I was introduced to the After the Deadline plugin while helping people at the Genius Bar.  After the Deadline is a great plugin that does grammar checking and spell checking of wordpress posts and pages.  This is no simple tool, it performs contextual checking of grammar and spelling at a very high and accurate level.

WordPress comes with a built in spell checker these days, but its not to powerful.  After the Deadline is a plugin that has been picked up by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.

I was also re-introduced to the Shopp ecommerce plugin for WordPress.  These days there are several WordPress plugins that provide ecommerce capabilities either as a bolt on plugin or as a conduit to another ecommerce plugin like OScommerce.  Shopp provides a number of great features as an ecommerce tool which include but are not limited to

• Easy to install WordPress plug-in
• Bolt-on e-commerce functionality, just install and activate
• Works out-of-the-box with any theme (quality may vary)
• 2Checkout.com (included)
• PayPal Website Payments Standard (included)
• PayPal Express Checkout (included)
• Google Checkout (Lvl 2 Integration) (included)^†
• PayPal Website Payments Pro (available add-on, US & UK only)^†
• Handles multiple product images with easy drag-and-drop sorting
• Support for selling digital & physical products and donations
• Export orders and customers into Tab, CSV and Excel formats
• Export orders for import into Intuit QuickBooks
• Search engine optimized shopping pages (product name and category in the title, semantic markup, alt/title attributes set, <meta> keywords/description)
• Built-in smart categories provide easy ways to highlight: new product additions, featured products, bestselling products, on sale products, random products, even related products for cross-selling
• Standards-compliant mark-up output (targeting XHTML 1.0 strict)
• Setup free shipping discounts
• Promote overstocked items with buy X get Y free promotions
• Apply any of your discount options using promo/coupon codes

Shopp is not a free plugin, it costs about $55.  As compared to the WP-Ecommerce plugin, which is free at a basic level and has multiple add on components to make it shine.  That said, the total price adds up to about the same amount.

In this video, Amanda does a great job of covering why WordPress is a great, effective, cost effective tool for non-profits. She has some colorful language, but she gets the job across in a no nonsense way.  There are some conversations and resources out there for non profits and wordpress but not as many as there could be.  I highly recommend checking out this presentation and conversation to help immerse yourself into how Wordpress can play a part in a Non-Profit organization.

Softduit was founded in Georgia and has expanded to North Carolina, but we serve customers around the world from Ireland and Great Britain and the Netherlands to customers all over the US and Canada to the far East, back around to the Ukraine and Russia.

WordPress CMS & Social Media Resources Referenced

This video references a few different resources which I have used myself including the cformsII Plugin, the social media managing service Social Oomph. 

I use Social Oomph regularly myself.  It lets me manage communications on multiple twitter accounts and my facebook account.  It helps me vet good versus bad followers on twitter.  It also helps me to schedule twitter messages if I want to make a future announcement or setup a recurring message for follow Friday for example.

BTW Cancer Services of Gaston County is offering tickets for a screening of a major motion picture 2 weeks from this Saturday, Letter’s to God Screening details.

Don’t miss your chance to see a major motion picture prior to its’ nationwide release in theatres. Help us spread the word and fill the auditorium seats! 

Saturday, January 30, 2010
Gaston Day School
Pamela Kimbrell Warlick Performing Arts Center

Afternoon Screening;
Doors Open         1:30pm
Live Music:         2:00pm
Movie:                    3:00pm

Evening Screening
Doors Open:        5:30pm
Live Music:          6:00pm
Movie:                      7:00pm

Tickets $5
Available at Cancer Services of Gaston County

1. The only tool we seem to have is to suspend all domains temporarily.
2. Then un-suspend one domain at a time and
3. Refresh the server status in WHM over and over again
4. Gathering a sample of outputs for cpu usage

So far we have not identified any single domain that might be contributing to the problem.  Even starting to wonder if there might be a sophisticated hacker out there, hacking a server level or installing a virus at a server level that doesn’t ramp up their hacking efforts or turn the virus loose until multiple domains are on line.

If you follow the normal Godaddy instructions for forwarding a domain, you will likely not get the redirection to work at all.  There is a special process that you have to follow, and if you need support, a special team in Godaddy to field your questions (general domain support is not trained for these situations).

I recently worked on a project to with one of my customers.  They had a significant amount of blog content on an old Google Blogspot account (ex somedomain.blogspot.com).  They wanted to consolidate this content to a central website powered by WordPress as a CMS.  They also happened to be bringing in another blog from a different locations, so there was a merger going on, but that’s not relevant for this issue.

