Most businesses out there have Facebook pages these days, or at least they should! Many businesses also use the WordPress blogging platform to post their news and upcoming events to their website. Updating content at both places can become very time consuming. To save time, we recommend integrating your WordPress blog with your Facebook page.  This means that whenever you publish a post from your blog it automatically post to your Facebook wall.  Although there are many plugins/apps out there that help with this we’ve chosen to focus on our favorite.. the RSS Graffiti App for Facebook.

See below for details on adding the RSS Graffiti App for your Facebook/WP integration:

1. Log into your Facebook account.
2. In the main Facebook search area type in “RSS”, the first result that displays is “RSS Graffiti”.
3. Click and download this app.
4. Once downloaded it should bring you to a RSS Graffiti page where you can add a new feed by clicking the “+Add Feed” button.
5. Under the “Basics” tab input the info it asks for… your “Feed URL” is the URL of your blog followed by the “/feed/” tag. For example: “http://yourblog.com/feed/” or “http://yourblog.com/blog/feed/”.
6. Under the “Schedule” tab input how often you’d like your Facebook to look for new blog posts (ranges form ASAP to Once a day).
7. When you’ve input all your info hit the “Save” button. (Be patience! This might take a day or so to grab your new posts for the first time.)
8. Get out and enjoy your extra free time!

Of course if you need a hand with this integration, we’d be happy to help.  Give us a call at 306.546.2118 or shoot us an email.

Often our clients need to send us large files whether that be high resolution photos, vector graphics etc. Most web emails (gmail, hotmail etc) will only allow sending of 25MB per email which sometimes just isn’t enough! One important thing to know is how to zip or compress those folders or files you want to send. By doing this you can drastically reduce the file size, which helps when it comes to sending over the web. Below are some steps outlining compressing files and folders on both PC and Mac.

Compressing files using a PC (Windows 7)

• Select your file or folder and right click.
• A menu will appear above your file with many options, select the “Add to archive” option.
• Once you’ve selected “Add to archive” a dialog box will appear prompting you for details about the name and parameters of the file you want to compress. You can ignore everything except the “Archive format” selection. The default will be “RAR” you will want to switch this to the “ZIP” option.
• After you’ve selected the “ZIP” format hit “OK”.
• Your file will be now be compressed into ZIP format! (Depending on the file size this could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to complete).

Opening ZIP files using a PC (Windows 7)

• Select the ZIP file, right click and in the menu select the “Extract Here” option.
• Once you’ve hit “Extract Here” the file will begin extracting itself in the same location as the ZIP file. (This could take a while depending on file size).

Compressing files using a Mac

• Select your file or folder and right click.
• A menu will appear above your file will many options, select the “Compress” option.
• Your file will be now be compressed into ZIP format! (Depending on the file size this could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to complete).

Opening ZIP files using a Mac

• Select the ZIP file, and double click.
• The file will then extract to the same location as your ZIP file.

Sending Large ZIP Files Over the Web

There are many free tools on the internet that help with sending large files (YouSendIt, Dropbox etc). Our personal favorite, and the one we recommend to our clients is SendSpace. Below are a few steps outlining how to upload and send your large zip files using SendSpace:

• Visit: http://www.sendspace.com/
• Under the “Select File” section hit “Browse”. This will open up a dialog box where you can select and upload your zip file.
• Under “Decription:” type a few words describing your file (Ex. Photos for OH! Media) or something that will help you to remember which file it is you’ve uploaded.
• Under “Recipient’s Email:” put in the email address of the person you wish to send the files to.
• Under “Your email:” put in your email address (so that you can keep track of the documents you’ve sent).
• Once your done filling out the form hit “Upload File”.
• This might take a few minutes depending on file size.
• Once the upload completes it will send a link to download the file to both yourself and the person specified in the “Recipient” area of the form.
• That’s it!

If your having trouble compressing your files but you still need to send them, no worries! SendSpace has a tool that allows for multiple uploads (for zip and non-zipped files)!  Below are the steps:

• Visit: http://www.sendspace.com/flashupload.html
• Select “Add a File” , this will open up a dialog box where you can select and upload your files.
• Once you’ve selected a file it will prompt you to enter a description, this is optional but in the long run will help you organize what files you’ve uploaded.
• When your done adding the files fill in the “Recipients email” and “Your email” text fields.
• Check off that you agree to the “terms of use” and hit “Start Upload”.
• This might take a few minutes depending on the size of the file you’ve chosen.
• Once the upload completes it will send a link to download the file to both yourself and the person specified in the “Recipient” area of the form.
• That’s it!

