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10 Ways to Make Your Website Sticky, CWC Berkeley Branch, May 15, 2011

May 14, 2011 By Linda Lee Leave a Comment

May 15 2011
California Writers Club, Berkeley Branch

“10 Ways to Make Your Website Sticky”
How can you get readers to come back to your site again and again? How do you engage readers and encourage loyalty and comments?

So you have a website or a blog, now what? How can people find you? What are they looking for? How do you build up regular readers or followers? What are some good ideas to promote yourself online?

These are just a few of the topics Linda Lee will be discussing with us in her presentation. Discover some easy and fun ways that you can “build your tribe online” and keep your readers coming back for more.

Filed Under: Ask Linda Lee, Speaking|Events Tagged With: build following, build readers, build your online tribe, engage readers, reader loyalty

Traditional Yellow Pages obsolete? San Francisco moves to ban the phone book

May 11, 2011 By Linda Lee 1 Comment

I saw this coming years ago. When I first started speaking in 2006 on why everyone needs a website, one of my examples was that the Internet was becoming the online version of the Yellow Pages. This has certainly come true. If you have a business, you must have some type of web presence. Google Places will show your business if you have a business address, and you can be found online with their Google “Place Pages” local directory.
This is certainly better then nothing, which is what would of happened before. Now if someone looks for you online, your business name, address and phone will come up. People have asked me how this is happening when they never signed up or registered for this service. Google is simply putting public information online. If you find yourself on this and want to edit or change it or add a website location, you just need to “claim” your business.

Another item you may notice when looking at the Google Place pages is people can leave reviews for your business or services there. If you have no website or web presence of some type, you
are not driving or presenting your message at all.
This can be frustrating for the users/clients/customers who are trying to learn more about you online, find some answers to questions about you, or compare your business to other choices they may be looking at.

Hundred’s of small businesses still do not have a website. This is just bad business in today’s world. I have no doubt that eventually the various versions of paper phone books will stop being printed. Everyone has a cell phone now, and most of them have the capability to go online and find addresses, directions, maps, and everything you need when you are searching for a place.

To read more about San Francisco’s board of Supervisors decision, click here.

Tell me what you think of the possible end of the traditional yellow pages?
Is this a good thing?
Do you still use the hard copy version?
Is it the end of an era?

Osama Bin Laden video or photos of him dead are a scam and sites have a virus

May 3, 2011 By Linda Lee Leave a Comment

Before the White House had even finished announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden, the scammers, crooks and nasty nasty hackers and thieves were up and running with the enticement of photos of a dead Bin Laden and fake Osama Bin Laden death videos. People searching for “osama bin laden dead” or “osama binladen” (links are taken from trending topics on google, they offer tons of articles and info if you click them.)
could very well find themselves on fake websites offering a download for a photo or video of him dead. If you happen to go to any of these fake sites, they are placing password stealing malware, trojans or spyware on your computer.

As of yesterday any photo of bin Laden’s corpse found on Facebook should be considered fake.

The U.S. has not yet released any photos or video of bin Laden’s body, but ABC News has reported it is likely they will release a photo of the deceased terrorist as well as video of the former al-Qaida leader’s burial.

Many emails with links to video of Osama bin Laden’s death have also been going around that could contain viruses. If you see any email with links referencing this, delete it immediately.

If you have gone to any of these sites, you need to run and tried to download or view something you should run a clean up ASAP on your machine. I highly recommend these products.
I am posting the FREE download links,and these links I am posting are safe to download from.

1. Malwarebytes -Download here most of the time, this one product does the trick!

2. AVAST- to keep your computer safe all the time. Download here.

3. Spybot search and destroy- Download here.

Since it looks like they are going to release some official images and video today, it will get even worse.

The best way to keep yourself safe is to only view things from trusted sources like news sites.

Filed Under: Computer Safety, Computer Virus Alerts, Warnings Viruses Tagged With: bin laden fake dead image, dead bin laden photo, dead osama, fake image, fake video bin laden dead, keylogger bin laden, osama bin laden, spyware, trojans bin laden, video fade

WordPress broke my site after I updated, why does it do that and what caused it?

