Archive for September, 2011

Important information coming from all forms and from a range of channels can be acquired on the internet, easily readily available to virtually anyone which has a laptop or computer connected to the internet. You can conduct limitless investigating on virtually any specific topic for several days but not exhaust the possibility cyberspace contains for the purpose of obtaining guidance and insight for that study. The following undoubtedly holds true for people wanting to start a small business. From government restrictions to bank account details, small business resources is found withinthe online world. As with any type of fact-acquiring quest (blank) it is wise to follow a few tips when searching for knowledge important for you and also your company.
1. Be sure that the information you have is originating from a dependable reference. Oftentimes one of the most reliable information are available on government websites – especially that material working with government error and legal requirements of business. Search for web pages developed by and also for small businesses themselves, the people inside the trenches who have handled oraddressing the same sorts of things you will probably possibly be handling. Try to find internet websites produced particularlyto encourage people who definitely are in situations such as yourself.
2. Be certain that the information you are gleaning is applicable to you in your situation. As an example, ensure that that your facts concerning government rules is that which will apply to your particular scenario, in your certain location, not government regulations from an completely different state or even country! Do not spend your time making an attempt to comply with regulations that aren’t relevant to you personally.
3. Take a note of internet websites in which strike you as significantly valuable. Several internet websites (such as delicious.com etc.) exist to aid on this process. There is very little much morefrustrating than simply being unable to dig up a web page you have previously been in and discovered invaluable so take steps to avert this.
4. As soon as you see a particularly valuable web page, try to find a pageon it with back-links. In many cases, these links may direct you to a variety of other website pages that can prove to be to become extremely helpful too.
5. Don’t be scared to ask inquiries. Numerous internet sites contain data on their internet site in order to get hold of them. Send them an e-mail showing thanks for the information they have given on their website along with asking them questions or for additional information. Many may well be more than happy to assist you and therefore, you havegranted them a small insight into just how they can certainly greatly improve their own internet site. Look for community forums that connect to small businesses or to your business topic and reach out to those needed for those discussion boards. Lend your own personal competency to the conversations, and in turn the discussion forum individuals may be more than delighted to provide theircapabilities to you, providing priceless small business training.
6. Take everything you read with a a dose of skepticism and study the veracity of every thing! Do not take jumps or spend money based upon information and facts which you have not proven the truth or necessity of by means of not less than a couple of efficient sources. Several small enterprise tools are accessible to you when you need it – don’t be afraid to make beneficial utilization of them!
Small businesstraining

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November marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a project in which thousands of writers around the world work toward completing a 50,000-word novel by November 30th. Sound like something you want to get in on?

Whoa. That’s 1,667 words per day. I’m not ready for that!

We hear you — writing a whole novel is a pretty big undertaking. So why not gear up for the project by starting the WordPress.com Post a Day Challenge this October? It’s a great way to meet others in the WordPress.com community, including writers who have completed NaNoWriMo in the past.

At The Daily Post, home of the Post a Day Challenge, we provide creative inspiration each and every day. You can also find tons of writing prompts at Plinky.com, so you never have to worry about running out of ideas. Participating in Post a Day is also a great opportunity to prepare outlines, character sketches, and research before starting your novel in November.

How am I supposed to complete a decent novel in a single month?

According to the folks at NaNoWriMo, “It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that’s a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.”

Think of it this way: Would you rather write an imperfect-but-complete novel, or no novel at all? Besides, if you get in the habit of posting daily throughout October, you’ll be well-equipped to start chipping away at a novel in November.

Bring it on! How do I sign up?

To join the WordPress.com Post a Day Challenge, visit The Daily Post. (The challenge began back in January but you can start any time.)

NaNoWriMo 2011 begins on November 1. Visit NaNoWrimMo.org for information on how to register (the initiative is not run by WordPress.com). If you decide to write your novel on your blog and want to make it easy for others to check out your writing, tag your posts with nanowrimo2011.

What else should I do to prepare?

To create a brand new (and optionally private) blog for the writing challenge, make sure you’re logged in to WordPress.com, then start a new blog. If you don’t have a WordPress.com account yet, get started here.