We’ve started to realize that when it comes to naming for the web there can be a lot of confusion. Below we’ve outlined some helpful tips in properly naming your photos/files for use on the web!

Things to Avoid When Naming Files for the Web:

1. Spaces: Avoid using spaces when naming your photos/files. For example if you upload a PDF with the file name “example report 2011.pdf” when the PDF is viewed or downloaded the naming structure will look like this “example”%20report”%202011.pdf”". The browser will automatically add in “%20″ anywhere there’s a spacing in a file name. Try instead to use underscores (_) or dashes (-) in place of spaces. For example the file names “example_report_2011.pdf” and “example-report-2011.pdf” are much easier to read and won’t be manipulated when uploaded to the web.
2. Hash Signs (#): Never use hash signs when naming your photos or files. Photos/files with hash signs (#) will NOT display on your webpage. Hash signs are part of the coding language used to develop your website so by incorporating one into file names the browser causes an error and fails display the file. For example this photo “player#20.jpg” will not display in the browser but a photo titled “player20.jpg”, “player_20.jpg” or “player-20.jpg” will display fine!
3. Quotation Marks ( ‘  &  “): Never use quotation marks when naming your photos or files. Photos/files with quotations incorporated into the filename will NOT display on your webpage. Quotations, much like hash signs, are part of the coding language used to develop your website. For example this photo “lil’photo.jpg” will not display in the browser but a photo titled “lilphoto.jpg”, “lil_photo.jpg” or “lil-photo.jpg” will display fine!
4. Lack of File Extension: Never upload your photos/files unless they have an appropriate file extension. File extensions cannot be changed by editing the filename. For example editing  a photo with a “.gif” extension to “.jpg” doesn’t actually change the type of photo from .”gif” to “.jpg”. This type of file change usually needs to be done through special software. Popular file extensions for photos are “.jpg”, “.jpeg”, “.gif”, “.png” and “.tiff”. For PDF documents the file extension must always be “.pdf”.

Another handy tutorial for clients that use OH!CMS V3. This time we explain the steps to add and link PDF files.

• First step is to go to the page where you want to add the PDF.
• In the Content editing area click on the folder icon to open up the “File Manager”
• The File Manager will now be open and you will see other recently uploaded documents (images, PDF etc). Click the blue “Upload” button to the left side of the File Manager.
• Once the “Upload” Button has been clicked a pop up will open where you can now browse to your PDF. Select your PDF and click “Open” (or double click) to start upload.
• You will see an orange progress bar as your PDF is being uploaded.
• Once uploaded it will show a “Complete!” message and the PDF thumbnail will appear within the File Manager.
• You can now exit the File Manager by hitting the “OK” or “Cancel” located to the bottom right side.
• Type the text which you will want linking to the PDF. This can be the PDF name or a sentence, basically whatever you want the link to the PDF to say.  (Ex. Example PDF)
• Select (highlight) the text you want to link then click the “File Manager” folder icon in the Content edit area. (Ex. See Image Below)
  
  
• The File Manager will then open. Select then double click the PDF you want to be linked. (Ex. See Image Below)

• Once you’ve double clicked the PDF it will return you to the Content editing area where you will see your text is now underlined.. showing that it has been linked to the document. (Ex. See Image Below)
  

• You can now save changes and view/test it in the browser!

This tutorial will give you the basics on everything you need to set up/add/edit/remove email accounts on our server! Let’s get to it…

WebMail

If you’d like to access your email account using WebMail follow the steps below:

• Go to http://yourwebsite.com/webmail
• Input email address in full (Ex. youremail@yourwebsite.com)
• Input assigned password for above email address
• Once logged in you will be prompted to choose between three options (horde, roundcude and SquirrelMail). Choose “SquirrelMail”
• Done! From here you will be able to send and receive emails.

If you’d like to setup your email account in Microsoft Outlook visit this tutorial!

If you’d like to add a new email account for your site follow the steps below:

• Go to http://yourwebsite.com/cpanel
• Input username/password combo that should have been supplied to you or your websites administrator.
• Once logged in you will see a section titled “Mail”. Click the “Email Accounts” icon.
• Once in the “Email Accounts” section you will see a form for Email, Password etc.
• Email field: This is where you put the name of the new email address (Ex. marketing – this will create an email address of marketing@yourwebsite.com).
• Password field: This is where you put in the password for the new email.
• Mailbox Quota: Select the size limit you want on the new email address, 250 MB storage or unlimited storage.
• Once you’ve input all the correct info hit “Create Account”.
• Done!

