Reviews Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™

September 30, 2010

Making Headway, and 5 Reasons Why I’m Switching WordPress Themes

Yes, I am making headway, though not always as fast as I’d like.

The big problem with being multi-passionate and always having a lot of balls in the air is that there’s simply not enough time to do everything I want to do, when I want to do it.

Case in point: I recently finished a website redesign for Susan Fox of a.i.m high coaching, using the Headway premium WordPress theme (affiliate link). I’ve been wanting to switch my own site over to Headway since I bought it months back, but never got around to it, and now I’m absolutely itching – itching, I tell you – to dive in and redo my site in Headway!

But with my street festival coming up in just over a week, client deadlines (art, design and copywriting projects at the moment) and guest blog posts to write, it simply does not make sense for me to spend the better part of an afternoon or evening (or knowing me, more like a day [or week..] or two…) digging into a site redesign. Even if I keep the basic layout essentially the same. (And being a designer, of course I’m always eager for a site overhaul.)

So I rein myself in and try to stay focused on the tasks at hand.

Soon, though, soon…

And why, you ask, would I switch from Thesis, a rockin’ WordPress theme if ever there was one, over to Headway?

Several reasons:

1) Drag and drop WYSIWIG editing functionality

No foolin’, this is da bomb!

Check it out: the image here (click to get a larger view) shows the Headway Visual Editor in action.

You see the site you’re building, as you’re building it.

People, for folks like me who are not native to the Land of Techie-Geek, this is seriously awesome!

Yes, it does have its own learning curve, and it’s not always as intuitive as I’d like (for example, you have to remember click “Enable Header Rearranging” before rearranging the header – doh!), but you can literally drag Leafs (content boxes – which come in various types), nav bar buttoms, etc. to create your layout.

No fussing with code.

That said, as with all things web-related, the more HTML and CSS you know, the better off you’ll be, but you do not – I repeat do not – have to be a code whiz to use this theme.

Can I tell you this rocks?

Headway also makes site-wide changes to fonts and colors super-easy – just select the item you want to edit in the Element Selector, and a panel drops down where you can change all the specifics. And because your site is showing as you edit, you don’t have to switch over to a new window to see the result.

Coolness!

2) Flexibility

Unlike with Thesis, Headway allows me to easily make every page on my blog or website different, if I so desire. If I want a different header on each page, or a different page layout, I don’t have to be (or hire) a code jockey to make that happen. Just click a few settings, and shazam!

Very cool.

3) Cost-benefit for developers

This was probably the kicker for me, the thing that pushed me over the edge to buy Headway when I already owned and used Thesis.

Here’s the deal: with Thesis, every time I want to use the theme to create a site for a client, I have to pay an additional license fee. Not so with Headway. The theme is now an asset that I can leverage to earn more money.

The ultimate of coolness.

4) Support

Thesis is known for having an amazing support community, and it does. But Headway‘s support forum and direct support has been awesome so far. One tweet about building a client site in Headway brought a reply from Grant Griffiths, the developer himself, asking if I had any questions. When I tweeted back that I’d be asking some in the user forums, he told me to email him directly.

So I did, and he answered my question within minutes.

Now I don’t expect Grant Griffiths to be on call for my questions at all times, day or night, but I was pretty impressed with that level of concern about his users. All businesses should be so customer-focused.

In addition, the Headway website has a whole slew of tutorial videos, so getting up to speed is as painless as possible.

5) A full suite of other great features

From the Headway website:

Behind the oh-so-pretty Visual Layout Editor is a throbbing settings engine for Headway Configuration. This lets you get at settings that are “behind the scenes,” so you can change what you want. Headway Configuration has several tabs, so let’s take a look at what’s under the hood:

