Unless your version of WordPress (v 2.7 and older), it will tell you at the top of the screen in a bright yellow box if there is a new version. There’s also a button with the number of updates you have available in your top toolbar. 

Before you upgrade anything to a new version, create a backup of your site. If you have a basic installation without many plugins backing up and updating is relatively simple.  Go to Admin > Tools > Export, and download the xml file with all content. This is your database backup. You also need to save your actual site files which includes images and uploaded files. Usually this is done by FTP transfer all your site files to your computer. You may also need to save your theme’s settings, some themes offer a tool for exporting theme options, others do not.

One useful tool is the Backup Buddy plugin. It makes sure you have a complete backup that you can recover later should the need arise. BackupBuddy is available online for about $75.  Make sure you follow all instructions and set your importbuddy password and save it in a safe place. If you would rather not be responsible for doing the backup and update yourself, Unlimited Media can do it for you. I will backup your site and upgrade the core WP software and most plugins for $89. Contact us to order your Backup & Update.

Don’t forget: updating your plug-ins is important, too. Just like WordPress, plug-ins that increase your site’s functionality, are maintained by the open source community too. An outdated plugin can make your site  susceptible to attacks. We recommend you update your WordPress core first then your plugins. Upgrade just one plugin at a time and check your site before upgrading any others.

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This tutorial gives you a clear step by step on how to create a post with an image and some formatting such as headings. After viewing this video you will know how to add post by pasting the text from a document on your computer and how to add an image.

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Multiple Images

To add multiple images in your wp-ecommerce store you will need the Gold cart plugin update. This will add extra functionality to your wp-ecommerce store.  The video below walks you through the addition of multiple images to your products. The speaker mentions having to delete images already in the Media Library, so that you can re-add them via the Add Product screen. He points out an important limitation, that you cannot associate images to your product from the Media Library, you must always upload the images from your computer to add them to the product gallery. We hope they can rectify this in future versions.

Weight Based Shipping (internal table)

If you are using weight based shipping, remember to add the packaged  weight for every product. Although you only need dimensions if you are calculating the shipping cost on the fly from UPS, USPS, etc. it is a good idea to add it to all your items as you add them in case you need to activate live shipping calculation later.

If you are using Weight Based Shipping with an internal table, you need to go to check that your weights and cost ranges are in place. Go to Settings > Store, click the Shipping Tab. Under Internal Shipping Calculators make sure Weight Rate is checked, click on the small Edit link to the right of it. A table should appear on the right.

In the table shown above the shipping that will be applied to an order of .01 pounds up to 2 pounds will be $5.  If the order weighs between 2 and 4 pounds the shipping will be $7, between 4 and 5 pounds will be $12 and so on. The total weight of all items on the order is used.   In the example above, all order 7 pounds and up are charged $20 shipping fee. Add more levels as needed.

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Below are guidelines and a link to a tool to create a strong password. A strong password is:

• has at least 14 characters;
• has uppercase letters;
• has lowercase letters;
• has symbols, such as ` ! ” ? $ ? % ^ & * ( ) _ – + = { [ } ] : ; @ ‘ ~ # | \ < , > . ? /
• has numbers;
• is not your name;
• is not your username;
• is not like your prior password;
• is not your friend’s name;
• is not your relative’s name;
• is not a dictionary word.

via Strong Password Generator.

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Are you using your WordPress site in creative ways to save time and communicate more effectively? Let me know in a comment below.

The post Embed a Google Docs Spreadsheet into a WordPress Page appeared first on Unlimited Media Website Services.

Each one is a little different, see which one you are more comfortable with.

For a more full featured photo editor that allows you to create banners and header graphics from images try:
http://pixlr.com/editor

These tools meet the needs of most beginners.

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The benefits for your search engine ranking are proven. In many cases, blogs can achieve solid ranking faster than regular websites. A blog is easier to publish than a regular website, so you can post content to it more often. Search engines like websites with frequently updated content. Each blog post is another page indexed on your site, and each post gives you the opportunity to rank for new keywords. Even the comments on your blog are useful, they measure the interest in a particular topic and the variations of keywords add to your search engine rankings.

Your blog gives you the opportunity to establish yourself or your company as an industry leader, offers a platform to network with your peers in the industry and allows you to generate buzz in social media. Businesses can use their blog to generate quality back links through well-maintained, informative and active blogging. If you are a proactive blogger, you can connect with multiple business partners who share a common interest or industry.

Your blog is a cheap marketing device. With a quality blog, you can instantly inform your consumers of the recently launched products and services much before you think to promote them through other media channels.

A blog can prove to be a powerful for building long-term relationships with your consumers. By posting sincere, unbiased articles to your blog, you can earn the trust from your potential customers to drive business growth.

A blog can be a frequently updated tool to tap into social media without having to jump into it full time. Since your blog readers can share your post with their friends on facebook, twitter and a host of social media, a blog is a good start.

Need help updating your website to enable blogging? Contact me.

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If you have any issues with the video go to:

YouTube – WordPress For Beginners – Part 1.