April 28, 2011 By Linda Lee 2 Comments

Dear Linda,

My website broke after I updated WordPress! Why does that happen? How annoying. Why is WordPress such a fuss budget? My friend was just telling me all her photos stopped working on one of her sites (she has something that switches them up) they simply disappeared and she had to reload them all.

Signed, Upset WordPress User

Dear Upset,

I am 95% sure it was not WordPress. It was one of your plugins.
Many people think WordPress “runs” everything you use when you are working in WordPress, but they don’t.
This can be confusing. Sometimes clients call me and say, ” I need to call WordPress, they need to fix this.”
There is really no where you can call, it does not work like that. Here is why.

WordPress is what is called an “Open Source Project“.

Everything you see from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community.Which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it. As in the entire set up is completely FREE. This also means the only customer support you will find is to do a search on one of the WordPress forums. For those who have their own hosting, you would go here:
http://wordpress.org/support/
For those on the free version who are hosting with WordPress.com
you would go here:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/

Why does this matter? Well since WordPress most likely did not break your site, the culprit most of the time is a plugin you are using.
WordPress itself, the program, is usually pretty well tested and working when they release the new updates, but your plugins are a completely separate entity.These are created by what is called “third party developers”. Plugins can be created by anyone and most of the plugins you will find and see out there are offered for free as well.

Plugin creators range from beginners to serious programmers who just want to help, to people who develop and sell their plugins.
There is no one checking these and regulating them, (other then the users themselves).

Many plugins I used over time have been abandoned by the person who created them because they did not have time to keep up with all the changes in WordPress, or they got a full time job, or they lost interest or they just burned out trying to help people for free, and trouble shooting websites all the time. What started as a fun hobby became too much work for no money.
( This is another good reason to donate a little cash to your favorite plugin developer, many of the plugins have donate buttons built in now.)

What is the solution when my WordPress site breaks after an update?

First make sure all your plugins are up to date.
If that does not fix it you will need to-
Deactivate all your plugins and then reactivate them one by one until you find the one causing the problem.
Sometimes just simply turning them “on and off” will fix the problem.
If you are still having problems, you can hire someone to figure it out and fix the site for you, or spend some time in the WordPress forums looking for some answers.
Finally if you are using a free WordPress theme, this is exactly the same set up as with the plugins so you may run into some problems with your theme, and you may need to buy a professional theme to avoid this kind of problem in the future.

I am available for hire if your site is broken and I also offer my clients monthly WordPress support for a small monthly charge.
Contact me here.
Continue reading “WordPress broke my site after I updated, why does it do that and what caused it?” »

Filed Under: Ask Linda Lee Tagged With: broke site, plugins, plugins broke, site not working, updated wordpress, updating wordpress, wordpress broke, wordpress customer service, wordpress help, wordpress support, wordpress update

Email Marketing Programs. Why you need one to make money online.

April 25, 2011 By Linda Lee Leave a Comment

Why do you need a professional email management program to make money and succeed online? I will tell you my story. When I started online in 1999, I hated spam, I hated email from” internet marketers”, and I resisted all advice to start building an email list.
I got very annoyed at people sending me email trying to sell me things. As time went on, I watched people I knew whom I knew personally who had started online around the same time as I did start to make a lot of money, One of my mentors who had actually helped me learn how to build my first website using Xsite Pro is now an online guru, and multi-millionaire. He never spams people and when he sends me emails, I read them.

Needless to say, I have had to rethink my approach to email marketing.
I now realize I must build my list. Your email list is literally your gold.
No matter what you do , author, teacher, life coach, editor, writing coach, sales, consulting, offering products, small business, non profits, it does not matter, your email list will be where you are guaranteed to make money or sell your product.
When people sign up for something you are offering, they have already made the first move in trusting you.
If they like what you do and have to say, you will be able to build trust with them through further emails.
Many of my clients start out using a free email program like “php list”, or just their own email, like outlook.
So why not just use those?
One of the primary reasons to use a professional email set up, is the delivery/open/read rate.
When you use a professional email/list building program, people have to opt in.
This gives you around a 70-80% actual open rate. People who opt in want your messages.

