Forums down, sigh.

The Partner forums are down.  Been working on starting to add affiliate links and having some unknown problem in WordPress.

I put in a support ticket for a content review, since I am sure I need more, better, and some honing of what I posted. However since I am finding working in WordPress so challenging, I want to get focused with some constructive feedback.

Meanwhile I built a Squidoo page as a feeder to the site and unabashedly asked all my Facebook friends to at least click through, preferably add comments and rate the lens. That should start the lens rising slowly and hopefully by the time the site is actually ready for prime time the Squidoo page will be sending some nice traffic.

Also writing ezine articles, and taking advantage of the Title Tool at EzineArticles.com. So far I'm not impressed with the results of using the tool. Nice for brainstorming, but a quick look at Wordtracker or SEOBook has always been  successful for me at finding titles that get my article viewed.

The advantage of the Squidoo page is that it's very Squidooly to compose in the first person. I wrote from very much my own head space and experience, which was fun and informative.

Okay, back to WP. Guess I should put in a support ticket.

First draft ready!

Three comparison categories, three top contenders in each category. I have enough material to post a couple more reviews of products that didn't make my top contenders lists, too. Then I will have to check what's new again in the niche... it's a fast moving niche and my Google Alert comes in every day with more material.

I spent some time on the side bar widgets in WordPress last night. My default template still doesn't seem to take hold and I end up having to make the same side bar for every category template that I've used.

Then I also wasn't satisfied with how to link to the comparison pages in a navigation tab so I created a new subcategory called comparison under the review category and moved the comparison pages to that category. Beware if you put a slug in the box for a category, WP uses that for the link archecture and doesn't always find the right category template. Sigh. I made the plug the same as the subcategory and WP found the right page template.

Today I will request a content review from Jeremy's team. I reapplied at Amazon.com for Associate status for the site. They had rejected the application when the site wasn't functional. I also reapplied at Shareasale.com, for the same reason. I'm a long time affiliate, so both of them can look at other work I've done, but I wanted separate accounts for the Partnership site. Still have to reapply to the Ebay Partner Network for the same reasons.

Time to start getting preliminary feedback from social networking and driving some traffic from article marketing. Though all my friends on Facebook are actually people I know from my real life, some of them are in the market for this product, just as I was.  When I mentioned I was building a site to compare this product niche, many were interested. I plan on being shamelessly self promotional and asking everyone to click through, bookmark, tweet, Digg, and pass on to all their friends a link to my site. While this is not necessarily big time traffic, it should be a nice natural start to link building and traffic building. Not to mention free content review comments from people who know me. ;)

Okay, post product reviews before the comparison page...

Because that way you don't have to go back into the HTML of the comparison page to add the anchors.

I coded the comparison page and the three (well, two really, since one was also a winner in another comparison category already) review pages in DreamWeaver. Then posted the review pages one at a time. As I posted, I previewed the post, and copied and pasted the URL into the comparison table.

Then I posted the comparison table with all the links intact.

So it's mostly offline work on Good Olde DreamWeaver. Until I actually try to get these pages to look exactly right and the navigation just right... then I'll be spending a lot of time in my WordPress admin, I suspect.

A page a day...

Gone back to the baby step method of  "a page a day" so I can feel like I'm keeping a decent schedule for getting the site finished.

There have been problems with the CSS, I'm not always getting problems once I've pasted my HTML into WordPress, so rather than break my head on technical stuff right now, I'm posting the pages I need to get posted and will worry about the CSS and WordPress related style problems later.

Currently I'm working in Dreamweaver, my favorite since purchasing it in 2002 or so. Then copy and paste the relevant bits into a WordPress post or page. I've never used WordPress for a whole site, so getting the navigation elements and category structure is not coming totally easily.

But it will get done reasonably quickly with a page a day. More if I can get some days off...

What are the non-technical Partners doing?

Okay, so I had a few notes (always having expected a recording of at least one of the sessions of customizing  WordPress), and knew that the hero shot problem was a custom field... but what did he tell us?

So finally, the techy kicks in and I says to myself, "Self, where's the code?" I opened on browser window with the screenshot that my page  is meant to look like. Opened another tab in that window with the current page and checked the code. No URL for the image.