General Tab: Contains main blog settings for feeds, Google Analytics or other scripts, and more.
Styling/Features: If you want to disable the Visual Design Editor, then you can change your style and font settings here, via drop-downs and checkboxes. If the Visual Design Editor is enabled (the default), there’s nothing to see here. Carry on.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tab: Headway has the most thorough SEO features of any premium theme… all without any additional plugins. Here you can manage various kinds of page titles, description meta tags, nofollow settings, noindex settings, and more to boost your search engine rankings.
[Want more specifics on why Headway is so awesome with SEO? See this page on the Headway website.]
Social Networking Tab: Here you can integrate your Twitter account into your blog without extra plugins to bog down your blog’s page load times. You can have your tweets automatically appear in a leaf on the blog, and automatically tweet your new blog posts to Twitter as soon as they’re published.
Headway Permissions Tab: Have a multi-author blog or a team of designer/developers? Set their permissions for how much of Headway’s power they can access. You get to choose what type of user account (administrator, editor, etc.) has permission to see and use the various Headway tools, such as the Visual Design Editor or Headway Configuration. No other premium theme has these capabilities built in.

Put these 5 points together, and it only made sense to make the switch… but of course I haven’t done so quite yet…

Unless there’s a good reason not to do so, I’m building all new client sites in Headway, and as soon as I can liberate some time from my current pressing deadlines, I’ll be buckling down to redo Living A Creative Life in Headway too. (In other words, don’t be surprised it you see a new design here sometime in the not-too-distant future…)

And now I’m curious: if you’re running WordPress, what theme do you use on your blog? What do you like about it, what you don’t like about it?

(And if you don’t have a blog or website and need one, I’m accepting new clients, so shoot me an email.)

September 7, 2010

7 reasons why my hero is a car thief: Chris Guillebeau & The Art of Nonconformity

I admit it: my hero is a car thief.

Well, okay, a former car thief, but still.

Who is my hero? Chris Guillebeau, whose Unconventional Book Tour for his new book, The Art of Nonconformity, starts today.

Okay, the car thief part is a bit inflated, though Chris did indeed steal a car at age 15, a tidbit I learned in a Question the Rules (affiliate link) interview. What he’s done in the intervening years, though, is a lot more interesting than this sensationalist factoid.

And truth be told, I have a lot of heroes, both the long-dead kind (Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, Sojourner Truth, to name a few) and the contemporary kind (Gloria Steinem and Jill Robinson spring to mind).

But Chris occupies a special place in my pantheon of heroes for a few simple reasons:

1) Timing

(Mundane, but true, and the only reason that has nothing to do with Chris. Timing may not be everything, but it’s a big thing.)

When I first discovered Chris and his blog, The Art of Nonconformity, my life was at a turning point. I’d tolerated “pretty good, but not what I really, really want” for years, but a series of personal crises had gotten me to a place of desperation. I was finally ready to make a change, but I had no idea how.

Right at that moment, this guy appeared on my radar who was actually living what he really, really wanted. Not settling for what the world told him he could get, but dreaming big, and really going after his dreams.

And making a living at it, to boot!

Chris showed that maybe what I really, really wanted was possible after all. I was primed to listen and learn.

2) He’s a beacon for the rest of us

Chris isn’t just living the life he wants; he’s also leading the way for all of us who want to live the lives we want. His writing, his impressive line of Unconventional Guides (affiliate link) – all are crafted to help people with big dreams to make them reality.

Chris first shows you that it can be done, and then helps you do it.

3) He makes his own rules

From stealing a car (okay, probably not something to try at home), to dropping out of high school yet still graduating with two bachelor’s degrees in two years, to volunteering in Africa for four years, to creating several profitable online businesses, to setting a goal of visiting every country on the planet by the time he turns 35 (at the time of this writing, he’s at 149/192), to creating a massive following and thriving business through generosity, to self-funding a 63-city book tour, Chris has never done things by the book.

4) He goes after big goals

Did I mention his goal of visiting every country in the world by his 35th birthday? And writing a book? Then there’s the World Domination Summit he’s in the middle of organizing, to bring like-minded nonconformists together in one place for a few days.

Oh, and I think changing the world counts as a pretty big goal.

5) He models generosity

It’s all very well to create the life you really, really want and step on people along the way. Or to make a fortune from exploiting people. Chris is just the opposite.

Not only is he generous with his time (he gave me a fantastic Thriving Artists Project interview), his energy (did I mention 4 years of volunteer work in Africa?), and his information (unlike some people I know, Chris is not tight-fisted here), but he’s generous with his money as well.

