Is it too late for New Years Resolutions?  I’ve known for years the importance of networking and building relationships after all I did work in sales for four years.  However, knowing the importance of something and acting on it are two completely different things.

So starting today I’m going to work on networking and building relationships.  I’m the shy type, but I figure as long as I put this down in words I’ll start changing my actions.

Why Networking And Building Relationships Is Important

There are many reasons, but I just want to point out the thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head.

• I look at the success of Linkin and think about the connections and relationships made there.  Today’s connection can lead to tomorrows job.
• I see Joint Ventures all the time.  If I don’t build relationships there will never be a joint venture.
• I’m not a natural when it comes to building relationships, but I do meet people through friends and sports teams.  Recently I’ve come into contact with three contract jobs and some possible volunteer work.  That’s without trying…imagine the kind of work I could get if I set my mind to building relationships.
• People you trust are more likely to give you work.  This might be a bad example, but I recently heard that a local school district were bidding for a new payroll system.  Unfortunately, they received a system that didn’t cover there needs and required a lot of work to get working properly.  Why did they choose such a poor fit for their new payroll system?  Someone had built an existing relationship with one of the decision makers and made millions on the sale of their payroll system.
• Another point I’ve noticed and you can ask this of yourself.  Who gets the job?  The best qualified?   From what I’ve seen the best qualified doesn’t usually get the job, but the person who knows or has a relationship with the boss.

I know there are many other important reasons for building relationships, but for some reason the points listed above have been really standing out in my head.  Please feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think and please add to the list.

How I Plan on Networking And Building Relationships

Offline

• Just be more friendly with people
• Work on remembering the names of new people I meet.
• Engage people in conversation
• Attend more social outings

Online

• Blogs – Use a commenting strategy to make a connection with key bloggers.
• Forums – Respond to relevant posts and add to the conversation and make contact with key members.
• Websites – Make contact with key website owners

This is a great start, but I also know the importance of organizing and tracking the people you meet.  For now, I’m going to test out Zoho CRM and see if that will suit my needs.  After a thorough testing period I’ll add my thoughts on Zoho CRM.

Anyways, this is just another rant and something I was thinking about today.  Let me know what you think and please add to the conversation and start building a relationship today!

I’ve been managing websites for years manually changing the copyright date as each year passed by and surprisingly this is the first year I thought about how to automatically update my WordPress copyright date.  It’s a very easy process and I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it sooner.  All you have to do is take your WordPress footer include page and replace the copyright year with a little piece of PHP code.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

How To Automatically Update Your WordPress Copyright Date

1. Log in to your WordPress Blog
2. Click the Appearance Hyperlink in the left navigation bar.  This will bring you to the Appearance page and also expand the Appearance dropdown.
3. Click the Editor Hyperlink under the Appearance drop down.  This will take you to the edit themes page.
4. In the right navigation you will see your theme files.  Depending on your theme these files may differer, but all themes should have a file named Footer (footer.inc).  Click this hyperlnk to open the file in the theme editor window.
5. As I mentioned everyone will have a different theme and the contents of your Footer file will most likely be different then mine.  However, if you have either a static (meaning you’ll see the actual date like “2008″)  copyright date then you need to change this to a dynamic (meaning depending on the year the date will programmatically change to the current year) copyright date.
6. You can automatically update your WordPress copyright date by adding the following code instead of the current year you see in your footer.inc file.
7. Delete the year (for instance “2008″).  Replace the year with <?php echo date(“Y”) ?>
8. Click Update File

*Note – depending on your theme you may not have a copyright date or your copyright date may already be automated.  To verify your copyright date just take a look at the bottom of your blog and make sure you see the current year.  If you’d like to add a copyright date just follow the same steps as above and add the following code where you’d like to see the copyright date:

Copyright &copy; <?php echo date(“Y”) ?>

That’s it!  Now you no longer have to worry about updating the copyright date in your future years of blogging.  It may seem trivial, but the copyright date is something I usually remember to update around February.

