Creating a Blog on your website is easy.  No, you don’t need WordPress or other applications.  You can do it right on your own mySiteWizard.org site.  Surprised?  Let me clear up a misunderstanding that is flying around. Wiki defines a Blog as a contraction of Web Log. That is exactly what it is.  It is a website which includes a chosen subject that you regularly add new information to.  That’s it.  You do not need simple or complicated applications.  You can create a blog directly on your existing site. Here’s how …

Firstly, choose a subject.  If the purpose of your blog is to attract an audience and even participants make sure that your subject has a following.  Is there room for another blog on the subject? Personalizing your information and ensuring that you bring something a little different to the subject increases the likelihood of success.

Sharpen your pencil and visit your competitors.  List what these sites include such as categories, comment forms, polls etc.  After you have completed this decide on the features that you have to have and those which hinder visitors from finding what they want on your blog.

Now log in to your site and let’s do it!

1. Add a New Page and name it Blog.  Ensure that the URL of this page includes Blog.
2. Decide on how your categories will be organized. For example, by subject or by month or both.
3. Decide on the location of this menu.  You may choose to place the categories in the Page Master Menu.  In this case all your webpages will include this menu. Alternatively, you may decide to have this menu exclusively on your Blog pages.   To do this create a new page by choosing Add a New Page then click Copy. Click Blog then change the word Blog to the article name etc.  This saves the time and the aggro of setting up each new page with this menu.
4. If you want visitors to add a comment use the Comment Form
5. If you want to create a membership to send out an email alert to inform of new blog items -then do this.  I choose not to hide any of my pages from all visitors.  The Join function is solely to provide members with a service. Now if you have a site which will be consistently loaded with new information consider using the Directory feature at mySiteWizard.org.  There is a great Search feature for you or visitors and the organization is wicked.  Really!  Whether you choose to use the Directory is not critical now.  You can always do this in the future.

Questions and comments – I’m always here to support you in your website success.

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How do I change my site email to a personal email address.

Once logged in go your Contact Us page click on the Contact Us box and the Editor box will appear. Now click on Setup.  Within Setup, place the email address that you wish to send your emails to.  Most commonly, the email selected is associated with the owner’s website domain. This email address has a professional appearance.

This is the most common choice for website owners. For example, if someone posts a question on www.mysitewizard.org they will receive an email from info@mysitewizard.org. This is pretty logical.  But if they received the response from maryandjohn@gmail.xx this could cause confusion and the possibility of this email being sent to trash-disaster!  Are you still with me?

If you wish to continue with your request you need to only change the email address in Setup to the new personal email address that you have chosen.

Alternatively, your domain provider gives you several great options.

If you choose to keep your professional email address but do not check your domain provider’s webmail this can be a nuisance.  The solution is using the provider’s email Forward To function.

How to do this?  Login to your domain provider, if you have purchased multiple domain names confirm that you are in the correct domain name account. Now click on Domains  and then on Email Forwarding.  Next to your professional email address place your day-to-day email address in Forward To.

Now emails from your website will be sent to two places: your email box at your domain provider AND your personal day-to-day email box.

Ok I am almost finished!  I always recommend that website owners use their domain email address. This provides you with the appearance of a professional identity.  Also, this eliminates any confusion that a visitor might have when receiving an email from an unknown email that is actually you. Yes, I know that I am repeating myself only because this is important.

I recommend that once you receive an email from your website not to respond to it from your day-to-day email address but to return to your domain provider webmail and respond from your professional email address.

If you need any further information, I hear to help.

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We’re very pleased to announce that the new (and improved) Toolbar is now live!

You can still get to the new Toolbar in the same way, e.g. ‘View’ –> ‘New Toolbar’, or if you’re already using it you’ll get the updates automatically.

Here is a quick summary of the advantages of the new Toolbar from the last blog article.  Hope you like it too.
New Toolbar highlights
The major drive for this change was to better organise the features available and create the structure so that we can expand services further in the future. The advantages of the new Toolbar are:

• Use the full screen browser for editing – you can move edit tools outside the boundary of your site
• Zoom in/out while editing – you make your site bigger/smaller to help you ’see’ it in full glory
• Sticky edit tools – the Toolbar remains at the top and the Editor will remain on screen as you scroll up and down
• Show off-screen objects – if you drag something off your site (outside the boundary), you can choose to hide or display off screen objects while in Edit mode (new under ‘view’)
• Detailed insert menu - more objects can be added in one click, including some new HTML snippets (’Insert’ menu)
• Quick pages menu – includes quicker ways to add pages, copy pages and change page length, plus edit meta data (for search engines) more quickly (see ‘Pages’ menu)
• Links to other services – Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, AdSense can all be viewed without leaving your site (new ‘Services’ menu)
• Copy site/transfer site feature – allows you to create copies of your site as the basis for a new site (not for backup)
• HTML widget - add any HTML snippet to your site using our HTML widget snippet (e.g. Google Gadgets, all Widgetbox widgets, all Amazon widgets and more).

And if you want to give it a go why not build your own free website.

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www.mySiteWizard.org

Changing the Length of your WebPages (L2)

Like many actions taken while building your website consider the implications. Pause and think about the overall effect.  For example, if you choose to change the length of all your webpages but have varying amount of text on each this effect might be messy having an unfinished appearance.  Alternatively, you could change the page length on a page by page bases thus retaining a balanced and professional look on your website. See Additional Resources for more information.

Level Of Difficulty: Intermediate (L-2)

Preparation:

a. Decide whether you want to change the length to a specific page(s) or to all pages on your website.

b. Select and copy the text that you want to paste on to the web page.

Start:
1. Go to the web page -> Insert -> Body Text
Notice the Height of the text you have just pasted on your web page.  In my example I have a text with 1200 pixels in height.

2. In Edit, go to the top Menu and click on Edit -> Page Settings

3. In Page Settings click on Page Length to reveal the existing length of your webpage.  In this example  it is 860 pixels. 860 pixels includes from the top to the bottom of the web page.

4. In this example the web page length is 860 pixels and the text is 1200 pixels therefore much of the text will be off page and not seen.

5. To solve this you must change the page settings to at least 1500 pixels. Click OK.
Note: Click Apply this Length to All Pages if this is your plan.

6. Save and test. Repeat the above steps to make necessary adjustments.

Set-up of Google Maps
3) In the Editor click Place. Enter the address such as 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY   10019 (MOMA) or an internationally well known landmark e.g. MOMA New York.

Additional Resource:

1. Considerations:Web page Length  click here to view

2. Practice these skills at here

Did I miss something? Do you have a question? Locate and click on Comment at the beginning and to the right of the article and I’ll respond.

Coach Carol – www. mySiteWizard.org

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