Dreamcatcher Web Studio

New Monthly Facebook "Mention" Promo

2011-10-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

If you have not connected with us on Facebook, be sure you do!

Like many, I am looking for help in promoting my work from home business and also looking to expand my growing portfolio.

I am running a "Mention" Promo monthly. All you need to do to be entered is like my business page and then give me a nice friendly plug on your Facebook page and you are entered! If you are not sure how to do this, feel free to contact me.

To be specific, here is what you get if your name is drawn:

A Joomla website with designed header and template, 5 pages built for you with supplied content.

In addition to these 5 pages you will automatically receive a contact me page, recommend me page and Add This social networking feature!

You will have the option of having VirtueMart added to your site for free if you wish to sell online, however the setup and entry of your products will be your responsibility.

Basic website hosting fees (cost of taking up space on the internet) will apply at a rate of just $10 per month :)

This promo runs EVERY month so keep entering!

Best of luck to you and thank you for your support, it is very much appreciated by myself and my family.

Brandy Burge

Local (Edmonton and Area) - 780-481-9627
Toll Free Long Distance - 1-866-980-3954

http://www.DreamcatcherWebStudio.com

Weekly Maintenance of Your Online Marketing

2011-01-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

Getting your website built and getting you online is our #1 priority at Dreamcatcher, but that's not all we do!

You know of course about our many other services available, such as:

Custom blog template creation and set up
Social Networking - set up of your Facebook business page, Linked In Professional bio and account and Twitter account set up
Custom Twitter Backgrounds (to make YOU stand out from the crowd!)
Advertising and backlinking services

The question is, once you get all set up with a great package of connected online marketing tools, who will maintain them?

Its great to have a website, a blog, and all of your social networking components online, looking pretty and providing some information to your potential clients, however, you need regular on-going activity on these to make them work the way you want them to.

Dreamcatcher Web Studio can help you with this!

Depending on what it is that you want maintained, we can work out a package that works for you.

We can:

Upkeep your website content and keep it new and fresh
Post regularly on your blog to keep it active
Maintain your Facebook business page, keeping constant activity on it and building connections and relationships for your business
Tweeting those ever important tweets about your business as well as building you a great following

If you would like some or all of these things done for you, whether we have done the initial building and set up or not, please feel free to contact us.

If you would like references from maintenance clients, just let us know and we would be happy to provide you with them privately.

Happy Sunday!

Brandy Burge
Dreamcatcher Web Studio

Why Do I Need a Website?

2010-07-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

Many people have the same question, "Why does my business need a website?". Even if your company is small and doesn't sell products, it still needs a website!

The website is a very effective and cost efficient method of delivering your business and services to the world. In this day and age, everyone is online. Most people go straight to the internet when looking for a company to do business with, rather than go to the phone book.

Here are some rather compelling reasons to get online today:

Your business door is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Information about your business, products and services can reach millions of people
A website can reduce printing costs. All of your information is on a screen for everyone to see.
A website can reduce your time on the phone answering questions.
The cost of buying and maintaining a website is only a fraction of what is typically spent on traditional marketing and advertising methods
Small businesses can compete at the same level as larger businesses

These are only a few reasons you need a website. We can help any business, big or small, get online and be a successful online business. We understand your needs and desires, and strive to help you in every way possible.

To buy your very own website today visit Dreamcatcher Web Studio today

Editing Your About Me Page

2010-07-05T21:40:00.000-07:00

The About Me Page is the second page that needs to be done after you purchase your site.

The purpose of your about me page is just to give a little information on who you are, perhaps a bit about your work history or family, etc.

This page allows your visitors / customers to get to know you a bit as marketing clearly shows that people connect much better to people than they do to websites!

Some pictures on your about me page are also a great idea!

To change this page, go to:
- Content
- Article Manager
- Home -
- Click on the title - HOME

Now, you can edit the content as you like.

***DO NOT copy and paste ANYTHING directly into your Joomla site from programs like Microsoft Word - EVER!

(If you have done a write up elsewhere, be sure to copy it, paste it into Notepad on your computer ( usually found from the start button or in accessories) and then cut it out of Notepad and paste it into your article)

Adding and editing content within articles is very simple, it functions much like Word and other such programs.
You have toolbars with many standard editing features like:

Font Size
Font Color
Bold
Italic
Underline
Left Align
Right Align
Center
Insert Table
Insert Picture
Bullets & Numbering
Hyperlinks

To Save your work as you go along and continue working,Click on the Apply button on the top right hand corner.

When you are finished, Click Save to Save and close your article.

Always check your work by pulling up your site from customer view using a second browser tab. Click on the top left, File, New Tab to get an additional tab.

Tips, Secrets and Strategies for using Facebook

2010-07-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

Facebook is a rapidly growing and boasts 175 million users with about five million new users a week. This makes it a ripe opportunity to boost your business.

Step One: Build your Profile

Facebook now offers options for those who wish to use Facebook for both personal and professional uses. If you already have a personal profile, you can now also create a profile specifically for your business. If you wish to keep profiles unified, you can also set limitations so business associates do not see those posts to your sister, husband or best friend and vice versa – it’s fairly easy to privacy protect posts and we’ll show you how to do that in just a bit.

To sign up, simply click on the button on Facebook’s home page.

Decide how people are likely to search for you and create a username. For example, if you’re creating a business profile then your business name will likely be your username however if you’re a service provider, people may search for you by your given name, for example Jane Smith.

Once you’ve created a username and a password it’s time to start adding information. In the image below you’ll see there are a number of options and opportunities to build your credibility and share information about yourself and your business.

Step Two: Start Connecting

The next step, once you’ve created a profile, is to invite your friends, associates, and anyone you’re interested in connecting with.

It also suggests people you may know based on your interests and people who are already in your group. You can also search for specific people and import your IM list.

Step Three: Editing Your Settings

As mentioned earlier in step one, you can modify your settings so only specified people can see your posts. You can create groups so only your friends see personal posts and your business associates can see your business related posts.

To access your settings, click on the settings button in the top toolbar. From there you’ll be taken to a page with several options, as seen in the image below.

Make the necessary adjustments to your settings, networks, notifications and so on.
To set your privacy settings, visit http://www.facebook.com/privacy/
And make the necessary changes. For example, you may only want friends to view photos and videos tagged with you in them.

Step Four: Begin Posting, Updating And Interacting

You can post what you are doing right now. You can also post photos and links to video or audio.
Users can also send and receive messages to other Facebook friends. You can use this function to share a promotion, a special link, or an invitation reserved specifically for your Facebook friends.

Step Five: Adding Facebook Applications

Facebook offers a number of applications including creating and joining groups. Adding and joining groups is another way to connect with a very specific target audience. If, for example, you are a writer and your market is work from home moms, you could create a group for aspiring mompreneurs and teach them the ropes of writing good copy. The group function allows you to also see the groups your friends and associates are participating in so you can make the decision about whether or not it’s a group you too want to join.

There are a large number of applications and with Facebook continually growing new applications will be added every day.

A few great applications to consider include:

Twitter – This is only relevant if you also have a Twitter profile and wish to integrate your Twitter and Facebook account. Doing so will publish all of your Twitter posts on your Facebook account and will be seen as posts by your network.

BlogNetwork – This application is a great way to publicize your blog and gain new followers.

Other applications include the ability to add videos, photos, and notable links. Each of these applications provides valuable ways to connect to your audience, provide value, and to boost website traffic and profits.

To add any application, simply search for it in the Facebook search bar and follow the instructions to add the application and to modify your settings as they relate to each specific application.,

We mentioned Twitter earlier, it’s the other tremendously popular social networking site and it integrates quite nicely with Facebook.

Social Networking Etiquette

2010-07-05T21:35:00.000-07:00

Like any social Endeavor there are rules of engagement, a protocol to follow to keep both the webmasters and your followers happy.

Here are a few social networking etiquette guidelines.

Engage Your Followers

Social networking is about building a community, it’s not about venting or sharing personal information. (If you want to connect with folks that way, then create two profiles, one for personal connections and one for professional connections.) Engage your followers in conversation, provide valuable information and be an authentic, transparent, and credible source of information and inspiration. That’s the way to build a following and a business!

Commit To Growing Your Network

Link, find friends, and start building your following. It’s not enough to have a presence on a social networking site. You must connect and on most sites that means inviting friends to connect with you and following others. However connecting indiscriminately doesn’t build a business.

Experts also recommend finding influential members in your industry and connecting with them. For example, if you’re the owner of a crafting store then it pays to connect with Martha Stewart because she’ll have a large following of crafters which you can engage with and build your community.

Follow Those Who Follow You

Generally, it’s polite to follow people who follow you or to befriend people who invite you to be their friend or connection – the terminology varies depending on the social networking site. Now Facebook used to limit friends to 5000 which meant you had to be somewhat choosy about who you befriended however they’ve recently lifted that limitation so there’s no reason not to befriend someone.
There are and will be some exceptions and caveats to that rule in that some people are spammers and some are not appropriate people to associate with. Use your best judgment.

Update Frequently

Like any other marketing tool, in order for it to be effective, it’s important to update and participate regularly. Part of building a community is being involved in it. If you’re gone for any length of time, people easily forget about you – sad but true. A general rule of thumb is to post daily. That doesn’t mean you have to spend hours and hours of your valuable time however a daily contribution is a nice way to stay in touch.

Be Professional

Remember you’re speaking to potential customers, vendors, business partners and associates and speak to them appropriately. Be positive, avoid too much jargon and watch the profanity – that might be okay for personal communications but it can send the wrong message to professional networks.

Remember The 80/20 Rule

Marketing yourself 24/7 is tiresome and a turnoff. Social networking is about providing value, not a sales pitch. Keep the old 80/20 rule in mind when networking - 80% information and communication, 20% marketing.

VirtueMart E-Commerce Store Features

2010-07-05T21:33:00.001-07:00

VirtueMart is an Open Source E-Commerce solution that is used together with a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla!

