eAction

Perhaps the best word of encouragement I can give you today is the one I need to hear myself. It’s okay to take some time off from our work pace to prepare love gifts for the family, and to plan to spend time with loved ones.

Deathbed confessions are usually in this vein, “I should have taken more time for the family.” Let’s take the cue and do that this Christmas season as much as we can.

Our family is rather scattered across Canada, and now even the brother closest to us, says he’s in too much emotional pain to spend time with us over Christmas. This won’t quite stop me. It just calls for more creativity to barge in on him with a meal, and kindly draw him out and help him to move on - as much as possible.

This morning in praying for him, I was reminded that he cannot, nor can I, undo the wrongs done to him, but the best recourse is to go throw himself in to the arms of the Lord, and humbly beg for help. In Psalms it says He sees our affliction and hears our anguished cry, and He helps us out of all our troubles. (Psalm 31:7)

If you don’t need fresh help from God these next few days, there may be someone else in your circle of contacts who does. You can give them the gift of encouragement.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my dream of training interns to do some of my work for me, and in turn showing them how they can start their own web business successfully. I believe I’ll be taking some definite steps in this direction in the months to come, but just now I’m pondering what are all the key things I would take a trainee or intern through to teach them what I’ve learned. This list might take some fleshing out later as we get into it, but here are the basic stages I think one needs to pass through. At least if I’m allowed to be as thorough as I feel necessary.

Intern Training Outline;
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. Set up Linux Operating System

Yes, I believe the most secure operating system is a Linux system, and a person who is going to operate a business all alone at home, needs to have some basic computer setup and repair skills. Installing Linux alone, or on a multi-boot computer will stand you in good stead the rest of your life. You’ll never be sorry.

2. Become Familiar with Your Computer & Programs

Lots of people are hampered by all they don’t know. It’s possible to struggle along and learn as you go. I did. But how it would speed up your success if someone taught you what are the most important programs, and how to use them to maximum benefit! You also need to know basic things like regular backups, and keeping your computer secure.

3. Become Familiar with the Internet and how to Do Research

Again, something I’ve learned over time, but my work was boosted tremendously once I caught on to much better research skills. Many folks only know how to find certain sites that a friend has introduced them to, and have no idea how to track down whatever they need to know, or how to make purchases securely. Things like that. Your horizons open up like on your first airplane flight once you know how to find whatever you want to know.

4. Learn Good Email Use and Etiquette, and Spam Protection

I’m constantly astonished at how little friends know about all they can do with email aside from hitting Reply. They think they’ve got it all cased once they learn how to include attachments. Huge pictures usually. What about replying in a conversational way, and deleting chunks that do not apply to this particular conversation? How about blind carbon copies? Or automatic signatures? And my big favourite, setting up multiple email accounts in one program, and systematically filing emails you want to save? Not all programs can do all this. You also need to know how to set up your own spam filters.

5. Survey the Many Business/marketing Models

By now my interns will be impatient to start their web businesses, but first I would insist on showing them the many different ways there are to make money online, and which ones are safer, which ones are illegal, and which ones you might dabble in to see where they go. These things are in a fluid state, often changing in a matter of months or just weeks. It’s important to know that although most “programs” to make money are free to sign up initially, that’s just to get your foot in the door and find out how the owner runs things. You really aren’t going to make money until you are ready to invest time and money. Some will suck up more than others! It pays to have mentors here.

6. Brainstorm with Someone and Analyse Your Style - Narrow Down Your Choices to One!

Yes, just one at the start. I think my biggest delay in financial results has been that I had too many interests and spread myself too thin. (Hey that’s why I need interns to take over certain promotional duties for certain businesses, and then more of them can succeed!) So I would brainstorm over several days with my interns, and help them select the business model that would work best for them, and if they have a batch of ideas, insist that they narrow down to just one choice and to give that one choice all they have for at least three months before they take up another.

7. Plot Your Business/site

My novel’s theme site sort of grew like Topsy as I learned and adopted more and more things about business and marketing. Now it is a huge Park, not just a garden any more, of over 600 pages! Plenty of content but it breaks a lot of rules for a successful, focused business. So yes, I understand the value of plotting your business ahead of time. That’s hard to do when you’ve got no previous experience to even know what might work and what won’t. This is where I, or other experienced netpreneurs, can be a huge help to interns! SiteBuildIt! is especially super excellent for this. (Where did you think I learned it?)