If you’d like to add an email forwarder to your existing email account follow the steps below:

• Go to http://yourwebsite.com/cpanel
• Input username/password combo that should have been supplied to you or your websites administrator.
• Once logged in you will see a section titled “Mail”. Click the “Forwarders” icon.
• Once in the “Forwarders” section click the “Add Forwarder” button.
• Once in the “Add a Forwarder” section you will see a form for Address, Destination etc.
• Address: This is where you input the address you wish to forward. (Ex. info@yourwebsite.com)
• Destination: This is where you input the address you want your emails forwarded to. (Ex. youremail@gmail.com)
• Once you’ve input the correct info hit the “Add Forwarder” button.
• Done! (Ex. All emails sent to info@yourwebsite.com will not be forwarded to youremail@gmail.com)

If you’d like to change your email password follow the steps below:

• Go to http://yourwebsite.com/cpanel
• Input username/password combo that should have been supplied to you or your websites administrator.
• Once logged in you will see a section titled “Mail”. Click the “Email Accounts” icon.
• Once in the “Email Accounts” section you will see a list of all the existing emails created on your website.
• Find the email address you want to edit and click the “Change Password” link, located to the right of the address.
• A form will pop up prompting you to enter the new password. After inputting the correct info hit the “Change Password” button.
• Done! The new password will now be active. NOTE: Remember this will mean that the password will now have to be changed on your email client and/or smart phone.

If you’d like to add an auto responder to your existing email follow the steps below:

• Go to http://yourwebsite.com/cpanel
• Input username/password combo that should have been supplied to you or your websites administrator.
• Once logged in you will see a section titled “Mail”. Click the “Auto Responders” icon.
• Once in the “Auto Responders” section click the “Add Auto Responder” button.
• A form will now be visible for you to input the specifics of your auto responder.
• Character Set: Leave as default.
• Interval: This amount must be in hours. Gone for a full work day? Input 8 hours. Gone for a week? Input 168 hours.
• Email: This is where you specify which email address will be sending out the responder.
• From: This is where you can put your name.
• Subject: Whatever you want the subject line of the email to be. (Ex. Out of Office)
• HTML: Leave this checkbox un-checked.
• Body: This is where you can input whatever information you’d like. (Ex. I am out of the office today, returning on Monday.)
• Once the correct information has been input hit the “Create/Modify” button.
• Done! Your auto responder is now set up.

We’ve begin to notice what a challenge it can be to configure an email address through Microsoft Outlook. We decided the most efficient way to tackle this reoccurring issue is to create an online tutorial. Without further ado lets get started!

Microsoft Outlook 2007/2010

• Go to Tools –> Account Settings. (In Outlook 2010 this can be found by going to File –> Account Settings.)
• Dialog box pops up and opens to “Email” tab by default. At the top left of the dialog box hit “New…”.
• Check off “Manually configure server settings or additional server types” and hit “Next”.
• Select the “Internet Email” option.
• Input requested info (Name, Email). If you will be configuring your email account on a smart phone as well as Outlook choose the “IMAP” option under Server Information –> Account Type. If you will only be using your email through Outlook choose “POP3″ under the Server Information –> Account Type setting. Incoming mail server/Outgoing Mail Server should be set to “mail.ohmedia.ca”.
• Logon Information.. Username should be your email, Password should be your email password.
• After entering the details, press “More Settings …” In the “Outgoing Server” tab, check the checkbox labelled “My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication”. There should also already be a mark beside “Use same settings as my incoming mail server”.
• In the “Advanced” tab, immediately beneath the “Incoming server (IMAP):” or “Incoming server (POP3):” line, find the box labelled “Use the following type of encrypted connection:” and select “SSL” from the dropdown.
• Click OK.
• When all info is input and correct hit “Test Account Settings”.
• You will be prompted to login using the Username/Password you just set up. (Remember: Username is your email, Password is your email password.)
• Outlook will run a test login and email, if configuration is set up correctly you will see two green check marks beside each task. Hit close on the test account settings.
• Click “Finish” in the main dialog box and you’re done!

Google Analytics is a free system that when integrated into your website can provide you with all sorts of wonderful data about your website visitors.

Don’t worry if your Google Analytics stats confuse you. There are people who build entire careers around translating those stats. We are hear to help!  We’ve written simple guide to explain the common functions of the system. Let’s get started.

You’ve visited google.com/analytics and logged in with your username and password that we’ve supplied you with.  And then your Dashboard comes up, and your eyes bug out.  It’s okay.

Here’s a picture of your Dashboard.  Well, actually, it’s our Dashboard (well, one of our test site dashboards), but you know what I mean.  Click on the image for a bigger version.