The Unconventional Guides affiliate program (yep, that’s an affiliate link), which has paid me back and then some for all of the courses I’ve purchased from him, has a 51% commission – the most generous I’ve seen.

But that’s not all: Chris is donating 20% of all royalties from the sale of The Art of Nonconformity to the AONC partner project with Charity: Water for at least 12 months following publication. And for each reader he meets who purchases the book during the Unconventional Book Tour or World Domination Summit events, he will donate an additional 80% of his royalties, for a total of 100%.

Is this guy cool, or what?

6) He’s a model of running a profitable business ethically, and with customer service that cannot be beat

So this one is kind of embarrassing (for me, not for Chris).

Months back, I wrote a review of the $100 Business Forum, an online course that Chris ran with Pam Slim. The course was top-notch, but I found the Ning platform they were using frustrating. I was writing my review late at night, when I was tired and cranky, and, well, I clicked “publish” when I would have been a lot better off sleeping on it and reading it again with the objectivity that a good night’s sleep can bring.

When you’re tired and cranky, sometimes you don’t realize how much it infects everything you write…

The next morning I woke up to a personal email from Chris, and a complete refund for my course tuition.

Needless to say, I felt awful, and I immediately purged the gratuitous crankiness from the review.

(I also made a mental note to never publish a review when I’m tired and cranky.)

And Chris instantaneously became my Customer Service Hero, because I realized that with that $100, he had bought himself a customer for life. And isn’t that what all of us business people want?

7) He doesn’t let fear stop him

On page 59 of The Art of Nonconformity, Chris shares a few of his fears:

I’m only on chapter 3. Will I ever finish writing this book?
What if it sucks? What if I get bad reviews? (Or worse, what if no one pays attention?)
I’m afraid of the forces of mediocrity and lethargy. I’m afraid of becoming too comfortable or getting lazy.
When I travel, I’m afraid of trying to speak another language.
Sometimes I feel paralyzed. People say they want to travel with me, and I think, “Oh no–then they would figure out that it’s not always that exciting.”
I’m afraid that people will think I’m faking it.
I’m scared of getting older and missing out on something I should have already done. (In the words of John Mayer, “I’m only good at being young.”)

Did you see the one about being afraid of trying to speak another language? Yet Chris has been to 149 countries (and counting).

Rock on.

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In short, Chris is my hero because he inspires me, and helps me believe that I can set big goals and achieve them too.

Would you like to be inspired? Do you want to set your own rules, live the life you want, and change the world? (And help out a great cause at the same time.) If you’ve ever thought, “There must be more to life than this,” The Art of Nonconformity is for you. It’s an easy read, but the kind of book you’ll want to go back to again and again.

In the words of Tyler Tervooren from Advanced Riskology, it’s How To Change The World for $10.08.

You can’t get better than that!

PS – I also recommend catching up with Chris in person on his Unconventional Book Tour. If you make it to the San Francisco stop, I’ll see you there!

June 3, 2010

Review: Scribe SEO

So the other day I fell victim to was inspired by a soon-to-be-ending promotion to try out a product I’d been lusting after for awhile: Scribe SEO.

Aside from resonating with the name (being a calligrapher, after all), this search engine optimization software just looked totally cool. It analyzes the content of web pages, blog posts, online press releases, or any other web content at the click of a button, and (get this) tells you how to tweak your content to get better search engine rankings and more traffic!

Yeah, I thought, but it’s just one more monthly expense, when I’m trying to cut back on expenses.

But then I got an email that a special promo (the largest Advanced Plan usually $97/month (ack!) for only $27 a month) was about to end.

Oy. What’s a girl to do?

Well, this girl decided to bite the bullet and try it, and is she ever glad she did.

I installed Scribe SEO as a plug-in on this blog (it plugs right into WordPress, but you can also use it on any website, plus you can integrate it into the Drupal and Joomla control panels), and started testing it out.

