Alaska Pacific University went live with their new website and my flash accordion file is on their front page! Very cool. Sundog Media designed it but needed a flash contractor (me) to create it for them – check it out at http://www.alaskapacific.edu!
I’ve had some folks ask me how on earth people make money with their blogs. I haven’t actually had an interest in doing this, but I did find a set of articles on it from someone who is successfully doing it. The articles aren’t exactly easy to find, which is why I’m linking them all here. They are from Money Saving Mom.
And just for good measure, a post on how to avoiding work-at-home scams: http://www.moneysavingmom.com/money_saving_mom/2008/11/guest-post-avoiding-work-at-home-scams.html.
The Google Business Listing change was almost immediate as well. Here it is – http://tinyurl.com/websmitten-google-listing.
And here is Christie’s new listing: http://www.google.com/search?q=impacts+alaska. At least for right now it is the top listing when you search for impacts alaska. To go directly to her listing, you can use the following link: http://tinyurl.com/impactsalaska-google-listing.
Another thing I’ve learned with Christie’s site is how to edit your Google maps listing. In her case, the wrong address was displayed. She wanted to know how to correct that. After a bit of online sleuthing, I found that question had been answered on Google Help. To add a new listing or correct a current listing, you’ll need to login to the Google Business Center. If you don’t have an account there, you can create one. You enter your information and must validate it by receiving a phone call to your business phone (you can also get a postcard, but I’m not sure how long that takes). Phone verification is almost instant and completely automated. You enter the PIN number they give you on the screen. Then, it tells you your listing will be posted/edited in 1 business day. I went ahead and did my own listing today to see how it all works. If I find the listing tomorrow, I’ll post it here.
So, no listing yet for impactsalaska.com yet. From the Google Discussion group I’m hearing that it “could be tomorrow or it could be next month… it’s based on factors none of us are privy to…” Argh. The maddening thing here is not being sure that we’ve hit every problem. I really think we have, but I’ll just have to keep checking daily to see if we’ve made any progress.
I’m learning a lot with a new site I’m working on – http://www.impactsalaska.com. Christie had designed a static site and was used to typing “impactsalaska.com” into her Google search bar to get to her site. I have found this is not an uncommon practice. Anyway, after I converted her to a WordPress site, mysteriously the listing in Google disappeared. Christie was the first to notice, since that was the way she normally traveled to get to her site. I looked in all the obvious places to see what was causing the problem:
Well, how long are you supposed to wait on a non-existant Google helpdesk? I waited a couple of days. My client was understandably perturbed. Finally, I posted again on the Discussion group – which had now closed and moved to http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en. I believe I now have the answer I overlooked: the Privacy setting in WordPress. I hope to report back tomorrow with an index listing in Google!
http://www.VCFM.net is complete. Naturally, there are a few tweaks we’ll be working on here and there as we go, but otherwise complete. This is a WordPress site on steroids. We are using 13 add-ons and several custom page templates. Some of it’s neat features include: the flash map under Program, Graduates that draws its information from a XML database; the Program, Faculty – Staff – Current Residents pages that randomly display little bios; the rotating banner of stamp images at the top; the form on the sidebar; the Interested?, Important Dates page that draws from a Google calendar…
I’ve seen this problem before when you have several tall images all aligned to the left. What is happening is the images are so tall they just keep trying to stay left aligned until they don’t fit across the page anymore (it’s part of the coding in the design that filters the way your site looks). What you need to be able to do is tell the next image to “clear” the left alignment and to start on a new line with an HTML tag. It is a bit of a glitch with WordPress as far as I can tell, so you have to outsmart it. Here’s how:
There’s a gotcha to watch out for – if you go back into Visual mode from HTML mode without publishing, the <div style=”clear:both;”></div> tag disappears. This happens with several different HTML tags – it’s a bit squirrelly.
So I’m working on my new site – www.vcfmrp.net – and we want to display graduate data on a map. Sounds simple enough. Where do I turn first? Well, google maps, of course. I figure, real estate websites use them all the time to display houses for sale. How hard could it be?
I fiddle and fiddle with google API. What I learn is that this is going to be awfully slow to load with more than a few data points. Plus, it’s just ugly.
I run across this article: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/takecontrolofyourmaps – and I couldn’t agree more. This morning I will shop for other options. So far, I like the idea of buying a flash map that someone else built and modify it (http://www.fla-shop.com/us_states/usa_silver.php) – for $45, this will save my client money, and it looks nice. http://mapnik.org also looks like a nice option, but may be overkill for what we are doing. Stay tuned for the results…
It looks like WordPress just keeps getting better. There’s a new version out and it looks good. It won’t be available to bluehost.com users for a few months (an automatic update script must be written so Fantastico can be used to install it -otherwise, it can be installed manually). Here’s an article about the new features: http://technosailor.com/2008/03/18/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-wordpress-25/