Red Humpy

I’ve had clients lose their WordPress blog password before, but they have been able to use the WordPress ‘lost password’ form to have a link sent to their email where they can then reset it.

Recently, though, I had a client who took control of a business page that was created in WordPress and the login and password information that they provided was not working. The client knew very little about the site, only that a previous developer had set it up and was able to get in and make changes.

After trying all combinations of information they sent, as well as attempting the password reset method from the WordPress login screen, I turned to the internet for help. I was able to find a handy script called emergency.php that solved my problem.

Some advanced FTP knowledge required

The instructions are posted on Village-Idiot.org, as well as the link to download the file. (Scroll to the bottom of the article on the Village-Idiot page and you will find the download link, or click here to download the file.) In order to install the script and successfully reset the password, you will need to at least know the correct user name for the blog. Usually, this is simply ‘admin’. You will also need enough knowledge to access the blog files via FTP so you can upload the emergency.php file to the blog directory*. (See info at end of this article for more info.)

Once the emergency.php file is uploaded to your blog directory, open a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) and type in www.YourDomainName.com/emergency.php. A text page will appear with a place for you to enter your user name and desired password.

Confirmation if password reset was successful.

If your user name is incorrect, you will get a message saying so. I recommend you try admin if the user name you think is right isn’t working. When the script is successful, you will get a confirmation message. Write down the new password you selected, and BE SURE TO DELETE THE EMERGENCY.PHP FILE YOU UPLOADED.

Return to your wp-admin WordPress control panel and use the password that you just set. You should be good to go!

Many thanks to Village-Idiot.org for providing such a useful script. It certainly came in handy for my client.

Download the zip file: emergency.php

Specific Instructions from Village-Idiot.org website:

1. Unpack the zip.
2. Upload emergency.php to the root of your WordPress install (the same directory that contains wp-config.php)
3. Open http://www.yourdomain.com/emergency.php in your favorite browser.
4. Follow the simple instructions.
5. When you are done, delete emergency.php off your server. Do not leave it up for someone else to come along and use.

*additional FTP upload information:

I use Windows Explorer to upload files via FTP because the screen available by right-mouse-clicking on the Windows START button and choosing ‘Open Windows Explorer’ or ‘explore’ depending on what version of Windows you are running. Once the Explorer window is open, clear out any text that is in the address bar and type: ftp://yourDomainName.com.  (Use YOUR actual domain name, not what I typed!) Press Enter.

You should see a login box pop up where you can enter your hosting username and password. This is NOT the same as your WordPress username and password. The hosting login info would have been created when you set up your hosting account.

Here are two videos: a 13 minute WordPress tutorial that steps you through

• logging in
• creating and editing a post
• creating a new page with navigation button
• creating a sub page in the navigation
• moderating comments

And a 7 minute video that covers only the very basics of editing a post and adding a page (scroll down page to view second video.)

These topics are the most common get-started questions I encounter with clients new to a WordPress blog.

(hint: click the 4 arrows at the lower right edge of the YouTube video to open the video full-screen)

Mashable’s website is an excellent resource for finding excellent and informative content about social media for your business. With top-notch writers such as social media scientist Dan Zarrella, their site is worth visiting on a regular basis and you will learn a lot about the world of social media for your business by following their tweets on Twitter.

There are many web developers who are unfamiliar with how to use new media to build a presence online, and even more small business owners who have no idea where to start or what questions to ask. Here’s my Top 5 list of Mashable articles that will help you determine strategies for your social  media endeavors, learn what you can be doing better, and what to avoid:

 7 Website Redesign tips

Focusing on content, incorporating a blog, encouraging contact and communication – these redesign tips can turn your brochure-like website into a tool that delivers results.

 7 Things Your Blog’s Sidebar Can’t Live Without

Items include option to subscribe, category list and calls-to-action. 

 The 9 Worst Ways to use Twitter for Business

Are you overly-promotional and follow anyone and everyone? If so, take a look at this article for ways to use Twitter better.

 10 Opportunities You’re Missing on Thank You Pages

Do your website Thank You pages have navigation and promotions? If not, you may be missing out on good chances to keep your visitors engaged.

 4 Reasons Your Website Sucks

Self-explanatory, and no music plays on the page!

Visit Mashable.com for more extensive information and free webinars that will help you gain knowledge of using social media tools for your business.

In my blog post about the Social Media Umbrella, I presented a visual to help make it easier to understand how your blog and other social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn work together to create the canopy of your online presence. Here’s my video explaining the concept. I’d love to hear your feedback!