What good is building a list if when you send the email, people delete it, think it is spam or never see it because their host or email program says it is spam? Also you encourage good will and build trust by allowing people to opt in or opt out of your mailing list.
You can learn a lot about what works and what does not work this way as well.

How are some ways you go about building your email list?

You can offer a newsletter or a tip sheet, you can use it to just update interested clients and readers about what you doing or speaking. If you have a new book coming out, the people who have expressed an interest will be alerted and you can include the buy the book link.

You do not have to commit to a monthly newsletter if that is something you do not want to do. Here are some ideas to offer for your clients, readers, customers to sign up for your email list.

Free tips sheet
Free video
Free lesson
Free white paper, (A white paper is an authoritative report or guide that helps solve a problem)

The most important thing is to just get started building that list.
I have tried iContact , Constant Contact, and AWeber. I ended up going with AWeber for several reasons.
I find their interface easy to understand, they have a plugin you can just add to your WordPress site and pop onto the sidebar, (the newsletter sign up on my sidebar is using their plugin).
It is worth spending some time exploring them before you commit, since you will be working in that interface and hopefully staying with them for the long haul. It is a bit of a hassle to change mid-stream since all your subscribers will have to re-opt in again.

I suggest you utilize the free trials for all 3 programs and see which one feels like the best fit for you.
Just click any of these ads to take advantage of the free trials and other offers.

No matter which one you choose, be sure to add the code for the email sign up on your website and start building your own “pot of gold” today!

Send Your First Email Newsletter Today – AWeber Communic

iContact.com - Email Marketing Service

Filed Under: Email Marketing, Learning Center, Marketing and Promotion, Resources, Tips, Free Tools, Online Success Tagged With: build a list, email marketing, giveaways, list building, make money online, money email, newsletters, online marketing, online success, white papers

How can I set up a strategic system or tweet plan where I am not creating more work for myself?

April 8, 2011 By Linda Lee Leave a Comment

Kim Edwards is writing an article for the Independent Book Publishers Association, and she sent me some interview questions. One of the questions was:
“How can I set up a strategic system or tweet plan where I am not creating more work for myself?”.
This is a great question for me because I just recently started using twitterfeed.
This is a tool that has greatly increased my traffic, (doubled it from the day I started using it!), and saved me so much time.
If you are using Facebook and twitter and Linkedin and not using this tool, run don’t walk to sign up now. Did I mention it is FREE. I would pay to use this.
It does take about 30 minutes to set up correctly.
Well at least it took me that long because I felt a little confused about the feeds and I did not get a confirmation message after filling things in and I kept trying to check it and was not sure how to do that.

Sometimes when I find myself feeling like that online I discovered it pays to leave it and go back. When I checked back later it was all there to see and after I wrote a blog post I checked twitter and Facebook and linkedin, and there they were! I was so excited.
The last few years many of the plugin my clients have used to perform a similar service have stopped working.
Also many of these twitter plugins do not play nice with WordPress, and break things in the themes and cause havoc in other small and irritating ways.
Recently Twitter announced it is asking developers to stop building clients that “mimic or reproduce” its own client experience, said Ryan Sarver, head of the micro-blogging website’s platform team. Read more about this here:
They are trying to bring 3rd party apps back to their own company and this means many fun and helpful tools you may use or be using to make life easier on twitter may stop working. (If they haven’t already).

In the meantime I highly recommend twitterfeed to save time and pull it all together for you so you can keep writing and do what you are “genius” at rather then dreary tasks we all feel like we are suppose to be doing online!

Have a great social media networking tool you are using? Tell me about it. Please leave a comment.

Filed Under: Linkedin, Marketing and Promotion, Social Media Networking, Twitter Tips Tagged With: facebook, facebook plan, promotion, save time, social media, social media plan, tools save time, twitter, twitter plan

Big and Glossy Website Design Trend

April 7, 2011 By Linda Lee 2 Comments

I have been designing websites now for 5 years. I still get many compliments on my primary website.