How does it work? Well, so far I’ve only used it in the WordPress Edit Post panel, where it’s a snap. Once you’ve written your post, you just need to create a custom title tag, meta description and meta keywords (either in a premium theme, such as Thesis or Headway, or in fields provided by the free “All In One SEO Pack” plug-in).

Then click the “Analyze” button, and voilá: your copy is rated with a percentage score, and you get analysis and recommendations for how to improve your findability.

Check out a screen shot of this post so far, analyzed for the keywords “SEO” and “scribe.”

Screenshot: Scribe SEO — Click on image to enlarge

Scribe SEO makes it so easy! It tells you exactly what you need to do to improve your results.

I was kinda anxious about signing up, but already I can tell I’ll get way more value from this product than the money I put into it.

If this sounds like something you could use, you might want to act fast, because the promo dealie ends Friday.

Here’s the deal:

With PROMO27, you get 300 monthly evaluations (the largest Advanced Plan) for only $27 a month. The Advanced Plan is usually $97 a month, so this is some serious savings.

Here’s how to get that great deal before time runs out:

Head over to the Scribe site to check out the demo videos, testimonials, and all the ways Scribe makes SEO copywriting simple.
When you’re ready, go to the Plans and Pricing page.
Select the Advanced Plan on the far left and click Sign Up.
Create an account, and click Register.
In the Promo Code field on the next page, enter PROMO27.
Once you’ve completed your purchase, you’ll see you’ve been subscribed to the Advanced Plan for $27 per month instead of the usual $97. (AND, if you sign up for a full year in advance, you’ll save even more – $259 instead of $324. That’s a $65 savings!)

Remember, the code PROMO27 is the key to the deal, so don’t forget to enter it. But it won’t work after 5:00 p.m. Central on Friday, June 4, 2010, so hurry (because they’ll never be offering this deal again).

If you do get Scribe SEO, let me know. I’d love to compare notes!

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*Disclosure: If you buy Scribe SEO through any of the links in this post, I’ll get some affiliate income, and will be forever grateful. If you don’t buy at all, or you buy through another link, I’ll never know, so don’t lose sleep over it.

May 26, 2010

The $100 Business Forum vs. The Empire Building Kit

If you’ve read much on this blog, you’ll have figured out that I tend to dive into things head first. Case in point: I’m actually doing Chris Guillebeau and Pam Slim’s $100 Business Forum and Chris Guillebeau’s Empire Building Kit at the same time.

Insane? Maybe. Not only do both of the courses require time and attention, but many of the same lessons and business principles are covered in both.

However, I actually really like the duplication of info. I was in the first group of emperors to buy into the EBK, and we’re now on day 50. The May $100 Business Forum started on May 10, several weeks into the EBK for me, and I’m benefiting a ton from having the concepts I learned in the EBK reinforced by the $100 Business Forum and presented from new perspectives.

Pam talks about things differently than Chris does, and let’s face it, business concepts are obviously not my natural strength, or I’d be rich by now. I can use all the help I can get! Plus there have been some fantastic interviews and coaching calls that are totally different from what I’m getting from the EBK.

If you’re considering these courses, what’s the main difference?

The EBK is daily emails from Chris, PLUS a bunch of video interviews with, and PDF case studies of, a wide variety of unconventional entrepreneurs, PLUS video tips from Chris. It’s a full year of lessons, but there’s no real community component. You get an email from Chris every day, but other than that, you’re on your own.

The $100 Business Forum, on the other hand, is much shorter, at only 28 days, but more structured and intense. There’s a lesson each day, with homework (examples: a personal SWOT review: list your personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats [day 4]; how to develop business ideas; and much more), PLUS occasional coaching calls with Pam and/or Chris, which offer an opportunity for direct feedback if you can be on the call (plus you can listen to the recording if you can’t). Because of its group forum format, you also get to interact with other attendees, which is extremely valuable (even though it’s an imperfect system for doing so — see yesterday’s post for more detail).

Upshot? Two great courses = exponential growth.

(And probably not enough sleep.)

Anyone else out there doing both? What are your thoughts?

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*Disclosure: If you buy a product or course through any of the links in this post, I’ll get some affiliate income, and will be forever grateful. If you don’t buy at all, or you buy through another link, I’ll never know, so don’t lose sleep over it.