Keeping it simple with social media goes a long way towards achieving the end result. And knowing what your end result actually is goes a long way in making sure you stay on track.

The Red Humpy REACH acronym reminds me to keep my eyes on the end result when using social media tools:

• Read
• Engage
• Attract
• Communicate
• Harness

When I REACH with social media, I am extending my real-world networking practices out into the online world, using social media resources as the tools of my trade. I can only reach so far in my little town of Pagosa Springs, but I can use my REACH to create an online community that extends around the globe.  And while I’m REACHing, I remind myself to focus on who I am and what it is I have to offer the people in my network.

Social Media Today has a June 15 article by Sarah Hartshorn  that outlines how someone can use social media to build their personal brand. She lists 6 ways to gain exposure and a loyal following online, including:

1. Be friendly and approachable
2. Share what you do best with others
3. Be authentic
4. Don’t try and be everything to everyone
5. Collect feedback as endorsements
6. Associate yourself with others in your network

In the article, Sarah takes a lot of confusion out of the jumble of social media by condensing it into 6 points to keep in mind as you build your personal brand. The tools you use to reach your end goal will vary from person to person. While Twitter and blogging might work for you, Flickr and YouTube will work just as well for someone else.

If you are taking the first steps at using social media for your business or to create a name for yourself online, remember to REACH, and keep Sarah’s 6 points in mind.

Long URL’s in tweets use valuable character resources

When I find a great article that I want to share via Twitter, I copy the link, go to my Twitter page, paste the link and compose a short tweet as to the content of the link. This method has worked fine, except when the link I paste is really long.

I’ve pasted links to wonderful blog posts that have the entire post title in the URL with-hyphens-between-the-words-in-the-title. With only 140 characters to work with in the first place, it is difficult to mince words enough to get the point of the tweet across.

Bit.ly solves the problem!

I noticed that on the posts from the Twitter power-users that I follow, their links are in a very short format and begin with http://bit.ly/xxxxxx. Since there’s an app for just about everything, I did a Google search on URL shorteners and found that the Bit.ly page does exactly what I need.

Users who register for free with bit.ly can link their Twitter account and use an interface that automatically shortens the URL and creates an editable tweet. When you press submit, the tweet with shortened link is automatically sent to your Twitter account and posted.

In addition, bit.ly has statistics to track how many other times that the same post was tweeted through bit.ly, and how clicks, shares and likes it has generated.

For Firefox users, bit.ly has a  button that you can drag onto your toolbar to instantly show the interface as a sidebar while you are reading a blog you want to tweet. This means you can read a blog post, decide you want to share it, click the bit.ly button on your toolbar, enter in a few words for your tweet, press submit, then continue reading and browsing. Your tweet is posted and you never had to leave the blog page or copy and paste to do it.

Using bit.ly with Internet Explorer

With Internet Explorer, dragging the button to the toolbar doesn’t work so I created a link to the bit.ly sidebar application and put it at the top of my Favorites list for easy access. Unfortunately, because it is a script I cannot drag the application onto my links bar for easier access.

Of course, no matter what browser you are using, you could just bookmark the bit.ly home page and then go there and paste the link of the page you want to tweet. Bit.ly will then create the shortened URL and a tweet for you to post. But by doing it this way, you have to copy the original URL, leave that page, go to bit.ly, and paste the URL to convert. Using their sidebar application is much quicker.

StumbleUpon offers the same service

Another option for URL shortening is StumbleUpon’s su.pr. The su.pr link is also very common in tweets, and you can use the service with your existing Stumble Upon account. Although su.pr doesn’t have a nice sidebar tool like bit.ly, they do offer tracking services, the ability to use the shortener with your own domain name, and a button to save the tweet for a later date. Clever!

Google offers a similar, limited service

I have also seen a goo.gl shortened link and discovered that Google also offers a URL shortening service, but it has it’s limitations.

 For me, the bit.ly sidebar that I can access from my Internet Explorer favorites is a good solution to conserve as many characters as possible on the link, leaving room for a more robust explanation of why I am tweeting the blog post.

I am the vice-president on the board of a wonderful nonprofit affordable housing organization that is based out of Pagosa Springs and serves four counties in southwest Colorado. One of our marketing goals this year is to increase our web presence and luckily, we have a staff member who can help us implement this plan.

