LINKING TO A PDF FROM WITHIN A BLOG POST

To Link to a PDF from within a blog post, click on the add image icon.

Select the PDF file and upload.

Once it is uploaded, click on the “Insert into post” button to insert a link to it directly into your post.

LINKING TO A PDF FILE FROM A LINK OR FROM AN IMAGE IN A POST

If you want to create a link to it from an image, or from within your LINKS, then, instead of clicking on the “insert into post” button,  copy the LINK URL and then hit the “Save all changes” button.

You can then paste that URL into the web address of a link that you’ve created (see image below)..

Or, if you want to link to the PDF file from an image in a post, click on the image that you want to link the PDF to, and click on the insert link icon..

and add the LINK URL in the LINK URL field, clicking “Update” when you’re done.

ADDING A PDF FILE TO YOUR MEDIA LIBRARY

You can also add the PDF file directly to your media library by clicking on the “Add New” link under Media in your left hand navigation.

Select the PDF file from your computer.

Then click on the save changes.

Once a PDF file is in your library, to find out its URL so that you can link to it, click on the Library link under media.

Then click on the “View” link under the file that you want to get the URL of.

That will pull up the name of the PDF file, linked to the PDF file. Right click (if you don’t have a right click on your mouse, hold down the control key when you click) on the link and choose “Copy Link Location” from the contextual menu.

There are probably a slew of other ways to add PDF files to your blog posts. If you have your own version, please share by commenting on this post. Thanks!

The first thing to do is to upload the image to your blog media library.

Make sure that the dimensions of the image will fit within your blog’s side bar dimensions. I would suggest keeping the image under 200 pixels wide. The image needs to be a png, jpg or gif image.
Click on the “Add New” under the Media bar in your wordpress dashboards left navigation (see image)

Once on the upload media page, click on the button to choose the files to upload, browsing for the image on your computer.

Once you’ve selected the file and upload it, copy the FILE URL. This is important. Select it, copy it, and paste it into a sticky note or a document so that you can retrieve it later. (see image below)

Now that you have the location of the image on the server, Save all changes and go to the Widgets area of your wordpress admin (under Appearance)

Then select the side bar that you want to place the image with link into – the left side bar (Sidebar 1), or the right side bar (Sidebar 2).

Find the text widget in your widget selections. click on the text widget, hold it down and drag it onto the side bar where you want the image to go.

Once you’ve dragged the widget to the side bar, click on the down arrow to open it up so that you can edit it.

Here is what you want to type:

(NOTE: When I say “image-location”, I am referring to the location of the image that you uploaded to your media library. You copied that location and saved it. When I say “link-url”, I am referring to the website address that you want to link to, be it a page on your blog or another website.)

<a href=”link-url“><img src=”image-location” border=”0″ /></a>

Tip 1: if you want the link to open in a new window, include  target=”_blank”   in the <a> tag.

For example, <a href=”link-url“  target=”_blank”><img src=”image-location” border=”0″ /></a>

Tip 2: Make sure to include the http:// at the beginning of your link-url. (see image below)

When you are done, hit the Save button.

Make sure to check it out on your blog to make sure it worked.

Let’s say you create a business page, and now you want to have someone else help you edit it. To avoid having them logging into your personal facebook account to do the editing, you need to add them as another administrator to the page.

Many of my clients have set up facebook business pages, and they then approach me to help them customize them – adding custom boxes, photos and banners. On other occasions, a client might ask me to set up a business page for them, and then I need to add them as an additional administrator, so that they can log in and make changes.

Here is the illustrated version of how to add additional administrators to your business page.

I am using my business page as an example.

Step 1: Go to facebook.com and, logged in as the person who created the page, browse to the business page.

Step 2. Click on the edit page link, found under the image on the left. (see image below)

Step 3: Once you get to the next page, in the right hand column, about halfway down, it lists the administrators of the page, and there is a link for adding a new administrator. Click on that link. (see image below)

Step 4: If the new administrator is already a facebook friend of yours, just type in their name and select them. If they are not your facebook friend, or don’t have a facebook account, then enter their email address in the field provided “Add Admins Via Email”.

Then click on the blue “Add Admins” button. (see image below)

The person you have chosen will receive an email notifying them that they have been selected to help administrate the facebook page.

The subject of the email will look like the picture below (but with their name instead of mine and the name of the business page they’ve been added to):

The body of the email will look similar to the one below (but with different names), and they should click on the link to view the page.

If they are not already a member of facebook, they will be prompted at that point to create a facebook account. They need to have a personal facebook account in order to administrate the business page. If your chosen administrator already has a facebook account, they can just log in to proceed. If they don’t have a facebook account, then they can click on the link provided to sign up for one.

And that concludes how to add additional administrators to your facebook business page.