May 25, 2010

A review of the $100 Business Forum (and how architecture affects community)

First, a story

(Which has nothing to do with the $100 Business Forum, but bear with me, because it will.)

I’ll never forget when my family loaded up our VW bus and drove across the SF Bay to move me into the UC Berkeley dorms for the first time.

Because I was a Regents’ Scholar, Cal would have paid full freight if I’d had financial need, but I only qualified for a merit check of something like $500 a year. However, the scholarship gave me something that was even more valuable than the $$ and the free pass into the graduate stacks in the library: a low lottery number for Cal’s impacted dorms.

In fact, I got assigned a room in what was sometimes lovingly, and sometimes enviously called “the country club on the hill,” a former school for the deaf and blind that had only recently been bought by Cal and converted into (very posh) dorms.

My brother, who’d suffered through 2 years of cinderblock living at Brown by this point, took one look at my very sweet suite (2 double bedrooms, huge bathroom, furnished living/dining room, full-sized kitchen [sans fridge, stove or oven]) and exclaimed:

“She gets to have this as a freshman? That is so unfair!”

I just beamed smugly as I shlepped my stereo and clothes into my new abode.

Sweet, yes? But the funny thing was that I spent most of my time in another building a few minutes away, where students lived in more typical dorm accommodations: rooms along a long hallway with a unisex bathroom at one end and a social room at the other.

Why? One word: community.

Architecture affects community

My building, which was made up of self-contained suites, had a much weaker sense of community than the building where everyone bumped into each other on the way to the bathroom, and where if you wanted to watch TV you had to trudge down the hall to the community room.

When people are essentially required to interact, it turns out, they do so much more (and hence build tighter bonds) than when interaction is a choice, or (even more so) requires jumping through hoops.

(I got further validation of how architecture affects social interactions during my senior year, when I was in an honors thesis group with a woman who was researching college student sexuality. Some of the colleges she studied offered no communal meeting place on the dorm floor, which meant the only place for visiting friends to sit down was the hard desk chair, the floor, or the bed.

Can you guess what this led to?

When forced to entertain in your bedroom, on your bed, the entertaining tends to lead in certain directions…

And then colleges complain that students are too sexually active. Right.)

What this has to do with the $100 Business Forum

When I signed up for the May $100 Business Forum, a 28-day internet course facilitated by Chris Guillebeau and Pam Slim, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I had visions of developing a community of fellow “lifestyle entrepreneurs.”

The course, which is half-way through as I write this, has been filled with excellent info for starting and growing a small business. Every day, either Pam or Chris put a specific lesson up on the board, sometimes with an accompanying video or mp3, and usually with a series of steps for participants to think and write about. There are live coaching calls with Pam (worth more than the $100 alone, especially if you’re one of the question-askers!), and we’re invited to share our thoughts in writing on the forum, and to reply to others’ posts.

All of this is great, and I’m getting excellent value for my $100. If you’re looking to build or grow a business, are looking for some group “coaching” with an opportunity to interact a bit with some very savvy coaches who are themselves online business people, you’ll get a lot from this course. I give it four 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

In fact, the only reason I’m not giving the $100 Business Forum a full 5 stars is nothing to do with the course itself — which is outstanding — but with the architecture. In this case it’s not physical buildings, but rather the platform on which the $100 Biz Forum is hosted: Ning.com.

Pam and Chris acknowledged in a video in the first week of the course that Ning has its pros and cons. I don’t know why they decided to go with this platform rather than an actual forum, with threaded comments, but presumably they had good reasons, because these two are sharp cookies, and have built their reputations on the excellent value they offer with their courses and products.

However, I have found it fascinating that Ning’s features (or lack thereof) have affected social interaction of participants of the course, in much the same way that my college dorm affected the social interactions of the residents.

How unthreaded comments are like a sweet suite

Let me be clear: the daily lessons are excellent. My complaints do not take away from the outstanding value the $100 Business Forum offers. I’m very glad I bought this course, and if you could use a little guidance in starting or growing your own business, the $100 Business Forum is a great place to start.

