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Guest post by JB (Jeffery Alexander Brathwaite) of 2 The Next Level

Happy New Year Everyone,

I started out 2010 with something I have been wanting to do for some years now. I attended my first WordCamp. What made this WordCamp so much better is that it was in my own town of Atlanta, GA. I wanted to get there early and get a chance to soak in all that this 1 1/2 day conference had to offer. What made this such a challenge is that on this day our host city was on the verge of a snow storm with temperatures in the 20’s. There was even talk of the event being canceled or at least rescheduled. I took a chance and pressed on anyway and got to my destination without any mishaps. To my enjoyment and surprise there were many Wordpress followers who braved the cold and ice as well.

Day 1

The first Wordcamp Atlanta was held at the  Savannah College of Art and Design or SCAD for short. The evening was kicked off with a brief welcome to Atlanta from the two organizers of the event Brandon Sheats and Tessa Horehled. We then broke up into the three session provided for us that evening. I attended a session presented by Amani Channel of Visual Eye Media. Amani talked about “The Secrets of Mobile Vlogging”. You may know Amani by his blog My Urban Report. Amani shared some great stuff on using video for your blog. The one thing I learned was that lighting and sound were just as important as shooting the video. Amani also recommend the Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera over the Flip MinoHD because of its external microphone jack. Take a look at the video and the blog post he did for WordCamp Atlanta.

My next session was with Topher Kohan of CNN.com. Topher’s session was on SEO and Wordpress. Topher really broke down some of the great SEO solutions you can get with Wordpress plugins. I learned how you can optimize your Wordpress template by just simply adding breadcrumbs to boost your search engine love. Topher suggested many Wordpress plugins for SEO but listed All in one SEO pack, WP Super Cache and Breadcrumbs as his top 3. I had already been using the All in one SEO pack but added both WP Super Cache and Breadcrumbs right after his session.

I then ended my evening with Chad Parizman’s session. Chad is currently the Director of Community Management for Scripps Networks’ shelter sites. These sites include my wife’s favorite cable channel  HGTV. Chad’s topic was “5 Situations Where WordPres Can Save the Day.  He gave some great real life scenarios on how using Wordpress could literally save yourself a whole lot of headache. His best example by far was his “Oh Sh-t Moment, where he told us the story when his team has to construct multiple Wordpress sites in order to be ready for a 12 am deadline where they didn’t know if one of their cable show channels contracts would be renewed. This meant that many of their viewers who were Cablevision customers lost two of their favorite channels, HGTV and Food Network. Wordpress saved the day by allowing them to construct both www.ilovehgtv.com and www.ilovefoodnetwork.com in a matter of hours before both channels went black on their Cablevision provider.

Day 2

Day two was even better so I hope you come back tomorrow to find out how excited I was with the news of Wordpress 3.0 future release for 2010.

Jeffrey Alexander Brathwaite, aka “JB”

Internet Strategist, Speaker and Trainer
404-287-0848 Office
Jeff[at]2thenextlevel[dot]com
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/jbrath

You can upgrade easily from your Dashboard by going to Tools > Upgrade, or you can download from WordPress.org. And of course, it wouldn’t be a major release without a short video summarizing some of the cool things about the new version:

When it comes to WordPress I must admit that I normally am a few releases behind, especially on new verision major jumps. Why? Well some things I just don’t need to be first on. I like beta for testing and then new releases are still for more testing in my opinion.

I simply do not want to get the bugs out with the rest of the users so I normally wait for the .x1 or .x2 upgrade. But for those of you willing to do the debugging (LOL) here you go.

The coolest new stuff from a user point of view is:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

Last week I put up a 5 minute ecommerce store with WordPress video and I was kind of surprised at how many people did NOT know that you had many options for doing ecommerce with WordPress. So I wanted to take a little more time out and research some more tools for you.

The Install Instructions

The easiest way to achieve this is by downloading and installing the WP e-Commerce plugin.

e-Commerce Install

Assuming you have a working version of WordPress installed you must do the following:

1. Download the e-Commerce plugin
2. Copy the folder to your local plugins directory
3. Activate the plugin and configure it to your liking

e-Commerce setup

Once the plugin is installed the most important things to do are:

1. Set your default shipping country and associated shipping settings
2. Setup and configure the presentation settings
3. Setup your receipt notification email address
4. Setup your payment gateway
5. Add products
6. Upgrade to gold if you want to add multiple images to products

PayPal Setup

These are the instructions for setting up PayPal for your WP e-Commerce store.