Generating passive income is a must for the self employed and creative people in this world. There are only so many billable hours in the day, and it is hard to make a living if you are just billing billable hours.

I decided to experiment with a digital product and adding it to my blog to see how easy the process would be.

Creating A Digital Product

E-books: If you are going to be selling any form of e-book, it is generally delivered as a pdf file. The best software to use to generate the pdf files, in my opinion, is adobe acrobat professional. However, there are free pdf writers available for creative people on a budget. Cute Pdf is an example of a free pdf writing software.

Audio Files: If you are going to be selling mp3 or audio files there are a number of great software options available for recording and generating mp3 files. One free software that I recommend to clients who want to generate vocal audio and not professional music quality is Audacity.

My Journey – bundling audio and pdf: I happened to purchase finale print music software several weeks back and spent a euphoric couple of days experimenting with writing beginner/intermediate piano scores. I was able to save these scores as pdf files by using adobe acrobat professional. Now I have a handful of piano scores suitable for the beginner/intermediate player and so thought to myself, why not bundle a score with mp3 file to sell digitally for this blog example?

First of all, I want people to be able to hear what it sounds like when played. Finale Print Music can generate a digitally produced  audio mp3 file of the music score. I needed to insert the mp3 file in this blog post so that people can hear a sample of the song.  Supplying a sample listen is a great idea for musicians selling mp3 files, or for experts selling audio files. If you are thinking of selling an audio file, I recommend installing the plugin below so that visitors to your site can easily listen to a sample.

WORDPRESS PLUGIN TIP: I installed the following plugin into my wordpress blog so that my audio links would be playable with an audio player.

http://wpaudioplayer.com/download

It generates an audio player just like the one here. Click on it to listen to my Simple Song 1 for the piano.
Simple Song 1

If you want to play audio on your blog, I highly recommend wpaudioplayer.

3 Examples of Digital Delivery/E-commerce Options

1. Option 1: free and the least passive:
   The first option for selling digital products would be to use paypal and then manually email people the product. Setting up a business paypal account is free, and then you can sell products and services online and paypal takes a small percentage of sales. This is the least passive option as you have to manually email people the digital product, but it is free. You can use the steps that I illustrate in this tutorial on adding e-commerce to your blog: http://goffgrafix.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/adding-e-commerce-to-your-blog/ to generate the code for your buy now button and copy and paste it into your blog post. You would then have to manually email the digital product to the customer once you receive notice of the purchase.
2. Option 2: e-junkie.com
   With e-junkie.com you can sell up to 10 products for only $5/month, and it ties into paypal. Click here to view the complete list of features that e-junkie offers. With e-junkie the process is automated. When a customer clicks the buy now code that e-junkie supplies you, e-junkie will automatically send your customer to a page to download the product when the payment goes through. They will also email the customer a time sensitive link to the product download page.
3. Option 3: 1shoppingcart.com/marketerschoice.com
   1shoppingcart.com/marketerschoice.com is a robust and comprehensive shopping cart service that offers digital products options, autoresponder capabilities, recurring billing and much more. I use them for my hosting/web design business, so they were the obvious choice, for me, for selling digital products. After I upload my product, the cart generates a buy now link that I can just paste into this blog post below. Voila!

Purchase Simple Song 1 Piano Score for the beginner /intermediate piano player.
$2.75
Score comes bundled with mp3 file.

Listen to the score below:

Simple Song 1

Your Experience with selling digital products

Please share your experience with selling digital products. What e-commerce system do you use? Do you sell pdf files? audio files? Is there a software that you have found useful in generating digital products? Please comment below. I look forward to your input.

If you found this tutorial useful, feel free to test the button below and make a donation.

I have just discovered slide.com. With a slide.com account you can

After a slide show is created you can edit it, remove pictures and re-arrange them by dragging them into the order that you want.

After you’ve created and saved the slide show – slide.com gives you an embed code that you can copy and paste into your blog.

Make sure your text editor in your blog is set to HTML tab and not the visual tab, and paste the code in where you want the slide show.

My initial slide show looked like this:

If you don’t want all of the tabs under your slide show, you need to alter the embed code slightly.

The slide show code itself is inbetween <object></object> tags. Look at the code, highlight everything that comes after the closing </object> tag and before the final closing </p> tag, and delete it.

It won’t get rid of the review and star links at the top of the slide show, but it will remove all the black buttons under the slide show.

One thing about slide.com, is that it does not yet have a way to protect your images from having other people download them. My suggestion is to use this tool only on images that you don’t mind having people review and download. This is a social media slide show tool, and is meant for blog posts that invite discussion.

Flickr slide shows are not the most elegant, but with the ability to add video, what a great addition this can be to your blog or website!

