I get this question from people of all the time. If you are just starting a business, wanting to have an identity online or just looking to find an easy way to manage your own website.

My favorite solution is the wonderful WordPress.  I’m sure if you are reading this you have heard of it and want to know some easy tips to get started.

1) Purchase a domain name.

My advice with this can go a few ways.  It really depends on what you are looking to achieve with the site.  Is it is for a business? Purchase a domain similar to your business name.  If it is for a personal brand? Try to get a domain with your name in it.  For personal brands don’t forget the growing top level extension .me!  Remember, buying a domain name is like buying your real estate online.

Places to buy domain names (I may or may not be an affiliate of some of these)

1&1 domains

Domain Sale! $7.49 .com at GoDaddy

2) Hosting.  This is the place where you control the storage of file, manage email accounts and much more around the domain name.  These companies provide space on a server for you to easily manage your web content.

Check out:

Hostmonster.com Only $5.95 per month

$1.99 Web Hosting at Godaddy

Rackspace.com

I use webfaction and love them!  But it has a more difficult control panel and I wouldn’t suggest it if you are new to setting up a website.

3) Install WordPress.  WordPress.org is the official url for the web software.  There you can download the latest program, read and ask questions in the forum and find out about new features and updates being worked on.  I strongly suggest that you use a hosting company like bluehost.com or godaddy.com because they have made this extremely easy. All you have to do is login and go to your Control Panel all the way down and click in on the WordPress logo.  It will ask you where you want to install it and I suggest installing it to the root.  Which is your main domain.  Not /blog or anything else.  This will allow you to control the content on the actual domain you just purchased. If you do not use one of these easy hosting companies, you will have to create a database on your hosting as well as a MySQL user to have access and privileges.  Things just get confusing from there.

Once you have installed wordpress.  Your hosting company will give you a username and password.  Usually by default it is username: admin password: letters and numbers.  The way you access this is by going to your wordpress admin path.

If you installed it on your root domain it will be www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin.  If you installed it on any sub paths it will be located where ever you installed it plus /wp-admin.

This will take you to your control panel for the entire wordpress site.  NOW YOUR READY TO GO!

4) Set Up.  Looking at the screen you will see a navigation on the left.  It will be dashboard, posts, appearance, plugins…etc.  This will be how you navigate through the different sections of your control panel. I suggest trying to create a “new post” first just to become familiar with the pages and how things work.  It’s really similar to Microsoft Word if you are trying to edit your posts.  WordPress has made it very easy.  You can embed videos, images and even music by just clicking the icons.

5) Appearance.  This is where you can adjust the look of your wordpress page.  Click on theme.  They give you a couple default themes to start with which are basic.  To find different ones you can click the tab “install themes”.  Then type the some preferences and search through the different styles.  Also,  if you want some really cool themes and would like to get a bit more in depth check out woothemes.com, themeforest.net.  Here is a link from Smashing Magazine to find cool free wordpress themes Click Here.  To install these third party themes you simply click upload and select the zip file of the theme on your computer.

Ok.  Now you have a good start.  I hope this helps answer some questions.  If I didn’t answer your question, please feel free to reach out to me at derek[at]makemealive.com or @makemealive_dk

Everyday is a chance to learn something new!

I always hear the issue deterring an entrepreneur from moving on a business idea is, “there was too much competition in the industry.”

There are BILLIONS of people in the world. BILLIONS! It will be almost impossible to find an idea or business that is completely NEW. Plus, I am going to say it again, there are billions of people. I promise there is room for any industry. Especially if your idea is filling a void or niche.

Competitors in an industry allows you to have a launching pad of what to do and not to do.

Your business idea will never please everyone. It is important to find a group it will please and focus on them. Focusing on the big picture will make no one happy or it will just distance you from your market.

I guarantee if your idea is something you like your not alone. Find those people and you will make a difference.

This past Friday, Derek and I had the pleasure of attending the Front-End Design Conference is St. Petersburg, FL.

This was one of the first design conferences that we had been to, so we weren’t sure what to expect. We arrived around 9am and were greeted by a slew of friendly people.. not to mention free coffee and breakfast too! After getting our name tags and swag bags, we made our way into the main room. I sat down in my chair, opened my laptop and noticed I only had about an hour of battery life, and 20% battery life on my iPhone!!! So I was that guy scouring for an outlet and ran his charger across the walkway…

Dan Denny, Front-End Design Conference Founder, kicked off the day by introducing himself, explaining what the conference was all about, and thanking the sponsors. The format of the day was basically two speakers, break, two speakers, lunch, etc…

There were a number of great speakers that were crazy informative and extremely helpful. I’m only going to cover a few, but all were great.

The first one up was Larissa Meek, from AgencyNet, who gave a great presentation on  brainstorming. She covered the difference between idea storming and brainstorming, the pros and cons of individual vs. group sessions, and gave a few great techniques to help you generate ideas. You can view her slides from the presentation here!

Next up was the hilarious Niki Brown from Metropolis Creative! Niki discussed the importance of of details in design including: Color Schemes, Typography, Grids and PLAID! I know she stepped out of her comfort zone by speaking at the conference, but there’s no reason for her to be uncomfortable. She definitely knows her stuff and totally commands a room! Check out her slides from her presentation here.

