advice – Page 3

Email Marketing Bounces

15th December 2011 Marketing, Web & PC stuff advice, digital, email, Marketing by Matt

Being a marketer today almost certainly means you must have more than a passing familiarity with the digital world; and one of the cornerstones of digital marketing, is the trusty email marketing mailshot. I’ll leave the process of managing your database, segmentation and targeting to other blogs and posts, because this post is going to focus on those things that every marketer hates – email marketing bounces. Effectively, a bounced marketing email is an unsuccessful email that is being returned to the send because it was undeliverable for one reason or another.

However, the story doesn’t stop there, because there are different types of bounced email and understanding what each one is will help future campaigns, as well as providing a more thorough understanding of the customer database and enabling a degree of data cleansing to take place – which will ultimately lead to more effective email marketing in the future.

Fix for RSS Error: WP HTTP Error: name lookup timed out

3rd September 2011 Wordpress advice, fix, solution, wordpress by Matt

I’ve just had a minor hassle trying to sort out the RSS Error on a different site that I maintain, but after searching for a solution online and not finding one, I had to figure out something myself – so I’ve posted my solution here. It’s actually really simple too… so that’s a bonus.

If you use sub-domains with the latest version of WordPress v3.x – and try to use RSS feeds to cross populate them, for some reason, all of a sudden you may start getting this WP HTTP Error. I followed all of the advice online, from consulting with my host, deactivating and re-activating plugins, and re-installing WordPress. Nothing worked.

So, the simple solution is pass to the feeds through an external feed generator/management provider, such as Feedburner. You can still use exactly the same feeds, but as they’re now routed through an external service, WordPress doesn’t seem to have a fit about the redirects any more… and, hey presto, you’re back up and running again.

Agree a date

31st August 2011 Web & PC stuff advice, web links by Matt

I’ve been told about this web site – Agree a Date (http://www.agreeadate.com/) which sounds ideal for trying to coordinate friends and colleagues for various activities. I’m going to add it to my bookmarks and next time I need to organise an event, I’ll be giving it a go!

The difference between sub domains, parked domains and add-on domains

22nd August 2011 Web & PC stuff advice, info, web design by Matt

I still get confused about the differences between sub domains, parked domains and add-on domains… so here’s a handy reference definition:

Sub domain

Lets say your domain is mysite.co.uk
You install a Discusssion Forum and put in in a directory called mysite.co.uk/forum/
You can turn the forum into a sub-domain by adding it as a sub-domain from your Control Panel
Now you can access your forum as either mysite.co.uk/forum OR forum.mysite.co.uk
This generally costs you nothing and is free.

Parked Domain

You have two domains mysite.co.uk and my-other-site.co.uk
mysite.co.uk is the domain of your website and you want to add my-other-site.co.uk
You want them both to go to the same place. In other words, when someone types either www.mysite.co.uk or www.my-other-site.co.uk they will go to the same page(s) on your website.
In order to have additional parked domains you need to purchase them from a registry.

Add-On Domains

You have two domains mysite.co.uk and my-other-site.co.uk
You want the two domains to be totally separate/independent websites
In order to have additional add-on domains you need to purchase them from a registry.

Disable directory browsing

11th August 2011 Web & PC stuff advice, web, web design by Matt

If, like me, you like to play around with your web site – occasionally you’ll accidentally break it, as I have. This latest time, I disabled the directory browsing on my site to increase security, but the way that I tried to do it through the cpanel index manager, left my whole site inaccessible.

So that I remember next time I do this… I’ve written the instructions down here.

Great idea – home made paper plant pots!

28th July 2011 Green, YouTube advice, green, youtube by Matt

I came across this video today and thought it was a great idea to be green, save money and recycle unwanted paper – make your own plant pots!

Interrupted plugin update solution

28th July 2011 Web & PC stuff advice, fix, wordpress by Matt

I’ve just had a mini heart attack after accidentally interrupting a plugin update in wordpress and being presented with “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute” whenever I try and access the front or back end of my WordPress site. After much frantic searching online, I found a simple solution – just delete the .maintenance file from the root folder of your WordPress installation. You can do this easily with your FTP client, or if like me you’re just using the Cpanel file manager, then make sure that when you start up the file manager – you select to show the hidden files (it’s a tick box otpion), so that you can see the .maintenance file in the first place.

More webmaster tools

16th July 2011 Design, Web & PC stuff advice, tools, web by Matt

Continuing on from my last post about domain name alternatives (HERE), there are other tools freely available online that should be part of any webmaster’s toolbox. This post will include links to the ones that I use most frequently and have found easiest to use.

There’s no point in struggling through with your web site, you may as well take advantage of the free resources that are available to you – and there are lots! All you need to know is where to look for them.

Domain name suggestions

15th July 2011 Design, Hosting, Web & PC stuff advice, domains, tools, web by Matt

So, you’ve decided you want to have your own web site – either for a personal blog, interest site, or some business venture (or whatever else) and now you need to decide on the domain name that you want. Unfortunately, there’s quite a lot of other people that have had exactly the same idea and there’s increasing competition for the best web names out there.

Even if you’ve decided on a really cool name, it may already have been taken by someone else that has launched their own web site – or could have been secured by a cyber-squatter, who’s going to try and charge an exorbitant amount to allow you to take it…. so, what’s the alternative?

Good plugin: WordPress Socializer

22nd June 2011 Wordpress advice, plugins, tools, wordpress by Matt

I’ve come across another good plugin that I like and have decided to add to my site(s) – it’s called the WP Socializer.

It’s an all-in-one plugin that includes links to all of the popular social networking / media web sites, but importantly, it allows a fair amount of customisation too. If you click on the full version of this post, you can see the plugin in effect, with the email, print, facebook, linkedin and twitter icons appearing rather faintly just at the top of the post.