VirtueMart provides you with a powerful, full-featured shopping cart:

•    the built-in catalog search feature makes it easy for customers to find what they're looking for
•    you can easily create unlimited categories and subcategories if you want to make your cart unique
•    you can have category and sub-category description pages
•    you can turn off categories and products with the click of the mouse
•    you can easily assign products to more than one category by linking the products together (a very handy little feature!)
•    put your products on sale or mark them as inactive or out of stock with the click of a mouse
•    thumbnail images pop up to show larger images automatically so you only have to upload one image
•    breadcrumb navigation makes it easy to get around in the site
•    easily display a section of featured products on home page.
•    easily display a section of new products for current year on home page
•    easily display a list of best sellers for the entire site on the home page and for each category the customer clicks on
•    You can offer your current customers a discount using coupon codes.
•    if you wish to do so, you can sell gift certificates as virtual products - the customer puts in a code to redeem online (great for gift-giving!)
•    ability to cross-sell products with others (so - if a customer buys the Laundry Detergent, you could show the Stain Remover, Magnet Ball and Dryer Balls)
•    Shopping cart has sales tax calculator that you can set for your own state or province

You get statistics reporting:

•    you can generate a variety of sales reports from the admin area of your site to monitor your growth over time
You get built-in email marketing:

•    Joomla has built-in Newsletter management with a customer-subscribe option. Build customer loyalty by sending a newsletter to your customers in text or html to let them know about upcoming specials, news, etc.
The best part about the Joomla Newsletter manager is that it is a very high end system. Unlike Newsletter managers on systems like Zen, you are not limited on ours as to how many users you can send to.

Neat Features for Customers:

•    if you choose to do so, you can give your buyers the ability to specify a shipping address different from billing - this is great for gift-giving!
•    the ability to choose how many of a product to add to your cart - this seems silly - but most Norwex carts don't offer this, so if you want - say - 3 of something, then you have to go back to the same product 3 times and re-add it. This is very annoying for shoppers and can make them decide not to buy.
•    Product Reviews - If you choose to use this feature, it allows your customers to make reviews of your products. You are able to approve the reviews before they are published to the site
•    Order Tracking - If you choose to use this feature, your customers can log in to their accounts to view their order status, or you can keep the customer up to date on the status of their order from the time it is order until the time it is delivered
•    a customer order history available to both you and your customer

Other Nifty Features:
•    you can change the look of your website by moving information around - done with the click of your mouse
•    there is a built-in site map feature if you want to use it
•    a built-in banner manager that allows you to put text & image-based ads, recommendations, etc. on either side or bottom
•    you have your own password protected administration area that you can set up with your own unique password
•    if you wish, you can generate invoices for customers
•    Joomla is an extremely fast-loading program (this keep people from clicking away and onto the next site)
•    And much more! Joomla is ever-evolving and new modifications are available regularly.

Search Engine Optimization:
Joomla is extremely search-engine friendly (so your site can get found!) - each product can be individually meta-tagged
Ease of Use:
Joomla is extremely easy to learn to use. It is an intuitive program, and its features have been well-documented with step-by-step how-to information.

Understanding the Basics of Social Networking

2010-07-05T21:32:00.001-07:00

Social networking began almost 15 years ago with Classmates.com and has grown by leaps and bounds since then. Today there are more than 200 mainstream social networking sites with millions of users.

Understanding the Popularity of Social Networking

In addition to the ability to connect with friends and family around the world, social networking sites enable people to make new friends and business associates. In fact, social networking has become a very important marketing component for many online businesses ranging in size from fortune 500 companies to small single proprietorships – everyone profits from building a community and connecting with people.

While usage is growing in all demographics, NetPop Research studies social networking users and found the most common participants are between the ages of 18-29 with the next most popular age group being folks between the ages of 30 and 39. They found on average, users spend between 4 and 6 hours online during the weekday and 4 and 5 hours a day on the weekend engaging in social networking sites. With so many users, Social Networking can be a tremendous business building opportunity.

Business Building Social Networking Benefits

On a very basic level, social networking enables you to broaden your scope of knowledge. With so many people online and sharing information you can gather information and learn about new business building concepts, tools and resources faster than ever before – there’s a very real educational benefit to business owners.

On top of that, social networking enables you to:

    *      Learn more about your target audience. Where else can you connect with your prospects on a very personal basis, ask them questions and essentially eavesdrop on their communications with others?
    *      In addition, social networking gives you a unique opportunity to express yourself as a brand. In addition to being able to learn more about your target audience, you can build a profile and communicate in a manner which builds your personal brand. Zappos, CNN, and even Martha Stewart have Twitter profiles and thousands of followers and The Humane Society and Coca Cola have Facebook pages.
    *      You can encourage participation. Web 2.0 was all about engaging prospects and encouraging interaction and it led to today’s most basic business building necessity which is to build a community around your brand. This means engaging your audience and letting them get involved – social networking enables you to ask questions and motivate involvement.

Of course nothing is perfect and there are some very real drawbacks to social networking. Fortunately, they can be managed.

The Downside to Social Networking

In order to make social networking effective, it’s important for you to spend time networking each and every day. So that’s one more demand on your time. Because social networking doesn’t often result in direct profits, it may be a task to consider outsourcing. At the very minimum your social networking efforts can be scheduled and limited to 30 minutes a day.

5 Things to Consider Before Choosing a Web Designer

2010-07-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

It seems that everybody knows somebody that does “website design”.

The term can refer to anyone from a high school student working on the weekends between book reports to an established professional website designer. Because of this, you need to be careful when choosing a website design company.

Choosing the wrong individual or firm can mean the difference between having a website that turns out sales and ending up with a website that turns off customers.

You need to do your due diligence when you sit down with your designer (or web design firm) to ascertain the level of competency and professionalism they have. It is important that business owners ask the following five questions in your initial conversation with any potential web design firm or individual.

Can you show me your work?

Web design companies will tell you that they have done wonderful work for fantastic clients but ask for a list of client names and website addresses. This is the very first thing that you should do and will set the tone for the initial conversation. Reputable firms have a gallery or portfolio of websites that they have designed. This is where the proof is in the pudding. Take the time to actually go to the sites and check them out. Take note on how the site looks, how clear the site’s purpose is and how the site ranks in search engines. It is acceptable to call the design firm’s past clients and ask how their overall experience was during the design process and after the website design services were performed. If you hear a common negative theme, you may want to consider moving on to a different firm but keep in mind that there are two sides to every story and you should check with the firm to verify the validity of the negative comments.
Can you see the project through to completion?

You’ve seen the work, now let’s find out who’s going to be doing it. It is very common for web design firms to use contracted web designers to assist with overflow and you should ask about this up front. You’ll want to know that this firm has the resources to be able to continue the project if that contracted employee leaves. Similarly, This if you choose to go with a self-employed web designer and that person gets sick, leaves or becomes uncooperative, you have nowhere to turn. Web design firms usually have multiple employees and a chain of command to ensure your concerns are addressed. Just be sure to clarify what will happen should the person working on your project become unavailable.
How much will this cost?

Cost is a sensitive issue to any website design firm. It’s not unusual for to pay anywhere from $800-$8,000 for a 20 page static website design, depending on the level of design and functionality included. I always consider the level of work the firm can produce, as well as the relationship and customer service. A firm that is going to stick with me and keep my business needs at heart (even after the site is completed) is worth it’s weight in gold. “You get what you pay for” really holds true in website design and development. I’ve had customers come to me because their sites completely crashed a week after launch and they can’t get a hold of their economy priced design firm. There is a tradeoff between price and service and I always suggest that you stay in the middle.
Do they build search friendly sites?

I have long sung the benefits of working with a web design firm that truly knows the benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and its practices. Many firms will say they create SEO friendly websites, but the only optimization on the site are a couple meta tags that give virtually no value. This is NOT and never has been SEO! It is rare to finding a design firm that truly understands how to optimize sites and can create powerful SEO websites but this combination of talents truly separates that web design firm from the rest of the pack.

Ask your web design firm about SEO and see what they say. If they emphasize meta keywords and make no mention of link building or site architecture RUN AWAY! Also, if they promise first place rankings right away, turn and run in the opposite direction since it takes time to rise in the search engine ranks. Test the sites in the firm’s portfolio for SEO by seeing where they rank in search engine results for the company’s targeted keywords. This is the true test of any web design firm claiming to be able to perform SEO
What kind of feeling do I get with this firm?

As funny as it sounds, first impressions do make a difference and the gut feeling you get from interviewing a firm can go a long way. Whether you feel that you can trust the firm or alarm bells are going off inside your head, listen to your instincts, because they generally are right. To me, the relationship is the most important thing – it is the one thing that will outlast any project and is the most valuable service a web design firm can provide. Without a good relationship, the project is doomed to fail.

Picking a design firm is as important as picking a valued employee and maybe even more so. The design firm will be designing the voice for your company that will be speaking for you 24/7 and all over the world. Take your time and find the design firm that truly fits with your company and understands your needs.

About The Author:

Oliver Feakins is President of the Internet Marketing and Social Media Company WebTalent, a Lancaster web design and SEO firm based out of Central PA. Besides a having a client base throughout the USA, Oliver is a favored speaker at universities and other organizations. He also writes expert articles for outlets such as Promotion World, WebProNews, ITWorld and Social Media Today. Visit http://www.webtalentseo.com for more information or call 877-496-3327.

Joomla Site Organization Overview

2010-07-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

Using Sections and Categories gives you the ability to put things in Categories, or Sub-categories, with Sections functioning as the top level categories, and Categories in Joomla functioning like Sub-Categories.

So you'd set up something like this:

Section1

Category1

Article

Category2

Article

Section2

Category1

Article

You'll want to think about the structure before you start creating – Make sure each item at the END of the line is an Article – if it does not need to have anything put below it, but is, itself, the informational piece, then it should be at the end of the line, as an Article.

Sections should be fairly broad. When you have a group of items which do not NEED three levels, just set them up as a Category, under a Section that is not going to be linked into the front of the site, and link directly to the Category instead.

You DO have to USE both the Section and the Category level if you want it to be categorized, but you do NOT have to treat it like that on the front end of the site – you can link straight into categories instead, to effectively remove one level of structure. More on this later.

We'll walk through each one.

To set up a Section, go to the Content menu in the Admin area. Select the Section Manager.

