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!

Through the major downtime and outage of Tumblr yesterday we learned a lot about Tumblr’s dedication.  Meaning that, through out the entire process they utilized other social outlets to update, apologize and remain in contact with the user base.  The average user does not relate, care or understand a database cluster outage.  They understand words like growing pains and assurance that they are working diligently to remedy the issue.  Tumblr remained transparent and did a good job to explain to the users that they value them.

Being down for an entire day is no small issue.  That is a long downtime and could really crush the development of most projects.  Tumblr came out on the other side seeing how much people really care about there platform and how loyal there user base truly is.

Late yesterday, Founder David Karp posted on the Tumblr staff blog.  “We can’t apologize enough, nor can we thank you enough for putting up with these growing pains. We know how impossibly frustrating it is to see your work offline. But please always know that we truly care about your work as much as you do, and we have an incredibly capable team working incredibly hard to take good care of it. Sorry we let you down today.”

Tumblr is growing at an extremely fast pace and scaling issues are bound to happen.  I believe this issue will better prepare them for future issues and there user base is going to stay loyal.

What do you think?

Tumblr is down for now about 15 hours and counting. When you go to tumblr.com the above image is displayed. This poses as a major problem for all those people who apparently live on the site.
The outrage has been taken to twitter where hashtags like #givememytumblrbackPLEASE are pouring out. I have always been a fan and believed that tumblr was on to something great. I truly didn’t realize how much they have gained ground over the past year. But apparently have some major growing pains. The site being down this long is not small issue.
Some people are loving the blackout. WhenTumblrIsDown.com is poking at the outage and making some money off of it as well by posting google adwords to the landing page.  Good for you.

Why do you think that tumblr is experiencing that long outage?  Do you feel it will effect its growth?

Flavors.me launched early this year and has felt positive growth instantly.  The site was developed by HiiDef Inc. which is an incubator startup for a few other creative web projects and founded by former Vimeo exec Jonathan Marcus and David Marcus.

The majority of users utilizing the internet these days, as a social platform, have multiple profiles from various sites.  The issue is that, to manage and stay relevant to the users, they have to go to the different services to update and stay connected.  Flavors.me is a solution and the ultimate goal in the social platform to create one internet presence, which spans and pulls together all the social services.

So how has Flavors.me positioned themselves for instant success?  Simple,  they solved a common problem and created a solution for potentially millions of people.  The site is extremely simple and a user can create a beautiful presence in 10 min. “CODE FREE!”  They are not adding to the problem with more social platforms.  They are simply utilizing existing API’s to create an organized social presence for any user, without the constraints of not knowing HTML/ CSS.

Of coarse there are plenty of other sites out there that pull your web presence to one place. But nothing this slick and simple and your end result is really cool.  Unlike other similar services out there, Flavors has created a platform that is scalable to cover the complete other side of the social profile management issue.  Hint, sites like threadsy.com

Flavors.me launched early this year and has felt positive growth instantly.  The site was developed by HiiDef Inc. which is an incubator startup for a few other creative web projects and founded by Vimeo exec Jonathan Marcus and David Marcus.

Find my Flavors… http://flavors.me/derekkohn

Bands are a dime a dozen these days. Today’s technology makes it easier then ever to record a song, shoot and edit a music video, and publish it to the web. So what’s gonna make you / your band stand out from the rest… a CREATIVE idea!

Take for instance, Atomic Tom’s brilliant Guerilla Marketing video. These guys shot a music video on NYC train using their iPhones as both video cameras and ALL OF THEIR INSTRUMENTS! The concept behind this video is genius on soo many levels.

The video starts off saying that all the band’s instruments were recently stolen. If that’s true.. way to improvise. Creativity often comes from restraint. I had never seen instrument apps being put to practical use. Impromptu performances on a NYC train are nothing new. An impromptu performance using your iphone as a microphone, piano, guitar, bass, drum kit, and video camera, definitely is! Is this the end of physical instruments? Did the iPhone kill the instrument like video killed the radio star?? Regardless, this is an awesome example of how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. And not for nothing, Apple should be using this video as their new commercial and paying the band for it!

Atomic Tom and Universal Records could have spent a small fortune buying print ads in magazines, airtime on radio stations, or tv commercials. Instead they embraced the new face of marketing and went viral. Prior to the ” Take Me Out, ” release, the majority of their YouTube videos didn’t have many plays at all. This video currently stands at 1.3 million views!!! They gained 210,000 plays over the course of me writing this… you can’t pay for that type of publicity! For example, until this morning I had never of these guys and now I’m blogging about them and have sent the video link to at least 20 friends. Who I’m sure sent it to at least 10 of their friends, posted on their Facebook wall, tweeted about, so on and so on. You need to allow your fans, clients, whoever, to take your photos, songs, videos, etc… and repost them at will! Restricting your content to just your website or YouTube channel only hurts you. You should make it as easy as possible for your audience to redistribute your content for free and not only will they be back with credit cards in hand, so will their friends. Case in point: I saw Atomic Tom’s video on my friend’s Facebook wall this morning, googled the band, landed on their MySpace, listened to some more of their music, and finally clicked a link to buy the album from iTunes.

Whatever your industry, you need to set yourself apart from the crowd and cultivate an audience. And you don’t need to spend a fortune to do so. All you have to do, is put your thinking cap on and eat a huge bowl of creativity for breakfast!

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!!