I find this interesting because that site is not a WordPress website. I created it using Xsite Pro, a website building program that I really love but do not use nearly as much. 80% of my business is now building WordPress websites. On my Askmepc-Webdesign site, people tell me they like how easy it is to find what they are looking for. I am sure they find the traditional layout familiar. (Read my article on how people read a website here). I also always have build very “clean” and clear websites.
I hate clutter online. We have enough coming at us already to be overwhelmed by a website.

There is trend now for oversized big glossy looking websites. Some of the things I like about the trend is most of the time they are easy to navigate.
The big buttons are helpful and there are usually clear and oversized directions given, (such as “click here to purchase”) which I think is helpful for many people.

Some of the things I do not like:

They can feel impersonal

They are too “internet marketing” and “salesy” and yes that is not a real word but I think you know what I mean.

They all tend to have those pop ups asking me to sign up or buy something.

They start to all look the same after awhile. Internet marketers are like sheep.

But let’s look at far we have come, a walk down memory lane cira 1998.

Click here to see old school website design… very old.
This is the website of author George R. R. Martin, A Song of Fire and Ice.
Now this guy is a best selling author, he could afford a really amazing website, especially since he writes fantasy fiction and is hugely popular.
Fantasy fiction websites tend to be quite interesting.
Maybe he does not want his website to turn out like this however. Click for sample of oversized glossy website.
Be warned it takes awhile to open and actually work.
HBO made a mini series out of his book and this site is glossy, big and oversized and does not work very well.
If you are using Safari, it warns you your browser is not compatible. Then in other browsers it takes a long time to open.
Nice job HBO. You bought into the big and glossy look but lost functionality. When I was trying to take a screenshot of HBO’s website
I accidentally got out of the site and hit the back button to get back, and it did the whole process of reloading again. Very annoying.

Your average reader will bounce off your website in 3-5 seconds if things are not working right.
Bounce rate is very important, this is the term for when readers stop in and leave.
If you are check your website statistics and see your readers are coming in and leaving quickly, you need to analyze that.
Is the page slow loading?
Is something wrong with that page?
Are they going there to find something and you do not have it on the page?
Sometimes you may of named a page and then changed the content or renamed it later and people are seeking information you no longer have available on that page.
These are concerns you need to have, especially now since Google has started counting website loading speed as part of their page ranking process.
Quote from Google:

“Google is now taking into account how fast a page loads in calculating its PageRank. In their own words: ‘[W]e’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests. … our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. … While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point.

Wondering what your website page ranking is?

Check Page Rank of your Web site pages instantly:

This page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

What kind of site design trends do you like?
Fill out my poll and leave a comment to give me more detail.
I really want to know what normal user think.
Please leave a comment!

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Filed Under: Web Design Tagged With: bad web design, big, bounce rates, glossy buttons, good webdesign, loading, oversized websites, trends web design, website speed

How to get rid of and remove the Lizamoon “Windows Stablity Center” virus

April 6, 2011 By Linda Lee 2 Comments

To continue the story from a few days ago. My daughter was doing a search for her term paper, and when she did the google image search, this virus came up. This fake security software calls itself “Windows Stability Center” and is known as the LizaMoon SQL injection: Windows Stability Center Trojan.

We killed the process and got out of the window, and thought all was well, since she never clicked anything or downloaded anything. Well she continued her research the next day and did a google image search again, and the message keeps popping up in Firefox, but not Internet Explorer. So I am not sure why that is happening other then she is finding many infected websites in image search. So now we are not sure what is up and when I did some research on how to tell for sure if you are infected and how remove it, I was finding this topic all over the map.

There were many different sets of directions and opinions in the geek community. I suppose they all may work, but some are quite technical for your average home PC user, which it turns out is the main victim in this scam virus.

What I personally recommend is installing and running Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware It is free and it works really well for removing bad things off your computer.
You can safely download the free version here.

Some of the other articles I found that are helpful. Do not download anything from these sites, they do have google ads and product ads on them. Just read the content.

Automated Removal Instructions for Windows Stability Center using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

How to defeat Lizamoon in one easy step. ( this just tells you some good info on the virus and how to avoid it, not remove it).