8. Learn Some Webmaster Skills

I had to teach myself webmaster skills as I went along because I couldn’t afford to have others do it for me. Now I am super grateful! People who can afford to hire others (or buy SBI) often brag that they don’t need to know any html coding. Maybe not, but if something goes wrong on their site, they have to wait for others to fix it for them. I just dash in there, find the problem-code and fix it myself. If it’s something I have not encountered before, I go do a quick search online, and soon I know how to do it. I like being able to solve my own problems. I would at least want to try to teach my interns this. If they are truly hopeless, well, I might reach the point where I would throw up my hands, but I would warn them that it’s more expensive that way!

9. Build and Develop Your Business

A web business is not finished when you have five or six pages up. Even if all the links work flawlessly. You’re not putting up posters on a wall or a power line pole. You are putting up a business - a legal entity - that must be nurtured and fed and developed. You are always looking for ways to improve or add to your business, and once you have customers or clients, you need to develop those relationships. Many will turn into friends, and friendships take time too.

10. Promote Your Business

Yes, dealing with emails and phone calls about sales to your customers, and often feedback as well, takes time. You will need to set aside hours each day for this part of your business. Each business! The world doesn’t come to your site simply because you have uploaded some web pages. You will need to write articles and post them, add more quality content, information, to your site, and write ezines or newsletters regularly to your contact base to remind them to come back and purchase again. They get busy, they need to be reminded. Of course, you want to find more clients/customers. If your site rides well with the search engines some will come without further effort, but you probably will have to learn to advertise, write press releases, and network with others.

Once my interns have passed through these basic ten stages, and are making money, I can see them getting antsy to resign and go focus on just their own business from home. So I’m bracing myself; I’ll have to recruit new interns and do this all over again!

Have you been meaning to get a SiteBuildIt! subscription, and just didn’t think you could afford it? Well, guess what; Dr. Ken Evoy has been persuaded to have his 2 for 1 sale again until midnight on December 25th. Considering that if you apply your brain and motivation, you can hardly fail with an SBI site. (Have you taken the video tour? VideoTour of SBI) It doesn’t take much to tell 2007 would be a great year for your new web business. SiteBuildIt!

By looking up things, trying various steps, like installing a linux operating system, and working with the programs, and making mistakes and learning from them — I have managed to learn quite a bit about Linux. Or so I tell myself. I’m even considering teaching others.

However, today I’ve discovered, or re-discovered a series of online courses at Linux.org/lessons/ There are three sets,

Getting Started with Linux - Beginner’s Course
Intermediate Level Linux Course
Advanced Linux Course

Short Lessons and How-Tos - Short lessons dealing with specific topics related to using Linux.

I’ve just looked at the index for each and decided that I should make time to work my way through them to make sure I really know as much as I think I do. But because I have many other “irons in the fire” to use an old cliche, it may happen that I only go look when I want to write another blog here on my Linux Learning Curve. So, piecemeal, little by little, I’ll review or share my new discoveries there. Perhaps not touching on each lesson separately, but using this place to record what I do learn.

Now, because my next scheduled entry in this Linux Learning Curve blog is due on Dec. 28, and I expect to take that week off for holidays, it may be January 11, before you see the next entry. I sure hope you can find something else to do in the meantime.

Hey, no reason you shouldn’t go there and get a headstart! Linux.org/lessons/

Merry Christmas & a Blessed New Year!
Ruth

Have you got a full schedule or timetable of what you must get done this month, this week - today? You get to feeling overwhelmed and then fretful, don’t you? Even if others have not laid all those little “jobs” on you to do, if you’ve been planning what you must get done, you want to live up to your own expectations. So in a sense you are the taskmaster that’s driving most of what you want to accomplish, right?

Then when someone else, like a family member, or a committee that you are on, throws yet another thing on you - you want to explode in anger. How dare they lay more expectations on you, when as far as you can see, you won’t get everything done that you feel is your duty and in your goals.

