Mashing Windows

File under “cheat”, but if you do any blogging or just maintain a site, you MUST download and install “Search Status” extension for Firefox (link). Each time you visit a site you can glance at its Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and – at a click of the mouse – backward links (Google, Yahoo, MSN), indexed pages (Google, Yahoo, MSN), Whois, Archive.org, and many other goodies.

Of course I am assuming that you are using Firefox, if you are not, go get it now!

written by lorenzo

How do you find out when your blog or site is in Google?

Of course you could go check Google, and all the other search engines, on a daily basis, if you have that much time to waste.

Or you can cheat:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts.
2. Enter your URL as in mashingwindows.com as search term.
3. Select options “Comprehensive”, and “as-it-happens”.
4. Enter your email.
5. Click on “Create Alert”.
6. Repeat steps 2 to 6 for the keywords that are particular to your site.

Does anyone have a trick for Yahoo, MSN?

written by lorenzo

The setting up of the blog continues, I have added:

• AddThis.com plugin, this way you can add my posts to your favorite bookmarking service, or Digg it!
• Registered with Technorati:
  - Go to Technorati.com.
  - Sign in. If you don’t have an account, sign up, then sign in (it’s free).
  - Click on “My Blogs” (top right).
  - Look for “Claim a Blog” (bottom of the page), type in your URL, then click on “Begin Claim”.
  - I used the “Post Claim” method, that’s why you see this: Technorati Profile.
  - Enter the Description of your Blog.
  - Select the Language of your Blog.
  - Select the Tags that describe your Blog.
  - Click on “save Blog Info”.

  

• Go to Google.com/webmasters/tools:
  - Sign in. If you don’t have an account, sign up, then sign in (it’s free).
  - Type in your URL, then click on “Add Site”.
  - In the Overview tab click on “Verify your site”.
  - In the drop-down “Choose verification method” select “Upload an HTML file”.
  - Google uses the same html file for all the sites under the same webmaster account, so using FrontPage I am able to drag and drop my file from one site to another one, let’s say from here to here.
  - Click on “Verify”, and you’ll get the message “You’ve successfully verified http://mashingwindows.com”.
  - Click on “Tools”.
  - Click on “Set preferred domain”.
  - Select the second option “Display URL as mashingwindows.com (for both www.mashingwindows.com and mashingwindows.com).
  - Click “OK”.
• Go to http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl:
  - Enter your URL.
  - Enter your comment, tag line, description of your blog/site.
  - Click “Add URL”.
• Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit:
  - Enter your URL.
  - Click on “Submit Feed”.
• Go to http://beta.search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx:
  - Enter your URL.
  - Enter the characters in the box (chaptcha).
  - Click on “Submit ULR”.
• Go to http://www.dmoz.org/:
  - Find the directory that matches the content of your blog/site, like here.
  - Click on “Suggest URL”, third item from the left, top navigation bar, like here.
  - Enter your URL.
  - Enter the title of your blog/site.
  - Type the description of your site.
  - Enter your email address.
  - Enter the characters in the box (chaptcha).
  - Click on “Submit”.

Looking forward to see how long before the blog shows up on the search engines.

written by lorenzo

Should I have a web site?
Should I have a blog?
How do I go about getting a web site?
How do I set up a blog?

People ask me these questions on a daily basis. And there’s no “one” right answer.
If you:
- are in business,
- are working at a job that you are proud of,
- are working at a job where you are looking to get promoted,
- are thinking of changing jobs or changing companies,
- are passionate about your craft, art, belief,
then you should contribute to the greater community by blogging.

And if you are a small business, selling products or services, and you don’t have a web site for your business, consider the idea of having a blog in lieu of a web site. See my earlier posts here, and here.

The simplest, quickest, and inexpensive way to get a blog up and running is to use Google’s Blogger. I will highlight the steps here:

1. Go to Blogger.com.
2. If you don’t have a Google account yet, you’ll be prompted to create one, and do so now.
3. Create a Blog, with a name that matches the name of your Brand, or that resonates with what you do.
4. Your blog will appear as name-of-your-blog.blogspot.com. Yes, you started at Blogger.com and your blog shows up at a different domain name: Blogspot.com. That’s the way Google makes it work.
5. You can customize the settings as you like, and choose different themes for the look and feel of your new blog. Blogger has great online help, and if you are uncertain about one option, you can’t go wrong by leaving the default setting.
6. DONE! You now have a blog! That was simple, and painless, wasn’t it?
7. Now start blogging: write something, anything that your readers might want to read, something useful for your audience.
8. Some GREAT blogs are set up this way, you can take a look at Post Secret, which is one of the most popular blogs, which has also evolved in the publishing of four books: PostSecret, The Secret Lives of Men and Women, My Secret, and A Lifetime of Secrets.
9. Rule of thumb says that it’s good to post at least once or twice a week. If you can answer the question “Why having a web site?” or “Why blogging” from the inside out, you’ll find the subject matter, and the motivation. If those questions are answered from the outside in, someone told you to do it, or you believe that it something you should do . . . you might never find the motivation, subject matter, or time to blog.

This blog, MashingWindows.com is build on a different platform. It runs on a hosted WordPress installation.

WordPress is an Open Source blogging software, which is free, no charge whatsoever to use.

Hosted means that the WordPress software is installed on a web server at a hosting company that I use for my web sites.

You can run a blog as a Hosted Blogger, see Creativery.com as an example.

You could also use WordPress free hosting services, see executivepagan.wordpress.com as an example.

Enough with premises, back on track, this is how this blog MashingWindows.com happened, today.