The information that Pam and Chris share is top notch (and the bonus interviews with guests Jonathan Fields and Charlie Gilkey were fantastic, as were Pam’s coaching calls). These two are generous and knowledgeable, and getting a chance to learn from them is worth way more than the $100 I paid.

However, I have to admit it’s been more challenging than I expected to develop the community I was hoping for, due to the simple fact that comments are not threaded.

What does this mean? It means that responses to any given topic or topic reply are scattered all over the site.

It means that if your reply to a topic shows up on page 1, my reply to your reply may not appear until page 6. Or 15. Or 21.

It means that if you want to follow a topic thread, you have to spend hours searching through hundreds of posts to find any responses.

It means that if someone responds to you, unless you search every page of every topic, you may never know.

It’s a lot like living in a self-contained suite at the “country club dorm on the hill” rather than a “bathroom down the hall” dorm: rubbing elbows with other residents requires a lot more work.

If I had unlimited time to spend on the $100 Business Forum, this would be less of a problem (though still annoying). But of course, like most people taking the course, I don’t have unlimited time. And it’s just enough of a hassle to find specific posts and replies that I’m not participating as much as I would have liked.

Accepting responsibility… but still whining a bit

Ultimately, I take full responsibility for this: I’m the one choosing not to spend my time wading through unthreaded posts. But if I had my druthers, the $100 Business Forum would be hosted on a venue that made things easier.

Yes, you can set your email filters to notify you of replies to any particular topic or reply, but the notification emails just tell you that So-and-So replied to Such-and-Such topic, not what is in the reply, nor whether they replied to you, so you have to click through to read it. Eye-rollingly annoying.

(Not to mention the fact that with notifications on, your daily $100 Biz Forum emails will spiral into double or triple digits very quickly. Yikes!)

Does all of this mean that a $100 Business Forum participant can’t still build a community? No, absolutely not! I’ve made a few connections that I’m really excited about. It just requires jumping through more hoops, and spending more time, than I expected. (Imagine: there are 150 participants in this course, plus Chris and Pam, and everyone is encouraged to post and reply to others’ posts every day. Even if there were threaded comments, that’s a lot of reading, and without a way to efficiently follow threads it’s kind of overhwelming.)

Chris and Pam suggest spending 20 minutes a day on the Forum. With the vast number of responses to each daily lesson (plus the community bulletin board posts, which are also not threaded), 20 minutes barely scratches the surface, and unfortunately there’s no good way to skim in order to find the messages that might be of most interest. (At least none that I’ve discovered. Perhaps someone whose neurons fire in a way more compatible with the Ning system would have better luck. Anyone?)

Again, the Ning platform is really my only complaint in what is a well thought-out, thorough and excellently presented online course for anyone interested in starting or growing a small business (especially an online one).

Lessons learned: the human laziness factor

The $100 Business Forum was the first Unconventional Guides purchase that I made. Chris and Pam clearly put a lot of time and effort into creating a very valuable course. I’m glad I signed up and I’m getting a ton out of it. However, the frustrating non-threaded-comments interface has reminded me of some interesting aspects of human nature.

The upshot: water flows downhill. People are pretty much the same: unless there’s a good reason to do otherwise, we’ll almost always take the path of least resistance. If you want people to behave in a certain way, you need systems that make it easy for them to do so (and not easy for them to not do so.) As I design products, courses, websites, and my life, this is something to think about!

Make things hard for people, even just a little bit, and you may lose them. Make things easy for people (easy to find what they want, easy to get a solution to their problem, easy to pay you), however, and you’re way ahead of the game.

Comments?

PS – Serendipity: right after publishing this post an email landed in my box from web marketing expert, Katherine Andes, with a variation on the same theme.

[Update 5/26/10: I found a personal note and a 100% refund from Chris in my email box this morning. Totally unexpected, and the refund was totally unnecessary, as I feel like I’m getting HUGE value from the $100 Biz Forum, despite my frustrations with Ning. But a clear example of his excellent customer service, and why I’ll be a Chris Guillebeau fan for life. Thank you Chris!]

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