The day has come…. it is Quit Facebook Day possibly attempting to overshadow the day americans are respecting our troops!?
It started a few weeks ago when facebook privacy settings and user capabilities became a larger issue then before. Privacy issues have slowly been an ongoing concern but now it may be crossing the line for some users.  When we look at facebooks future goals, user privacy becomes a major concern. I am all for other social networking options and believe facebook is developing a strong hold on our socializing thru the internet. Especially, because of there recent patent filings (i e newsfeeds).
Let’s be serious though. This boycott isn’t going to make even a small dent in facebook users today. There are way to many sheeps with blinders on these days. If you can reach a majority audience, there are so many who follow without question. I am willing to explore other alternative social media options, although as of now nothing compares to Facebook.
What do you think about this facebook boycott? Is it necessary?
Do you feel facebook cares about your information?

I have been looking for simpler ways to manage my life online.  I currently have about 5 email accounts that I manage through my email client.  I have all my social network accounts and some of those I even have multiple accounts for.

Even talking about it makes me want to pull my hair out!  I am looking for a simpler way to do all this with out it intruding my day to day too much.

After looking around I ran into Threadsy.com.

Threadsy is a social communications platform based out of San Fransisco, CA and founded by Rob Goldman and Udi Nir.  They received there series A funding in 2008 and have been dedicated to developing the most user friendly communication tool since. It recently opened its doors for beta testing by the public.

The goal of Threadsy is to group together all of your email, twitter and facebook accounts into a real time social communication interface right in your browser.  I have found it to be the best designed UI for on the web for this application.  The only downside I have found at this point is that it doesn’t include anything for tumblr and a few other key social networks.  I am sure they will scale to that in the future.

I am very impressed and will continue to use it.  Check it out today and let me know your thoughts.

Well… not exactly. The social media giant announced yesterday, at their F8 conference, that they will be doing away with the Facebook Connect name / brand. Open Graph, a new protocol and API, will be replacing the FB Connect.

This new feature will allow users to integrate other websites and web applications into their Facebook profile! The first major companies to jump on board are Microsoft, Yelp, and Pandora. Previously, sites that used Facebook Connect were only able to store users information for 24 hours. Now, these websites and companies will be able to store your data for longer and use this information to better analyze their audience. For instance, if I were to post on Facebook that I love pizza, Yelp would be able to pull this information and use it to both gear “pizza” related ads at me and better filter my search results when I’m looking for a place to eat!

Another cool feature Facebook has already started implementing, is the “Like,” button. Obviously, you’ve been able to “like” friend’s status updates, photos, and comments on facebook. Now, the “Like” button is being added to a ton of websites. So if you like an article,  photo, or whatever on a particular website, you can now like it and it will be shared with friends on Facebook.

I like the idea of websites being able to customize my online viewing experience, by analyzing my Facebook data. Rather than having to sort thru all the bullshit on a site, it will be tailored to my interests! One concern some people are going to have is, privacy. From what I understand, privacy will be the users responsibility. Meaning that it’s up to users to select what information that want shared and with who. I’ve accepted the fact the we live in a VERY public world now. And whether we like it or not, our information is constantly being gathered from a variety of sources. Nothing is private anymore…We’re constantly on camera whether we know it or not. Pictures you don’t even know your in end up on Facebook, including pictures you would never want certain people to see! Everyone has turned paparazzi with their camera phones! So I’m embracing this new “public” lifestyle and patiently awaiting my 15 minutes of fame!

What do you think about Open Graph? Are you concerned about your privacy?

]]> http://www.makemealive.com/2010/04/22/no-more-facebook-connect/feed/ 0 http://www.makemealive.com/2010/04/05/lil-wayne-speaks-from-jail/ http://www.makemealive.com/2010/04/05/lil-wayne-speaks-from-jail/#comments Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:44:08 +0000 makemealive_dk http://www.makemealive.com/?p=860

I was a little bit late on this one….

Lil Wayne is no stranger to social media and the power of the internet.  Being known as one of the mix tape kings and the most friend requested artists on myspace.  Coming soon Lil Wayne is writing a blog for ESPN sharing his passion of sports.

We all know that Lil Wayne has been sentenced to a year in prison for possession of weapons charges.  His team set him up with a blog to speak to his fans while locked up.   I wanted to introduce you to the FREE WEEZY campaign going on during his time in the slammer.

The place is called WeezyThanxYou.com, where he posted his first blog Friday April 2nd.  In it, he writes, “During my prison stint, I want my fans to know I love you. I want all of you to know that I appreciate all the mail I get, and this is my way of saying thank you. The F is for Family, Friends, and Fans.”

He also talks about how you will be able to view his blog on ESPN very soon and tells Young Money to hold it down for him.

You can also buy a FREE WEEZY shirt for $29.99 on the site.  Which I think is expensive.  You gotta see it.  I’m sure if you are a die hard Wayne fan it is worth it.  Doug that is for you bro.

I bet your wondering how the hell does he get to have a blog in prison???!

Karen Civil who works in artist and social media for his label says he will not be doing much twitter or myspace updates from prison.  He hand writes his blogs and they are typed out and posted by the label.  We can also expect a few new releases by the artist while in jail.  So look out for Weezy making sure his fans are still connected.

This all just proves the importance of artists and there fans and how social media has played such an important part in the evolution of the music industry.

What’s your thoughts?? Who is gonna buy a FREE WEEZY tee???