information.

If you have questions or comments please post them below.  (Please post below so others can see your question instead of sending me an email with the question.  This way, others can see and benefit from your question.  Thanks!)

Sometimes a website’s content needs to be moved to a new domain. If there are pictures and plugins involved, the process gets a little more complicated. I wanted to move a blog with posts and photo galleries from one domain to a totally different subdomain. There are really good instructions on what to do when moving your WordPress website to a new domain, and instead of rewriting them, there are links below.

How to Move WordPress to a New Domain
How to Move a WordPress Blog or Website



The keys to getting the NextGen Galleries back in working order on a different domain depends on being able to find and download the files that contain information about the previous NextGen database files in phpMyAdmin, then modifying and uploading them to the new domain’s server.

As I imported the xml file along with the whole wp-content folder (so the plugins were also replicated) onto the new – different server, I beamed with premature satisfaction that things seemed to be working. Then, with horror, I realized that the Nextgen photo galleries weren’t loading on the new site. (The Nextgen Gallery is a really great plugin for WordPress that allows uploading and organization for photos, among other things.)

I knew that the photos from the old site were in the new website and that all the previously used plugins had been reinstalled. This is because as the previous wp-content folder was being uploaded to the new server via ftp, I saw the photo names from the Nextgen Gallery uploading. (Downloading and uploading with compression took over one hour. I’m not complaining. Overall, it saved a lot of time.)

While I took care to replicate the posts, content and plugins, the galleries were not being accessed and could not be found. So, not wanting to upload over 100 photos and type all the photo details again, I started searching for a way to make this happen. The best explanation that I found was at the WordPress forums, but here are points of clarification.

Here’s a step by step way to get the Nextgen Galleries plugin working by going into phpMyAdmin.

1.  Log into the old server to access phpMyAdmin. Click on the correct database to find the wp_ngg_album, wp_ngg_gallery, and wp_ngg_pictures files. (My example is a bit wonky because I think I was messing around and did two installs, so your table info will likely not have the wp1.)

Here’s a screenshot of what PHPMyAdmin export values I used. (I had additional editing because my files had (wp1_ngg…) – a number one after wp, so I changed them all to wp – even for all of the picture files, but in the end, it worked!)

2.  Export them one at a time by making sure that only the chosen one is highlighted (on my first try, by default, every file was highlighted) by looking over the export values, then click “Go” in the lower right hand corner of the page.  This will allow you to name the file and save it to your computer.   “Save as” a .txt file.

3.  After downloading the files to your computer (see above, and before importing them to the new domain) open the files in a text editor to make sure that the correct, updated database name is in the file. Most people will only need to make sure that the new (destination) domain’s database be switched from the old one.

4.  Now log into the new server’s PHPMyAdmin. (It’s assumed that WordPress has already been installed, so you’ve already created the new database, and the plugins have been added or replicated.)

5.  Delete the wp_ngg_album, wp_ngg_gallery, and wp_ngg_pictures files, and use the import function to import your .txt files from your computer. (I had to delete them before importing them, but that probably had to do with which boxes I left check marked on the initial export.)  This replicates the previous NextGen commands and tables so that all the previous photos and galleries can be accessed and display as before.

This worked for me. All the galleries were recognized and loaded just as in the previous domain. Hope that it works for you.  Many thanks to Alex Rabe (NextGen Photo Gallery plugin) and Kevin Sylvestre (Slimbox display plugin) for creating and sharing the plugins.

In the process of setting it up, I wanted to change how the date displays in the upper left hand corner. By default, the date displays in a Latin, Romance Language type format. In the States, people are used to a different date format, and being based in the States, I wanted to change how the date displays. I tweaked with the code and while my first tries created errors in the code, I figured it out.

I checked the WordPress forums to post it there, and now can’t find the proper string, then went onto the theme author’s website and tried to post it there, but the code kept getting stripped out. Here are the changes that I made. (Sorry that it runs off the page.)