I’m in the midst of such a crisis too. It actually started a few weeks ago, but recently I have taken to committing my daily schedule to the Lord, and I’ve seen some amazing miracles. I counted about seven just yesterday! So let me urge you to do the same. Give Him liberty to remove some things that aren’t really necessary, but ask Him to also provide wisdom and discernment to know which jobs to keep and when to slip them into your busy day.

I’ve had to sacrifice some of my blocks of time temporarily for interruption projects, but I’m astonished at how many nooks and crannies of free time God has found in my timetable, where I can get this and that done. With five and ten minute sessions over meal times, I have made a Teddy bear for a new great-nephew, I altered a fur jacket for someone, I took Dad shopping for a chair he wanted, I sold some copies of my novel! I’ve set up a client on my hosting service, and will do another one right after I finish this blog.

Right now I’m riding on the “high of faith” all these things are giving me. I am not fretting about my schedule this week. I’m laughing as I go! Seems to me, it should work for you too.

This week I’m getting fresh practice in transferring sites to my hosting service for people who don’t know what to do. There are a few key things to keep in mind, and a certain sequence of events to follow. You might want to save this for a time when you’ll be moving your site. Chances are quite good that you will at least once or twice in your life online switch to another host. (Some restless folks do it several times a year).

Assuming you have shopping around or been referred to your new hosting service, you try to determine what special instructions they might have. If they don’t give you any, these generic instructions should work.

1. Evaluate what you have to work with.

Get access to the administrative panel or area of your domain at the new host. Look around for what you are allowed to do. Does it have a backup and restore feature? Is it the same type of admin panel as you have had in the past? cPanel is the best known and most used on the net, but here are others, and some hosts have designed their very own, original system.

2. Backup the current site/location.

If you are switching between hosts who both offer cPanel, you are in special luck. Because you can do a backup in the previous cPanel from which you are moving, and download it to your computer as it does the whole site backup. If you have any databases on your current site, you would do a separate backup of those, but in the same admin area.

3. Restore the site at the new location.

Login to the cPanel at the new host/location. Find the Backup icon or link, and from inside there, Use the “browse” button to find the backed up file on your computer. Click Restore. Do the same for the databases you saved on your computer.

4. Look over your site at the new location.

You want to see whether the site made the transfer complete without errors, so prowl around and try most if not all the pages, to see whether everything is in place. No graphics missing, or error messages, etc.

A few things to remember. Don’t try to change your username and password while you are doing this kind of transfer. You must leave everything intact, and the whole site should be in place exactly as at the old server. When you are sure it it all in order, then you can go change your password. Username - only if you can persuade your host to do that for you at their higher up admin panel.

If either your old or new host don’t have cPanel you will have to do the transfer manually. I’ve tried saving a page from the browser’s File -> Save this Page as… feature. It does a Microsoft trick, in that it saves the web page, AND with it a folder with all the graphics that belong on that page. However, when you look closer at the coding on that page you will find that the links to those graphics have all been dynamically changed to point to that extra folder - which I refer to as it’s suitcase. But on the web that page points to other folders for images, and scripts, etc.

To transfer pages manually

1. You will need to visit each and every web page, right-click on the body, and choose “View Source…” on the fly up menu. A new window opens up with the html coding of the page visible. Highlight and save all that on your computer to your usual html editor, and paste it into a blank document. Then save it to the folder in which you are putting the whole site, making sure that the page names and the directories match exactly what is on the site.

When all done your computer should end up with a mirror copy of the site as it stands on the old host’s server.

2. Now you login to the new host’s cPanel and use the File Manager to upload (especially if the domain’s DNS has not propagated yet), or if you can use ftp login that way, and upload the pages. If any pages were using java scripts, you will have to make sure they come along too, and end up in the right folders.

3. Check to make sure everything is in place; fix the errors you find.

All there? Great! You have transferred your site to a new and hopefully better host.

As you grow in skills and confidence with your website you will entertain thoughts of doing this for others. It may happen gradually, but will likely pick up pace after a while. That’s my experience.

If you’re a webmaster you grow your business by building up your clients’ business sites. In that case you’ll want to know about how to help local businesses get effective sites up. Got Questions?

It would benefit you a lot to become an SBI! Certified Webmaster. To do that, take the FREE … Webmaster BUSINESS Masters Course You’ll also find this of value And yes, we’ll field your Questions.