• 11:30 AM – I started brainstorming this project last night, and I did some searches for a suitable domain name available. While many nice domains were already taken, I was able to find a few possibilities. I wrote them down, and I went to sleep. This morning I looked at my notes, and I went on the quest for the perfect domain name.
  I find that my creativity is enhanced if I let my brain work on a problem overnight.
• 11:38 AM – I decide that MashingWindows.com is the way to go. I want to express what my project really involves, using one single computing machine, in this case an Apple MacBook Pro, and loading 2 operating systems: Mac OS x 10.5 Leopard, and Microsoft Windows XP Professional. Both operating systems are windows based, so riding the coattail of trend of mashing-up everything, from music to videos to social networks, I am mashing these two windows-based operating systems into one machine: MashingWindows.com is conceived!
  The challenge is not so much setting up the machine, that’s easy, it works, it will work great, the challenge will be to transition the tools that I use now to the new environment, migrating as many as possible to web based services, and – if not possible – to the OS X environment, slowly decreasing my use of the Windows XP environment.
• 11:39 AM – I secure the domain name at SODBdomains.com.
• 11:41 AM – I print the receipt of the transaction in PDF file using the free Primo Pdf.
• 11:43 AM – I edit the Name Servers settings at SODBdomains.com to reflect the DNS of Hostgator, my hosting provider.
• 11:44 AM – I check that the DNS change is propagating, and indeed I am able to see a blank directory on the Apache server. DNS changes are propagating pretty fast, at least using my ISP (Comcast).
• 11:49 AM – I install WordPress using Fantastico, a script utility included with the hosting account at Hostgator which enables me to install server side software flawlessly.
  If your hosting provider does not support Fantastico, you can download the software at wordpress.org/download.
• 11:57 AM – With WordPress installed, it’s time to select the look & feel of the blog. WordPress uses “Themes” to change its look and feel, it’s very fast, easy and practical. I have a few themes that I have come across in the past, and that I liked, so I keep them handy on my server.
  In a few minutes I am able to install 7 of them (123 Red Black, Bleak Green, Contempt, GridFocus, Nobus, PixKit, and YGo Greenary). You can find these and many more at themes.wordpress.net and wpthemesfree.com.
• 12:05 PM – After previewing all of them, I have two finalists, GridFocus and PixKit. I decide to go with PixKit 1.2 , due to a more lively look, with some appropriate colors, and because GridFocus is not yet widget ready.
• 12:08 PM – Time to add some plugins to make WordPress even better. I have a standard set of plugins that I install in all my blogs powered by WordPress, and they are:
  - All in one SEO pack;
  - Google Analytics for WordPress;
  - What Would Seth Godin Do (WWSGD) ;
  - WP-Polls.
  It doesn’t take me long to install the plugins since I have those files on my server as well, so it’s as easy as drag and drop. I am using Microsoft FrontPage to manage my web sites, and Microsoft Expression Web for web development. And these are two of the tools that keep me tied to Windows XP.
• 12:09 PM – Time to enable the Akismet plugin, which comes with the standard WordPress installation, and enter my WordPress.com API Key. If you don’t have one, go and register at WordPress.com and get yours (it’s free).
  The only setting that I do is to select the option to “Automatically discard spam comments on posts older than a month”. I leave all the other default settings untouched.
• 12:15 PM – I enable WWSGD. I leave all the default settings untouched.
• 12:16 PM – I don’t enable (yet) the WP-Polls. I will post some polls at a later time, so no need to enable this now.
• 12:17 PM – Enabling Google Analytics plugin requires a Google Analytics User Account number.
  - Go to google.com/analytics.
  - Sign in, or if you don’t have an account, sign up and then sign in.
  - Add a new website profile, follow the prompts, get the user account. In the case of MashingWindows.com the user account number is “UA-239157-24″.
  - Enter the UA number in Plugins\Google Analytics.
  - Click on “Update UA String”.
  - Done!
• 12:20 PM – Go to Manage\Categories, and I edit the “uncategorized” category, renaming it “Miscellaneous”. I personally don’t like a category labeled “uncategorized”. I add a few more categories: Web, Blogging, Apple, Mac, Microsoft, Windows.
• 12:30 PM – Go to Options\General, set up the timezone, click on “Update Options”.
• 12:32 PM – Go to Options\Discussion, remove the check from the box “Comment author must have a previously approved comment”, click on “Update Options”.
• 12:34 PM – Go to Options\Permalinks, select the option “Date and name based”, click on “Update Permalink Structure”.
• 12: 37 PM – We are done! I start writing the first post.
• 01:45 PM – The first post “Why this blog” is published: MashingWindows.com is born!
• 01:46 PM – Go to manage\Posts, and delete the standard post “Hello World”.
• 01:52 PM – I change my mind and I delete the category “Miscellaneous”, in a focused blog like this there should be no miscellaneous.
• 03:39 PM – The present post is written, must go and edit.

From the time I had the domain selected at 11:38 AM, it took me about one hour to have the blog up and running, it was ready for posting at 12:37 PM.

Remember, I have done this before, multiple times, and I am using services that I am familiar with, and on my current machine I have the username/passwords of all these services managed by RoboForm. Actually password management is going to be one of the issues that I’ll need to address on the new machine, since I don’t think Roboform works on OS X.

• 04:23 PM – Editing is finished.
• 04:24 PM – Entered SEO Pack Title and Keywords for this post.
• 04:25 Edited timestamp for this post to synch with the text.
• 04:26 Clicking on “Publish”

written by lorenzo