Okay, if I were coding this by hand... in the other browser where my WordPress administration is open,  go into the theme editor and check the template. Okay, there's the tag, oh, look, there's the custom field it's meant to call.

Open another tab in that browser to the post and add the custom field. Save. Whadya mean value for the field? Oh, I'll bet that's the URL. What did he say about Media? Try uploading the heroshot, even though it's on the server, can't figure out how to "attach" it, and by now a few neurons are connecting. The template includes the correct path to the images folder, so I just need the file name. Enter the file name in the value box for the custom field heroshot. Refresh other browser window... whalla, that one down.

Now my text is a dark gray on an almost black background. The screenshot is of black text on a light gray background. In the browser with the admin panel open, edit the post AGAIN, looking for background color in the WP text formatting area... (meanwhile already coding it in my head... oh, wait). If I were coding this in DreamWeaver, I'd just tweek the CSS file. Hmmm, the CSS that is called in the page template is not available in the termplate editor.

Open CSS file in my FTP client (could have used DW also), find the right div tag from the browser window with the current page open, and check out the code. Paste current CSS code into a temporary text note JIC, Switch the background and color, and sure enough, the CSS had been wrong. Now I've got the lighter background and darker text, but the lighter background is still darker than the screenshot.

Fire up Photoshop Elements (still in 3.0 so it isn't quite right in Windows 7, need to upgrade), open the screenshot, color pick that background color, copy and paste the hex code into the right CSS file, save, upload via FTP, reload the browser window.... finally at least that's right.

Meanwhile I notice the heroshot takes a bit to load, so I open it in  PSE to check the size... 154 kb. Dudes, I've been coding web pages since 1999 on dialup, optimizing graphics should be a habit. So I use PSE\s nice little utility "Save for Web", and even at 50% quality it's down to 29kb. Save as heroshot-lite, upload, change value in the custom field, reload, sigh of relief.

While PSE is open... open the logo, crop to the image, save as a jpeg for a favicon. Open up irFanView, size to 16x16 pixels, save as favicon.ico, upload to home directory. As someone who appreciates the visual cues on the browser tabs of favicons and favorites way too many pages all the time, I like to have a favicon for any site I'm working on.

I have miles to go figuring out the other templates I'd planned on using for review pages and product pages, and I can read CSS, HTML, optimize my own graphics, and use my FTP client to do on the spot editing of text files. I have no idea how lost someone might be if they have no real tech skills in this field.

Meanwhile I really, really need to be finishing up the content, which is meant to be my main task.

Deep breathing

 Mantra: I know WordPress is supposed to be easier for content management. I know WordPress is supposed to be easier...

Okay, first I uploaded the new theme not to a theme directory so I broke some stuff in the way the page was displaying until I realized that. No problem, create a new folder in the Themes directory and upload, then re-upload the default in the main www directory. Change theme in the admin section > Appearance > Themes.

But my templates seem to need me to finish tweeking them, and I am not grokking the custom fields. I'm frustrated since there doesn't seem to have been attached a copy of the call recording from Monday when I met with Jeremy and Ryan. And in our training videos, there's also not a video for Customizing WordPress. I barely recall that webinar (webinars are late at night for me, so even with notes I tend to need a refresher). My notes are too sketchy.

I've emailed for another copy of the call recording, and am going to upload my first drafts of some reviews for content so it's up... and hope my deep breathing helps me get a handle on setting up my templates and how to properly use my custom fields.

I'm not new at WordPress, but this way of using it as a CMS is far beyond what I've done with it previously. WP is quite impressive with what you can stretch it to do. But right now all I can think is "I could have coded this  in DreamWeaver by now". Normally that thought is reserved for trying to get a table in MS Word formatted correctly. ;)

Next Phase Starting!

I've been busy writing content, but haven't posted it yet to the new site. After last night's call with Jeremy and his assistant, the next phase begins.

The site template is finished and should be arriving in my email today. Then I'll upload it and begin adding my content and customizing the site.

So in addition to  continuing to create content, I guess you can call it Tweeking Time. ;)

I'm very excited to move into this phase.

I also have a personal interest in the nice (of course), and am hoping to make a personal purchase within the next month, so all the research is very fun to do.