The challenge is choosing what social media to invest our valuable resource of time into. A Facebook page is probably our best free resource because it can allow fans and visitors to see organizational updates and interact with us.

Melissa Jun Rowley has a great article posted on Mashable.com that shows some great examples of what other nonprofits are doing with their social media resources. For some, it is about getting more volunteers and reaching out to the community they serve. For others, success is measured by acquiring donations. But whatever the desired result, using tools like Facebook, Twitter and blogs is free except for the time someone on the staff has to put into it. Investing in these free resources, however, is a great way to extend your nonprofit’s message far beyond the reach of traditional networking.

Keep in mind that a Facebook page or another online resource is a commitment and doesn’t guarantee any kind of success, but the tools are there to use and when done properly, you can generate the kind of return you are looking for.

What do those icons at the end of posts mean?

To make the best use of social media opportunities, most bloggers have icons attached to each post that allow you to interact in many ways. If you like what you read, you are able to re-broadcast the content, follow a user on Twitter, become a fan of their Facebook page, subscribe to their RSS feed, check out their YouTube video channel, or view their Flickr photos.

Here is a list of the common icons you will see and what you can do with them:

Twitter

The Twitter icon will take you to that person’s Twitter site. You can view the user’s tweets and if you are a user yourself, you can choose to ‘follow’ them on Twitter. When you follow a user, their tweets will appear on your Twitter home page.

Facebook

When you click on a blogger’s Facebook icon, you are taken to their Facebook page, usually their business or fan page. From there, you can share the page with others, choose to ‘like’ the Facebook user, post something on their ‘wall’, or just browse the page to find out more about that person.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site that functions much like Facebook, but LinkedIn is all business. Clicking on the LinkedIn icon will take you to that person’s profile. You can choose to create a connection with that user, but it must be reciprocated. LinkedIn users build their network by creating connections with people who have connections with other people. The site lets you analyze your connections to see who you can connect with that may have a connection to someone you don’t know but want to connect with. People use their connections to gain introductions to someone they don’t have a direct connection to, post a job opening to their connections to see who their connections can recommend, among other things. It’s all about business networking (and connections)!

Stumble Upon

This link is pretty cool. When you read an article that you would like to promote and you see this icon on the page, you can click it for submission to StumbleUpon for other people to find, or stumble upon! The site is basically a big blog post repository where users submit articles and rate them for other users. As a user, you can stumble upon recommended posts based on the posts you’ve already recommended. Other StumbleUpon users can rate posts they stumble upon with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. When you find good content, support that blogger by stumbling their post for others to find.

Digg

You can Digg a page by clicking on this icon, which takes you to the Digg site that works much like StumbleUpon. When you submit a post to Digg, you are making it available for other Digg users to find and rate. The rating system on Digg is an up-vote (digging) or a down-vote (burying). Pages with high rankings are featured on the main page for exposure, but it’s hard to achieve a ranking high enough to make it to the main page. Digging posts that you like is another way of supporting a good blogger.

Delicious

Delicious is a social media bookmark site where you can add links to pages that can be accessed from any computer. Bookmarks stored on the site can be viewed by others unless they are marked as private, and the site uses the number of bookmarks a site has to rank the pages. Users can browse Delicious pages by category to find content that is relevant to their interests. By bookmarking a blog page on Delicious, you are promoting the page for the blogger, as well as making it easy for you to find and access no matter what computer (or smart phone) you are using.

RSS Feed

This symbol is, in my opinion, the most powerful. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and the tool can be used in many ways. By clicking on a blogger’s RSS link, you are taken to the syndicated feed page for that post where you have the option of subscribing to the feed for that particular post. By using a feed reader, you can then view any updates to that post.

You can also subscribe to an RSS feed that covers the entire blog and view all of that blogger’s posts via your feed reader, such as Google Reader. A reader is an easy way to keep track of all of the great blogs you come across and read the content in one spot, kind of like creating a custom newspaper with only the content that you want to read.

Another handy way to use an RSS feed is within your own website. If you have a blog and your own website, you can use a customizable feed reader such as RSSinclude and have your blog post summaries appear on your web page! You can view an article on how to do that here.

You can also show RSS feeds from other bloggers in addition to yours to provide your site visitors with a variety of good content that is hand-chosen.

YouTube

If you see a YouTube icon on someone’s page, it will take you directly to their YouTube channel where you can see all of their posted videos. Many bloggers have great instructional videos that you can watch or re-post to your own site.