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If you’d prefer individualized assistance, please contact us. We’ll help you develop a customized, targeted online plan for your organization. We’ll examine your existing client base and business goals, formulate a cost effective and efficient approach, and will follow through with design, implementation, and on-going maintenance if you so chose.

PLANNING YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE: THE BASICS

The planning of your site needs to be carefully considered. Your site should incorporate your current business levels and goals, while acting as a guide for seamless future expansion. Unless the site under development belongs to one individual, this should be a group process that involves not only the implementers, but key decision makers. You may even want to integrate the plan for your website with your department, office or organization’s mission.

Define your purpose
What do you want to achieve by creating a website? Perhaps greater visibility, accessibility, attendance at events, increased sales; the possibilities are endless. So first eliminate some of the confusion before it crops up by specifically identifying what the site should accomplish, otherwise it will try to do too many things at once, and do none of them especially well.

Define your target audience
Who do you want to attract to your site? Employees? Customers? Potential Customers? Explore some demographics. Consider the level of tech-savvyness of your target audience in your design and features.

Define a “look”
What kind of personality do you want your site to take on? Should it be proper, conservative, professional, almost institutional? Or should it be more liberal, even to the point of having an “attitude”? (Note: Unless you have a competent art designer on staff, you should probably consider outsourcing at least this portion of the development process.) Browse the web, gather ideas and sites that appeal to your organization, make notes to share with your devloper. Get an idea of your color scheme, provide your developers with guidelines on what color schemes are acceptable. If you desire specific technologies like animation, sound or video, make notes of these as well as the reasons for using them. How will they help your site accomplish its goals? These answers will help the developer in the design process.

Gather current information
What information do you currently have? What information will you need to obtain? What are the sources for this information? Ideally this information should be in digital form as text or in a word processor document. This allows your team to evaluate the information it also allows for organization in terms of “pages”.

Organize your content
Try to visualize the path that the user will take through your site and make sure that the most pertinent information is available at any point in their journey through the site. Look at other sites that are similar and gather ideas. Make notes on all “pages” where there should be a link to another page. For example, an order form should have a link to a “Order Help Page”.

Get the approval of the decision makers before you go into production. There are few greater wastes of time than designing a site before the boss has given his or her ok on it.

Carefully weigh the benefits of outsourcing.
While often times it looks like the most cost-efficient approach is having an inhouse employee attack the design of your site, keep in mind that there are opportunities costs involved. That employee will be focussing his or her time and energy on web design rather than the duties they are arguably better trained/suited to address. Not only does a business lose the benefits the employee brought to the table previously, but also is losing that productive employee for probably more hours than the company would be paying for should they outsource through seasoned pro web designers. And a company has greater security that the site they’re paying for will function as planned if it’s designed and maintained by a person who does html for a living, not as an additional duty.

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We will not cover images in this document since they introduce a more complex set of variables that involve resizing them to fit the layout, compressing them for the web and uploading them to the proper directories. We will cover images in another issue.

In each section below will be the explanation just below that you will see the example of the HTML as seen by the browser in your document. Immediately below it in large green text will be the html code as it appears when editing the page with a text editor.

HTML Basics

Headings

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A heading tag will automatically put a space above and below itself. We often start with the h3 heading tag because starting with an h1 would make it too large for our page design. So subsequent heading tags would be h4 and h5.

H1 Heading

<br /> <h1>H1 Heading</h1> <p>

There are several heading tags each a bit smaller than the one preceding it. H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6.

H2

<br /> <h2>H2</h2> <p>

H3

<br /> <h3>H3</h3> <p>

H4

<br /> <h4>H4</h4> <p>

Line Breaks

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This is a standard paragraph. It is enclosed by paragraph tags on both sides. The text inside will wrap until another paragraph tag is encountered. This is the most common type of element in html. Its not manatory to close the paragraph tag everytime.

<p>A paragraph enclosed by paragraph tags on both sides.</p> <p>

If you want to put a line break or you will need to insert a break tag. It will be single spaced, not double like a paragraph tag.

The text after a break tag will start on the next line, like this line did.

first line <br> next line

Comment Tags

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Comment tags…

Lists

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When you want to insert a bulleted list you use the following code:

• The ul tag stands for unordered list
• The li tag defines a list item, which will be bulleted
• You can also make ordered lists, which are numbered

</p> <ul> <li>The ul tag stands for unordered list <li>The li tag defines a list item, which will be bulleted <li>You can also make ordered lists, which are numbered </ul> <p>

1. This is an item in an ordered list
2. It is automatically numbered by the browser

</p> <ol> <li>This is an item in an ordered list <li>It is automatically numbered by the browser </ol> <p>

This item is the Term in a defined list

A defined list has a term and a definition.

This is another term

This is another definition.

</p> <dl> <dt>This item is the Term in a defined list</p> <dd>A defined list has a term and a definition. </p> <dt>This is another term </p> <dd> This is another definition. </dl> <p>

Colors

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Colors are defined as a hex code. They always have 6 characters. There are hundreds of possible colors (depending on the display of the user). Here are some commonly used on our site.