Click on the New button.
Name the Section – this is the name that will show up at the top of the section page when you go to that section.
Give it an Alias – use one or two words, and put DASHES between them. This is what Joomla will use for the page name in the page link, if you have SEF URLs activated.
The Published setting just indicates whether it is ready to go live. Most of the time, it stays on Yes, but you can set it to No if you want to hide it temporarily while you work on it.
Set the access level – it can be Public, Registered, or Special. Remember, if you set it to Registered or Special, then this Section, and ALL categories and articles that are under it will not be visible to anyone who is not logged into the frontend of the site.
Give the Section a Description – this is what your readers will see at the top of the section, to tell them what kinds of info they might find in it.
Click Save to publish it.

In order to FIND the new Section on the front end of the site, you will need to create a menu item for the Section.

Go to the Menus menu, and select the menu that you want it to show up in.
Click NEW.
Click on Articles.
Select Section Layout if you want to display the list of categories in the section.
Name your link – this is the name that will show up in the front end of the site, in the menu.

For example You may have a menu with an Article Library link, and a Member Info link, which might contain:

Article Library (Section)

Marketing

Article

Web Design

Article
Business Instruction

Article

Member Info (Category, under an unlinked section)

Article – Join

Article – Member Benefits

Article – Terms of Use

Just because it is THERE, does not mean your visitors have to know about it or use it!

Next, we'll create a Category. Categories can be accessed through a link to a Section in a menu, or you can link directly to a category. They are very similar to Sections, with one primary difference:

You cannot put another Category under a Category – you can only put Articles under them (unless you use an add-on extension to give you multiple category levels). You set them up the same way you do a Section.

Go to the Content menu, and select the Category Manager.
Hit the New button.
Give it a name.
Give it an alias – the alias is the same thing that it is in the Section setup.
Select the Section that it belongs under. If you change your mind, you CAN change this later in Joomla 1.5 and later.
Give it a description – the description will show up on the category page, when they select that category, and it can provide a nice introduction to the items in the category if the articles happen to be private. When someone selects the category – from the section page, or from a direct menu link – they will see the description that you put in for the Category, followed by a list of the articles in the category, from newest, to oldest.
Set the access level – again, this can be Public, Registered, or Special, and just like Sections, if you set it to Registered or Special, it will be invisible, and all items under it will also be invisible unless logged in.

Click Save to publish it.

You can provide frontend site access to a Category one of two ways:

Put a menu link for the parent Section into the menu, and the Category will automatically show up in the Category list on the Section page.
Create a Menu Link directly to the Category – this is valuable for small Categories that need no sub-level (just link to the Category instead of to the section).

Articles can be Categorized, or Uncategorized. Uncategorized articles are not automatically linked in anywhere, you must create a menu link, or a link to them in your content in order for anyone to find them. Categorized articles show up automatically on the Category page that they are under – so you can just link to the Category and all articles under it are automatically linked into the Category page.

Uncategorized articles are perfect for items that do not need to go inside a category, or which always need to be accessible for your site visitors – About, Policies, or any pages that you want to have accessible ONLY from inside another page.

Articles can also have the following features:

Single page article. You don't have to do anything special for this. If you use this, then the ENTIRE article will show up on a Category page, so generally you'd only want to use this for an Uncategorized article, such as an About or Policies page.
Article with Teaser, and Read More segment. This is perfect for Categorized items which you want to access from the Category page, because it allows you to have a teaser, or summary, followed by the rest of the article when they click "read more".
A multi-page article, with or without the Read More feature. This works for articles that have multiple segments, or when you want to break it up.

Creating a single page article is simple:

Go to the Content menu, and select the Article Manager.
Click the New button.
Fill in the Name, and Alias – they mean the same thing they do for Categories and Sections.
Choose the Section that the article goes in, and the Category, if you want the article to be categorized. If you do not want them Categorized, then leave the Section and Category unselected.
Paste your article into the box – remember, if you wrote your article in Word, or another Word Processor, the formatting may go funky – if it does, just select all of the article, and use the Eraser Tool right above the description box, to erase the formatting – it is a white ovalish lumpish looking tool on the lower right. Then reformat your page for easy reading.
Set the access level. Same as Category and Section access levels – any article that is set to Registered or Special will not even be visible to anyone who is not logged in, but will appear in the list as soon as they do log in.
Save your Article.

Two important things about Saving Articles:

Joomla has a system timeout. This is a security feature, so it has an important purpose. It is set in the Site Configuration, under the Server tab. 120 minutes is a reasonable time to set this to – it is set to about 5 minutes in the default install, which is such a SHORT time that you may lose work if you are not careful! If you are working on an article, and the session times out, it will kick you back to the login, and you will LOSE your work.

We compensate using three strategies:

First: We make sure the config is set to at least 120 minutes.

Second: We usually work in another program, and paste the article in, then format it fairly quickly in Joomla.

Third: If we think we've been in there a bit too long, we copy the content that we were working on before we hit Save – then if it kicks us back to the login, we can go back, rename the article, and just paste in what we were working on.
Joomla has a Check-out, Check-in feature. When you start working on an article, Menu item, Category, Section, or other alterable item, Joomla checks it out under your account. Anyone else who tries to access it gets a “locked” item icon, and they can't open it or mess with it. It cannot be deleted, EVEN BY YOU when it is locked. It will STAY locked, until the changes are Saved, or Canceled.

If you accidentally hit your browser Back button (after looking at an article and choosing not to change it), or if you open one, then the session times out because the baby threw up and you had to go clean it up, or if you just close your browser window instead of Saving or Canceling, then the item will be locked. If that happens, just go back in, and hit Save. Joomla is designed to allow many people to work on a site at the same time, and this feature prevents one person canceling out the changes of another person.

Now... On to the additional topics for Articles:

Articles with a Summary

This is VERY easy – simply place the cursor between the teaser text and the rest of the article, and hit the Read More button below the article box. It will put in a line, which can be deleted, or you can move items from one side of it to the other.

Do NOT repeat the summary text when you do this, because when you click the Read More link (or the article title) from the front of the site, the summary shows up above the rest of the article below.

Multi-Page Articles

Just as easy! Put the cursor where you want the pagebreak, and hit the PageBreak button below the article box.

How To Edit Your Joomla Contact Page

2010-07-05T21:12:00.001-07:00

Your contact page is not really a page. So don't create one in the Article Manager!

The Contact Manager will do some things for you much better than a mere page will do.

First, it will keep your email address off the page - so spambots cannot pick it up.

Second, it provides a contact form with Captcha (image verify code) which you can turn on or off, but which can protect you from site spam if you have it on.

Third, as your business grows, if you need to have someone else help answer emails or calls, it can provide more than one contact form to route emails and calls to other people.

To set this up, go to Components -> Contacts -> Contacts. Click on the name of the contact that is already in there. Put your details in instead of the ones that are there.

You can put in a message also. You can even put in a picture if you choose.

On the right, you can choose which elements you want to show.

Save the Contact. If you have a Contact Us link on the front of your site, this will already link directly to it.
If you do not have one, then go to Menus -> MainMenu (or the name of the menu you want to put it into). Click New, and select Qcontacts.

Then select Single Contact Layout. Name it, and select the contact you are linking to. Save it.

You can also link to a category of contacts. This is how you link to more than one contact. You just select Contact Category Layout instead of Single Contact Layout when you create the menu link.

The Contact Manager is a professional and effective solution for providing contact information and a contact form for your site visitors.

How To Edit Your Home Page

2010-07-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

The Home Page of your website if one of, if not the most important page in your entire site.

Even though we have supplied you with some content to fill this page temporarily, it is absolutely vital that you write your own Home Page Content.

First of all, you want your site to be unique and send the exact message you wish to convey to your visitors.
Second, Search Engines DO NOT like duplicate content and therefore, if you leave this content on your Home Page, it is very likely that the search engines will not index you site at all or will give you a VERY low ranking.

So, your first order of business when you get your site is to write your very own Home Page Content.

To change this page, go to:

- Content
- Article Manager
- Home - this page is easily identified because the title is Home and it is also the only article listed with a green checkmark under the front page column.
- Click on the title - HOME

Now, you can edit the content as you like.

If you wish, you can select everything on the page and delete it and start from scratch.

***DO NOT copy and paste ANYTHING directly into your Joomla site from programs like Microsoft Word - EVER!

(If you have done a write up elsewhere, be sure to copy it, paste it into Notepad on your computer ( usually found from the start button or in accessories) and then cut it out of Notepad and paste it into your article)

Adding and editing content within articles is very simple, it functions much like Word and other such programs.

You have toolbars with many standard editing features like:

Font Size
Font Color
Bold
Italic
Underline
Left Align
Right Align
Center
Insert Table
Insert Picture
Bullets & Numbering
Hyperlinks

Your Internet Based Marketing Skills are Valuable to Offline Businesses

2010-07-05T21:09:00.001-07:00

If you have an online based business and you are looking for ways to earn extra income, a good way to do this is by offering your internet marketing skills to offline businesses. In this article you will find 3 reasons why your services are so eagerly sought after by offline business owners.

With the internet being used as it frequently is today by everyone who is searching for anything at all, people will look up businesses in their local areas online before resorting to the Yellow Pages.
It is so easy today for people to source products locally on a search engine by simply typing in the keyword phrases they are targeting to search engines such as Google. Any offline business that has no website or internet presence will lose out to a substantial amount of business.
For this reason offline businesses are finding it more difficult to market themselves. A lot of the old advertising and promotional methods are not as effective as they used to be.
For any online internet marketer who wants to make money and has the skills to optimize websites for the search engines this is a perfect opportunity.

Most business owners who run offline businesses are busy and not very knowledgeable when it comes to marketing their businesses online. All you need to do is look at some of their websites to see how poorly and unattractively they are laid out. Very often they don’t even have proper Meta tags.
By cleaning up and improving the appearance of their websites and optimizing the pages correctly, which makes the site more appealing and easier to navigate for prospective customers.
This will not improve the navigation on the website for their visitors but will also make that visit more pleasurable, which will increase their chances of making more sales.
This is a win-win situation not only for the offline business owner and his prospective customer, but also for you.