Here is the original code in the header.php before modification:

 
<?php printf("%s, %d %s %s %s %d", __(date('l')), date('j'), __('of', 'painter'), __(date('F')), __('of', 'painter'), date('Y')); ?>
 

If you want the dates to be formatted American style, switch out the code above for the one below, and make sure that the code is still surrounded by the beginning and end “p” tags. Make this change in the header.php file. I modified the code so that the values continue to match up. It validates!


<?php printf("%s, %s %d, %d", __(date('l')), __(date('F')), date('j'), date('Y')); ?>
 
That should work.

Let’s say that your business’ website is represented by a red tomato.  Having a website that is search engine optimized means that your website has been prepped to interact nicely with webcrawlers and spiders that work for the search engine.  If your website can show the search engine that your tomato is the right one to pick, then when someone searching for specific information – types in certain keywords, the red tomato (your website) will be shown and can share its delicious, ripe, warm, summery essence with the most people who are searching for red tomatoes.  Having a website that is not optimized is like blindly picking stuff that may be green and tasteless, then serving it to visitors.

Ideally, you want your website to show up for people who are searching for your business’ information.  Optimizing your website is like giving the red tomato the right tags so that it shows web bots and spiders, “Hey, this is the one to pick!” thus, when real people (potential customers or people searching for information) search for your website, they will be able to see and access your information.

With summer finally arriving, it’s the best analogy I can think of.

Search engine optimization helps people arrive to your website after entering a search term in a search engine. Here’s a link to Google if you’d like to see the popular search engine. After the searcher hits enter, a listings of what the search engine things is relevant is supplied. There is a very complicated process that occurs when this happens.

There are a couple of basic things to understand.

1. Every business, blog or website wants to be at the top of search rankings. The competitions is fierce. There are over 8 billion websites out there. This number grows every day. If you make a website, even if you put in all the right keywords, your whole site will be ranked with all the other websites that have similar words. (This is where page rank comes in.)

2. Search engines understand that all websites ideally would like to be at the top and have a complicated system of creating a ranking websites by using (and constantly refining) over 2,000 different interrelated algorithms. It is a detailed, complicated and secretive process.

3. The online world is constantly changing. Websites are created and websites disappear. How your website ranks with other sites is dependent upon highly dynamic factors some of which are: which website link to your site, the rank of the websites linking to your site, which sites you link out to, how long your website has been around, size of the site, freshness of content… etc.

Search engines, mainly Google, have risen to the top because they are good at what they do. What at first was an odd name that was made fun of, is now a growing empire and has become a household verb. How many times have you heard, “Just google it.”

When you search for a term, the search results are based off of the text that is typed into the search form.  Google quickly searches its massive daisy-chained database and within a few milliseconds, will show you relevant results. It is able to do this because it has an army of bots or spiders are constantly crawling and indexing websites on the internet, recording, categorizing and analyzing the text, incoming and outgoing links, alt text, age, size, tags, and many other aspects of website. They don’t always present exactly what you’re looking for, but they do a pretty good job.

Understand that all search engines are text-based. If the text does not exist on your website, it can never be listed and found. Search engines match exact text entered into the search form and matches it with with text on websites that it has crawled. For example, let’s say that a glass sculptor artist based out of Boulder has a website. The glass sculptor has a beautiful looking website, but the pictures are not labeled, and there is no text that indicates where he is located. If someone searches for “Boulder Glass Sculptor” his website might not even come up in the listing. If, however, the exact text, “Colorado Glass Sculptor” is in the site, and someone searches for the exact text “Colorado Glass Sculpting”, then the site has a chance of being listed in the search results. If the text does not exist in the website, it will not be listed as a result in certain keyword searches.