I always try to keep my blogs up to date and up until now I’ve used the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.  A great little plugin that simplified the WordPress upgrade process.  Recently WordPress has added automatic upgrade functionality as a standard feature.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade Fatal Error

Today I was going about my daily blogging business and noticed that WordPress 2.7.1 was available.  I attempted to use the built in automatic upgrade and received the following error:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class pclzip in /home/mysite/public_html/wp-admin/includes/class-pclzip.php on line 171

Here’s what I did to try and fix my problem:

1. I decided to try my handy WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin instead, but it informed me that I was already up to date (even though I wasn’t).
2. I next tried upgrading one of my newer blogs.  It upgraded just fine without fail.
3. I did a little research on the internet and found that my faithful WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin was causing the problem.
4. I went to my plugins panel, deactivated WordPress Automatic Upgrade, and attempted the built in Automatic upgrade.
5. It worked like a charm!

Now my blogs are all upgraded to WordPress 2.7.1.  One final note: I also read that if you do not have the WPAU plugin and you are experiencing this problem you might try disabling all your plugins then try the built in autaomatic upgrade again.

As a new blogger one of the most basic things you need to know and master is how to install a WordPress theme.  It’s not too difficult and not too technical, but you do need to have a few skills already mastered.  If you can browse the web and you have basic windows navigation skills then installing a WordPress theme should be no problem for you.

Here’s the step-by-step process:

How To Install A WordPress Theme

I’m going to assume that you found the WordPress theme of your dreams and have already downloaded the zip file…the adventure begins…

UPLOADING YOUR WORDPRESS THEME

1. Most (if not all) WordPress themes can be downloaded in a zip file.  The first thing you need to do is extract the contents from your zip file.
2. The process for unzipping a file may vary slightly depending on your “zip program”.  I usually just double click (open) the zip file and drag the contents from the zip file to my desktop.  There are other ways to extract contents from a zip file and hopefully you already have this skilled mastered.

1. The next step is to upload your extracted file to your web server.
2. Have you used FTP (File Transfer Protocol) before?  If so, use your FTP program to upload your extracted zip file to the following directory: /public_html/yourdomain.com/wp-content/themes
3. If you don’t know what FTP is then I have an easy way for you to upload files to your web server…that is as long as your web host uses cPanel…if your host doesn’t use cPanel then your shit out of luck…kidding…just contact me and I’ll do my best to walk you through FTPing your files.
4. Access your cPanel by going to http://yourdomainname.com/cpanel.  For this blog it would be http://www.bloggersproject.com/cpanel.
5. Enter your username and password – by the way, if you don’t normally access your cPanel here you need to know your 8 letter login name.  My account uses the first 8 letters in my domain name for instance, “bloggers” would be my domain name.  If you know how to access your cPanel through your host’s front page then access it there and look at the upper left corner of your cPanel home page under stats you’ll see your username.
6. Click on the little Unlimited FTP button (grouped under “Files”).  This runs a little Java program that allows you to use FTP inside your browser.  If you don’t have Java installed then you’ll need to take care of that now

1. You should be looking at two file directories now.  The left one has your local computer file directory and probably looks similar to what you see when you use windows explorer.  The directory on the right side is your web server directory.
2. Navigate through your file directory (left side) and find your extracted zip file.
3. Navigate through your web server directory (right side) to the following location: /public_html/yourdomain.com/wp-content/themes
4. Now just use your mouse to drag the extracted zip file to the directory mentioned above on your web server.

ACTIVATING YOUR WORDPRESS THEME

1. Go to your WordPress blog admin panel: http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin.
2. Enter your username and password.
3. Click the Appearance hyperlink in the left navigation.
4. Click the Themes hyperlink under the Appearance drop down in the left navigation.
5. The themes window should open and you should see an image of your new theme
6. Click the image or hyperlink with your theme name.