Because many offline businesses are not capturing the contact details prospective customers who visit their websites, they are losing out on traffic on a daily basis.
By simply adding an opt-in form to their websites where people can give their contact details the business owner will build a list of customers to whom he can continue to sell his products now and in the future. As an internet based marketer this alone could become a full time income for you, just to add capture pages to websites for those offline businesses that do not have one on their websites and you could even improve on this by writing a series of follow up emails for them.
The opportunity to create a great income online is not limited to the internet alone. It can benefit offline business owners as well as they can increase their business presence on the internet with your help. What a wonderful situation for you and them where both parties can only do better.

If you enjoyed this article by Michelle Jayes then visit her website www.online-income-business.com for more great ideas and business opportunities and sign up for her free newsletter

Tips for Increasing Online Sales

2010-07-05T21:08:00.001-07:00

I’m going to let you in on a very dirty secret:

There is one question that is being dodged by experts in EVERY market. Answer that question and you’ll corner the market, be worshipped forever and get more customers and sales.

If it was that easy, why aren’t other experts answering these questions?

It’s because they fear an informed audience. That’s outright silly! But, we’re not going to tell them that. While your competitors run scared, you’ll be getting more sales since you’re going to follow the steps I outline in the article below. You will educate your targeted audiences, get more website traffic, teach people how to buy from you and increase your sales.

Now, are you ready?

Step 1: Find the questions that are being dodged by other experts in your industry.

I can’t tell you what these questions are. It will vary from industry to industry. . So, how do you find these golden questions to answer?

Go to Yahoo Answers and type in your keyword. Examine the questions carefully and see which ones keep popping up. If people are asking the same questions, that means that people have the same questions. There’s a need that’s NOT being fulfilled.
Go to forums and watch what your audience is discussing
Survey your clients, customers and list of prospects

Step 2: Answer the questions in as many formats as possible

For each question create a blog post. Do NOT date these blog posts – you will see why later on. Once you create your blog post, expand it into an article. Then, turn your article into a video, special report, podcast and audio interview. You should also create online press releases. If you need help with writing your articles and blog postings, I have templates that will help you write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Just go to http://www.StartWritingArticlesFaster.com

Step 3: Answer the Questions in As Many Places As Possible

You should submit your blog posts to as many RSS feeds as possible
You should bookmark your blog posts using Digg, Technorati and De.li.cious
You should submit your articles to the top websites, ezines and article directories that accept article submissions. We can do this for you at http://www.IWantMoreProspects.com
You should submit your videos to YouTube and Viddler. You may even want to think about investing in the TrafficGeyser.com video submission service
You should post links to your blog, articles and videos on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Linked In.
You should post your articles on social marketing websites sites like Scribd and Squidoo
You should submit your press releases through PR Web or Webwire. If you use Webwire.com, all you have to pay is $20. But, I do suggest comparing the two services and see which one matches your needs.
Videos teaching people how to buy from you or how to use your product should be on your website.
When people opt-in for your special reports, ebooks or other free offering, you should have an auto-responder series that gets people to go back to your blog or website. If you have lots of blog postings that answers your prospects’ top questions – all you have to do is create a summary for each blog posting and send people back to your blog every day. This way each blog posting will get the visibility it deserves. And, by not showing the date, these postings become evergreen.

Follow these steps and you will increase website traffic and get more sales, because you’ll be educating your prospects, answering their questions and teaching them how to buy from you.

About the Author:

Article Marketing Expert Eric Gruber uses the power of articles to create online opportunities for Internet marketers, small business owners, authors, entrepreneurs and speakers who want more publicity, prospects and profits. Now, you can get his instant article writing templates that will help you write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Get 3 of his favorite article writing templates for free at: http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com

15 Important Web Design Tips

2010-07-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

The truth of the Google duplicate content penalty is quite simply that there is none! If that confuses you, then you have been reading too many misinformed forums or blogs where people get stuck on some popular term that they have no idea what it means, and then profess to be experts.

The only experts on the Google duplicate content penalty, and the only people who are qualified to define it, are Google, and in Google's own words "There is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty". This comes directly from Google's Webmaster Central Blog.

That should be the end of this article, at precisely 96 words excluding title as I define my word count. But it is not. Why? Because even though this blog is operated by Google, and even though much the same has been stated by Matt Cutts, Google's main software engineer, and other Google experts, people still argue and complain about the Google 'duplicate content penalty'.

So here is the truth: you might ask who am I to know the truth, but I read all the Google blogs and their official statements, and in applying what I learn, I achieve excellent results for my web pages on Google search engine listings: and those of Yahoo, MSN and Bing. So I am coming from a sound base that my results can prove.

As a professional article writer whose customers trust to get them the best results from the articles I write, I have to be very aware of the policies and the way the algorithms work of each of the major search engines, and so I am as qualified as anybody to comment on myths such as this.

The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty

There is no duplicate content penalty. Google's major search engine function is to provide a customer the best possible results for a search, based upon the search term (keywords) that the customer has used in the Google search box.

Google's customers are not:

You, who use it to get your web pages listed.
Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.
Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.
Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.

Google's customers are those seeking information, whether that is to solve a problem, where to purchase a product at the cheapest price, find a sports result or to get directions to a specific location. Everybody that uses Google uses a search term to find some information that they need. That search term is what you and I refer to as a keyword.

If Google detects several web pages offering exactly the same content, its algorithms will select that which best offers the information required and list that. It might also list one or two other pages offering exactly the same content if there are good reasons for it doing so (e.g. more links to other relevant websites, more other relevant pages on the domain, and so on).

So, not all duplicate content pages will be refused a listing. If these duplicates are articles, then the algorithms that the spiders carry on their backs will take the links from these articles into consideration, the authority of the directory on which it is published, and other factors, before deciding which should be listed. It is wrong to believe that this decision has a chronological factor, but, if you include a link in your article Resource section to your web page that contains the same article, then your page is liable to be listed above the others, partially because of a greater number of links back to it from the other copies, and partially because your entire site is liable to be more relevant than these others to information being sought by Google's customer.

This is not because yours was created first, but because it better meets Google's criterion for authoritative back-links. However, if the rest of your website is not equally authoritative, your page might be listed behind another with the same content or even not listed at all.

All of this is designed by Google so that its customer is offered the most relevant range of results to the keywords they used. That is what Google is for, and is its ultimate objective. Google will not penalize any individual or any website for publishing what you refer to as 'duplicate content', and it will take your version into consideration for publication just as any other version.

What counts in the long run is which version Google's algorithms believe to be most likely to provide the best possible information to the person seeking it, and if that means not publishing a whole host of duplicate information, then that is only fair, isn't it? If you used Google to find some information, you wouldn't want to find page after page saying exactly the same thing, would you?

No, and neither does Google. A Google listing comes from its indexing of billions of web pages that contain the keywords used by the searcher: both in relation to the entire phrase and to the individual words used in the search term. If you want your copy to be different, make some minor changes and perhaps change the form of the keywords, but most importantly, change the title and the introductory paragraph to which the crawlers will take special notice.

You then have a better chance of your version being listed along with some of the others, but remember: the next time you use the term 'duplicate content' you are using a term that does not exist in Google's vocabulary for any reason than to deny its existence. The Google Duplicate Content Penalty does not exist: the truth!

About The Author
For more information on the mythical duplicate content penalty visit www.article-services.com where Pete Nisbet will also explain how to earn money using article marketing.

The Google Duplicate Content Penalty

2010-07-05T21:04:00.001-07:00

The Truth of the Google Duplicate Content Penalty

You, who use it to get your web pages listed.
Adwords advertisers that use Adwords to advertise their products.
Corporations or individuals that use it to have their web pages listed.
Internet marketers who recommend others to use Google for advertising or searching.

Designing Websites for Search Visibility

2010-07-05T21:03:00.001-07:00

Designing enterprise Web sites for search engine visibility has been a major thread of this column since I started writing for MediaPost several years ago (side note: I will hit my 100th column in a few months). URL structures, redirection plans, dealing with process obstacles, and putting research up front have all been topics I’ve previously covered. Today I am going to build on a column that I wrote almost a year ago, entitled “How Search Fits Into The Redesign Process.” To start, a list of major considerations for designing an enterprise Web site for greater search visibility is provided below. (Please read that column for more info on each of the following points):

I was recently going through a discovery process with a Fortune 500 executive who was guiding his company’s Web site redesign, and I inquired directly about the search aspects of the project. His response: “Search is not relevant to this process.” Contrary to what he was saying, search was in fact critical to the overall process; he was just clearly unaware of his company’s campaign history and investment in the search channel. In light of this response, seemingly old and worn advice is worth another spin or two around the block, especially if it will help convey the natural search value of a legacy Web presence.

In enterprise marketing, it is not a question of whether your company’s site is going to be redesigned or not, it is simply a question of when. Most companies do some kind of major redesign or tweak every two years, and if they haven’t just relaunched, they are planning for the next one. So the “when” is most often “now,” no matter where you are in the process. The important thing to remember here is that search should be a key consideration at every stage of the process, whether it is selecting a provider, setting requirements, producing comps, coding or site deployment.

So how do you fit natural search into the process? Here are a few ideas to start:

Use site language and messaging that is consistent with the user’s perception of your product or service.

For the most part, search engines are still very literal, and truly effective semantic intelligence still lies far ahead. Position content and language that reflects the way users search, in order to rank for those terms. The path to understanding this language is through linguistic and keyword research, and also by studying and knowing your target. Language and keywords impact and guide information architecture and content strategies, among other aspects.

Read your log files (and/or review analytics reports).

If you want to know what you stand to lose in a site redesign, take a look at what you are currently gaining in terms of traffic, visibility, revenue, and conversions. Are there any particular Holy Grail terms like “travel,” “shopping,” or “banking” that may be giving you a lot of traffic? See a section of a site that is referring a ton of long-tail terms? You will likely find some areas that are worth preserving.

Ensure that RIAs are both crawlable and indexable by search engines.

Rich Internet technologies that are implemented without search engines in mind can instantly render a once-thriving natural search program into total obscurity. Flash and Ajax are key tools in the design and development toolbox, but considerations must be made for search upfront.

Avoid the creation of URL canonicalization issues.

