Twitter represents yet another move towards this ideal state of information filtering. It’s not perfect but with the right tools it can be awesome.

So here, for those people that haven’t had an experience of Twitter is a simple video explanation. And for those that have, perhaps we can soak up some of the easy-to-follow language to incorporate into our online communication.

This proves it’s smart to make it simple!

It also helps distinguish your site in your browsers bookmarks and is also used in some social bookmarking sites as well. Here’s how you can easily create the file and make it show up on your website.

1. Find an image on your computer that will work very small. It should be square and can be a gif, jpg, png, or bmp file. It can have transparency as well. It does not need to be a large file as it will be reduced to 16×16 pixels in size.

2. Visit http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon (new window) and press the Browse button.

You could also try this free tool that makes a favicon from your Twitter profile image. http://www.html-kit.com/favicon (new window)

3. Navigate to the image on your computer and press Open.

4. Click the Create Icon button on the dynamic drive website.

5. In a moment you will see a preview of your icon. If you are happy with the way it looks, press the Download Favicon button.

This will download a file called favicon.ico on to your computer.

6. Login to your WordPress website.

7. Click on the Media tab and select Add New.

8. Press the Select Files button, navigate to the favicon.ico file on your computer and press Select. WordPress will automatically upload the file.

9. When it is finished you will see a small image of the file and down the bottom we are looking for the File URL section. Copy this URL.

10. Click on your Appearance tab and select Editor. Find the theme files section on the left and click on the one that says, Header (header.php).

11. Paste this code below the <link rel=”pingback” href=”/xmlrpc.php” /> line and replace the href URL with the full file path to the icon file we uploaded previously.

<link rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/x-icon” href=”http://yourwebsite.com/uploadspath/favicon.ico“>

12. Click the Update File button.

You will need to refresh your website page to see the favicon in action. Even then it may not work straight away. The easiest way I have found to test that all is working is to use a different browser to load your page fresh.

If all is done right you should be sporting a spanking new tiny favicon. Yay!

Bookmark Favicons

This will show you how to upload and install a new WP theme that you have downloaded. It also covers how to browse the WordPress.org themes site as well.

NOTE: This guide shows the interface from WP 2.8 but also features an admin navigation plugin called “Ozh’ Drop Down Admin Menus” Find out how to install that right here.

1. Start by Logging in to your WP site.
2. Click on the Appearance tab then select Add New Themes.  (To preview themes already installed click Themes)
3. Now we can choose to browse the WordPress.org site by using Search or selecting layout elements like Black, Left Sidebar etc, then click on the Find Themes button. Or we can click the Featured | Newest | Recently Updated to see those options as well.
4. To upload a theme we have downloaded to our computer already click the Upload link.
5. Click the Browse button and navigate to the sopt of your PC where the ZIP file is located. Press Install Now.
6. Once it has been uploaded, WordPress will ask if you want to Preview | Activate | Return To Theme Viewer.
7. Pressing Preview will show you what your site would look like to visitors.
8. Click Activate if you want the new look to go “Public”.
9. You have a new theme for your site!

Screencast Tutorial – Installing Themes in WordPress

First you need to make sure that the DNS settings in your domain control panel point to your hosting account.

Haven’t got hosting yet? Download our free PDF guide.

[download id="6"]

The DNS Settings will have been sent to you when you first purchased your web hosting server space. The Email will look something like this:

Welcome to the hostgator family!
Your Domain:     yournewwebsite.com
Your Username:   yourusername
Your Password:  cr4zypassword
Your sites IP address:
34.55.456.234
Your name servers:
ns0234.hostgator.com
ns0235.hostgator.com

These last two strings of numbers and dots are the Domain Name Servers. They tell your browser where to look for your domain. i.e. The server your site is hosted on.

Creating An Add-On Domain in Cpanel

1. Login to Cpanel and find the Add-On Domains button.
2. Click the Addon Domains button.
3. Enter your new domain into the New Domain Name: field.
4. Enter a strong password. TIP: You can write it down first on a secure text document then copy and paste it.
5. Click Add-Domain! Cpanel will take a moment to set everything up.

Now you can install WordPress from Cpanel and start building your site!

His approach is simple and sensible and reminds us that social networking is about making friends and if you have something to “Sell” it should come up casually and naturally rather than being a obsession that turns people off.

Perry Belcher demonstrates how YOU can use social media in business without being a jerk.

What It Does: Allows you to quickly and easily, search for and insert YouTube movies, royalty free images from Flickr, Wikipedia links, Google searches and even links from your own site, into your posts and pages.

Insights uses a dynamic AJAX interface which loads search results in seconds, all within the WordPress posting page!

Who Needs It: Anyone that has a self-hosted WordPress website.