Having a website is important for a business. It is the global public billboard that is easily accessible from an internet enabled device, whether a laptop, desktop or phone. Simply having a website does not mean that your site will show up in web searches, as there is a lot of competition. When you have a website, you ultimately want it to perform to its goal, whether that is bringing people to your place of business, book vacation tours, order stuff, or generate awareness or income. None of this can happen if your website can not be found. This is why search engine optimization is important.

Have you ever entered in a search string of words only to find that it has returned a listing of worthless websites that don’t have the relevant information that you were searching for? In the past this occurred because the offending website may have listed keywords of, say, different cities that exists, and city you typed in just happens to be in that list? This happens less frequently now because – 1. There is more competition, and – 2. Search engines like to be good at what they do, and do not like to be tricked. Google constantly refines and improves their algorithms to exclude sites that use keyword stuffing simply to bring more traffic to their sites. In other words, they have included algorithms to exclude websites that try to fool search engines. In some cases these sites have been dropped from the index. (This is a very bad thing.)

In order to find out what search terms people are searching for, run a keyword search through a keyword search tool that shows what terms and combinations people are using around various subjects. You can learn what different combinations of words they are putting together and at what frequency. If your website or business deals with certain keywords, create a site with broad keywords that will increase your chances of being listed. Once the relevant keywords are identified, they need to be placed in the website in a way that gives the viewer relevant and helpful information. Where you place the words within your website is also important.

Meta tags or meta keywords, and a description have a mixed reviews as to the relevance that google gives to them. Websites are made up of two main areas: the head and the body. The head section is invisible to people visiting the website when seen through a browser, but is read by the search engines.

If you think about what you do, and try to put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for information, try to think of what keywords other people would use to find your type of information.  Help them find the red tomato!

I wanted to take the time to wish you a Happy New Year and check up on how your experience with the website is going. This is Keya from Zoomla Design. I periodically check your site online to make sure that it is still up and running. Here are some tips, reminders and features of websites to check out.

There is a new update of your Content Management System – WordPress. As I write this, we are on version 2.9.1. Remember to update your software because sometimes there are security updates that are important to the infrastructure. It’s very easy to do. Log into your dashboard and at the top, there will be an “update now” button. It is a good idea to back everything up before updating. One easy way is to go into the Tools Section (right hand side, under plugins and users) and choose “export”. When you export a file, an xml file is created. This is a file that can easily by reimported into your website. Click export, make note of the date (the format that the file is usually named) and save it in a place where you can find it again. This is done just in case. You don’t have to do this, but it doesn’t take that much time, but it can come in handy later. Now click update – usually at the top of the page. It will take under 30 seconds. Easy. The beauty about having a CMS based website is that it can give you an edge over your competition. I’ve talked to clients and am glad to hear that business from online customers has picked up.

I’m thinking of setting up a Q&A session every month or two for previous clients to help stay on top of SEO changes and to help optimize your website. This would be a time when you can come into the office, meet others and ask your questions. Search engines use complex algorithms that are constantly changed and improved upon. In checking your website and learning more about search engine optimization, I sometimes see different things and easy text changes that will help your website rank higher than, say, your competition. (And isn’t good competition fun? I think it’s fun.) For people who have analytics embedded, we can start looking at the returning statistics and work on making your website and business more accessible.

I’d like to feature a website. Mountain View Winery is tweeting and utilizing a facebook fan page. These two social networks, Twitter and Facebook are the top two referrers to websites. A Tweet badge is embedded in the left hand sidebar so that recent Tweets show up on every page and post. As an independent business, it’s important to have the structure set up so that if people want to comment on your products or services and share them with others, the infrastructure should be set up so that they can.

If you have a social network set up, I know that it is sometimes difficult as you juggle many different tasks as an independent business owner, but try take the time to upload a new picture or something to start a conversation with to have taken the time to follow you, join your group or fan page. While your own personality may or may not be set up to have the desire to constantly update your status, keep in mind that there are others out there who do spend the time to promote things online and they like to do it. Remember that if the structure is set up, others will help to get the word out about your business or project.

