Just for book customers
Mar 25th, 2006 | By Sites that Soar / Ais | Category: Design secrets, Latest news, Selling - tips and toolsTo avoid massive bandwidth use by people downloading my free graphics, I’m changing how my book customers access the freebies. (To find out why I’m doing this, scroll down to the foot of this page.)
Here’s the new freebies URL:
Here’s how to find the password: (only book owners can do this)
1. Open your PDF of Sites that Soar!
2. Scroll down to the fourth chapter, Branding: Your header graphic.
In the first (WordPress 2.3.x) versions of the book, that will be around page 14.
In the second edition (WordPress 2.5.x), it’s on page 21.
3. The password is the first three words in that chapter (after the chapter title). In other words, the first three words in the first sentence on that page. Use all three of them, in lower case, as one word.
For example, if the first three words were: The password is
You’d enter this as the password: thepasswordis
(IMPORTANT: This URL and password will change regularly, to keep it truly a resource for those who’ve paid for the book. Always check this page if you’re a book customer and can’t access the freebies pages.)
Be sure to sign up for my free newsletter–there’s a form at the lower right, in the sidebar–to find out when new freebies and updates are added to the Sites that Soar! website, and the special “Resources for book owners” section.
FREE GRAPHICS
I’ve created original graphics for you to use on your Mimbo or Branford Magazine homepage. They’re a fine way to get good-looking content online right away. (You can replace them with your own, unique images later.)
Book owners have access to over 40 free graphics for their websites. For a ’sneak preview’ featuring 10 free graphics, use the following link. (The page URL will change regularly to avoid hot-linking.)
TELL OTHERS, EARN MONEY!
Tell your friends (or total strangers ) about the Sites that Soar! e-book and earn 50% for every copy they buy. (That’s 50% of the cover price.)
Get your free affiliate links (so I know who referred which customers) at either E-Junkie or Clickbank.
E-Junkie:
https://www.e-junkie.com/affiliates/?cl=13015&ev=b806d355d3
To get your affiliate link, click on “Get Affiliate Code.” Then, in “Select Merchant,” choose “Aisling Dart and Eibhlin MacIntosh.” In “Select Product,” choose “Sites that Soar!” and the edition that you’d like to sell. The next window will feature several linking options, including HTML.
If you’d like to use a graphic link to boost your sales, roll your cursor over the Affiliates link in this site’s navigation bar, and select “Affiliate graphics.”
Tip: If you’re already a member of E-Junkie, the affiliate program link is also at the foot of this page:
http://www.e-junkie.com/shop/product/48303.php
Clickbank:
While I’m updating the files and setting up the affiliate programs, the Clickbank links won’t work. However, over 95% of Sites that Soar! affiliates are using E-Junkie, linked above.
(As of July 10th, I’ve almost completed my Clickbank links.)
Until then, the following Clickbank info is crossed out. I’ll un-cross it as soon as it’s back online.
Or, instead of E-Junkie, you can use your Clickbank account to earn 50% per sale.
The hoplink for Sites that Soar! is <http://AFFILIATE.eibhlinm.hop.clickbank.net/> (Of course, you’ll replace the AFFILIATE part of that link with your own Clickbank username.)
————————————————————-
Why I changed the freebies URL and password
I’ll confess: I’m a novice at writing ebooks for my own use. (Sure, I’ve written them professionally for others, but they handled the marketing and bonuses.)
When it comes to how Internet marketing pros handle review copy information… I know just enough to be dangerous.
So, when I sent a review copy of the book to the staff of a major website, I included the URL and password to this page, so they could see the bonuses that are just for book customers… and they published the password, online.
(That was my mistake. They’re busy, and I didn’t make it clear that this page was just for book customers.)
The URL went out in their RSS feed to thousands of people. Perhaps tens of thousands, or more. I’m thrilled with this publicity… but I had to add an extra step to keep the freebies secure.
That’s why I’ve moved the other pages that are freebies for my book customers. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I’m adding more customers-only freebies to make up for it.
Hi there
Is the link actually on this page? I can’t seem to find it.
Thanks much
Lisa
Thanks for catching that! It’s fixed now. I’d made a mistake when I tried to tweak the page colors.
