How Categories & Tags in WordPress effect Readers

Categories in WordPress:

• organize content
• are hierarchical

Examples:  main meals, appetizers, desserts

Tags in WordPress:

• are keywords in the content
• are not hierarchical
• may or may not be displayed in the theme

Examples: beef, parsley, broccoli, caramel

How Search Engines view Categories & Tags in WordPress

Categories in WordPress:

• contain a search engine friendly link structure
• optionally used as keywords

Examples:

http://strawberriesareglutenfree.com/category/main-meals

http://strawberriesareglutenfree.com/category/main-meals/beef

Tags in WordPress:

• often used as meta data, keywords
• don’t usually have a hierarchical link structure

Questions?  Comments?

In order to see the size of your blogger download file, you will need to download it first. Navigate to your blogger’s settings and click on Export Blog

Then click “Download Blog” and when prompted, save the file to a location you’ll remember.  (The default location is the “Downloads” folder in Windows.)

Open the folder where you saved the Blogger export.  The name of the file will be “blog-mo-day-year.xml”.  After opening the folder you’ll be able to see the files and its size – one on top and at the bottom.  Do not try to open the file if it is very large, it will likely create errors.

This test site is a download size of 94.1KB. (There are 1,000 KB in a MB.) The limit for the Standard Limo Service is 64MB (not KB).  If you are not sure what size your blogger download is, or if you qualify, let us know and we will help you find out.

Credit: http://www.emailgoodies.faketrix.com/

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 what the problem is.  ”My site is down” is not nearly clear enough.  You need to give the support desk more details.  Be clear about your site address, any error messages,  and what you were doing at the time of the error.  Also include how long you’ve been seeing the error.  These examples will work:

My site was down when I logged on this afternoon.  I don’t know how long its been down for.  I, nor any of my administration team was logged on at the time.  The last time it was working fine that I know of was last night when I went to bed at 11PM EST.  When I try to go to my site, www.mysite.com, this is the error that I get:  ”500 cannot connect to database”.  

I was in the middle of typing my post, and all the sudden my browser (FireFox) crashed.  When I put it back up, I cannot get to my site(www.mysite.com) any longer.  I can get to Google and other sites just fine.  I can check my email.  Its been down for 30 minutes.  The error message I get is: …. 

I’ve been getting emails all day that my site is down.  I was seeing it just fine.  But now I can’t.  When I go to my site – www.mysite.com – I get this error:  ….  I’ve been seeing this error for 10 minutes now.  I can view other sites and my email just fine.  I’ve rebooted my computer.  I’ve rebooted my browser (Chrome) and there are no other problems on my end.  

Describe your software and general use

When you have a website, you install files onto the server to show to the world – that is known as your website.  And there are hundreds of programs that put files on servers.  Some programs reside on the servers themselves, while other programs reside on your computer at home.  It will be immensely helpful when speaking to your host’s support person if you describe what software your website uses.  For us, it is WordPress, with a theme, and various plugins.

It is also helpful to tell them how your site is used.  For example,

I get roughly 2,000 unique visitors a day.  I have an e-commerce site from which I make my living.  It is imperative that it be up and running soon.  

My site is a simple brochure site which gets 1000 plus visitors per day.  I have a conference coming this weekend, and I MUST have that site back up and running immediately!  

My site is on a VPS and I get 7,000+ visitors a day.  I have mostly text, some images, and I post a video every day on the blog.  It is my full-time income and every moment its down, means I’m loosing money.

Help yourself

Have you ever contacted support, and been told to refresh your screen?  Unfortunately there’s a very good reason for this.  Most of the requests for support can be avoided by making a few simple checks before you call:

• have you tried another browser
• refreshed your screen
• waited 2 minutes and refreshed
• cleared the browser cache
• Checked a site like: http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
• checked your internet connection – can you get to a friend’s website?  Check your email?
• rebooted your computer

Make sure to let the host support person know what you’ve already done to try and solve the problem on your own.

