Being Prepared for Home Office Disasters
Most Small Office / Home Offices (SOHO) environments are simply not prepared to handle a disaster. Many cannot survive even a small equipment failure. What is scary is knowing that these businesses have a strong going-concern and are usually the sole-breadwinners of their family unit or their neighbourhood community.
It is already common knowledge from the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics that:
- Over 40% of all companies that experience a disaster never reopen
- Over 25% of the remaining companies close within two years.
Why is it that these businesses do not have a disaster recovery plan, let alone a business continuity plan?
Google Analytics Code into WordPress Blogs
Google Analytics provides a superb set of information that tracks traffic coming and leaving your webpages. You can also see how long they stay, where they come from and study a whole bunch of other statistics. If you are already entrenched as an Internet Marketer, you will already know the value of this transparency. Otherwise, maybe I’ll write more about Analytics in a different post.
To get Analytics working, you have to get the code into a specific point in your webpage. Same for WordPress, except here, you put the code into your theme’s footer.php.
WPquickstart.com
A nifty little website by Sarah Lewis, a veteran blogger and blog design consultant.
Through a series of videos, she will guide you through the process of installing WordPress, configuring it and getting you started in your blogging environment. A very good step-by-step suite, peppered with lots of tips and ideas that you might want to implement for yourself. You might also notice that the whole webiste has been designed using WordPress too..
The videos show a slightly older version of WordPress but between the cosmetic re-arrangements in the latest version, all basic functionalities are there.
In a nutshell, start your WordPress journey here: www.WPquickstart.com
WordPress, why use this?
Probably a no-brainer review but these are my observations below:
Benefit #1: Free
Yes, free is usually a good reason. Not the best reason, but a rather compelling one. However, when you consider that this is one of THE Standard Blogging Engines out there, you probably ask what’s the catch? No, I’ve not found the catch yet, but the other benefits following add to the overall experience.
Benefit #2: WordPress Support
There is a whole team of people at WordPress constantly upgrading the engine and keeping the bugs out. Sure, they may not support you directly since you are not on their paid service, but the simplicity of this is that WordPress is a quality product maintained at a quality standard. So where does one go for the actual day-to-day support? Read on.
Benefit #3: WordPress Community
Do a Google search on any problem you encounter on WordPress and you would find a whole long list of websites offering you help; free or otherwise. You will find tons of articles from how to install WordPress, to changing themes, adding plug-ins, to more advanced topics like writing code. You are never alone.
Benefit #4: Commercial Blogs
One major advantage of having your own domain for blogging versus WordPress.com is that you now have the option of monetizing your blogs. Why not? If you have a strong readership following your content, it is too easy to add plug-ins or widgets from Amazon and Google Adsense to earn a little residual income. Or if like me, you intend to make your blog a form of an information portal or marketplace, you have the technical ability to do so with this engine.
Benefit #5: Availability by Domain Hosts
Most domain hosting companies will sell you hosting packages that include the WordPress-friendly environment. This means that you get the SQL backend (the database backend that WordPress uses to store your blogs), the WordPress installation programs and Fantasico (the cpanel tool that eases the installation of all server-end programs). You do not even have to read an installation manual - it’s just a 3 (yes, three!) step process via Fantasico. Try doing that with your VCR.
Don’t hesitate further. Install WordPress today.