I learned that if I try to make a link a different color than the standard text, I need to be certain that — in the process of changing the text color — I don’t overwrite the code for the link.
I’m experimenting with the theme at http://www.asktheitmanager.com – I love it!
How did you implement the sitemap page?
Thanks.
To implement the sitemap page, after installing the Sitemap Generator:
1. go to Write Page in your WP control panel.
2. In the HTML (code) tab for the page, enter this code between brackets (< and > ). (I’m concerned that, if I post the code here, I’ll end up with my full sitemap in this comment.)
!– ddsitemapgen –
3. Save the page.
4. Your sitemap will appear automatically. (You can configure it in the Options/Settings tab of your WP control panel.)
For more info, go to the plugin homepage. Scroll down the page (it’s long) to get to the installation instructions. You can go to that homepage from your Plugins tab in WP. Just click on the name of the plugin.
Or, go to the page directly, at this URL:
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/
P.S. David, I LOVE your website… you’re doing a wonderful job with a great concept!
Hi,
how did you set your header nav bar sort order?
Thanks.
I stayed with the default, which is alphabetical. I added my own “Buy the book” link as HTML in the header.php file, in your wp-content/themes/branfordmagazine/ folder.
The code is almost at the very bottom of that file. You’re looking for this, in brackets.
ul id=”nav” class=”clearfloat”
Two lines below that, you’ll see the really important code:
?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=’); ?
If you want to add particular links in HTML, add them after that, each one between its own li and /li.
(I had to remove all of the brackets in that code, because it was affecting this comment. But, the li and /li must be in brackets, <>.)
Here’s some info at WordPress, if you’d like to use a different order for your Pages. (Remember, WP likes to use numbers for everything. So, if you’re customizing the order, use the Page number.)
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_pages
Scroll down to “Hiding or Changing the List Heading” They provide quite a few options.
I hope this helps!
Thanks for your quick response!
It’s not the theme. All of my websites — on more than one kind of server — use Branford Magazine’s Comments feature ’straight out of the box’ and they seem to show up fine.
I’ll go through the possible solutions to your problem, in order of likelihood. You’ve probably checked some or most of these, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check, just in case. More than once, I’ve inadvertently clicked the wrong option or — since I don’t really know PHP — deleted a vital line of code.
I’d start with several areas in your admin areas.
OPTIONS > DISCUSSION
Start with your Options tab (or Settings, in WP 2.5) and click on the Discussion tab. See what your settings are for “Before a comment appears.” I keep that as light as possible, given the audience and access for that particular website.
(If you’re likely to get spam, flames, and/or nonsense comments, keep it high. If — like this site — the audience is probably going to be a specialized, no-nonsense group, you can use lighter controls and even adjust down after you see the trends in comments.)
Further down that page, check your Comment Moderation and Comment Blacklist choices. I’ve kept the default two-link ‘hold’ and I’ve put a list of unattractive words in the Blacklist.
(The latter can affect your standings at some search engines. ‘Worksafe’ language can earn you a higher ranking if a competitive site includes language — even in comments — that Great-aunt Hazel probably doesn’t want to hear.)
OPTIONS > GENERAL SETTINGS (DEFAULT SCREEN IN OPTIONS)
White you’re in the Options area (or Settings, in 2.5), see what you’ve set the Membership for. IF you’ve said that people must be logged in and registered to comment, be sure that you’ve also said that anyone can register. Then, be sure that theirs registration went through okay. If they’re not listed among the Users, they probably didn’t register (or didn’t register correctly… hit the wrong button or something) and their comments won’t show up.
If the person was required to register, did register, and did comment, check the Comments tab and see if their comment is waiting for moderation, or was caught by Akismet for some reason.
INSTALL GLITCH?
If none of those help, I’d reinstall (overwrite) the ’single.php’ file in your branfordmagazine folder. The line that must be there to show comments is this:
‘ < ?php comments_template(); ?>‘
(The code line will be minus the ticks at the start and conclusion… I added those to prevent the code from trying to run in this comment.)
THEME ISSUES
Worst case, revert to the Classic theme in the Presentation tab for WP 2.3.3 (or Design for 2.5). I’m only talking about clicking on the Classic theme to check the site in that theme… no other changes. See if comments start working.