We needed google to initially convert the blogspot domain to a domain we purchased through them.  In this case Google handles all the redirects of those deep blogspot article links (in this case more than a thousand articles!).  This is not something a persona can do manually either (not possible).

After Google had everything redirected from somedomain.blogspot.com to BrandNewDomain.com, we then wanted to do 301 redirects from BrandNewDomain.com to ConsolidatedDomain.com/blog/ .

If you follow the Godaddy process, you simply login and type in a redirect URL.

But that will fail! 

Among other things, you have to delete all of the Google default information from the initial creation of BrandNewDomain.com purchased from Google.

Then you do your redirect and if you run into problems you have to call the right department in Godaddy.

Here’s the information that Godaddy sent me to help other people avoid the 4 tech support calls I made and 60 minutes of time spent on the phone working with Godaddy to get this right! 

Support Staff Response

Dear Brett, Thank you for contacting Online Support. Here is the information we discussed over the phone. The direct line to Go Daddy/Google Domain support is 480-366-3700. The email is gdomains@secureserver.net. Please keep in mind that we are not Google. We can only provide support for the settings within the DNS control panel. This does include setting up forwarding however. To setup domain name forwarding you must first log into your account at the Login Page. (To obtain your login information for your Google domain and update the DNS settings, use the directions below) 1. Go to http://www.google.com/a and click on ‘Returning user, sign in here’ on the top right. 2. Enter your domain and select "Manage this Domain" from the drop down and click ‘Go.’ 3. Now you will need to login to your Google account utilizing a username and password you previously created specifically for Google Apps for your domain. If you do not know this information, click ‘Forgot your administrator username or password?’ 4. Once logged in, select ‘Domain Names’ from the blue box that lists your domain. 5. Click on "Advanced DNS Settings". 6. You will now see listed your GoDaddy Google Sign-In Name, Password, and PIN. 7. Select "Sign in to DNS Console" in order to manage your DNS settings. 8. Now enter your Google Sign-In Name and Password listed on the previous screen. 9. You should now be in the Domain Control Center. To manage a domain place a check to the left and choose the option you want from the menu bar above [Organize, Locking, Contact, or Nameservers]. Once logged in, you need to setup domain forwarding. Domain name forwarding may be setup by through a few simple steps. • Check the box next to the domain(s) you wish to setup forwarding for. • Click the ‘Forward’ button in the gray menu above. • If you have selected multiple domains click the ‘Click here to Enable Fields’ link under the warning. • Enter the full URL that you would like your domain to forward to. Example: (http://www.anotherdomain.com) • Click on ‘OK’ when complete. • Allow 48 hours for the forwarding to take place. To add Masking, follow these steps: • Check the box next to the domain(s) you wish to modify. • Click the Forward Domains button above your list of domains. • Click the Masking tab that is next to the Forwarding tab. • Check the box next to Mask Domain. • Modify the title that you would like to appear in browsers. • You are also able to modify the description as well as the keywords. (Meta-tags) • Click Ok when you are finished. Next, you will need to update the IP address for the domain name. Here is how you modify the IP address. • Click the link for your domain you wish to modify the IP address for. • Click the ‘Total DNS Control and MX Records’ link on the domain details screen. • You will need only 1 A (host) record. Delete the extra records by clicking on the "X" to the right of the record. • Now Edit the remaining A (host) record by clicking the "pencil" button to the right of the record. • Put in the IP address (64.202.189.170) into the "Points to IP Address:" • Click on ‘OK’ when complete. • Allow 48 hours for the forwarding to take place. Lastly, you will need to update the WWW CName for the domain name. Here is how you modify it. • Click the link for your domain you wish to modify. • Click the ‘Total DNS Control and MX Records’ link on the domain details screen. • Click the "Pencil" next to the WWW under the CName Records. • Change the "Point to Host Name" to say @. • Click on ‘OK’ when complete. • Allow 48 hours for the forwarding to take place. Please let us know if you have any further questions, comments, or concerns by replying to this email. Our service departments and telephone lines are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to accommodate your needs anytime. Sincerely, Amber P. Online Support Representative

This is probably one of those videos that you will want to watch a couple times, just to make sure you understand the insights and information within. 

So when people ask me today, “How can I sell products online from a drop shipper?” I usually tell them, something along the lines of “More power to you if you can make money doing this, I’ve done it and its not easy.  There is a REASON why I don’t do it today myself.” 

