There are a few options that are available for adding a featured content gallery similar to the one on our front page. Our favorite is the Dynamic Content Gallery Plugin for the following reasons: 1. We use an excerpt and a thumbnail plugin, and out of the 3 galleries that we tested, this was the only one that didn't conflict. (We use Advanced Excerpt by Bas Van Doren, and Thumbnails for Excerpts by Radu Capan.) 2. The images are stored in its own folder on the server so no absolute links are necessary - we can simply use the image name instead of the full URL. 3. Images are NOT … [Read more...]
Free Marketing for Mom Owned Businesses
August 28, 2009
Here's the latest Mom-Owned Business Directory. There are hundreds of them out there. Which ones do you enter your site on? … [Read more...]
Copyblogger Website
August 26, 2009
SEO stands for search engine optimization. And is the art of getting Google to see your site among the millions, and to love it. There is a lot of information to sift through to find the good stuff on SEO. For example, you want to use "keywords" to help the search engines know what your pages are about. But you can't use too many keywords or your site will loose credibility. You want links coming into your site, but not too many. How much is too much? And how do you stay on top of these things? This website is a great start: copyblogger's SEO Article Series. We heart your site, Mr. … [Read more...]
DS Plugin Picks
August 24, 2009
My latest discovery has been the "Excerpts of Children" plugin. Here's what it does: This plugin dynamically generates html paragraphs with excerpts from child pages. Put [excerpts-from-children] on any page and it will insert the excerpts from its child pages. See our Value Added Services for WordPress for an example. … [Read more...]
Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Service Business
August 21, 2009
The current trend is towards more home-based businesses and for good reason. They require lower overhead and startup capital, making them easier for entrepreneurs with limited funds. Have you been tossing around ideas for your own service business? The following will review some important basics. What is a service business? Service businesses are those that provide help to others. This can be anything from mowing the lawn to managing business accounts. The basis of a successful service business is one that supplies a realized need. In your area, it may take some research to discover … [Read more...]
Our web hosting servers are now green, greener, and greenest!
August 17, 2009
This is an article from our server headquarters in Texas: Did you know that the average server produces the same emissions as a 15 mpg SUV? HostGator hosts over 1,800,000 websites on its shared and reseller servers. That means a lot of servers, and a lot of carbon emissions. So we asked ourselves, What can we do to be part of the climate change solution? We took steps to minimize our environmental impact at the office, but still we weren't satisfied. We then switched to 36% more efficient servers, but still we weren't satisfied! All of our shared and reseller servers are now 130% wind … [Read more...]
List of 30 FREE stock photo sites
August 13, 2009
Sitepoint has a current list of 30 free stock photo providers. Some of the sites that I use regularly are: stock.xchng morgueFILE Flickr Creative Commons Attribution Barry’s Free Photos image*after All US Government images are public domain (NASA Image Exchange, and National Park Service, for example) The tool that I use the most often - nearly every day - is Zemanta. Right in my blog screen, I can add links and images - it is so handy! … [Read more...]
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