Flickr

With Flickr, users can upload photos that become their ‘photostream.’ The Flickr icon will take you to someone’s photostream. A Flickr photostream can also act like an RSS feed for photos and can be embedded on a website with a reader.

Promote others and you will be promoted in return.

Bloggers will appreciate you using these social media tools to help promote the pages you think are worthy of attention. And if you are a blogger yourself, you should provide links to these tools for your viewers to use.

Some blogs have no social media buttons, and some have these listed and many more, such as Reddit, MySpace, Technorati, WordPress and others, but the ones that I have listed are the most commonly used. Another common icon is an envelope that will allow you to send an email to someone to share the link with them.

Bloggers should provide links to the sites that they use and monitor, and blog readers should utilize the links to help them navigate the social media world and promote good content for others. I hope this list helps you understand what those little icons mean. I’d love to hear your feedback.

“But I already work full-time running my business!”

When I share my excitement about social media resources with my clients, most who are sole-proprietors or have only 1 or 2 employees, their initial reaction is one of stunned silence.

“I can barely get on the internet,” they say, or, “I don’t know how I could possibly find time for keeping up with all that stuff.”

In another post, I used Mr. Carpet as an example of how he managed to find time to learn all about an 80′s entertainer’s medical ailments, but thought he couldn’t take time out of his busy schedule to do anything with social media.

But with a little budgeting, planning and time assessment, any small business owner would be silly not to work in a half-hour a day to use free tools that can build your company, your reputation, and your customers.

Legitimate excuse for having no time?

For those who are truly booked non-stop during their business hours, there is always the evening. If you have an attitude that you don’t want to spend your home hours doing work, then you can stop reading and just accept that your competitors will find the time and you can continue on your current path.

Others who really do have no extra time can consider hiring outside help. By cutting back on your outbound marketing budget just a bit (mailings, advertisements, etc.) you can find a few hundred dollars a month to hire someone to create the content you will need to submit online. Hopefully, you’ve been reading my other blog posts and have started to understand that the key to online marketing with social media is providing good content that your customers will find and value.

If you spend two or three hours up front developing a good online marketing plan, you can hire a writer to create blog posts and Twitter tweets. There is software available that will allow you to create many tweets at once, then have them released on a schedule that you create. (Check out Tweet Later) For blog posts, you can have several pieces written and posted at once, or also use a service to post them on specific dates.

Stop making excuses for having no time!

Business owners who plan to grow, to extend their reach, to build their business to possibly sell it someday - you will benefit greatly from using free social media tools. You don’t need a big budget  as far as money goes, but you do need to be aware of how you budget your time.

Skip an episode of one of your weekly TV shows that may be wonderful but isn’t doing anything to help your business grow. Think of how much you could accomplish after you put the kids to bed or finished dinner and instead of turning on the TV, you turned on your computer to work on building your own business. The key to that, though, is wanting to do it. Hopefully you are in a business that you love and are passionate about. If not, finding time to do ‘work’ will probably be difficult.

If you  are lucky enough to be in a business that you enjoy and are passionate about, take a hard look at how you spend your time and designate at least half an hour a day to your social media plan. The great reward of social media is that the more you put in to it, the more you get out of it. You will love watching your followers grow, reading the comments on your blog posts, and gaining new clients and customers who flock to the content you created.

Find some time and give it a try. Involve your husband or wife, ask the kids for their perspective, invite a neighbor over and share a blog idea with them, jot down ideas over coffee… Soon you will realize that online social media is the same as the conversations you’ve been having all along, but you’re using the internet to involve a greater audience.

You’ve got a blog, you’ve got a Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn account, and you’re even using them all together. What other valuable resource can you access? Your staff or employees!

Many businesses have banned social media sites like Facebook and Twitter all together because of rampant misuse and loss of productivity. However, many savvy business owners are realizing that by educating your staff on the proper use of social media sites, they are a valuable resource and offer free publicity to your company.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Create a clear policy on how much time can be spent on these sites
• Maintain strict guidelines for proper content that should be posted using the company name
• Encourage employees to create their own  posts as guests on the company blog and monitor and respond to comments
• Don’t force social media on staff, but allow them to use it if they have something positive and valuable to say
• Remind your staff to be themselves

Although time is money, if you have available staff with even a half hour of free time each day, the time they spend on their social media sites will be time will spent. Creating posts, tweets or status updates that relay how wonderful it is to work for your company is free advertising with a broad reach. With a good plan in place, encouraging your staff to use social media on company time can be a huge benefit.