Ted Nelson’s Steakhouse at http://montrosesteakhouse.com is using their feed to write about their dining specials. (The RSS feed is under “Specials”, the last tab on the right hand side.)  This way, people can subscribe and their recent specials are floating around on the internet, ready to be delivered to potential customers via a search engine. This is a great use of the RSS feed. I’d recommend the inclusion of pictures of the specials be included in the post.

Remember that pictures are important, especially in posts that are on the RSS feed. A good post lets others know about what is available and gives them information. Because your RSS is within your own site, the potential customer is already within your own site. If you are writing a post that gives advice, make sure that you have at least 2 great paragraphs. If you’re looking for a word count, 200 to 400 words are good. Remember that Google, the largest and most frequently used search engine is text based and the degree to which people return to your site through a search largely depends on how the searcher’s keywords match up to what keywords you have in your content. (In other words, if your post includes misspelled words, mostly likely, the search engine will not find you and people will not find your website and services. Unless you are doing this as a strategy.)

Let me know how things are going, if you have success stories or other concerns, please do communicate them. Happy New Year!

• Different browsers and basic safety issues

• Easy online photo editing, sharing and how to embed them

• Free tools to actually simplify your life, such as rss

• Google’s growing world and other cool open source (free) software

• Businesses and social networking within facebook, twitter and blogging

• How to register your business with Google’s Local Business Center to control how your business shows up in searches.

• Basic analytics to optimize the use of your website

There will be time for Q&A at the end of the class.  You’re welcome to bring a laptop, as there’s a wireless connection accessible at the library.  There are a lot of things that locals in small Colorado can do to promote their business or organization.  It’s simply a matter of knowing.  I often find myself at the post office or other public places explaining the different between lossy and lossless file formats, the difference in browsers, RSS, Google’s Local Business Center and other helpful things, so why not have a free class?  You’re welcome to attend.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 6:00pm – 7:30pm, Map below. Click on the question mark (a person can go to the library to get all his or her questions answered.)

Montrose Regional Library, Taught by Keya Horiuchi

View Montrose, Colorado in a larger map

Google Docs allows documents to be created and edited in real time. If several people are working on one project, it allows those involved to access and modify one document. In this way, if someone makes changes, the changes are made in one location. Google Docs is accessible from any computer connected to the internet. Log into a Google account, start or open a document and start working.

Depending on which section you are logged into within Google, Documents will be in the upper left hand side of the screen, or under the more tab. If you are logged into your Gmail account, look in the upper left corner and you should see Gmail, Calendar, Documents, Reader… etc. Click on Documents and this will take you into the world of Google Docs. It will give you the ability to save documents to pdf, email them to others, as well as create forms or spreadsheet. This is just part of a small section of the growing world of google. There’s lots to explore. Try it out!

Here’s a link to create an account with Google http://mail.google.com/mail/signup

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is represented by an icon that looks like this: . It can be used to quickly get information out to people, as well as act as an organizer for the vast amount of information on the internet. RSS enables information to be sent to people who subscribe to it. When new information is posted, it is sent to the subscribers’ reader page. Watch the ninja video and substitute the word “podcasting” for “RSS”. RSS is like lining up (subscribing) to get apple pie (the news you want)…

What is a reader? A reader page is essentially like a front page that you set up to customize RSS feeds that you have subscribed to. When new information is posted from the subscribed source, it automatically loads on your reader page. Think of it as an online front page newspaper that you customize. Not only can you subscribe to news from large organizations like Reuters, the BBC or NPR, but you can also subscribe to your favorite blogs that your friends publish. Information is easily modifiable within a reader page, usually by dragging and dropping the tabs. Just as easily as you can subscribe to content, you can also delete your feeds (stop getting apple pie). I use “My Yahoo” as my reader.  I’ll create a video tutorial that shows how to set one up as soon as I have time.