When you change phone numbers, the phone company will leave a recorded message telling the new number to the person who called your old number. This is the effect a 301 permanent redirect has on a search engine — it applies the old URL and backlinks to the new URL; the search engine is happy, and your site is happy. A canonicalization problem occurs when 302 redirects are pointed to permanently moved pages. I have seen instances where clients have gone through four or five redesigns using 302s, and a string of six-to-eight redirects points to a single page, each with its own set of inbound links. This basically makes it difficult for engines to determine the “real URL” to show in results and apply backlinks to. How do you fix it? See the next point.

Set up a redirection plan.

In just about every redesign project, at least some content is removed, and URLs go away. Help the engines and your users by using a 301 redirect to point them to the most similar page on your site, or the site map, home page, or custom 404 page. Spend the time to map out which URLs are going away, and where they should be pointed. And don’t sit on the plan —do it on the day or evening that a site is pushed out of production.

Don’t remove content that supports coveted rankings without assessing risks first.

One mistake I see frequently is when content is removed from a site, with no replacement content to support the valuable rankings and visibility it has previously created. Before axing existing site content, determine how difficult it would be to re-attain the ranking, the ranking’s importance in terms of traffic and revenue, or if it is your CEO’s favorite pet ranking. Then create a plan for bridging new content, or leaving it alone.

Include search as both a business and technical requirement before planning has even started.

If search is not a consideration and priority early on, then it will be 10 times harder and more expensive to try to re-engineer at the end of or after the project.

Ensure that there is a voice for search within the Web site team structure.

Having a search specialist as part of the Web design team (and implementing their recommendations) will do a lot to ensure a healthy transition in the redesign and relaunch process, in addition to the potential for growth. The list above is useless without some subjective strategy behind it. Get experienced search optimization help that is fit to your company’s unique situation, needs and goals, and make it an integral part of the redesign process.

These are just a few considerations to get you started. Feel free to add your own thoughts and considerations for redesign at the Search Insider blog.
Rob Garner is strategy director for digital marketing company iCrossing and writes for Great Finds, the iCrossing blog. Contact him via email at rob.garner@icrossing.com,and follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robgarner.

How To Optimize Your Site for Local Search

2010-07-05T21:01:00.001-07:00

As the search engines take “search” to next level, more and more people are beginning to narrow down their searches to their cities or neighborhoods.

This is because of the rising need among visitors to know who they are dealing with. They want to personally visit your business location. Thus, targeting local visitors along with global visitors does help your website get the best of both worlds.

3 Reasons to Optimize for Local Search

Build Brand Awareness. Optimize your website for local keywords to increase brand awareness geographically.
Leverage Trust. If local visitors trust your brand, this can translate on to the web and capture the attention of global visitors. This superiority will set your website apart from your competitors.
Increase ROI. A recent survey shows that, local seo tends to convert more often, is cost effective and leads to increased ROI.

How to Optimize your Website for Local Search?

Optimizing a website for a locally oriented business includes all the steps of on page and off page optimization along with a few tweaks and additions. The following steps will ensure that your website marks its presence in the local results.

Add Your City Name to the Meta Tags. It is highly important to add the name of your local city to your original keywords and place them accordingly in the title, keyword tag and description tag of the web page. While crawling and indexing the website, the searchbots interpret the emphasis on the name of the city; then use the city name for the search engine results pages from the database.
Use Other Localized Metadata Available. There are various other Meta Tags present in HTML which favor local website optimization. Some of them are present under the Meta name as ‘country’, ‘geo position’ or ‘ICMB’. Meta Name – country can be used to input the name of the country where your target visitors reside. Meta Name – geo position or ICMB can be used to input the latitude and longitude coordinates of your business city. Every country has its own unique ICMB code. These details give the search engines more favorable data to rank well locally.
Submit Your Website to Google Local Business Center. Google lets you submit your business listing free of cost to its local business center. You can add business details like address, area of operation, contact number and hours of operation to the listing. All these details are available on the screen with a snapshot of a map which shows the detailed location of your business. All you have to do is add the listing in the local business center by going through a quick verification process and the visitors will find their way to your business website.
Build High Quality Backlinks. Link building is the most important aspect of search engine optimization. Search engines give a lot of importance to incoming links and consider it as a measure of a website’s popularity. You can build quality backlinks by submitting your site to high PR search directories, internet yellow pages, local search engines and Google webmasters tool.
Select the Correct Service Provider. If your business is based in UK and your domain (.com) is hosted with a service provider whose servers are based in its Australian data centers, then chances of your website ranking well in Australia are more. This is because; the search engine will interpret your website to be an Australian website making it harder to rank well in UK search engines (.co.uk). Thus, hosting your website in the country where most of your customers live is a practical decision.

Website optimization for local search is a must for websites with service based businesses to increase lead generation, sales and ROI.

Debbie A. Everson is the CEO of SearchMar.com, experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Learn about search engine marketing, paid search advertising, social media, and email marketing. Read my SEO Blog for hints and tips. Follow me on Twitter @searchmar. Call 1.866.885.6263 to speak to one of our SEO Consultants and receive your free consultation.

How to Look Beyond What Is Or Isn't Ranking

2010-07-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

Website owners and managers will always be fascinated with how well they rank on search engines.
However, rankings can be deceiving because they only provide a small part of the data set anyone will need to gauge online success.

Who wouldn't like to be No. 1 on Google for an organic listing? Among the busy array of results (including paid ads and local search), a top ranking still shines. It shouts: "I climbed the mountain and beat out the other guy."

But did you?

Here are 12 key points to consider with your ranking numbers that quickly touch on other aspects of your marketing online initiative. Keeping these factors in mind will help you make better choices about what next steps you should take to ensure that you're better positioned to improve your company's bottom line.

Did you pursue the right keyword?

A No. 1 ranking is possible with barely any effort, but will it drive traffic? You might rank well for Cleveland Legal Counselors, but odds are more people are searching for Cleveland Lawyers. If that's too competitive, try Lawyers in Cleveland and get your share of traffic from the many ways people search.
Are you targeting the right search engine?

A top ranking on Bing can trigger big smiles. However, if your website only gets 3.5% of its traffic from Bing - for all keywords - the ranking may not deserve a lot of attention. Yes, conversions are worth considering, but you need to constantly think about what precious time you're committing to Bing when other engines may pay off in an even bigger way.
What's your track record?

You need to chart the progress. It's not a good sign if months go by and you can't crack the top 30 positions in any search engine results. Own up to the fact that maybe the keyword phrase is too competitive if it doesn't show an improvement. Look for headway. For keywords with little competition, maybe you'll rank higher sooner. But that's not always the case. Your search engine optimization (SEO) practices may help you show a marked improvement even for more competitive search terms.
Setbacks are common.

If you manage to get a great ranking - perhaps in the top 5 spots - don't panic if your ranking dips a bit. It could easily rebound.
Substitutions aren't inferior.

Like NBA bench players, new keyword options can excel if given the chance. If you can't get a high ranking for a keyword phrase among your starting lineup, drop it after a few months. Why keep it if the keyword phrase isn't gaining momentum - either toward a top ranking or in its ability to convert.
Don't be misled by your computer.

With personal settings, browser history and different data centers, it's increasingly tough to know if your exceptional ranking is really what it seems. For your most significant keywords, you may want to have someone else tell you how the keyword phrases ranks. Or, test out the search terms with some other ranking checkers (including third-party sources) like the ones listed below.
Understand your landing pages.

It's not uncommon for the home page to be the landing page for a powerful keyword phrase. Your conversion option may really be an inside page. In a fantasy world, you could tag keywords and they would magically be directed to your preferred pages. In reality, that's the beauty of paid search. But don't give up on your home page. If it's working, find a way to establish Calls to Action within the content, the core navigation, and diverse user cues to make sure visitors go where you lead them.
The crowded home page.

Another problem with the home page is the fact that many keyword phrases often rank well for it. A few keywords may perform better if you are able to adapt your strategy and target some interior pages for some of the keywords. Your website analytics package should help you see what keywords are being used to reach the home page or any other page with a crowded keyword field.
Balance greed with diversity.

Online marketers get excited if they have more than one page appearing in the top 10 search results for the same keyword phrase. You should consider whether one of the pages could better support another keyword phrase that lacks the visibility it needs to generate traffic and sales or leads for your business. Don't make a hasty decision. If a keyword phrase ranks No. 7 on one page and No. 15 on another page, don't assume the No. 7 ranking is the best one to attack because it's closer to the No. 1 position.

You need to weigh what you've already done with both pages, keyword themes on the website, the amount of content on each page, conversion opportunities and more. For example, the No. 7 ranking may be the best you'll do for the one page. For another page, the No. 15 ranking may not have taken as much effort to achieve (meaning you could still do more with SEO to improve the ranking).
Visitors tell another part of the story.

Unfortunately some businesses lack conversion data and settings. At least you can look at the visitor data in your website analytics. In the purest sense, visitor metrics will indicate whether the ranking has any merit.
Be honest about your conversions.

Many websites lack opportunities to connect with visitors. Your top ranking may be wasted if your potential customer encounters a poor design (with usability messes), text overload (visitors typically prefer to scan) and information without a clear Call to Action. Offering your phone number in the 14th paragraph isn't very effective.
Know your website strengths.

To appreciate your rankings (or lack of them), you need to know your website's strengths and weaknesses. Take a look at the competition. Study which website ranks No. 1 or even No. 10.

What do they have that your website lacks? Maybe it's a great domain name (with a keyword), an age advantage, more links, and more content (multiple pages) to accentuate keyword themes, etc.

Business owners and marketers can study rankings every day, but the ranking position alone won't help. Look at the rankings within the context of overall traffic, conversions, your SEO efforts to date, the viability of your website, and your ability to spread keywords across the website.

Ultimately, you may need more pages to support your preferred ranking over the long haul. While making that investment, keep an eye out for alternative keywords that your website can realistically support - today and in the future.

About The Author

Mike Murray is the Web Strategy Thought Leader for World Synergy, an interactive online marketíng firm that focuses on website design, custom web applications and business infrastructure services and strategy. Mike has more than 13 years of experience with web site development and marketing online, frequently speaking at regional and national conferences, including Search Engine Strategies.