• on a travel site or real estate site, to show a montage of photographs and  videos of a featured location
• on a cooking site, to intersperse “how to” video and photos of the final products
• start a photo slide show with a video introduction.
• piece together a slide show of multiple videos – to create a full length tutorial or demo.

In three easy steps you can create a set of photos and videos on flickr, and then embed that set into your blog or web page.

1. Log into flickr, go to upload photos and videos (under the “You” menu in the top navigation). Upload your photos and videos. Make sure you have selected that anyone can see your photos.
2. Once your photos and videos are uploaded, click on the “Organize” link in the top navigation, and then click on “Sets and Collection”.  In the top left click on “Create a new set”, and drag your photos and videos from your photo stream at the bottom of the page onto your set. Your screen should look like this:
   

   Once you’ve dragged all the photos and videos into your set, hit the save link at the bottom of the left column to save your new set.

3. Click in the top right the link that says, “Your photostream” to return to your photos. In the right column you should see your sets. Click on the image representing the set that you want to share, and then click the “slide show” link in the top right. When the slide show loads, click the “Share” link in the top right. This will give you embed code to add it to your blog or website. Make sure you switch to the html view in your blog editor before pasting in the code.

I created a set of images of our puppy, and included a quick video that I shot this morning – just to test how it would work.

View my slide show of our miniature schnauzer, Rosco, below.

If you don’t want people to be able to download your flickr photos, when you log into flickr, in the top navigation under ‘You’, choose ‘Your account’ and then click on the ‘privacy and permissions’ tab. The first setting is “Who can download your pictures” and there is an ‘edit’ link to the far right of it. Click on that link to adjust the settings.

If you don’t want people to be able to download your flickr photos, when you log into flickr, in the top navigation under ‘You’, choose ‘Your account’ and then click on the ‘privacy and permissions’ tab. The first setting is “Who can download your pictures” and there is an ‘edit’ link to the far right of it. Click on that link to adjust the settings.

What is your experience using flickr?

Ever wonder why images or photographs sometimes appear next to people’s comments on blogs?  Those images are called avatars, and it is really easy to create an avatar image for yourself. You, too, can have a photograph or icon that will follow your comments around the internet.

Why would you want to do that? For branding, and to call attention to your comments. You don’t need to use a portrait. You could use your logo, for example.

Below, I am going to walk you through, step by step, how to create your custom avatar image using gravatar.com.

1. The first thing to do is to have an image on your computer that you want to use. I used a photograph taken of me by Lynn Christoffers – a Martha’s Vineyard Photographer.It doesn’t have to be square. Gravatar will let you crop it once you upload it.
   
2. Step two: Go to http://www.gravatar.com
3. Step 3: Click on the “Sign up now” link. (view image below)

4. Step 4: Enter the email address that you want your avatar image associated with. (see image below)
5. Step 5: They will send you a confirmation email.
   Click on the link in the confirmation email to activate your account. (see images below)
   

   

6. You will then be directed to a page that will ask you where the image is that you want to upload.

7. Choose where it is. Search for the image and upload it.

8. You will then be able to crop it to be the perfect avatar image.

   

9. When you’re done cropping, you will be asked to rate it based on the image content.

10. The final step is to assign the image to your email address. Just check the box next to the email address that you want to associate with the avatar, and click on the “use for selected address” button. Then you’re done. It is that easy.
    

You can log into gravatar at any time to update your avatar images or add new email addresses.

• Adobe Photoshop Elements for Windows – My image editing tutorial use adobe photoshop elements. This is a relatively inexpensive software that allows you to prepare images for the web. It is a paired down version of Adobe Photoshop (which costs over $600) adobe photoshop elements runs around $80 depending where you purchase it.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements for Mac – My image editing tutorial use adobe photoshop elements. This is a relatively inexpensive software that allows you to prepare images for the web. It is a paired down version of Adobe Photoshop (which costs over $600) adobe photoshop elements runs arounc $80 depending where you purchase it, and is cross platform.
• Resizing and Cropping Images – This tutorial walks you through how to resize and crop images in adobe photoshop elements – to prepare them for your content management interface.
  Click here to view the embedded video.
• Selecting and changing line images – This tutorial shows you how to remove a line image from its background in Photoshop Elements. This is useful if you have a line drawing or signature that you want to upload to your website and have it match your website’s color.
  Click here to view the embedded video.
• Preparing Graphics for the web – An article with tips on preparing your graphics for the web. It addresses the issue of why photographs uploaded to the web might appear less vibrant than on your computer, how to compose portraits and tips on taking product shots.
• Quick color correction using levels – Do your photos need a little color enhancement before you post them to the web? Here is a quick tutorial on how to easily polish up those images, bringing up or down the lights, the darks and adjusting colors.
  Click here to view the embedded video.
• Cutting the background away from an image – This Tutorial takes you through removing the background from an image in photoshop elements, leaving you with the object in the image surrounded by a transparent field.
  Click here to view the embedded video.