That first block, the long chart stretching across the page – it measures how many visitors you’ve had to your site.  You can see we had a large spike in traffic around Dec 8th.

The next block is Site Usage.  Here’s a quick rundown:

Visits: How many *unique* visitors you’ve had.  This doesn’t count repeat visits from the same computer.

Pageviews: All the pageviews you’ve had, including ones from the same computer.

Pages/visit: On average, how many pages of your website are viewed by each visitor.

Bounce rate: How many people come to your site and leave without viewing any other pages.

Avg. Time on Site: How long your visitors stay on your site before they go to another one.

New visits: Visitors coming to your site for the first time.

The Visitors Overview is a more compressed version of the top graph.

The Map Overlay shows where your visitors are coming from.  Since this is a test site we use for our own purposes, it makes sense it is mostly visited from Canada, because that’s where we are!

Traffic Sources Overview: Ah, this is what you’re interested in!

Direct Traffic: People who came to your site by typing the URL into their address bar.  They didn’t use a middleman to get there, they typed in www.yoursite.com.

Search Engines: Yes, that’s people who find your site from Google or Bing.

Referring Sites: Sites that link to your site but aren’t search engines.  For example, if you sell a widget, and the manufacturer of the widget posts a list of their widget distributors on their own site that’s a referral.

Content Overview is just a list of the most popular pages on your site and the number and % of pageviews they count for.

To top off this basic tutorial, I’m going to talk about one more section, the Traffic Sources (which you can access off the left hand menu).  I don’t have a picture of this page because it contains very specific data.

But at the bottom of this page are two columns you are very interested in:

Your Top Traffic Sources and Keywords.

Your traffic sources are fairly straightforward.  The ones labeled Direct are people who go to www.yourcompany.com, the ones labeled Google are people who go to your site from Google, and ones labeled Referral are independent websites that link to you.

Your keywords are the search terms people use on Google to get to you.  Here you can tell how people *find* you.

There are full report links underneath each of those options if you want a full lists of traffic sources and keywords.

There you have it.  Not to difficult was it?  If you have any questions or would like to learn more we’d be happy to give you a more detailed rundown!  Drop us a note!

So your website has gone through the final review stages. You’re happy with it and excited for the world to see it! While it was in development, you were given a temporary web address to access the site, but now it’s going to be www.yourcompany.com!

Except that when you visit www.yourcompany.com, your site isn’t there.  If you had an old website there, it’s still showing up.  Or if this is the first website at that address you’re getting a temporary ‘coming soon’ page or it may just seem like the site is loading forever, nothing ever coming up.

I’m going to talk about why this happens – in geekspeak, we call this propagation.

Another geekspeak term is TL;DR – too long, didn’t read.  I’m going to put the TL;DR version below.  Keep on reading past the next paragraph to get the full technical explanation.

Geekspeak:

You know there’s some magical technological thing going on to make www.google.com bring up Google but you’ve never really thought about it.  Well, www.google.com is a URL.  A URL needs to be told where the website files are.  If a URL hasn’t been told where to go, you get Server Not Found messages and long loading times that go nowhere.

So now the techs have told www.yourcompany.com where to go – to find the files we’ve been working on.

But wait!  It’s been an hour since they emailed you they updated your domain settings and your site still isn’t up.  This is because the instructions telling the URL where to go need to propagate.  The internet is controlled by 13 ‘root servers’.  When we tell a URL to go somewhere, that message needs to make it to all 13 root servers.  The reason the internet works this way is because your Internet Service Provider or ISP (for example, Sasktel or Access Communications) only has to talk to those 13 servers to get instructions on which website goes where.

This sounds really complicated.  Here’s how it breaks down:
your website files -> a URL -> root DNS server -> Sasktel/Access/etc. -> you.

This is where the time lapse comes in.  The root DNS servers need to record the URL change.  Then Sasktel/Access/etc. need to talk to the root DNS server to get their updates.  Sometimes, an ISP only updates those records once a day or even once every two days.  This explains why your friend on Access can see your site but you on Sasktel cannot.

TL;DR:

When your website is set to go to www.yourcompany.com, it needs to be updated on a special server, and the company you get your internet from checks the special server for website address changes.  But it may only check once every day or two, which is why you cannot see your site.  Unfortunately, we can’t force this process.  Not even Microsoft can!

If it’s been a full business day, try clearing your cache.  You can also flush your DNS cache just to make sure it grabs the updates from your internet company.

We’ve had many requests from clients on how to use their Wordpress sites. Wordpress is an excellent blogging platform, but it can also be daunting to new users.