As a former credit manager / contract manager (ie the guy that had to assess new retailers and distributors to see if they had the stuff to be successful selling our products), I also know there are two things that make a person selling drop shipped products successful.

1. They have to be kick ass sales people, &
2. They need a competitive advantage

Now, if you are a kick ass sales person, then keep reading.  If you are not, I advise you skip on to a different topic, because the people that are kick ass sales people will eat your lunch, and you will not be profitable, unless . . .

You have a competitive advantage so powerful that you can then afford to hire a kick ass sales person.

What’s a competitive advantage in drop shipping?

If you have an exclusive lock on a product or a product model that no one else can sell, you have an economic competitive advantage.  If you have the ability to sell a given product at a price lower than anyone else (even if you are using it as a loss leader or something), then you have an economic price advantage.

If you can make your customers feel better about themselves, make them feel cool for dealing with you, or get them to buy when you don’t have a lock on the product or the price then you are either a kick ass sales person (and maybe don’t know it) or you have some other business setup that emulates this (maybe like a Zappos.com that sells shoes, but answers questions on anything if you call them, or an Apple that sells MP3 players at a premium because people think they are cool).

“I’m a Kick Ass Sales Person, and I make my customers feel cool, Where Can I get drop shipped product for Free?”

So lets say for the sake of argument, you have 1 and 2 covered, maybe you have 50,000 followers on twitter that think you are the best thing since digg, and you are a kick ass sales person, all you need is something to sell.

Well that’s where Shopster comes in.

Shopster essentially gives you access to more products than you could ever hope to review and pick from.  They make it easy to organize and setup a drop ship connection and automate the setup of your online store.

The cool thing is that they do this for FREE now, for people just starting out.  They used to offer a free 7 day trial and then charged about $50 per month to sign up. 

No more free trials, they just have a simple free account.  The catch is that you can only sell up to 25 products, but guess what?

That’s a good thing.  The biggest mistake most people make when they set up an account with Shopster is that they try to add a thousand different products and fill up their online store like they are going to compete with Amazon.

Got a news flash for them and you.  YOU ARE NOT GOING TO COMPETE WITH AMAZON ON 1,000 DIFFERENT PRODUTS.

But you might just compete with them on a few! 

So start small, stay focused, and start for free.  Once you know what you are doing and this can be demonstrated by the fact that you have “MADE A PROFIT” Then you can start looking at growing and repeating your hat trick.

Maybe someday you will compete with Amazon, which just bought Zappos, but more importantly, maybe you will also become profitable enough that it won’t matter if you can beat Amazon.

With that in mind we might ask ourselves if social media allows us to get ahead of the curve so that we are not flattened by the 80/20 rule because we helped guide the majority of activity when it was still in the minority.

Working on twitter and facebook or even in the blogosphere can help a company achieve at best, more control, and at worst a seat at the table where the discussion is taking place and the action can be observed first hand.

When your company is the focus of that action and attention, you will be well served to be present!

If your company does not have a twitter account, facebook page or fan page or if you have not yet implemented a marketing strategy through these communications mediums, Softduit Media can work to help you succeed!

It is called Artisteer and it makes it so easy to create valid html and valid css in a WordPress themes that it is simply amazing.

You do not have to utilize a second hand free theme when you utilize this software.  You can make your own custom wordpress themes from scratch in minutes!

This amazing plugin performs a number of great functions to help push you to the top on any given page on your website.  It generates meta keywords, meta descriptions, it can block duplicate content from tags or categories and sooo much More!

If you are not running it, get it now and thank me later! 

Download from WordPress Plugins – WordPress : All in One SEO Pack

BONUS TIP!

If you also install Google XML Sitemap generator with WordPress your xml and xml.gz sitemaps for Google, Yahoo and MSN will be kept up to date automatically!  You set it up once, keep it upgraded and let it take care of business for you.

WordPRess: Google XML Sitemap Generator

Bonus Bonus Bonus Tip! Canonical URL Plugins

Depending on what you are looking for the All in One SEO Pack may not create the new canonical tags that the search engines are now promoting.  To fill that gap I have found 2 new plugins that were released to address the problem. 

I have not run these yet (but intend to do so shortly).  If you want to give them a try, we can all be learning guinea pigs together. 

1. No Duplicate Content Plugin (author’s plugin home page)
2. Canonical URL’s for WordPress Plugin