More relevant details

It is really important to include any and all other relevant details in your first contact – let them know you are serious about solving this and have done everything you can first.  Other things to include in your support request:

• have you installed any new software, plugins, themes recently? (this includes advertising widgets or other javascripts)
• recently changed anything about your site at all
• is your software up to date
• are your plugins up to date
• has the traffic or use of your site changed

Approach with caution

Remember, Support Desk personnel spend all day answering support requests.  If you want yours to get attention quickly, state why it is urgent and be polite!  They deal with cranky people all day long.  Be the one that is reasonable and polite and curious.  You will find a resolution faster if you are working together instead of at odds.

If you’ve had a particularly great experience or particularly bad experience with your host’s support desk, I’d love to hear about it!

Today I want to share what I’ve learned over the last 3 years of owning a small business.  I have, and will continue to be, on a quest for wisdom that I can use in this journey.   I have spoken to 100′s of small biz owners at tech conferences and through email.  And I think the more stories we share the more wisdom we can learn from each other.  Each piece of advice we can incorporate from each other brings us one piece closer to solving our own puzzle.

Here are my three pieces of wisdom that I have learned in my Work at Home travels:

1.  Everything I do has a goal.  Currently while my girls are so young, my goals are to have quality(after supper) & quantity(after school) time with them. We, women and moms, tend to wallow in a lake of guilt over everything from our work habits to our meager efforts at self-care.   My daughter just came over to the couch where I’m sitting with my laptop.  Our conversation went like this:

Me:  Megan, can you pass me that pillow please?

Megan:  Can you please call me Dr. Megan?

She doesn’t seem bothered by my laptop at the moment.  And the guilt immediately vanished.  Of course this changes when she wants something. Which brings me to point #2.

2.  Work-at-home Moms are still WORKING.  Unless your children can watch themselves, you need help.  Or perhaps you think that your job is less than your hubby’s who needs to work at an office (or other place of employment) uninterrupted?  You don’t need to focus?  Great!  You’re good then.  For the rest of us, we need help.

I don’t do it alone.  I have a Nanny who picks up the Kindergartener, fixes lunch, helps keep my house in order, does the un-ending laundry, and picks up the others after school.  And I STOP working at 3PM (okay, not always, but thats the plan).

3.  The children(& home) belong to my husband and I.  So of course, our duties with the children are shared quite equally.  Different times in our lives these chores are divided differently.  The house is shared by all five us and as such we all have (age-appropriate) duties to keep the place a nice comfortable home.

For our family, my husband does bathtime, and bedtime.  He does Saturday outings and Sunday School.  He does Hapkido with them once a week.   He does supper 2-3 times per week.  I do the other meals, deep cleaning, kids day-time activities.  We both volunteer on the Parent Advisory Committee.  Then we each have our own interests and volunteer opportunities that we are happy to participate in in the evenings.

My Mom can’t believe how “lucky” I am to have a guy that participates.  I’m always astounded when people (women) say this.  Of course he participates!!  Its HIS life – why wouldn’t he?  If you have to call me anything, please don’t call me ‘lucky’!  We have earned each others’ respect and forged this path through many compromises.  Now I couldn’t admire and love him more… but that’s another Valentine’s post.  :)

Of course there are so many areas in which I’m still trying to come up with a solution for – namely hiring help, expanding the business, book-keeping, consistent blogging, etc.  Which brings me to a resource that has just opened up this week – its called Kitchen Table Companies by Chris Brogan.  He has done some Kitchen Table Talks on ChrisBrogan.com which I’ve enjoyed recently.    The KTC group and forum seems a bit pricey to me, but the resources are promised to be great – I’d love to know what you think if you go exploring the site.   For the month of February, there are reduced charter-member rates.

Also, I’d love to hear words of wisdom you’ve gained through your experience working for yourself, or being a pro blogger over the years… how do you manage to balance it all??

Till next time,

Cathy Tibbles