If you’d like to make your blog look more like a book, you might be interested in purchasing the Chapters theme. Remember that you also have the option to set up a static front page (in place of your posts page) on your blog’s home page, if you’d like to use it to display a table of contents, for example.

So what do you think, are you up for the challenge?

New Themes: Eight, Bold Life, and Elemin

If you score three goals in one hockey game you’ve made what’s called a hat trick. I think that should totally count for themes too. If you’re reading this post you’ve just scored a chance to check out three brand new themes for your blog. Hat trick!

The first up is Eight by renowned designer, Elliot Jay Stocks. Its unique layout means your blog will be almost completely transformed just by activating it. Thanks to the custom background feature and its custom highlight color feature, transforming the look of your blog even further takes only a few clicks. Eight is a premium upgrade for your blog at $75 for a lifetime subscription.

Eight

We have another brand new free theme for you too. It’s called Bold Life by Jay Hafling and just like Eight it has its own unique grunge-elegant look.

Finally, we have another premium theme for you and there’s nothing grungy about this one. The beautiful and elegant Elemin, designed by Themify, is just packed with features so make sure you check it out on the theme showcase. You can upgrade your blog to Elemin with a lifetime subscription for $75.

Enjoy!

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Are you content to become just a follower?  Do you dream of having a managerial or supervisory position?  If you are, then you should attend a leadership development education where you will learn and develop the skills that you need to become a leader.  You can work your way to the top by being exemplary in your work but you will not remain there if you do not have leadership skills.  You need to be able to inspire and motive people because when you are able to do that, you can expect your people to become more efficient in what they do.  You can look for leadership development skills training to help you with this.

Characteristics Of A Good Leader

What makes a person able to lead?  Do you have to be intelligent, charismatic, or hardworking?  You should get a leadership development education to have a better understanding of what it takes to become a leader.  Being a leader is not easy because you have to be able to inspire people to do their best in whatever task you have given them.  Making decisions is also one of the important aspects of being a leader.  It is not that easy because you have to take responsibility for the consequences of your decisions.  You need to be able to do this no matter how difficult it may be.  The leadership development training will be able to help you learn the skills that you will need to become a leader.

New Domains for You and .me

Today we are adding .me (to .com, .org and .net) as a new option for upgrading to your own, custom domain name on WordPress.com. All of our domain mapping options cost just a couple dollars per month for your domain name and hosting. You don’t have to deal with web servers or configuration, we take care of everything for you.

Get your own .me domain on WordPress.com.

As Sara mentioned a couple months ago, one of the most common questions we get is whether you can use your own domain for WordPress.com blogs. Incidentally, Add a Domain is our most popular upgrade, so we know you love customizing your digital address and we are always looking for ways to make it better and easier.

Rather than adding numbers or dropping vowels for a .com you don’t really want, check out .me and find the perfect fit for your business, your name, or just a pun you can’t stop laughing at. We’ve seen lots of creative domain-names-as-sentences using .me, like about.me and connect.me. And we love our wp.me URL shortener, available to all WordPress.com users.

How to get a .me domain
If you want to upgrade to a .me domain for a new WordPress.com site, head over to wordpress.com/signup. If you want to add a .me domain to an existing WordPress.com site, you can follow our step-by-step instructions. It’s less than $3/month, so what are you waiting for?!

Leave a comment and let us know what other domain mapping features you want us to add.

Enjoy A Shiny New, Simplified Admin Bar

Remember your old admin bar (displayed at the top of your screen while you’re logged in to WordPress.com)? Up until today, it’s looked something like this while viewing an individual post:

But we wanted to make it easier for your visitors to interact with you via Likes and Follows, so we’ve cleaned it up a bit. Now it looks like this:

Better, right!? Now on the right hand side of the admin bar where your Gravatar is displayed, you have easy access to your user profile, all the blogs you can contribute to, and all the comments you’ve made across WordPress.com:

In the blog menu on the left side of the admin bar, you’ll see all the stuff related to the blog you’re currently viewing. If you’re looking at a post on your own blog, the menu will display links to your dashboard, post editor, comment moderation panel, custom menus, and widgets. Next to the blog menu are the Follow and Like buttons, along with a sparkline, which reflects the last 48 hours of page views on the blog:

When viewing posts on other blogs on WordPress.com, the blog menu on the left side of the admin bar will display the following options, as well as the shortlink and theme information:

If you hover over the WordPress.com logo in the left corner, you’ll see the following quick links:

Lastly, you may have noticed that you’re no longer able to reblog a post after clicking the Like button. Don’t worry — we’re cooking up some reblogging improvements that you’ll have access to very soon. Stay tuned!