For a full list of web colors see the Visibone Color Lab

Colors can also be applied to fonts within a font tag. Like this in Fuschia.
<font color=”#FF00FF”>Like this in Fuschia.</font>

The horizontal rule tag adds just that:

This rule is fancy with several attributes added:

This is the code to add an email link:

Send us an email at custserv@domain.com

Send us an email at <a href=”mailto:custserv@domain.com” mce_href=”mailto:custserv@domain.com”>custserv@domain.com</a>

To add a regular hyperlink to your text surround it in the anchor tags. Dont forget to close this tag, its critical.

Go to Index

<a href=”http://domain.com/index.html” mce_href=”http://domain.com/index.html” target=”_top”>Go to Index</a>

The link can be an absolute, where the full URL of the page is used, as above. Or it can be a relative link depending on if the current page is in the same directory as the linked to page. Assuming this page is on the same directory as the linked page the link below can be used.
Go to the index page

<a href=”index.html” mce_href=”index.html” target=”_top”>Go to the index page</a>

Formatting Text

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Most newer browsers support the use of the div tag, which allows us to center, align left, align right and justfy our text. The center tag has been used for years and is still used on many pages. A paragraph tag can also be used with the align attribute to align the enclosed text. Here are a few examples:

<br /> <div align=”center”>This text is centered with a division tag.</div> <p>

This text is centered using the old fashioned center tag.

<center>This text is centered using the old fashioned center tag.</center>

This is aligned right with the paragraph tags.

<br /> <p align=”right”>This is aligned right with the paragraph tags.</p> <p>

<br /> <div align=”JUSTIFY”>This is justified using the div tag….</div> <p>

To change the empasis on a piece of text you can bold it as we did above, italicize it or make it larger or change the color.

Any text can be bolded by placing the bold tags around them. Like this for example.

<b>Like this for example.</b>

Italicize by putting the i tags around the text.

<i>Italicize by putting the i tags around the text.</i>

Make text larger by placing a font tag with the size attribute defined. On our site we deal with size in relative terms, meaning that we have define the font as a +1 or -1 or -3. 0 would be the browsers default size for the font. We dont set an attribute to 0 since its default.

You must always enclose your text with opening and closing font tags, otherwise you apply that font to the rest of your page if you leave a tag unclosed.

This font is altered to be +1.

<font size=”+1″>This font is altered to be +1. </font>

This is -1. This is a no brainer, right?

<br /> <font size=”-1″>This is -1. This is a no brainer.</font>

Tables

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Tables are a little more complex. Say you want to place a set of text or numbers in a small table in your page. The table below is simple. It has an opening table tag, which can have many attributes optionally added to it. Next is the tr tag which begins a table row.

Within the Table Row tags you see Table Data tags which define the “cells” like in Excel. The table below has 3 cells in each row. The first cell in each row happens to have the letters a and b.

The second cell in the first row has the number 1 and the second cell in the first row has the number 2.

The numbers 3 and 4 are in the second row. All Table Data tags (cells) must be closed or you have a big layout mess. Finally at the end of each Table Row you have a row closing tag and at the end of the entire table you have the table closing tag, these are also critical.

</p> <table> <tr> <td>a</td> <td>1</td> <td>2</td> </tr> <tr> <td>b</td> <td>3</td> <td>4</td> </tr> </table> <p>

The above table has no optional attributes defined so it is diplayed in your browser in its default state. Older browsers will but a border around your table and it will look like a spreadsheet grid. You can control the border by adding that attribute as in the table below. The attribute for border is placed “inside” the opening table tag. A border of 2 is a fatter line border than a 1, obviously.
You can also control the width of the table as a percentage of your screen (whatever it is for the user), or as a fixed number of pixels. This can get complicated when you have alot of data inside your table.

</p> <table border=”1″ width=”50%”> <tr> <td>a</td> <td>1</td> <td>2</td> </tr> <tr> <td>b</td> <td>3</td> <td>4</td> </tr> </table> <p>

You can center the data inside your table by adding the align attribute to the tr (row opening tag) that you want to affect. This will center all the text in that row.

</p> <table border=”1″ width=”50%”> <tr align=center> <td>a</td> <td>1</td> <td>2</td> </tr> <tr align=center> <td>b</td> <td>3</td> <td>4</td> </tr> </table> <p>

You can also add a background color to your table by adding the attribute to the table tag. Adding the bgcolor attribute to the tr (row) you set a background for just that row. The table below has one color for the whole table (silver) and another for the first row (lime). You can do it for one cell by inserting the bgcolor attribute into the td (cell) tag, as we did for cell #4 below (teal).

</p> <table border=”1″ width=”50%” bgcolor=”#c0c0c0″> <tr align=center bgcolor=”#00ff00″ > <td>a</td> <td>1</td> <td>2</td> </tr> <tr align=center> <td>b</td> <td>3</td> <td bgcolor=”#008080″>4</td> </tr> </table> <p>

Template Files

Let us create a set of professionally designed templates for your site. You can edit your own pages from any web browser, when you host with us via our online file manager. Contact us for more information.

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