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I am always fired up when I learn about a new tool, and slideshowpro is really exciting. I immediately purchased it so that I could play with it.

I purchased the slideshowpro for flash ($39), and the CMS slideshowpro director ($39). My server will work with slideshowpro director, if any of my clients are interested, however, if you are going to be making tons of video slide shows, I recommend the slideshowpro hosting for the CMS, because you won’t have to worry about bandwidth, and it is really reasonable.

1. Step one in getting slideshowpro up and running on my wordpress blog was to install the director on my website server. This was pretty straight forward.  You ftp the files to the server, and then browse to them. The installation process through the web browser walks  you through any permissions that you need to update. It will prompt you to manually create a .xml file called crossdomain.xml, it will tell you exactly what to copy and paste into that file,  and upload that to your root directory, which I did with bbedit.
2. Step two was to create an album in the director and upload photos to it. I uploaded pictures from a walk I took on a landbank trail in Chilmark, just two days ago. I then copied the path generated to that albums .xml file to paste into the flash file parameters.
3. Step three was to install the slideshowpro extension into my flash cs3 and then create a new flash file.
4. Step four was to plug in the path to the album’s .xml file generated by the album, and also to choose that the .xml file is a director generated file, publish the .swf file and ftp it to my server.
5. Step five was to install the plug-in Kimili flash embed tag generator into my wordpress blog, and click on its icon to add the new .swf files path, size etc.   I made sure to add the base=”.” parameter to the embed tag. I found the instructions here.
6. The results of my efforts are at the top of the page.

I am pretty excited to learn more about the slideshowpro customization and parameters.

Putting a video on your website is a great way to form a personal connection with your website’s visitors and with your clients. And so, to practice what I preach, I have decided to experiment with different media so that I can teach you what I learn. With the content management systems that I have programmed for you all, adding a video to your website can be very easy and inexpensive – even free, if you already have a webcam.

For my first adventure into video recording, I purchased an inexpensive webcam from <a href=”http://logitech.com” title=”Logitech.com” target=”_blank”>http://logitech.com</a>. This is a devise that plugs into the USB port of my computer. Now, when I launch my ichat program (I am on a mac), there is a little camera icon as opposed to a phone icon, and if I click on that camera icon,  on my computer screen, I can view what the camera is pointing to. You can use a webcam with skype and <a href=”http://dashboard.aim.com/aim”>aim</a> as well. This logitech cam does not integrate with my iMovie software, however, it probably would integrate with movie editing software on a windows machine.

My webcam is perched on the top of my computer and is pointing at me. This was a bit of a shock at first, to tell you the truth. Working from a home office, I had become accustomed to being hidden, reclusive. How many of us who work at home, stumble from bed to our computers and check our email before even brushing our teeth in the morning? and before you know it, you are busy working away in your pajamas.  Using a webcam invites people into your private space. Now, all of you can see through this window on my computer, that my home office  is  cluttered, and that I work in an environment of creative chaos.

If you want a more formal and professional video presentation for your webpage, I suggest that you put some sort of screen or blank wall behind yourself.  However, a webcam is an informal tool at best.

I purchased a software from <a href=”http://ecamm.com” target=”_blank”>http://ecamm.com</a> that records video conferencing, and I used that to record myself talking. I also experimented with using <a href=”http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/” target=”_blank”>SnapZ Pro X software</a> which can record my desktop. On a windows machine, I could use <a href=”http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp” target=”_blank”>Camtasia Studio</a> to record the video conference.

I did some quick editing of the recording in iMovie HD, and then uploaded it to google. If you are on a windows machine, you can edit with windows movie maker, a free software. Once uploaded, google generated the code that I needed to embed the video into my website.

This is a really easy way to make an informal video to put on your website.

Keep in mind that any video that you upload to google or youtube.com is going to be distributed throughout the internet – so use that to your advantage. Put your website address on your video. Introduce yourself and your services. Having your videos in the public domain can be a form of grass roots marketing, if done correctly.

It is beneficial to compose your text first in Word or Appleworks or another software that has spellcheck, and then copy and paste the text into the CMS text editor interface. Please view this tutorial before doing so.

Part 2: Web Site Structure

Basic overview of how content on a website is structured.

Part 3: Creating bulleted and ordered lists

Below are instructions on how to add a bulleted or ordered list to your intuitive-website content with the text editor.

Part 4: Linking to other websites and Email Links

How to create hyperlinks to other websites and also how to create e-mail links.

Part 5: More Text Formatting

How to change font styles, alignment and colors.

Part 6: Uploading Images to your content

How to embed an image into your intuitive-website pages using the text editor.