The main thing you want to do with your Wordpress site is make blog posts. Below is both simple and more detailed information about the process of creating a blog post:

The Basics of Creating/Editing & Publishing a Blog Post

• First sign in using WordPress Login page. ex. (www.examplesite.com/blog/wp-admin)
• Click the “Posts” tab located within the left side navigation.
• Click the “Add New” link located both at the top and left hand side of the page.
• Add blog title where it says “Enter title here”.
• Add some content!
• The content box has many editing functions similar to those you would see in Microsoft Word. You can bolden, italicize, add links and more!
• If you plan to write blog posts on a variety of topics creating categories is a great way to keep your posts organized.
• Add a category by clicking the “Add New Category” link located in the “Categories” section to the right of the content area.
• If you’ve completed your blog post but don’t want to publish it right away you have the option to save as a “Draft”.
• To save as a draft click the “Save Draft” button located to the left of the page under the “Publish” section.
• If you’re ready for the word to see your words of wisdom, click Publish!

Need more details? No Problem…

Blog Post Title

This is the title of your post. You can use any words or phrases but  its best to avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post.

Content Editing Area

The blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to displayed in the content of the post.

Preview button

Allows you to view the post before officially publishing it. This is located under the “Publish” section to the right of the “Save Draft” button.

Publish Section

Contains buttons that control the state of your post. The main states are Published, Pending Review, and Draft. A Published status means the post has been published on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you. If you select a specific publish status and click the update post or Publish button, that status is applied to the post. For example, to save a post in the Pending Review status, select Pending Review from the Publish Status drop-down box, and click Save As Pending. (You will see all posts organized by status by going to Posts > Edit). To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click “Edit” in the Publish area next to the words “Publish immediately”. You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date posts. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the “Publish” button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date.

Visibility

This determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you (and to other editors or admins within your site)

Save Draft

Allows you to save your post as a draft / pending review rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, visit Posts – Edit in the menu bar, then select your post from the list.

Publish

Publishes your post on the site. You can edit the time when the post is published by clicking the Edit link above the Publish button and specifying the time you want the post to be published. By default, at the time the post is first auto-saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database.

Post Tags

Refers to micro-categories for your blog. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Tags have to be enabled with the right code in your theme for them to appear in your post. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking “Add”.

Categories

Categories refers to the general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the “+Add New Category” link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to” Posts” >” Categories”.

Discussion Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: Allow Comments on this post and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this post. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to this particular post.

Password Protect This Post

To password protect a post, click “Edit” next to Visibility in the Publish section to the top right, then click “Password Protected”, click Ok, and enter a password. Then click OK. Note – Editor and Admin users can see password protected or private posts in the edit view without knowing the password.

Post Author

Post Author refers to a list of all blog authors you can select from to attribute as the post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users with authoring rights in your blog. To view your list of users, see “Users” tab on the far right.

WPScreencasts also describes this process, except using a video podcast, so if you are more of a visual learner, the video below is for you:

We have had several clients ask us how to properly resize and optimize images for use on their websites. In most cases, our clients do not have access to costly software like Photoshop or Fireworks. Thank goodness for Picnik – www.picnik.com, an online system (just acquired by Google) that gives users the ability to edit digital photos and images in their browser, without having to purchase or download complicated software.  We’ve compiled detailed step by step instructions to help our clients (and anyone that might be interested) resize and optimize images so that they are suitable for the web.

Suitable web images should be:

• Small in file size, allowing for quick download
• Correct dimensions (width and height) to fit properly on the page
• JPG or GIF format

Step 1

Visit www.picnik.com.  It’s not mandatory to sign up for a free account to use the system, but we recommend it.  Becoming a member unlocks additional features like unlimited access to all your uploaded photos and edits.  Don’t worry, registration is quick and easy.

Step 2

Find and click the “upload photos” button.

Step 3

A window will pop up.  Browse through your computer and find the image you wish to resize and open it.  This will upload the image.

Step 4

Your chosen image will now be displayed in the editing window.  You will the notice the tool menu located above the image.  For the sake of keeping things simple, we are only interested in the clicking resize button.

Step 5

Picnik does a great job of giving on-screen instructions.  Simply enter the desired dimensions (width or height) in pixels.  The software will ensure that the image stays proportional.  We recommend that you avoid making images larger with this software, doing so will reduce the quality of the image, making it muddy and blurry.

Step 6

Click the “Save and Share” button when satisfied.  Let the software do it’s magic, and when prompted click the “Save Image” button.

Conclusion

We have only scratched the surface of what you can accomplish with this amazing software.  As you spend more time using the software you will be come more comfortable with it’s features.  Explore and have fun!