IF CLASSIC DOESN’T WORK EITHER…
If comments don’t show up in Classic, check with your hosting service. The glitch is either there, or with your core WP files… the ones at the top level. If the hosting service says that WP should work fine, I’d delete the wp-includes and wp-admin folders and reinstall them, followed by the files in the branfordmagazine folder, starting with the top level and working down to the folders.
I’d then do a file-by-file overwrite (saving backups, of course) of the wp-content folder. That should not be necessary, but… well, anything’s possible. See if you can isolate which file has the errant code in it.
IF COMMENTS ARE WORKING IN THE CLASSIC THEME…
If comments ARE working in the Classic theme, reinstall Branford Magazine — overwriting everything except the files you’ve customized — and see if that helps. Then, overwrite each of the files you’ve customized, in case you accidentally deleted an important line in the original setup.
Again, the game is to isolate where the problem is, so you don’t have to rebuild the whole site from scratch.
Personally… I’ve done some amazingly stupid things during my trial-and-error phase (and managed to do something beyond inane this past week). It’s largely a matter of methodically going through the files until I find out where the problem is.
Sometimes, if I can spot the problem area but I’m not sure how to fix it, I copy part of the relevant text or code, and search at the WordPress Support forum boards. That bailed me out of last week’s I-can’t-believe-I-did-that problem. (I had an old Magpie folder in my root directory, called /feed/, and — due to an index.php tweak I was trying — WP was trying to find the RSS feed in the old /feed/ folder.)
Worst case, you may be one of the extremely rare people who are having Comments problems with WP in general. In that case, it probably is a server issue. http://wordpress.org/support/topic/166241
I hope that you find a solution near the top of this laundry list of fixes!
– Aisling
I’m sorry that none of these worked, but it gave me a chance to list the many possibilities, in case anyone else runs into a similar problem.
I hadn’t thought about the plugin issue. I’m dealing with that on one server, where WP 2.5 broke my favorite contact plugin, and the plugin that does work within 2.5… it breaks WP 2.5’s media control panel. Frustrating!
(I have to deactivate the contact plugin every time I want to add images to a post, and then reactivate the contact plugin when the new post is published. This is one reason why I suggest not upgrading to 2.5 yet. Everything was fine in WP 2.3.3.)
Do share what you learn when the problem resolves. Even if it’s not exactly a WP issue, it may help someone else.
Thanks!
Hi Ais,
I’m not able to get comments showing up on pages, although I can for individual posts. I’ve checked the Allow Comments option on the discussion field for the page.
Any ideas? Is it a restriction of the theme?
Thanks.
Hi Aisling,
I tried all these with no success, and I also thought it might be a rogue plugin so I disabled all the extra ones I had installed – no joy! (I’m actually working with a Semiologic site, so it’s not quite a vanilla WP install, which I might try when I put it into production as I’m still experimenting as you’ve probably seen).
I’ll have to live with this for the moment. If I find the answer I’ll let you know.
Hi we have talked in email, thanks. Best keep things here.
I am adding your sitemap suggestion. I already have a Google Sitemap installed i.e. a .xml file. Is there any advantage having a “normal” site map as well?
Andy
Andy, thanks for asking about sitemaps. David’s right about the “normal” sitemap, which is the first thing that I install when I’m adding Pages to my websites.
I have a very short attention span. If I don’t find the page that I’m looking for within two clicks, or if the Search form returns too many choices, I look for a sitemap.
For this website, I’m using the one from DagonDesign.com
http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/sitemap-generator-plugin-for-wordpress/
That plugin is great, because it updates automatically. Since my largest site has over 300 articles and images that receive heavy traffic, I need a sitemap that’s easy to use… and automatically updates.
While an XML sitemap can be important for some search engines, my primary focus is my site visitors, and the “normal” sitemap is usually what they’re looking for.
David, thanks for your generosity! You’re providing some great resources for people who are building websites.
Thanks also for recommending that plugin. The best way to provide a useful website is to know where your people are coming from and what they’re looking for. Analytics are key to this process.
Thanks again!