Clean up begins after massive website attack-BBC

I want to update, I recently clicked a link and it was of course .ru, as soon as I saw that I knew I was screwed.
There is a new version of this sucker , so new I don’t think there is a name for it, but it is exactly the same.
Here are some excellent directions, once again for removing it. I lost 2 hours fixing my computer AGAIN.

Here are some excellent detailed directions on how to remove the fake Internet Security virus.

http://www.myantispyware.com/2012/01/25/how-to-remove-internet-security-2012-virus/

You have to boot up in safe mode and there are few different things you need to do, but this walks you through each step.
Most of us have two computers handy, so what I do is have the directions on one computer, while fixing the other one.
It is such a drag that this happens. I just hate these criminals and all the damage they cause, don’t you?

Please leave me a comment!

You know if it happens to me, it can happen to anyone.

Filed Under: Computer Safety, Computer Virus Alerts, Warnings Viruses Tagged With: Fake Internet Security Screen, Internet Security Screen Virus, Internet Security Virus, liza moon, LizaMoon SQL injection: Windows Stability Center, lizamoon virus, remove virus, Trojan, windows stablity center

LizaMoon Virus -how to get out of the fake virus screen, or frozen virus screen

April 5, 2011 By Linda Lee 1 Comment

Lizamoon virus fake security scan screen image

I started to write this post yesterday, and saved it as a draft.

In the meantime my daughter was working on her finals for school, and I told her about this Liza Moon virus and warned her if anything odd came up and told her she was infected, let me see it.
The next day she was doing a google image search for her paper and clicked an image and got the warning.
She brought the computer to me and I was honestly surprised. There it was, the lizamoon virus. Luckily, she never clicked anything, so she did not get infected. But this is a very tricky one. It looks legit, and I feel bad for all the innocent people who will get this.
Especially the senior citizens. When I work on computers for Seniors it breaks my heart how messed up their computers usually are. Spyware, extra spammy toolbars, and just all kind of annoyances that make it so unpleasant to work online.
What happens is a little spoof window comes up telling you are infected, and then even you try to close the window to get off you are in trouble. Either choice leaves you with the virus window there and ready to run.
There is a way to get out of this type of situation however. What you want to do is hit Ctrl=Alt=Delete.

This will bring up your Task Manager. What you want to do is select Processes in the Windows Task Manager.
You will then see the fake process in the list. ( In this case I think it is called “Windows Stability Center” for this Virus)
Just click it and select “end process”. Then get out of there and off that website!
Or you can try the shorter set of Alt and f4, which closes a window.

You will have just averted a disaster. By the way you can use this same trick for any program you get stuck on.
I use it all the time when Firefox, or IE freeze on me or hang or a program stops working.

I made a fast video for you on how to do this. Now this is on Windows 7 so it is a little different looking but the process is the same. View in full size, it is nice and clear. UPDATE 3-10-12
I just got this virus AGAIN, and it would not let me kill the process.
Here are the directions for what to do if that happens to you.
http://www.myantispyware.com/2012/01/25/how-to-remove-internet-security-2012-virus/

Here is a good video that will show you exactly how the virus looks and works.
I have the HD version, click the button to make it full size when you watch.
It will help see what is going on with the virus fake ware and fake screens.

Here is a good article on the LizaMoon virus. Click this sentence to view.
Another good article.

I have updated with more resources and directions for the Internet Security Fake Screen and Virus Scanner here:

Filed Under: Computer Safety, Warnings Viruses Tagged With: avoid virus screen, computer virus, Fake Internet Security Screen, fake screen, get off frozen screen, Internet Security Scanner Virus, Internet Security Virus, lizamoon virus, Removal of Intenet Security Scanner Virus, remove internet security fake screen, unfreeze screen, virus, windows task manager

What happened to the back button drop down menu on Firefox 4.0?

April 1, 2011 By Linda Lee Leave a Comment

I have just upgraded Firefox to 4.0, and IE to IE9.
I must say I really like both of these updates. They are sleek, lean and run fast.
But of course as always some of my favorite addons stopped working , and then there are other things that always annoy until you can figure it out and get used to doing things in a “slightly” new way.