1. Browse to PayPal and sign up using your email address
2. Under Profile > Shipping Settings check the allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings listed above

Google Checkout Setup

These are the instructions for setting up Google Checkout for your WP e-Commerce store

1. Browse to Google Checkout and click sign up now
2. Select whether or not your business has a Google Account for services like AdWords or Gmail?
3. Create your account using your Gmail email address

At your WP e-Commerce store’s Admin

Now that you have a Google Checkout account setup enter your Google Checkout Merchant ID and Key into the payment gateway settings page in the WP e-commerce admin panel

1. Under e-Commerce > Gateway Options choose Google Checkout as your payment gateway.
2. In "Google Checkout Merchant ID" enter your Merchant ID.
3. In "Google Checkout Merchant Key" enter your Merchant Key.
4. Choose your Server Type (Sandbox vs Production), currency, and button style
5. Click the button that says "Submit"

Ecommerce Themes/Templates

Crafty Cart – Ecommerce theme that is free, but it requires a plug in to function. A Retro Shop Theme designed for the WP e-Commerce Plugin

Shopper Press – Free ecommerce themes

Ecommerce Themes – these are not free, but have a very polished look and feel.

Ecommerce Plugins from Web Design Booth.com

WP e-Commerce

It is the most powerful free Wordpress Ecommerce plugin. It integrates with a lot of payment options and designers may easily tweak the look and feel of the website by utilizing Wordpress PHP template tags, shortcodes, and widgets. Besides these, WP e-Commerce has a complete documentation and beginners are easy to get started with it.

eShop

eShop is an accessible shopping cart plugin for WordPress, packed with various features. It can handles downloadable products and supports various payment options such as Paypal, Payson, eProcessingNetwork, Webtopay and Cash/Cheque.

YAK for WordPress

It is an open source Wordpress plugin for Ecommerce. It supports posts and pages as products and uses categories to handle different type of products. YAK supports different payment options too. Basic documentation is free while the advance useages documentation costs $20.

Shopp

Shopp is a premium Wordpress plugin for Ecommerce solution. You will have complete control over the shopping experience, which mean you can customize the design with stylesheets and Wordpress PHP tags. The documentation is pretty complete, and you can get more supports from the community via the support forums.

Wordpress Simple Paypal Shopping Cart Plugin

This simple plugin lets users add an “Add to cart” button anywhere on the blog. Customers can view their items from the shopping cart page.

Tutorials And Resources

1. Create an eCommerce Website with WordPress in under 5 minutes – A video tutorial from Wordpress.tv that teach you about how to create an Ecommerce website with Wordpress and the WP e-Commerce plugin.

2. Getting set up with the WP e-Commerce plugin: settings and configuration – Another video tutorial which walks you through the process of getting set up with the WP e-Commerce plugin.

3. How to Build an Online Store With WordPress – A simple tutorial on how to use Ecommerce Themes from iThemes to built your own online store.

4. How To Open An Online Store With WordPress In Less Than 30 Minutes – Shows you how to built and create an online store with Wordpress in less than 30 minutes. It is very suitable for beginners.

5. WP e-Commerce SEO Tutorial – This SEO tutorial is designed to show you how to optimize WP e-Commerce for maximum traffic from the search engines.

6. WP e-Commerce Review For Wordpress – This article reviews the pros and cons of WP e-Commerce. A must read article for WP e-Commerce users!

This one really got me buzzing. I am a "Crackberry" addict and I have not been able to shake the addiction NOR am I trying. I guess the guys at WordPress knows that and made this just for me

WordPress for BlackBerry Public Beta is here and I cannot wait to get this on my Curve. Keep in mind that this version is right now in Beta post so it will have bugs and you need to be prepared for that if you use it.  This  is an Open Source project. Source available at http://blackberry.svn.wordpress.org/ 

Check out the video below to see it in action or click HERE to download it.

To install the beta application: Point your BlackBerry browser to http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install and follow the instructions.

Yeah yeah… I’m displaying my inner geek (which by the way, is well protected in the body of an offensive lineman).  People have asked me many times which platform to use and I always suggest Wordpress over the others, simply because they are push blogging to new levels constantly.

Even though it still in public beta mode right now and the smart minds (geeks) are still in development, I have to say this news is WAY COOL!

I do this ALL the time to simply make my widget get that uniform look, so check it out, you might like it…

PLEASE Rate My Video with 5-Stars DSR!!!

Last week I did a story on Wordpress blogging and how easy it is to get started. I told you to ‘>STOP wasting your $$$ on developers (at least till you know what you are doing). I love Wordpress platform because of all the cool things you can do with it and too it.

Often people ask about the differences between a FREE Wordpress.com and a HOSTED WordPress.org site. My theory is this, ask yourself these 3 easy questions…

1) Do really ‘need’ to SELL stuff on my blog?

2) Do I really ‘need’ to monetize my blog with advertising?

3) Have I ever blogged before?

If you answered NO to #3 then I would suggest you go to WordPress.com first and set up a blog. The reason is, for you to do #1 or #2 (sell or monetize) you first MUST have successfully done #3. Nope I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but contrary to popular thought, blogging  is NOT a build it and watch the $$$ roll in kinda thing!

