Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu makes Wordpress 50% better in 60 seconds
The way Wordpress should have been designed in the first place 
Wordpress is an awesome piece (family?) of user-friendly, open-source software. It makes web design a practical option for a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise have even bothered trying.
But, like many other non-commercial things, it has ended up with surprisingly ragged edges. Documentation? Only for the geek. Navigation around the Admin ‘dashboard’? Clumsy, clunky.. ugly. Counter-intuitive even. So much ’sideways tunneling’ to find the functionality you need… So many opportunities to do the wrong thing.
Like changing your permalink structures and losing your entire site in one click.
Like writing a post instead of a page (again)..
This plugin makes using Worpdress 50% easier in my opinion. Thanks!
How do I hide my Wordpress blog until it’s ready to go live?
Maintenance Mode plugin is how you hide your blog until it’s finished
Now we’re getting busy with site designs, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to be able to build a site ‘offline’ as it were.
So I went looking for how to do that and found… (yes, you’ve guessed it) - yet another ‘how to’ shaped hole in the Googlesphere.
I was about to give up when a Canadian schoolteacher blogger caught my eye, and led me to ‘Maintenance Mode‘ from German developers Software Guide.
I laughed, I cried, I danced around the room with joy. This is exactly what I need; so simple and yet so bloody invisible. Here’s how it works - and you can have fun and make it look anyway you want!
Thanks, guys, or should I say vielen danke, Ich totally like liebe dich. Go there, don’t mind if you don’t speak German as good me, just press the buttons until the plugin downloads 
(BTW, don’t mind that it messes up the Flash image uploader in WP 2.6 - you can just use the Browser uploader instead)
StatCounter.com: “Shut that door!”
It may be free, it may be invisible but reliable it isn’t. At least not yet.
Yesterday, our blog stats showed a StatCounter.com page as one of the ‘referring URLs’.
That means someone came to our blog from their StatCounter.com stats page (after I’d visited their site from our site).
In fact, I’d visited their site to get a graphic for our client list. Noticing my visit, they’d clicked backwards to our site. Nothing unusual about that.
What is unusual is what happened when I clicked on the referring URL. I found myself on a StatCounter.com page - logged in to our client’s account!
So, StatCounter.com, if you’re listening: in the words of the legendary Larry Grayson -
“Shut that door!”
Revision podcast package for schools and colleges
‘mu:kaumedia Revision Podcasts: the powerful way to keep your students on track with their revision all year round.
This amazing package lets your staff create regular revision podcasts featuring audio, video, text and images through your own powerful, great looking site.
Adding content is as simple as making a phone call and sending an email.
Students can sort podcasts by subject or by teacher and either listen there and then on the PC or pick up the full podcast via iTunes and listen on their mp3 players.
Our revision podcast is a powerful two-way communication vehicle to keep your students informed and motivated all year round - and to capture feedback back from them.
The package includes:
• A bespoke, branded, highly Google-visible site (search for ‘revision podcast’ and look out for our demo to see how effective our sites are)
• 36 x 3 minute audio podcasts per year & image treatment / text editing / keyword writing
• podcast published via iTunes
• interactive ’star’ rating feedback with stats (showing most popular podcasts)
• search engine optimisation on site
• domain name registration (if required) plus domain hosting
• unlimited bandwidth hosting for audio & video (so no traffic limitations or charges)
• a simple web interface for schools / colleges to manage and select revision recordings for inclusion in podcast
We’ve made the process easy. No IT issues, no long drawn out design process, no hidden costs or management fees. One price and it will do exactly what it says on the tin.
If you’d like to find out more about how your college or school can benefit from this package, please call Sam now on 01822 610841
Blogging = search engine optimisation for normal people
The biggest benefit of blogging? Great natural search engine visibility
All you have to do to is post relevant content regularly and pay attention to using your keywords in your post titles and headers. That as complicated as it needs to be.
The site you’re currently on is less than a month old but it’s already #1 in Google for ‘business blogging Devon’ as a result of just following the above advice.
Cost of that #1 position? Virtually nothing. Age? 4 weeks.
Interestingly, the #2 result is my Ecademy profile - cost £130 per annum. Age? 4 years.
Online reputation management. Not.
This is a recent, real review about a real hotel. It is public, still there, available for anyone to read.
A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT.
We were allocated a second floor room fronting onto the street and the noise from late night revellers outside adjacent bars continued into the early hours of Saturday morning. Sleep was impossible.