1. This will open a lightbox popup with your new theme (this is a sample of your site).  Click “Activate” ThemeName in the upper right corner.
2. Test your blog by going to your live website/blog.

That’s it!  Lots of little steps that should get you up in running in no time.  Of course there are always little snafu’s so if you’re having a problem feel free to contact me in the comments area below.

What do Google Analytics and Mark McGwire have in common? Yeah, I know it’s a question only a nerd would know or even want an answer to.

So, why am I even pondering such a question. Well, I was reading Google Analytics 2.0 and I came across this short paragraph about Mark McGwire that really caught my attention in light of the recent allegations from his brother about his steroid usage.

Here’s what I read:

…Comparing what a good analytics package does to what a good site-stats package does is like having Mark McGwire bat right before the Little Leagues’s MVP. One could be kind and say it’s a Major League to Little League comparison, or like putting a man next to a boy, but the truth is that analytics are like site stats on steroids.

This quote was in reference to AWStats and Google Analytics. Obviously Google Analytics is Mark McGwire in this analogy and the author is getting his little jab in on his thoughts on Mark McGwire’s steroid usage.

Anyways, if you’re a nerd like me then I just thought you’d find this humorous as well.

If you want to learn more about Google Analytics check out:

The other day I was sitting, listening to the news on the radio or television, hearing all about the bailout/economic stimulus package and how it was approved by the Senate and blahblahblah….the rest just kind of drowned out into oblivion except for the number a trillion dollars.  I’m not sure why I heard that number or why it stuck in my head, the “economic stimulus bill” is for $838 billion…not too shy of the magical one trillion dollars.

What Is A Trillion Dollars?

I know one trillion is a big number, but the real reason it caught my attention was because I was reading about numbers the other day and the article I saw was trying to put one trillion dollars in perspective.

So, what is a trillion dollars?

1. A Trillion Dollars = $1,000,000,000,000.
2. A Trillion Dollars is a one with 12 zeros to the left of the decimal point.
3. A Trillion Dollars is a million million dollars.
4. If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from Earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills.
5. One trillion would be enough to buy about a thousand boxes of Girl Scout cookies for every person in the US.
6. A trillion barrels of oil would – at current consumption levels – fuel the world for about 33 years

source: npr.org

…and the article I was reading:

Let’s say you came up with a great business idea about the time Jesus of Nazareth was born. And let’s say that business made one million dollars every day, day-in and day-out, 365 days a year from that point forward.

You wouldn’t earn a trillion dollars until October of 2737. – source: Teaching Sells.

So when you hear about bail outs, economic stimulus packages, and other government spendings remember What Is A Trillion Dollars?

I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there have been terrible bush fires in Australia.  The numbers I read as of yesterday are: the death toll is 181 people with 750+ homes destroyed. Authorities fear that the death toll will rise to above 300 as many people are unaccounted for.

I came across this information in my RSS reader, but not from a general news feed, but on several money making blogs.  I read both Darren Rowse’s Problogger and Daniel Scocco’s Daily Blog Tips and both featured a story on the bush fires and a great promotion offered by SitePoint to raise money for the Red Cross.

The SitePoint staff has worked around the clock to put together a promotion where not only can you get some great SitePoint books, but also help aid in the Bushfire crisis.

5 Books For The Price of 1

It’s a simple offer page:

1. Visit the promotion page
2. Choose 5 of their books
3. Order the books sometime between now and Friday (2/13/2009) of this week.
4. SitePoint will give you 5 books for the price of 1.  That’s a $149.75 worth of books for just $29.95
5. SitePoint will give the money that you pay to the Australian Red Cross

Their goal is to raise over $50,000 and I’m hoping the number is even higher.  I’m definitely putting forth my purchase and here are the books I chose:

1. The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
2. The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks, and Techniques
3. Deliver First Class Websites: 101 Essential Checklist
4. The Flash Anthology: Cool Effects and Practical ActionScript
5. DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design using JavaScript and DOM

Good luck to the SitePoint team.  I hope you reach your goal.