Episode 6 of The Social Media Monster podcast is a conversation with my guest Tom Sliker on website platforms, the differences between WordPress and Drupal, and why a site builder might choose one over the other. Tom has developed on numerous platforms, has worked in all levels of IT operations, and has been my friend for about 15 years.
Following are my slides for the session I did at BarCampCHS this year on WordPress. And let me take this opportunity to thank all the great folks who organized BarCampCHS and the fine folks who attended my presentation.
This presentation covered how to do an installation of the WordPress software to your own server, set the basic settings, and how to add security against spammers and hacking. The session was aimed at people who have basic computer knowledge, a desire to have their own WordPress installations, but who are not PHP or WebDesign professionals.
Below you will find the presentation of the session on Podcasting that I gave on November 13, 2010 at BarCampCHS. Thanks to all who attended!
This presentations covers what it takes to create a basic podcast, encode it correctly, publish it to the web, and get it listed in the iTunes directory. We talked about recording equipment, editing software for the Mac and Windows, the workflow to produce a podcast, and what you need to make your podcast compatible with the widest variety of playback devices.
The audience for this session is those who don’t have any real recording or broadcasting background but are looking for ways to spread the word about their organization or cause. No special skills are required and I recommend the use of as many free and/or open source tools as possible to keep costs to a minimum.
EBooks are the coming wave of publishing, if in fact that wave isn’t already upon us, so I was eager to get hold of a really promising tutorial book I had heard about, “EPub Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders” by Elizabeth Castro. Unfortunately after reading it I have some mixed feelings. I would still recommend the book to those interested in self-publishing ebooks, but I do have a few hesitations.
My biggest issue with the book, and not that there is any actually problem – the book isn’t bad or is wrong or anything like that, is that the book just doesn’t go far enough. A couple of examples of this: first we will start with the title. The title states, “creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders.” What doesn’t make sense to me about that is the fact that the iPad is not the number one ebook reader. That honor belongs to Amazon’s Kindle. I am truthfully not sure where the iPad ranks after that, but regardless, as eBook readers go, the iPad isn’t the most targeted platform. So, you would think that you would want a how-to book that was aimed at publishing ePub books to the dominant platform. Instead it seems that the book, and the title, were designed to grab key word searches.
The other example of this is that the book is designed around teaching you how to use Microsoft Word to generate your ePub. Now I will make no claims that Word isn’t the number one wordprocessing program and tool for writers, but it isn’t the necessarily the main tool for creating ePubs. Castro also covers using Adobe’s InDesign software for eBook creation, but she even admits that the software is costly and cumbersome. But other software that is freely available, such as Calibre, that is much more adept at creating ebooks and is much more frequently used aren’t discussed. Calibre doesn’t get any mention in the book – not even a footnote! This is a glaring omission that can’t be overlooked. Continue Reading »
Next week I will be participating on the panel for the first in Lowcountry Local First‘s 3 part series “Redefining Business As Usual: Customers for Keeps How to WOW the Lowcountry“.
The workshop takes place from 8:30 to 1:00 on November 3rd at the Lowcountry Innovation Center. The tickets are $25 for LLF members and $30 for non-members and include coffee and lunch. The session will start with introductions and need assessment followed by a presentation by Katie Wells, the panel discussion and then round table talks during lunch.
For those of you who don’t know Katie, she is is the owner of the nationally recognized customer service training company, Kewsolutions, Inc. In the Lowcountry, a few of her clients include Planters Inn, the Historic Doubletree Guest Suites and PDA – Production Design Associates. Katie is a nationwide expert and speaker on customer service, hospitality and social media. In 2009, Wells was the trainer for the G20 international economic summit in Pittsburgh, PA. Wells is also a weekly columnist for two community newspapers – WestOf and the James Island Messenger.
And, just to get you thinking ahead of time, here’s a great article that was in Business Week on customer service – folks are willing to pay more for great customer service but even in the current economy many businesses are not delivering.
In the interview we cover subjects from iPads and iMacs to mind mapping software and video and podcast recording. David is a great guy and simply fun to talk to. Give the show a listen and let me know what you think. Soon I will be doing similar podcasts of social media folk for The Social Media Monster podcasts.
What do you see when you see the name “therapists”? Well, depending on the context, you may see the profession “Therapists” or you may see the more dangerous and derogatory “TheRapists”. This is one of the things you need to think about when choosing a web identity such as a Twitter name.
Too often we get caught up in the excitement of a new name discovery or something we think is cute without considering the long term ramifications. We will hold a personal example until last, but lets next consider a friend of mine who came up with a great social media identity – Social Sass. But wait, when we put those words together as a domain name or Twitter ID, that great title can quickly become “SocialsAss”. Most likely not what the selector had in mind.
In addition to the odd double meanings of names, you also need to beware of names that are either hard to spell or confusing. This applies to plurals, multiple words that repeat letters, and the odd spelling form. Think about this – if your Twitter name is read on a radio program or podcast, would people be able to find it without doing a search or having it spelled out for them? The word “skool” may seem cooler to you that “school”, but how many prospects are you going to lose because they can’t find you.
And if your name is Tess, and your run a school, how many people would be able to find “TesssSkool” or even “TesssSchool”? How many “S”s are in that? And remember you can’t put in the apostrophe, so what are you going to do? Even if you don’t make it possesive, you get “tessschool”. Again, how many people would put in the correct number of “S”s?
On a mechanical note, beware of easily lost characters. The underscore for exacmpe, “_”, can easily be lost on forms with underlines. And not just lost in print, but lost on devices. What that means is beware of any character that is hard to enter on a cellphone’s keyboard. The more mobile platforms become a part of everyday life, the more we need to be aware of how hard it can be to enter special characters on those devices.
Finally, lets just look at my own example. Palmettobug. That was my business name. I was enamored of it. Little did I know that lots of people, especially women find the reference to bugs “icky”. So, after having that brought to my attention, and then having to come to grips with it, I am rebranding myself – as myself.
So, choose your name carefully. And for more on this subject, check out my colleague Cheryl Smithem’s post on the rest of this subject. Her post, Social Media Names, speaks to the heart of branding and is the partner post to this post.
OK, the winners in the Daniusoft DVD Ripper contest have been chosen by the random number generator at Random.Org. So, if you don’t like the results, please blame them and not me. I hate not being able to pick you all!
This is the presentation I gave at the Type-A Mommy Bloggers conference in Asheville, NC, last month. Unfortunately I only had about 45 minutes as I would have loved to have gone into a lot more detail. Additionally, the conversations around these issues with those who attended the session were fantastic. So, please don’t hesitate to leave comments and ask further questions. And always feel free to email me.
I seek to empower people by making technology a vehicle for driving businesses and communities. Just as you drive a car without worrying about how the engine operates, I will take care of your information systems as a data mechanic. This lets you drive the technology, instead of it driving you. I provide social media, web development and PC and Macintosh support services for small businesses and not-for-profits in Charleston and the surrounding South Carolina Lowcountry.
Episode 6 of The Social Media Monster podcast is a conversation with my guest Tom Sliker on website platforms, the differences between WordPress and Drupal, and why a site builder might choose one over the other. Tom has developed on numerous platforms, has worked in all levels of IT operations, and has been my friend for about 15 years. 