10 Important Inbound Link SEO Tips

2010-07-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

Don't overlook your inbound linking strategy as you think about search engine optimization for your site. An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your site from another web site.

The one constant and reliable strategy in search engine optimization is that sites with a variety of high quality backlinks rank higher in the search engine results pages.

Why are these links to your site important? They can can...

bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link
boost the number of visitors to your web site
dramatically improve your search engine rankings

Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all.

The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That's a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can.

Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

Directory Links

Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it's free, it may take awhile for your site to be added. Getting added to Yahoo's Directory costs $299/year.
Press Releases

If you're writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.
Article Directories

Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can drive traffic back to your site!
Social Bookmarking

Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your content on these sites (like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service. By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.
Blog Comments

To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that's happening within the comments.
Social Media

Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you've got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.
Blog/Podcast Syndication

Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases, each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also get a link.
Video Syndication

YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video's description or on your profile page, or both.
.EDU and .GOV Links

Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of weight. Frankly, it isn't easy to get inbound links from these sites.
Internal Links

Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.

Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings grow.

About The Author
Small business marketing Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals create authentic, profitable online businesses. Would you like to learn the specific Internet marketing strategies that get results? Discover how to improve your visibility and get found online by claiming your Free gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketíng Toolkit, at ==> TurbochargeYourOnlineMarketing.com

Understanding Google Ranking

2010-07-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

A lot of people assume that Google positions are a marker of website success. They are not.

If you are watching Google rankings, they will go up and down. This is normal.

There are any number of reasons why it can happen.

1. Competition for the word.
2. Changes in how Google measures.

You really don't need to worry about it. This is why:

Position in Google for any given keyword phrase is ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT to making good sales.

I know, you're being told everywhere that if you aren't on page 1 in google for your top keyword that you'll never make a sale. That is an absolute lie made by people who want you to pay to try to put you there, or a mistatement made by people who don't understand how it works.

We don't even rank for Web Design terms, yet we get good traffic and get calls from our websites. We've proven this with client sites also, and statistical evidence bears out what I'll say here.

Think of it this way...

If two people have a cold, and one takes medication to suppress the symptoms, which one is contagious?

No one would ask such an absurd question because we know that both are still contagious.

Same thing here - if you judge success by something that doesn't really matter to sales, then you are making the same kind of mistake as you would if you thought that stopping the sniffles and cough meant you no longer had a cold.

There are many complex factors involved. But something you need to know is:

Most of your potential customers are NOT searching for your keyword.

And...

LESS THAN 10% of the people who find you will find you using ANY of those common terms!
The other 90% will find you through keyword phrases that you'd NEVER think of.

So what do you do?

Create information pages for your site that are original, and interesting. Choose topics related to your site focus. Make sure the pages are written BY YOU.
Get your site link out there into directories, onto forums, into blogs, etc. Be a nice person and just go be friendly online and leave your signature line.
Everywhere you go online and off, just politely leave your URL. Use it in email signature lines, and everywhere.
Measure traffic trends, and get clues about what to do from your TRAFFIC STATS, NOT from your Google Position. Google Positions mean NOTHING. Results mean something. Traffic stats are RESULTS. They can tell you a lot. Your site has comprehensive traffic stats, which you can access through your Cpanel.
Measure success by sales. If you aren't getting any sales, then you need to look at trends, and see if you are close to getting them - stats can help you know what might work.

At first, the majority of sales a website makes, is made through personal contact. True of EVERY website. So don't wait for your website to do it all for you. Keep working at it, and it will slowly build momentum.

How to Link a PDF to a Page

2010-07-05T20:49:00.001-07:00

First, check to see if you have the Attachments extension. Some of the older Norwex sites did not have this installed by default, the new ones do have it. If you do not have it, you can email us and ask for it, and we'll put it in.

Look in the Components menu for something named Attachments. If you have that, then you can easily attach PDF documents to your pages.

Attachments is an easy solution, but it isn't perfect. It has some limitations.

First, each item that you attach to a page will show up where the program tells it to show up - you cannot tell it where to show up. The program places the attachments for each page, at the BOTTOM of the page in the front of the site.

We install this as the first choice though, because it is SIMPLE to use.

Just open up your article in the back of the site, and scroll to the bottom, and look for the button that says Attach on it. Click that, and you can upload your attachment right there.

If you go into the component, in Components -> Attachments, you can set some settings - you can make it so attachments are ONLY for registered users, or you can set it so that anybody can see them. There are some other settings too.

If you need more robust PDF document handling than this, we do have another option, but it is slower and more complicated to set up and use, so we usually recommend this as the simplest way to get documents available on your website.

Adding Articles to Menu's

2010-07-05T20:47:00.001-07:00

After selecting Menu>Menu Manager>Top menu>New>

Click Articles.

Under Articles, you have several choices:

Article Layout - this means a link to an article.
Article Submission Layout - this means you want to link to a page where your site visitors can submit an article to your site.

Category Blog Layout - This creates a link to a Category, where it will display the articles on the category page, or where it will display article summaries on the Category page. You have a LOT of configuration options for this choice, to make it look just as you want, but it takes some time to make all the bits work together to get your layout right.

Category List Layout - This creates a link to a Category, where it displays a list of article titles. Not many configuration options, but fast to link because you don't have a lot of settings to tweak.

Section Blog Layout - Similar to Category Blog Layout, but for a Section instead of Category. Has a lot of configuration options.

Section List Layout - Similar to Category List Layout, but for a Section. Shows a list of the Categories in the section.

How To Create a Category

2010-07-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

Go to "Content" in the top menu, and select "Category Manager", then click on the "New" icon.

You cannot put additional categories under categories. Categories must be assigned to a section. Articles are added to categories, that are assigned to sections.

"Title" and "Alias" should be the same, except that "Alias" should be all small letters, with dashes instead of spaces. And no more than three words.

"Published" - click the "yes" radio button. Or, if you want to work on your page some more before you publish it, then you can click "no" and it won't show up in the front end of your site. When you finish your edits you can click the "yes" button, then your section page will be visible on the front end.

"Order" - allows you to change the order of your sections, if you have more than one section. You don't need to worry about this button for your menu items. You can change that order through the "Main Menu Manager".

"Access Level" - You are able to choose if you want everyone to see the section, registered visitors only to see the section, or special visitors.

"Image" - You can put in an image for your section if you wish.

"Image Position" - Adjusts the position of your image left, center, or right.

The icons and symbols at the top of the page are pretty much standards for editing your content. The white icon, second from the left on the bottom row, next to the "Insert Horizontal Ruler" is a tool that allows you to remove code. You can highlight a section of your manuscript and click on that icon, and all formatting will be removed. You can then start over using, bold, italic, different header fonts, or anything else you want.

"Description" - Where you enter any content that you may want in your section head. You can leave this blank, if you wish.

How To Link a Category to A Menu

2010-07-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

From the "Menus" menu, pick "Main Menu" or the one that is the same name as the name of your site.

You will see the "site tree" that gives you your choices. Click on "Articles".

Under "Category" you will see "Category Blog Layout" and "Category List Layout".

If you choose "Category Blog layout", in the front end of your site, you will see a description of your category, and the full articles that you have attached to that category. If your articles are short, this option will work well for you. If your articles have more substance, you may wish to choose the next option.

In the "Category List Layout" only a clickable list of the articles that you have attached to that category will show up in the front end of your site.

After you choose your option, click the "Save" icon in the upper right corner, and you're done.

How To Create A Section

2010-07-05T20:14:00.001-07:00

Go to "Content" in the top menu, and select "Section Manager", then click on the "New" icon.

You cannot assign additional sections to another section. Several articles are assigned to a category, which is assigned to a section. There may be several categories in a section.

"Title" and "Alias" should be the same, except that "Alias" should be all small letters, with dashes instead of spaces. And no more than three words.

"Published" - click the "yes" radio button. Or, if you want to work on your page some more before you publish it, then you can click "no" and it won't show up in the front end of your site. When you finish your edits you can click the "yes" button, then your section page will be visible on the front end.

"Order" - allows you to change the order of your sections, if you have more than one section. You don't need to worry about this button for your menu items. You can change that order through the "Main Menu Manager".

"Access Level" - You are able to choose if you want everyone to see the section, registered visitors only to see the section, or special visitors.

"Image" - You can put in an image for your section if you wish.

"Image Position" - Adjusts the position of your image left, center, or right.

The icons and symbols at the top of the page are pretty much standards for editing your content. The white icon, second from the left on the bottom row, next to the "Insert Horizontal Ruler" is a tool that allows you to remove code. You can highlight a section of your manuscript and click on that icon, and all formatting will be removed. You can then start over using, bold, italic, different header fonts, or anything else you want.

"Description" - Where you enter any content that you may want in your section head. You can leave this blank, if you wish.

How To Edit an Article

2010-07-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

Log in to the back end of your site. Click on "Content" and select "Article Manager". You should see a list of articles that we have put in as samples for you to use. We will start with the "Policies" page. Click on the name of the page to open it.

The boxes named "Title" and "Alias" can stay the same, if you choose. If you have a more creative name for your policies page, go ahead and change it. But change the Alias so that it's the same thing, but the Alias should be in all small letters. The alias should also have dashes, and NO spaces, between the words.

The drop down menu that is titled "Section" allows you to make the article part of a group or collection of articles under one section, and several categories. For example:this page is put into a section called "Instructional", and a category called "How Tos". Under the section "Instructional" we could add more categories, like "videos", for example, or"tutorials". On one of our clients sites, a section is called "Articles". The categories are categories in which she wanted the articles to be divided. The individual articles were all put into the "Articles" section, but put into the category where they fit.

The icons and symbols at the top of the page are pretty much standards for editing your content. The white icon, second from the left on the bottom row, next to the "Insert Horizontal Ruler" is a tool that allows you to remove code. You can highlight a section of your manuscript and click on that icon, and all formatting will be removed. You can then start over using, bold, italic, different header fonts, or anything else you want.

All that's left is typing or pasting in your content.

Warning!