Link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/insights

Author: Vladimir Prelovac

Instructions

To add a YouTube Video:

1. Position your cursor where you want the video to appear.
2. Click the Videos button within the Insights box and in the Search field enter the Title of the video.For a more specific search you may want to paste in the actual videos title from YouTube. Like most search, the more keywords you use the more your results will refine.
3. The window will magically expand and show you the search results.
4. Click on a video thumbnail and it will open up and allow you play the video.
5. Click the Add Video button to insert the movie into your post or page.

To add an Image from Flickr:

1. Click the Image button
2. Enter a search term or name and press Search
3. The page will window will automagically expand to show image results from Filckr.
4. You can choose the image size from the drop-down.
5. Click the image you want to insert it into your post.
6. You can then highlight the image again and click Unlink (link defaults to the larger image on Flickr) or align it with the text aiignment buttons.

To add a link from Wikipedia:

1. Click the Wikipedia button
2. Enter a search term or name
3. Clicking the text link will take you to the page in a new window.
4. Highlight some text in your document.
5. Click the small Pen Link button next to the link you want in the results window.

You can even search your own site with the My Blog button. Very handy!

To initiate the search you can also press return on your keyboard.

Video Screencast Training

Screenshots:

We also touch on an important iPhoto management tip.

If you hold the Option key when you launch iPhoto it will allow you to create a new library or choose a previous one. Great if you have many projects and do not want them to be mixed up together.

The steps to importing a CD of images are:

1. Launch iPhoto and/or choose the correct library.
2. Create a new Album by clicking the plus sign on the bottom left sidebar.
3. Drag and drop the CD from your desktop into the new album on the left.
4. Watch the slide show as the images import.

Write to us and request a training.

Take the time and follow this guide step-by-step and WordPress will be only 2 clicks away!

First you need to make sure that all the following elements are downloaded and functional. (links open in a new window)

Downloads:

1. Firefox – make sure that first you are using the very latest version of the Browser (3.0.7 19th March 09). Mozilla often release security updates that you should allow.
2. Secure Login Add-on – This Firefox extension makes logging in to websites a simple matter of clicking once.

Click to Enlarge

Security Note: This add-on makes it very easy to login to any sites that Firefox has stored passwords for. This extension is not recommended on a public computer.

If you have a private machine but want an extra degree of security you can designate a master password by going to (on a Mac ) Firefox > Preferences > Security > Use a Master Password. Make sure you remember this!

Once you have updated your browser and have the Secure Login addon installed we need to put our WordPress links on our Firefox toolbar for quick access.

1. Open the email you would have received when you installed WordPress that contains your account login details. it will look something like this:
2. Click on the Admin URL link.  This is the link that contains /wp-admin/.
3. Enter your username and password. Allow Firefox to remember it.
4. Once you are successfully logged in, drag the URL in the top of your browser onto your toolbar (assuming you have space – you may need to create it)
5. You can right-click on the link in the toolbar and choose Properties to customize the name that appears.

Now next time you want to login to your WordPress website, all you need to do is click this new link, then click the Key icon (when it lights up) and voila, you’re in!

WordPress Screencast Tutorial

You do have a gmail account don’t you? If not fix this now by clicking here: http://mail.google.com/mail/signup

To create your language translation gadget visit this link:

http://translate.google.com/translate_tools?hl=en

On this page you can also add one-click translations from with your browser.

Pick the language of your blog or website then copy and paste the resulting code into a text widget in WordPress or in dreamweaver simply paste in the code where you want the Gadget to appear.

Thats it! Refresh your page to see the new Google language translation tool.

Creating fast, user defined search adds a service to your website that serves your visitor and you. Create the search engine, copy and paste some code to one of your web pages and then you can edit it later from your gmail account.

Add the credibility and reliability of Google powered search by following these steps (links open in a new window) :

1. Sign in or create a Gmail account.
2. Go to ~ http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
3. Create a name, description, keywords and what sites to search. You can copy and paste in a list of urls into the field to allow Google to emphasize or search exclusively.
4. Remember to tick the No Ads section at the bottom.
5. The next page will let you do some test searches and send yourself a convenient email reminder.
6. To manage your search engines visit ~ http://www.google.com/coop/manage/cse/
7. Click on the control panel link for the search engine you want to embed. Note: the Home Page link takes you to its own simple page on Google.
8. Click on the Code link. Now you can choose to host the results on Google or on your own site. The zippy and cool way to have them appear on your site is go choose the Modal Overlay which makes use of Ajax to return the results but still being on your website.
9. Take the resulting code from this page and copy and paste this into your static pages or a WordPress widget perhaps.
10. Test the new search engine on your site.