Hi all,
feel free to download any graphics you want from my site http://www.asktheitmanager.com , also upcoming sites will be http://www.adwordsanswers.com and http://www.davidnrothwell.com
They’re all from clipart and just sized and shaped using the excellent and easy to use faststone screen capture program (google for it, used to be free, now a small charge – check it out). http://www.faststone.org/
On the sitemap question above, a “normal” sitemap is always a good idea to help humans navigate around, plus it has other uses – it’s updated when you make any changes and is a source of keywords, so it’s good for search engines as well.
You should also implement the google analytics (free) plugin for in-depth and revealing stats about your website visitors.- get it from Denis’s site at http://www.semiologic.com/software/marketing/google-analytics/
There is one Breadcrumb plugin that I’ve heard about, but I haven’t tried it:
http://mtekk.weblogs.us/code/breadcrumb-navxt/
It’s current through WP 2.5. I hope that helps!
You’re most welcome!
I’m also interested in a Breadcrumb Trail which helps with both navigation and SEO.
Any plugins you know about?
Follow up to page comments…
I checked with the theme author and pages are not coded to receive comments (he doesn’t see the need…) so my expectation seems wrong. However, if this is a page (not a post) then you have it working…
He’s given me a workaround which I’ll be trying soon and let you know.
About WP 2.5.1, see my article, http://sitesthatsoar.com/wordpress/wordpress-251/
Wordpress 2.5.1 is out.
Has anyone used it?
Any problems or should we go ahead and upgrade?
Hi Karen, and thanks for the compliments.. and the question!
If you’re talking about the nav bar at the top (where it says “Home” and then “About”), you can change the “About” in WordPress, in Manage > Pages. “About” is a page. Any other pages you want to add will show up in that row — alphabetically is the default — after the “Home” section.
There are ways to get fancier with this, but that’s the basic concept.
I hope that helps!
Hi Aisling, tatermuffin pointed me this direction. I’ve been having fun as this gave me the avenue I was looking for to design what I wanted with my website.
However, for the life of me, I can NOT figure out how to change the nav bar. The words in the “about” box, add in the contact form or whatever else I might want to stick there eventually. I’ve gone through the e-book several times looking. I see the code you posted above, I just am clueless on what to do.
The page I”m working on is here: http://prints.best.vwh.net/wordpress
Thanks for the help!
Health and Happiness,
Karen
HA! That was it.Thank you!
Hi Gary,
I wish that I could tell you a simple way to reduce the columns from three to two, but that’s beyond my expertise right now. My best suggestion is to contact Michael Oeser (the creator of Branford Magazine) and see if he can help. http://www.der-prinz.com/
In haste,
Ais
Hi Aisling,
Great book, very useful, I have a reasonable familiarity with Wordpress, but your guide is helping me to get more reliable results when messing with themes (I don’t think I have ever used one right out of the box).
I spent all day yesterday modifying the Branford theme and making it all the right colors, without really thinking what the word “magazine” meant – doh!
I need to try to reduce the three column home page to two, i.e. one main column and a right sidebar.
Is there an easy way to do this?
I’m thinking that I may be able to simply ignore the home page and start with a specified home page, but I’m less than 24hrs from go live with my site and I don’t really have time to experiment.
Any help would really be appreciated.
Thanks
Gary
The new edition of the book is going to be over 70 pages, and I have about 25 pages left to go. (I’m currently working on the section showing the changes in uploading images and inserting them in posts and Custom Fields. Lots of screenshots make this the slowest part of the update.)
I’m still aiming to finish the book this week… hopefully, tomorrow. (That said, as soon as I say something like that, something surprises me and takes longer! *chuckle*)
As soon as I complete this, I’ll talk about the polls. It’s pretty easy to use, and documented by the plugin creator: http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming.php You’ll need both the WP-poll plugin and the widget that goes with it.
Hi Ais,
how’s the new book version coming along?
Also any update on how to implement the poll in more detail?
Thanks!
Thanks for the book. I loved the site but didn’t think I could manage to code until I ordered your book. It was worth every penny! Now for a question: When I went to http://sitesthatsoar.com/wordpress/just-for-book-customers I told Firefox to save my password, the old one. Now I can’t get back to the screen where I can enter the real one. Does anyone know how to do that? Many thanks!
Try clearing your cache. If that doesn’t work, overwrite the password in the first form, and continue as if it’s your first visit.