Do not cut/copy from any document, especially Microsoft documents, and paste them directly into your content area. There are codes, forms of codes, and code "bloat" that could make your web site look really strange, and you will regret it.

Instead, copy your content and put it into something like Notepad, that comes as a standard accessory on any Windows computer. Notepad strips all extra code from your content. Just remember to copy/cut again from your Notepad screen, then paste into your content area on your website.

Do not use WordPad. If you type your content directly onto your website page, then you don't have to worry about this problem.

The pages that we have put in titled "Policies", "My Great Business", "Product or Services", and "About Us" all have example content that will need to be customized to your business.

How To Create A New Article

2010-07-05T20:12:00.000-07:00

To create a new article, go to the Content Menu, and the Article Manager. Look at the icons in the upper right hand corner, and find the "New" button that is a white plus sign in a green circle - click it.

In the "Title" box, type in your title, as you normally would. In the"Alias" box, put the same words, but in all small letters, and with dashes in between the words instead of spaces. Two or three words should be sufficient. If you need to condense the words from your title, choose the most powerful words.

In the "Section" and "Category" boxes, if you have already created the sections and categories then choose the appropriate ones from these drop down menus. If you haven't, just list the articles as "uncategorized" and you can change it later.

Now your ready to add your content. The editing tools at the top of the edit box are pretty much standard. You just need to find the location of the icon/job that you want. Layout will always be slightly different between any two operating systems, but using these tools is just about like using a word processor.

Remember! Do not cut/copy and paste from any document, especially Microsoft or WordPad documents.

They have extra code that will do funny things to your web site, then you'll wonder why things don't look right. And you'll have to look at the html code to try and figure out what doesn't belong there, to remove it. ICKY!

If you want to cut/copy and paste from your original document, paste it into Notepad, or some similar program first. This will strip out any extra code that will do strange things to your site. It will also strip out the formatting, but that is actually the point, because that formatting is what is responsible for the messy code that warps your page. Copy/cut again from Notepad, and then paste it into the editing block of the page you are working on, and reformat it there.

After your content is in place, then you can tinker with the "header" style, fonts, bold, or anything else that suits your fancy. When you are finished creating/editing, click on the "Save" icon in the upper right hand corner of your page.

If you have not assigned the page to a category or section, that is fine. You can come back and make those assignments later. Just reopen your new article, make your changes, then click "Save".

How To Link An Article to a Menu

2010-07-05T20:10:00.001-07:00

There are two kinds of articles - Categorized, and Uncategorized.

Information pages and Service pages, and other things of that nature will need to be put into sections and categories. But some articles will not.

Menu items such as "About Us", "Contact", and other informational type articles can stand alone, and be left as "uncategorized".

For a stand alone article, go to the "Menus" tab in the main menu on the upper left hand corner. Click on "Main Menu". When the page downloads, you will have a page just like the ones for the "Article Manager". Click on the "New" icon - the green circle with the white plus sign.

You will now see a "tree" of options. The first option for articles is "Archive", which has the choice of "Archived Article List". This is for articles that you may want to have your visitors have access to, but you have removed from your site.

The next choice is "Article". The options here are "Article Layout" and "Article Submission Layout". "Article Layout" is what you would use to link an article to the Main Menu. Article Submission Layout leads the user to an article submission form.

The remaining choices are for linking categories and sections, and putting articles on the main/home page.
Choose "Article layout". On the right hand side, just under the icons at the top, there will be a gray box with "Parameters" written on it. If you click the "Browse" button, you will see another view of the "Articles" list. Click on the title of the article. Then type the name of the article in the "Title" box on the left side. In the "Alias" box, retype the title, but in small letters, with dashes in between the words, not spaces.

There is a drop down menu for "Display in". You want it to display in this menu, so leave this option alone.
The "Parent Item" box should be left with "Home" already high lighted, unless you want it to show up nested in the menu under another item (which will only show up after someone clicks the parent item).
"Published" should default to "Yes". If it is not click on "Yes".

There is a "note" here that says you can change the order of menu items after the changes have been saved. After you have clicked Save, you will go back to the list of the Menu Items. You can use the "up" and "down" arrows to change the order of your menu items.

There is a scroll menu for "Access Level". If you want everyone who sees your website to see that page, then choose "Public". If you want to only allow people with certain access levels to look at that article, then choose "Registered". Anyone who wants to look at that page will have to use a password. If you only want "Administrators", or those who you allow to make changes to your site, choose "Special".

Lastly, you have a scroll menu that says "On click open in". "Parent window with browser navigation" just means that it opens on the same page. In other words, the new page will open in place of the page where you clicked. You can also choose to have it open in a new window.

After you have made your choices, click the "Save" button at the top of the page.

Using Links & Images in Articles

2010-07-05T20:09:00.000-07:00

Links are easy!

Just put the words or picture into your article that you want the link put into. Select it, and hit the link tool in the toolbar right above the editing pane.

The link tool looks like a chain.

Type or paste your link into the top box - remember, you MUST have the whole link, including http://. If you do not, it won't work.

Images are a little more complex, but not too hard. If you scroll down, you'll see an Image button at the bottom of the edit pane. Now, there is a standard Image button in the top toolbar (looks like a little tree), but DON'T use that unless you already know how to FTP and all that. Use the one at the bottom, and it will upload the image for you.

So, click on that Images button, and then on Browse. Locate the image on your computer, and then hit Upload. After it uploads it will appear in the image window in the middle. Select it, and then up at the top, click Insert, and your image will appear in your content. If you need to align it left or right, you can do that by clicking on the image, and clicking the little tree icon up above. You can set the alignment, and horizontal or vertical spacing.

Remember, you need to scale your images down BEFORE you upload them!

Make sure they are not wider than 450 pixels or so, for most templates. Wider than that in some templates can make your template do weird things!

Just because an image LOOKS a certain size on your screen does not mean it IS that size. Unless you measure it in pixels, the measurements may be wrong. The height is not terribly important, but the width is - width of an image can break a layout (if that happens to your layout, you'll understand what it means to "break" a layout!).

To scale an image, open it in an image editor, like PhotoShop Elements, or The GIMP (free). Find a command for Resizing an image in one of the menus. That will usually get you a dialog box, where you can change the measurements to pixels.

Do NOT use inches or anything else, it won't work the same. Web dimensions must be done in pixels. Usually you can change just the width, and the height will automatically change also.

Save the image as a jpg if it is a photo, or as a gif if it is clipart or only has text in it. Then it will be ready to upload.

What is Joomla?

2010-07-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

Joomla is a Content Management System. Commonly called a CMS. It is sort of like a site builder, only far more powerful.

There are many professionals who work with Joomla, so you can usually find help. It is also an award winner - so lots of people really like it.

If there is something you want your site to do, chances are, Joomla can do it. It is "modular", which means that if it cannot do something now, you can usually find an extension which plugs into Joomla to make it do more. Like Legos.

It is important to understand that Joomla does not work with a "page" structure. People tend to think in a matter of Pages. Joomla does not. It thinks in Content. And Content can have many kinds. Pages are automatically created for you, depending on what kind of content it is, and how it needs to be displayed. If you create the content in the right way, Joomla pretty much takes care of everything else.

Some parts of your content are not found in the Articles. Contacts are a good example of this. Contacts are found under Components -> Contacts. That gets you to the Contact Manager, which is set up just for handling contacts. You can use that to create a single contact form, or to create a category of contacts for Sales, Support, Tech, etc.

Joomla also handles site permissions. You can restrict certain things so only a certain group of people can see them. You can assign other people to help you in the backend of the site (where all the management work is done), and you can choose what they can do too.

There is a learning curve. You can figure out how to do a lot of things just by playing around. Look all you like - you can't hurt anything if you don't hit SAVE!

Creating an Email Account For Your Joomla Website

2010-07-05T20:06:00.001-07:00

To set up an email account:

1. Login to Cpanel
2. Click Email Accounts
3. Put in the info for the new account - remember, your email Quota must fit within your hosting space. If you have a temp account, or a small hosting account, set the Quota for about 25 MB. If you have a larger one, set it for 50 or 100 MB.
4. Click Create.

Set up as many as you need. :)

To set it up in Outlook, use the following settings:

Incoming Mail POP Server: mail.domainname.com
Outgoing Mail SMTP Server: mail.domainname.com
Username: Use the ENTIRE email address, including the @ domainname.com part
PW: the password you set up

To check the email via Webmail, login to:

http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail
use the entire email address to login

Which Internet Browser to use?

2010-07-05T20:05:00.001-07:00

Internet Explorer has more errors on more websites than any other browser. It is also very slow.
Safari is the number two offender - it does not behave well with ANY of the shopping carts, content systems, or other website structures we work with - it just stops working, and won't let you make changes to a site.

We recommend Mozilla FireFox for working with a website that you update online. It has many nifty plugins that you can use to make life easier for you also.

FireFox is not only more stable, it is fast.

Our clients tell us all the time how much faster the internet is with FireFox.

FireFox is a FREE Download, go get it!

Images Not Displaying

2010-07-05T20:03:00.001-07:00

There are two primary reasons for images not showing up:

1. It did not get uploaded. Make sure the file is uploaded exactly where the image link thinks it is.

2. The file name is not correct. The filename must be exact - it IS case sensitive so capitals or small letters matter.

One other reason we've run into, which can cause images to show up in the Media Manager, but not show up on the frontend of the site:

Symbols in the filename. If you put periods, commas, or apostrophes in the filename, or other symbols, the image will not display on the front of the site.

It is best to name images and folders without spaces in the name, keep the name short, and put dashes or underscores if you need to separate words in it.
Do not put anything else other than letters or numbers.

Using Articles, Categories and Sections in Joomla

2010-07-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

So you'd set up something like this:

Section1

Category1

Article

Category2

Article

Section2

Category1

Article

We'll walk through each one.

To set up a Section, go to the Content menu in the Admin area. Select the Section Manager.

