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Should I say “Us” or “Me” on my website?
Small businesses often dither between using first person or third person on their websites. The temptation is to say “Us,” in order to look like big, professional brands. However, that isn’t always appropriate. Imagine that you are talking to an artist and ask about one of his paintings for sale that might look good on your wall. “We find this to be one of our most meaningful works,” he says. “However, we can sell it to you for the price you are asking for, if you can pay us in cash.” Sounds awkward, right? The “big business” feel can come as outright deceptive sometimes. People like sincerity. If your business has...
Read MoreReady to Get Dropbox?
Dropbox is an incredible tool for: backing up your files keeping files in sync across multiple computers collaborating on files in group projects sharing files with others more easily than emailing attachments The free account has 2 GB of storage; paid accounts offer more. You can also get more storage for your free account in a few ways, mainly by referring friends to Dropbox. In fact, if you yourself are referred to Dropbox, you will get 500 MB of extra space, and the person who referred you will also get 500 MB. It’s win-win. If a friend told you about Dropbox, ask them for their referral link. If nobody else is giving you a referral link, use this one:...
Read MoreEnable/disable comments on all pages or posts at once
Have you ever wanted to turn on comments for all your pages at once? Or perhaps managing comments is too much of a pain, so you decide you want to disable comments for all of your WordPress blog posts easily. Change Posts Individually The most obvious way is, when editing a page or post, to scroll down to the “Discussion” section and check or uncheck the “Allow comments” box. Don’t see the “discussion” section on the page/post edit screen? At the top of the screen on the right side there is a “Screen Options” button. Click it and check the box for “Discussion” to make those settings visible. Change a Group...
Read MoreWhy You Should Never Use Flash for Magazines and Newsletters
PDF is the natural format for material, such as magazines and newsletters, with static content and a fixed page-by-page design. However, there have been several times I notice magazines will show their content on the website using a special Flash plugin. This is a bad, bad idea, for many reasons: Flash is not supported on iOS devices, and is being dropped from Android devices. It’s becoming less popular everywhere. PDF, on the other hand, can be opened on any platform; even smartphone users have a choice of apps for how they want to view them. PDFs are more easily shareable. If one person likes your sample, that person can share it with friends, who can open it...
Read MoreSign Paperwork on your Android or iPhone
Adobe Reader now has eSignature capability. This applies to their desktop program and mobile apps, but the real point is this: now on your tablet or smartphone you can mark up a document. You can add comments, draw over it, highlight or underline or strikethrough text, or sign it. After you add text markup, you can move what you added, change the color, or delete markup you added. It’s saved as you add each signature/drawing/etc., so you may want to make a copy of the file before you open it in Reader. What are the possibilities for this tool? Most of them seem geared for taking notes—highlighting text when studying a document, for example—but there are...
Read MorebbPress causes white screen on website
If you’ve tried to install bbPress and buddyPress on the same website, possibly experimenting with forum alternatives, you may run into some strange behavior. This can occur even if one of the plugins is deactivated or uninstalled. The strangest I saw as the website being completely blank—a white screen. The admin console worked fine, but the website proper did not, and even though display_errors in php.ini was set to “On,” no error messages were displaying. Just a white screen. If I deactivated the bbPress plugin, the problem disappeared. Apparently bbPress 2.0 can have some conflicts with buddyPress. Uninstalling the plugin isn’t enough; a...
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