your friendly geeks
Dianne is a university graduate with a bachelors in Information Technology. As is the case with our entire team, she works from home full-time in graphic arts and design. Dianne has been providing graphics for us for the last several weeks and is the sweetest lady on the planet. She hails from Pennsylvania - please say "Hi" in the comments! :) Click here for her portfolio of work. … [Read more...]
Hello fellow WordPressers, I'd like you to meet Ana, a friendly geek who has recently joined our team at DSWP. Ana joined me to assist in answering your support questions in a timely manner. And also to help me with some scheduling and administrative tasks. But since we've started working together, her past in SEO and project management has also become a huge asset to our team. Her experience has been Administration and Project Management focusing on SEO, Web Development, QA Engineering, Web & Mobile Applications. Like so many of us, she started working from home gradually, … [Read more...]
The first couple paragraphs caught me by surprise. The guy who created Meet-up felt very much like I do. I was the kind of person who thought local community doesn't matter much if we've got the internet and tv. The only time I thought about my neighbors was when I hoped they wouldn't bother me. I received this article from Scott Heiferman, co-founder of Meet-up.com. I have never received any sort of newsletter from meet-up before. Ever. In this time of over-information, that alone is reason for curiosity. Plus it was yesterday - the 10 year anniversary of 9/11. And the title … [Read more...]
This tutorial will show you how to add Google Plus to your WordPress website. This covers self-hosted websites, not those on wordpress.com. What we want to accomplish: Easy sharing of your content Flowing and obvious placement of all social networks Customizing the twitter 'via attribute' ie: via @dswordpress Easy selection of styles and buttons My favorite configuration at the moment is something like this: Simple step-by-step instructions 1. Add the plugin Go to your Plugins tab, Add New subtab. And search for "Share This". Select to install the plugin … [Read more...]
You know your blog is visited by hundreds of people daily and then it hit you! Google sent you an email with the subject line: “Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to (your website)”. Unnatural links. What’s that supposed to mean? Apparently, Google has detected that you’ve been engaging to what they call “unnatural linking practices.” Link building is a common practice done by many web masters and web owners. This helps them build their reputation in search engines, thus helping them increase their page rankings. However, there are times that webmasters … [Read more...]
Paid links need to be obvious According to Google Webmaster Guidelines, any paid links need to be obvious to search engines so they don't skew natural search engine logarithms. In their words, Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.... Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such … [Read more...]
If this announcement concerns you (you're on server DDD), you should have received an email last night to clarify our time line. This email contains instructions for taking a backup and when you can expect to be on the new server. Unfortunately there is one error - Please take your backups at 11:50 AM this morning (Tuesday) not 11:50 PM. And one omission - we need to change your name servers to point to the new server!! Please keep an eye out for an email to you on how to do this or where to request help for this step! Onward & upward!! Your friendly geeks, Cathy … [Read more...]
This question deserves an answer right away. As do all your questions, and I'll be answering your emails and questions as quickly as I can. Answer: No. This is not your fault. As I tried to explain via the newsletter regarding the outage - this was caused by a variety of factors. Most of which are "higher load" than usual. This is NOT the same as: extra traffic extra plugins bigger or graphically heavy themes videos, viruses or anything else that you've done Sometimes, for some of you, an extra plugin in the last week or two may be contributing. But plugins are par for … [Read more...]
Every so often, our firm advocates on behalf of clients with their hosting companies. Its not that the hosting companies are doing anything wrong or unfair; its that the clients just aren't getting anywhere no matter what they say or do. And its genuinely frustrating to feel as though your concerns are being dismissed! And last week, there were three times where we had to get answers from web hosting companies that our clients were frustrated with. So here are some tips to getting the answers you need from a web hosting company support person. Be clear about the problem State clearly … [Read more...]
Note: the new Genesis update is only for WordPress 3.2 users. Only those people who are running WordPress 3.2 and up will be able to see the update. If you'd like to update your Genesis, first upgrade to WordPress 3.2. And check out the Genesis update details here: Genesis 1.7 Release. … [Read more...]
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