New Themes: Magazine and Parament

Isn’t it nice to have a brand new theme, or two, on a Thursday? Maybe you’ll remember, this day in September—because today it’s double the fun with Magazine and Parament now available in your WordPress.com dashboard.

Magazine is a sleek and stylish theme from StudioPress that’s perfect for showcasing your carefully crafted content. Choose from ten color schemes and six layout options and customize it to your taste. Make it yours for a lifetime subscription of $75, and discover all its features on the Theme Showcase.

Parament is a beautiful, all-purpose theme featuring a dark color scheme with bright orange highlights and a textured background. Its clean, colorful, and curved lines will help your content stand out from the crowd. Learn all about it on the Theme Showcase.

Enjoy.

We’ve written before about our efforts at WordPress.com to help you get more attention for your work. And we’re here again with a new feature: follow.

After weeks of experimentation with different designs, locations and names, we’ve determined the addition of a small, cute, little button at the bottom of your blog will dramatically help pageviews and retention.

Starting today, on all blogs, whenever someone who is not logged into WordPress.com visits, they’ll see this small little button in the bottom right corner. The button is mostly out of the way, but just noticeable enough before people leave.

And when a visitor clicks on the button, it smoothly slides open, revealing a simple way to follow the blog without having the burden of checking back on their own to see if there’s anything new. They can put their email address in, and will be notified whenever your blog has a new post.

Questions we expect to be frequently asked:

1. Why is it called Follow and not Subscribe?  Good question, as many designers here at WordPress.com debated this, including me. Although the functionality is similiar to the Email subscription widget, after testing various prototypes, we learned more people clicked on the button and signed up if it were called Follow rather than Subscribe. We also know subscribe suggests to some its something you pay for, whereas follow has no such connotation.

2. I don’t like it. How can I turn it off on my blog? Easy. Go to your Dashboard. Click on Settings, then Reading, then Email.  Sorry you don’t like it – but we understand. If you change your mind, this is also the place to go to customize the message new followers (subscribers) will see.

3. Will other subscription features also have their name changed? We are carefully studying the impact of different names on existing features. We only change names when we have evidence it helps our bloggers and the benefits outweigh the annoyance of the change. We don’t change feature names to be fashionable or to emulate other services that might rhyme with “critter” or “shmacebook”.

4. Why don’t I see the button? The follow button only appears for users not logged in to WordPress.com. If you want to follow a WordPress.com blog, and are already logged in, simply use the follow button that already appears in your admin bar at the top of the screen. If you want to see the new hotness, log out of WordPress.com and go to any blog, including your own, to see it. To log out, go to your admin bar at top of the screen. Click on “Me”, then click on “Log Out”.

5. Why did you put something on my blog that changes how it looks? We know you want complete control over your blog’s appearance, and that’s why we’ve built so many themes, widgets and customizations for you to use. But here the data was strong enough for the positive effect of this small little button to turn it on.  We’re making sure you know about it and know how to turn it off if you don’t want to use it. In the future we expect to add more ways for visitors to follow your blog, which will give visitors and bloggers more of what they want.

It is certainly exciting to plan for a wedding.  When it comes to the wedding photography, make sure that you look into the different styles of photography so that you can determine which one you like best.  Choose the Minneapolis wedding photographer that can give you exactly what you want.  Quality of the pictures is important as well as capturing the right moments.  Discuss with the photographer the shots that you like so that there will be no regrets later on.  When it comes to the wedding DJ, it is important that you choose a disc jockey with plenty of experience so that he will know the right kind of music that makes a wedding more special.  Do not forget to choose the wedding songs that will be played at the reception.