You MUST have an audience that is interested. And that audience wants good content. So start with the content creation FIRST. Learn that part of blogging and THEN move over to the other phases. With Wordpress.com you can STILL write stories and demo your products, you can STILL tell readers about your web store. And you can still build your rabid viewership while you learn the ropes for FREE. Then when you got your balance right, you can remove the “training wheels” and graduate to a hosted Wordpress.org blog.

YES, everything you do on the .com Wordpress can easily be moved when you want to create a .org blog. This is EXACTLY what I did with ColderICE.com. This blog started out as a FREE Wordpress.com blog! Then once I got my feet wet, learned how to use Wordpress and Plug-ins and stuff, we moved it to its own server.

So how much did that cost to get started and learn WordPress? NOTHING, it was FREE and EASY…So get started TODAY and put up your blog on one of the best platforms out there. Hey, when you do, come back here and add your link in the comments so I can visit YOUR NEW Blog!!!

Have fun and watch the video…

I just got a solicitation call, which has sparked this post. Truly I was trying NOT to laugh during the pitch, but I failed miserably, LMAO

Seems like the latest bunch on of leaches crawling through the pockets of unknowing online retailers, have been the so called “WordPress  Site Developers.” These charlatans are selling canned WordPress blog packages for as much at $1800.00!!!

OMG, WTF? Well I guess there is a sucker born every minute, but WE are NOT suckers! We read the ColderICE.com blog And as such, we simply are NOT fair game for the snake oil sales of the so-called WordPress “experts”

Generally speaking, the installation of a Blog using Wordpress is not an arduous task by any stretch of the imagination. It is designed to be EASY, to allow anyone to set up a blog regardless of technical expertise. That is why WordPress was created and made open source, to keep the leaches out of your back pocket.

But if the task seems too much for you, or you are just not that comfortable with technology, you can actually get it done for you for as little as $35.00. Or you can go buck wild and get a premium customized install for just $135. Doing research for this article, I found dozens of reasonably priced installs to counter the scumbag prices. Come on,  $500 – $1800 for what was meant to be free and easy?!? OMG, if I just had no conscious and could sleep at night, I too could jump into that business and strike it rich I guess?!?

What’s that? That’s the money you could be saving without that WordPress Installer sucking money out of your business!!!

Do not get me wrong, I am NOT saying that all paid professional  that create blogs for businesses using WordPress are fakers, BUT make sure you get what you pay for. Hundreds of dollars for 10 minutes worth of work and a paint on-template? Pleeeze.

On Monday’s Social Networking training, with the guys at Brainstoming Bonanzle, I mentioned how EASY it is to do a WordPress install, and customization. Plus I also said that with WordPress version 2.7 things such as SEO, Plug-Ins and administration just went from 18 year old, do it yourself now down to 10 year old understanding.

After that call, I got some email about “how to do it” and I was going to make a demo video on it. Then I thought better of it. So instead of ME doing the video, I figured I would just show you how MANY videos there really are out there on YouTube (over 2,400) showing you HOW TO DO IT YOURSELF in less than 10 minutes via C-Panel (look for that feature when choosing your hosting platform…I use BlueHost  for ColderICE.com) So here are just a few…

When it came to moving my blog from Wordpress.com to my own install of Wordpress.org on my server. I looked for some help from others cause I though it would be complicated…NOT!!!

If a big ol dummy like me can do it I know you can! But just to help you along and get you started I made a cool video of my latest install. You guys have submitted so many names already for the new eBay Friends on ColderICE.com that I need to make an entirely new space just to handle it! So if you want to be included on the My eBay Friends section just shoot me an email with your eBay user name and I will have you added for FREE and I will even create the little widget for you!

But back to Wordpress installation….I chose the BlueHost provider cause it makes the process simple and easy for a novice like me. But this will work with other hosts as well. You do NOT have to use BlueHost.

So pick a hosting service with C-Panel and once you have that part competed, you are ready to follow this video!

Now I am NOT the biggest fan of anything Microsoft has done lately. As a matter of fact I have been ignoring a lot of the things in the Windows Live Community, maybe to my own detriment.

But I got wind of a absolutely fabulous addition to my blogging tool set recently that I just have to share with you. If you use WordPress or even Blogger for your platform you know that they can be sorta "clunky" to update. The interface is usable, but the functionality is less than friendly.

FireFox plugins were the "old school" choice for me. I used to use the Live Writerfox plug in which works great. But since Google Chome arrive on the scene, I have really not been using Firefox anymore, belive it or not?!?

So that left me kind of lost in space. But now I have the solution! The Window Live Writer desktop download from Microsoft. I know, I know…download? desktop? Microsoft? YEP, you heard me, this version rocks and it allows me to be completely independant of the "browser wars" going on right now. That is why I am liking it. Check out this cool video, from Remarkablogger,  that introduces how to use it and all the great features. It has really made my blogging life easier….for now.