OK you say, typical for [location] and it did finally settle down - for about an hour. However, persons in the next room returned and we endured loud conversation, radio/tv at high volume and hysterical laughter throughout the rest of the night. Our complaints to reception resulted in the comment “They are entitled to laugh” It continued, even louder. We checked out in the morning!.
We expected some explanation, regret and maybe an apology. No contact until 3 emails inviting us to “Visit [name] Hotel This Festive Season”. This prompted a reply from me reiterating our experience. It was ignored.
I sent a reminder email - “HOW ABOUT THE COURTESY OF A REPLY?” No response - But I did receive a copy of an internal email in error, it says everything about [name] Hotel, [location] viz. “John remove them from the email database please Regards”
How beligerant. Unable to recommend to anyone.
When we read online reviews, we’re doing two things simultaneously: we’re looking at the detail and the bigger picture to decide whether to buy. We expect the odd slip-up in service or the occasional faulty goods. But if we spot a trend of poor service, faulty goods or a failure of the business to respond to such problems - we’re suddenly on consumer high-alert.
What we won’t forgive is someone’s unwillingness to listen when we’ve had a less-than-satisfactory experience. In the case of the hotel (above) there is a worrying silence despite there being a facility to respond via the online review site. Of course, it’s possible the hotel has resolved this matter to the customer’s satisfaction offline. But the absence of any online response suggests that’s unlikely.
A prospective customer will conclude that either this hotel is as beligerent as the reviewer asserts or that they are incapable of handling this situation. Either way, the original problem of noisy rooms still remains unresolved (bad) and now, added to that, the impression that nobody gives a damn (worse).
This situation presents two significant challenges for this hotel. It clearly needs to develop the skills to monitor and respond publicly to such critical and public online reviews.
But in order to address and resolve this particular review - and to avoid others like it in the first place - the management in this hotel has to change how it deals with feedback in the first place.
1 star reviews on national hotel review sites are - make no mistake - acts of punishment.
The crime isn’t the noisy bedroom. The crime is not listening.
Audio testimonials - dynamite value for money
How’s this for value?
In 2006 we made an audio testimonial for 4Networking. Since then, it’s been listene to by over 3,000 people. That’s a piece of direct, powerful ‘word of mouth’ marketing heard by 3000 people - all of whom chose to listen to it.
We sold that audio testimonial at an introductory price of £50. Each listen has cost 4Networking less than 1.5p. Bargain. Is there anything to compare??
Click . to listen to 4Networking audio testimonial.
The times they are a-changin’
Quite possibly…
… gizmo of the year. Sennheiser HD437 headphones.
There are some things that are such great value, so well built, so… so.. faith-in-the-human-race-restoringly excellent that you feel uncontrollably good about them. These headphones are exactly that. In a world where everything is a rip off, these guys ride in on a white charger and rescue the day. If you paid £50+ for them, you’d still like the lightweight, iPod friendliness and the excellent, ear-warming sound.
But they don’t cost £50. They cost just £15. A business associate tried them on in a meeting this morning. “I love them!” he said “I like the way they fit so snugly. They’re.. they’re… comforting”. That’s exactly the word I was thinking of.
A great podcasting tool
For many people, podcasting is about sitting in front of a PC with a USB mic. But if you’re like us, you’ll be wanting to get out there in the real world capturing interviews with people and ideas and opinions from all over. In which case, you’ll need a portable mp3 / wav recorder. The m-Audio Microtrack 2496 brings the world into your podcast.
Pros:-
• Fantastic recording quality with supplied stereo mic
• Small, light, easy to use
• Over 700 recordings so far without a single error (* DOINK!! See this post!!)
• Every input you need
• Plenty of mp3 recording capacity on even the smallest (supplied) 128mb flash memory card
Cons:-
• Non-removable battery
• Can be difficult to playback files when there are less than 3 recorded
• Clicky mic level controller sound picked up when recording with supplied stereo mic
• Almost feels too light and plasticy
We bought this unit for about £240, the price now is somewhere in the £187 region - a bargain if only you can get hold of one. It may be that currently, it’s a victim of its own success as suppliers everywhere are out of stock and waiting for delivery. Annoying since we need another 2 for a course at the end of September.
Update: It turns out that this unit is now ‘discontinued’ - (”this recorder is now discontinued in its current form and there will be no more shipments. We are advised by m-Audio that the new improved version 2 microtrack will ship ‘in the autumn’ “).
-
About us
-
Our Services:
-
-
-
Hate gobbledegook?
-
Got feedback? Need help?
-
Latest 'mu:kaumedia podcast
-
In our store:
-
Big Bang marketing
-
In development