Lea Alcantara started off her presentation, ” The Art of Self Branding,” with an audience exercise. She instructed us to switch seats and sit next to someone we didn’t know, introduce ourselves and take two minutes to get to know that person. Afterwards, we wrote down three adjectives about the person we just met and disclosed them to each other a little later. I got, ” personable, proactive, and central florida haircut!” Not sure what that last one means, the girl I said it was a good thing, so i guess I’ll take it. The purpose of this exercise was to find out how others perceive us. This was my favorite presentation, because I just finished reading ” Celebrity Branding You,” by Nick Nanton, and could really relate to everything she was saying.

The next presentation was on taking your designs from wireframes to finished products. But, I was too busy staring at Meagan Fisher’s unbelievable slide designs to remember what she talked about (jk)!!

Meagan broke her process down into four categories – Get to know the project, Develop the strategy, Bring it to life, and Make it shine.

Next on the agenda, LUNCH BREAK! Lunch consisted of White Russians, Bloody Mary’s, Burgers, and running in the rain.

When we got back, Jina Bolton, from Crush + Lovely, was setting up for her presentation on CSS Organization & Workflow. My background is primarily in Print Design, and I just started diving into code. Jina was extremely knowledgable, but most of what she covered was over my head. Hopefully next year, I’ll be on the same page!

Sarah Parmenter was up next with a presentation on the Principles of UI Design. I think everyone fell in love with her accent, as soon as she started talking! Sarah discussion was focused mainly on iPhone App design. She went over both good and bad design and showed examples of each, as well as showing us some projects she had worked on.

After the conference was over we headed to the “After Party!” Free appetizers and drinks.. count us in!

Overall, the conference was AMAZING!! Dan and Cherrie you all did a very impressive job putting it all together! We met a ton of great people including Vishal from GrooveShark, and Mitch from Freshbooks. Everyone was soo friendly and you could tell they were actually interested in what you had to say! We look forward to staying in touch with everyone that we met and attending next year’s conference!!

Hi everyone! I know I haven’t been posting for a while but have been super busy running LOOK and getting several projects off the ground. A lot of our new web application projects are moving away from using search engines as a form of marketing but rather using SMO (social media optimization ) to get traffic to websites. This shift in business has lead me to create this post below….

I am somewhat not surprised that our marketing focuses have shifted this way due to the exponential growth of all social media platforms. My favorite one of all is Facebook, since I had been an “early adapter” of this website since it’s inception. Although Facebook has not been consistent in its structure of defining what audience or business model it wants to run, where in most businesses this would mean epic failure, I feel as if facebook has been able to maintain steady growth due to its technological contribution to the social media community. Since my time of using it back in “2003″ by referral of a couple of technologically savvy fraternity brothers… Facebook has grown tremendously in what they are offering.

“Facebook has expanded their audience base to every demographic, from your grandmother to your girl friend’s dog.”

We can now play addictive flash based games all the way to sell our old couch ( that has probably been peed on) to one of your unsuspecting friends…… this is why on March 13th 2010 Facebook is now the number 1 most visited website on the internet daily… Surpassing Google… sorry Google Buzz, you can’t keep up! JUST LOOK AT THE NUMBERS

Feel Free To Disagree… Our MakeMeAlive Readers Love to Have Intellectual Debate! (No Alcohol Required)

We are very excited here at makemealive for www.impressto.com to be launched!  We are looking at spring 2010.  It is set up to be a creative marketplace.

Check out the new promo page here and the video.

www.impressto.com

The Everything Store from Derek Kohn on Vimeo.

Now I know I’m gonna get shit for posting this the to the MakeMealive.com blog. So I’m gonna apologize to Derek, Doug and John ahead of time. Sorry Guys!  And John… I apologize that this post is going to get more viewers than your “seed fund startup investment for gen-y demographic people…   …. … .. . “  = )  but i think this link deserved more than just a tweet and or a facebook post.

Why this webpage www.milliondollarhomepage.com caught my attention is due in large part of my envy for this kid. Here we work 15 hour days developing robust database driven internet apps and this kid creates one f*cking webpage and becomes a millionaire.

I still think this idea was stupid but on the other hand we have to give the creator credit. He understood the value of advertising and the efficiency of internet marketing for advertising revenue and part of me feels like I need to absorb a lesson from stumbling upon such a website. Although I admire his creativity and marketing mind, I still believe paying $1 dollar per pixel for adspace is a tremendous price to pay for such little space. Growing up in a billboard world can really f*ck with your perspective on a business model such as this… Anyways I will come up with a more informative and moving post in my next blog but felt like I wanted to share this with the MakeMeAlive readers.

What does everyone think?! Please comment on this post I am dying to know everyone’s thoughts!

kidding about $100..

If you like whiteboarding, IdeaPaint is a dream come true.   It is also a successful start-up founded by three Babson College undergrads in 2005.  The concept for IdeaPaint came while Jeff Avalon, John Goscha, and Morgan Newman where involved in an intense brainstorming session but had to keep erasing the whiteboard to fit new ideas (hate when that happens).  For three years, with help from chemists, they invented a durable, smooth, and nonabsorbing paint.

The product was first marketed in 2008 at a NeoCon home-furnishing trade show, where it won its Innovation and Gold Awards.   The three founders, all mid-twenties, were first successful in raising angel investment while at college still, and recently raised $5 million from Breakaway Ventures of Boston.