Click on the New button.
Name the Section – this is the name that will show up at the top of the section page when you go to that section.
Give it an Alias – use one or two words, and put DASHES between them. This is what Joomla will use for the page name in the page link, if you have SEF URLs activated.
The Published setting just indicates whether it is ready to go live. Most of the time, it stays on Yes, but you can set it to No if you want to hide it temporarily while you work on it.
Set the access level – it can be Public, Registered, or Special. Remember, if you set it to Registered or Special, then this Section, and ALL categories and articles that are under it will not be visible to anyone who is not logged into the frontend of the site.
Give the Section a Description – this is what your readers will see at the top of the section, to tell them what kinds of info they might find in it.
Click Save to publish it.

In order to FIND the new Section on the front end of the site, you will need to create a menu item for the Section.

Go to the Menus menu, and select the menu that you want it to show up in.
Click NEW.
Click on Articles.
Select Section Layout if you want to display the list of categories in the section.
Name your link – this is the name that will show up in the front end of the site, in the menu.

For example You may have a menu with an Article Library link, and a Member Info link, which might contain:

Article Library (Section)

Marketing

Article

Web Design

Article
Business Instruction

Article

Member Info (Category, under an unlinked section)

Article – Join

Article – Member Benefits

Article – Terms of Use

Just because it is THERE, does not mean your visitors have to know about it or use it!

Go to the Content menu, and select the Category Manager.
Hit the New button.
Give it a name.
Give it an alias – the alias is the same thing that it is in the Section setup.
Select the Section that it belongs under. If you change your mind, you CAN change this later in Joomla 1.5 and later.
Give it a description – the description will show up on the category page, when they select that category, and it can provide a nice introduction to the items in the category if the articles happen to be private. When someone selects the category – from the section page, or from a direct menu link – they will see the description that you put in for the Category, followed by a list of the articles in the category, from newest, to oldest.
Set the access level – again, this can be Public, Registered, or Special, and just like Sections, if you set it to Registered or Special, it will be invisible, and all items under it will also be invisible unless logged in.

Click Save to publish it.

You can provide frontend site access to a Category one of two ways:

Put a menu link for the parent Section into the menu, and the Category will automatically show up in the Category list on the Section page.
Create a Menu Link directly to the Category – this is valuable for small Categories that need no sub-level (just link to the Category instead of to the section).

Articles can also have the following features:

Single page article. You don't have to do anything special for this. If you use this, then the ENTIRE article will show up on a Category page, so generally you'd only want to use this for an Uncategorized article, such as an About or Policies page.
Article with Teaser, and Read More segment. This is perfect for Categorized items which you want to access from the Category page, because it allows you to have a teaser, or summary, followed by the rest of the article when they click "read more".
A multi-page article, with or without the Read More feature. This works for articles that have multiple segments, or when you want to break it up.

Creating a single page article is simple:

Go to the Content menu, and select the Article Manager.
Click the New button.
Fill in the Name, and Alias – they mean the same thing they do for Categories and Sections.
Choose the Section that the article goes in, and the Category, if you want the article to be categorized. If you do not want them Categorized, then leave the Section and Category unselected.
Paste your article into the box – remember, if you wrote your article in Word, or another Word Processor, the formatting may go funky – if it does, just select all of the article, and use the Eraser Tool right above the description box, to erase the formatting – it is a white ovalish lumpish looking tool on the lower right. Then reformat your page for easy reading.
Set the access level. Same as Category and Section access levels – any article that is set to Registered or Special will not even be visible to anyone who is not logged in, but will appear in the list as soon as they do log in.
Save your Article.

Two important things about Saving Articles:

Joomla has a system timeout. This is a security feature, so it has an important purpose. It is set in the Site Configuration, under the Server tab. 120 minutes is a reasonable time to set this to – it is set to about 5 minutes in the default install, which is such a SHORT time that you may lose work if you are not careful! If you are working on an article, and the session times out, it will kick you back to the login, and you will LOSE your work.

We compensate using three strategies:
First: We make sure the config is set to at least 120 minutes.

Second: We usually work in another program, and paste the article in, then format it fairly quickly in Joomla.

Third: If we think we've been in there a bit too long, we copy the content that we were working on before we hit Save – then if it kicks us back to the login, we can go back, rename the article, and just paste in what we were working on.
Joomla has a Check-out, Check-in feature. When you start working on an article, Menu item, Category, Section, or other alterable item, Joomla checks it out under your account. Anyone else who tries to access it gets a “locked” item icon, and they can't open it or mess with it. It cannot be deleted, EVEN BY YOU when it is locked. It will STAY locked, until the changes are Saved, or Canceled.

If you accidentally hit your browser Back button (after looking at an article and choosing not to change it), or if you open one, then the session times out because the baby threw up and you had to go clean it up, or if you just close your browser window instead of Saving or Canceling, then the item will be locked. If that happens, just go back in, and hit Save.

Joomla is designed to allow many people to work on a site at the same time, and this feature prevents one person canceling out the changes of another person.

Now... On to the additional topics for Articles:

Articles with a Summary

This is VERY easy – simply place the cursor between the teaser text and the rest of the article, and hit the Read More button below the article box. It will put in a line, which can be deleted, or you can move items from one side of it to the other.

Do NOT repeat the summary text when you do this, because when you click the Read More link (or the article title) from the front of the site, the summary shows up above the rest of the article below.

Multi-Page Articles

Just as easy! Put the cursor where you want the pagebreak, and hit the PageBreak button below the article box.

This can be confusing at first, until you begin to think in terms of Sections, Categories, and Joomla structure. Once it clicks though, it will help you to organize and manage large amounts of information in a very flexible way.

Thinking Like Joomla

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When someone first starts working with Joomla, there is usually a certain amount of frustration and confusion. This is normal, because we tend to think a certain way about websites - as website USERS, we think differently than we do as website CREATORS. We think about what we SEE on the front of the site, not what has to happen in the back to create what we see.

In order to use the website software more effectively, it helps to learn to "Think Like Joomla". That means learning to think about what CREATES the pages, as well as just what the site visitor sees.
Joomla does not think in terms of "pages". It thinks in terms of "content". Content can be information, images, videos, audio or music, software, links, or anything else you want to present to the world.

Joomla is truly a "content management system". A system designed to help you manage content efficiently, no matter what kind of content it is. So the first step in setting ANY new function up is to define what kind of content it is, and how it might best be handled. Chances are, whatever kind of content it is, Joomla has a way to manage it efficiently, that will be more efficient than trying to handle it in the way we think of as a "page".

Articles can be one of two kinds of content - categorized or uncategorized.

A Contact "page" in Joomla is a dynamically created form, handled by the Contact Manager (Qcontacts). It is a different kind of content than an article.

Forums, galleries, comparison charts, directories, forms, etc, are just other types of content, managed in the best way to handle them. If you handle them in an extension that is special for that kind of content, it will be easier long term than trying to fit them into an article layout.

The goal of setting up content is to set it up in a structure that is best suited to handling it - that way the system simplifies the work for you, and does part of it for you. It usually takes a few extra minutes to set it up initially, but then it saves you time each time you add anything to that area.

The classification of "content" rather than "pages" is also why some things in Joomla are handled through the Menus, NOT through the articles - because the Menus are actually what designate the final output of "pages", not the articles - an article is not a Page, until someone clicks on a menu link to ask for it as a page. Articles can appear in many ways - as main content in a page, as supplementary content in a page (an article can show in a module - in a box in the sidebar), as a link in a page, with multiple articles on a page, etc. But menu links CREATE pages.

At first, this can be hard to get your head around. This is a concept that confuses EVERYBODY in the beginning. But it is also the lightbulb that goes on at some point that suddenly makes it all make sense. So be patient with yourself and keep asking questions until the lightbulb goes on - It WILL go on! It just takes some time and repeated exposure to be able to fully grasp it.

Once you understand how Joomla thinks, it gets much easier. It will take some practice to completely learn this - you can ask all the questions you need to, we will answer them!

How To Add Products In VirtueMart

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A separate user account should be set up for each person who needs to get into the back of the site. This helps to ensure that no one has access to more of the site than they need to get into – a security precaution – and it makes it possible to delete users who no longer have a need to get into your site, without having to change anyone else's passwords.

We recommend that you read over these instructions completely before you start. There are some helpful tips that will save you some grief if you go over it all first.

To add new products, login to the site backend, at http://www.sitename.com/administrator.

Under the Components Menu, select “VirtueMart”.

This will take you to the Cart Component of the site.

On the left, there are several tabs. Click on the Products Tab. It will expand to show you a series of options.

Click on the List Products link.

A new set of tools will appear along the top of the site.

Click the New button at the top of the page.

This takes you to a page where you can add a new product listing. The new product panel has several tabs across the top.

Start with the first tab.

Enter the Stock Number under SKU.

Put the Product Name in the Name field.

Ignore the URL field, it is not necessary for normal product setup.

Select the Category from the list.

On the right, put the price into the Product Price field.

Ignore the other fields in that part, and go down to the bottom to the Product Description field.

You can insert images into the Description field, along with a description. The format to enter your products in, and the image sizes that you should use, are in the Details page at the end of this document.

To insert an image, make sure it is scaled to the right size before you put it in. Place the cursor where you want the image to go, and use the Image link below the description box to insert it.

Ignore the PageBreak and ReadMore buttons, they do not apply to product listings.

We will not cover the Display Options tab at this time - instructions will follow on how to add a secondary product to a product page (to sell companion items).

Click the Product Status tab.

Put the number of items available in the In Stock field. If your items are one-of-a-kind, put 1 in the box.

Ignore the other fields in this tab.

Click the Product Dimensions and Weight tab.

The fields here are for the purpose of SHIPPING calculations ONLY. They do NOT show up on product pages. Enter them if you need the cart to calculate shipping for the item based on dimensions and weight.

Click the Product Images tab. This tab is useful to give a larger view of the product, and to offer a thumbnail that will be available to the visitor in Category view.

Ignore the Related Products tab unless you wish to cross link products.

Click the Save button at the top of the page.

TIPS:

When you are working, the system WILL time out if you are in there very long. So if you think you may have been in there working on a single listing longer than 2 hours or so, Save, and then open the page to edit it again and finish up. If you don't do that, you can lose your work.
If you open an item other than a product listing (such as a category or other item) make SURE you Save or Cancel to leave that page! Do NOT use your browser's Back button – this can cause a problem and lock the document. It is a safety feature to prevent two people from working in an item at the same time.