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While my team and I are very familiar with newsletter and autoresponder services such as Aweber, Constant Contact, 1ShoppingCart, Vertical Response, among a handful of others — I was thrown a curve ball this week when a client wanted to integrate a My Emma sign up form on their website. The services are generally about all the same when it comes to this step. Somewhere there will be a place for you to create/design a form, and from there you’ll be able to generate the code to embed it on your site.

Now, with My Emma, the default code it created for me had borders around every input field (yuck!) and the fields for visitors to input their information were very small. The HTML editor was little help as it was blank, and there were no options in the form design process to make any of these changes.

Here’s my tip for you If you would like your My Emma form to be styled like the rest of your website, use one of the javascript embed options and remove the following line of code (this is the first line):

<link href=”https://app.e2ma.net/css/signup.sml.css” rel=”stylesheet”>

This line of code is what is styling the form, and it’s from My Emma. When you remove this code, the form will instead use your site’s styling. And that’s it Other than this small tweak, My Emma seems like a good email marketing solution for those seeking a basic, easy to use solution.

I hope this helps Please feel free to leave any questions or comments.

Tags: 1ShoppingCart, autoresponder services, Aweber, Constant Contact, Email Marketing, My Emma, Newsletter Marketing, Newsletter service, newsletter signup forms, Vertical Response

So over the weekend, I stumbled upon The Social Networking Academy, created by Jo Barnes. After signing up for her list via facebook, you gain access to a wealth of resources for facebook fan pages. For newbies, there are video walkthroughs on what facebook is, the objectives of a facebook page, as well as a tour of a facebook page. If you’re already familiar with facebook, you can skip that training section entirely and head on over to the Creating & Customizing a Page section. Here you’ll find videos that show you, step by step, how to create and edit your page, and how to add content and images. And there’s more. Jo also shows you how to create your welcome/landing page (which is iframe friendly — the new facebook standard), and she also provides free templates to get you started. When the page is created and you’re ready to rock it, there’s a section for that, too — Marketing Your Page.

So, head on over to Jo’s facebook page, “like” it, and then sign up to get free access.

Look forward to hearing your experiences using this, or other, facebook fan page resources.

Tags: facebook fan pages, facebook marketing, fan page templates, free fanpage templates, Jo Barnes, The Social Networking Academy

If you’re anything like me, from time to time you have files that you need to convert to another format.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched for shareware/freeware file conversion tools… or used online conversion tools that don’t work at all. Who has the time or the patience for this frustration?

Enter Zamzar, a free, online file conversion service. Using it is as simple as uploading your file, selecting the file type for output, and entering your email address for deilvery. Zamzar will convert your file and email you a download link, and let you get back to work! Check out the extensive list of file types Zamzar supports.

Have you used Zamzar, or other file conversion tools? Please share your thoughts on your experiences!

Tags: free file conversion, zamzar

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

Yup, that’s right! I’m giving away one free website design every month! AND, it’s easy to enter! All you need to do is sign up for my newsletter by entering your email in the form over there to the right, or like the A Virtual Edge facebook page.

Now for the fine details. Winners are picked on the 15th of every month (please see 2010/2011 schedule below). Each winner will receive the Gettin’ Started WordPress design package for FREE! You can learn more about the package on our WordPress packages page, but it includes logo creation, customized WordPress website (including premium theme), a year of hosting ($35/year after that), and integration of your newsletter signup, social media buttons, google analytics, etc.

A random winner is selected from facebook or my newsletter list, depending on the month. It’s not just easy to enter, but occassionally I also provide subscriber-only specials, too!

Contest Schedule

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

I am a BIG fan of the WordPress platform for building websites. It’s not that I don’t know how to code HTML, but there are just so many factors about WordPress that make it a superior choice over your typical HTML site. So, what’s so special about it? Why are so many people raving about it?

Why You Should Use WordPress:

1. Once you have your site customized, you don’t need to know code to update and maintain it. Yes, you will need to learn the WordPress platform, but it’s very intuitive and user friendly. If you have experience using Word, then you can quickly learn how to maintain your own website if it’s built on the WordPress platform. What most HTML website designers and developers don’t highlight is the fact that if you don’t know how to code HTML, you’re stuck contacting them every single time you have the smallest change to make on your website. You’re charged for this, and many times are subject to an hours minimum charge – even if the change only takes 5 minutes.
2. WordPress is an afforable way to get a professional online presence for your small business, and development time is quick! I know that small businesses, especially those just starting out, face a lot of challenges. You know you need a website, done at a price that won’t kill your budget, and you wanted to have it done yesterday. You can get all that with premium WordPress themes. The base of all my designs start with a premium WordPress theme, which is then highly customized to your specific business or needs. This not only saves me time since the majority of the code is already there, but this time savings is also what keeps the development cost to you affordable!
3. WordPress is SEO friendly. By using WordPress, you’re already helping your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts by using a system that was specifically built to be SEO friendly. It’s easy to name your URLs, change your page titles, use headings, add tags to images, and all sorts of other things that make the search engines happy.
4. Plugins offer nearly unlimited functionality to your website. Through the use of plugins, and there are thousands upon thousands of free plugins, new functions can easily be integrated into your website. There are plugins to integrate your various social media accounts, SEO plugins that offer even more SEO capabilities, membership site plugins, forum plugins, plugins to add polls, plugins to promote sharing of your content on various outlets… I could go on and on, but this is definitely one aspect of WordPress that just rocks.
5. It’s simple to integrate a blog into your website AND have it match the look of your site. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve landing on someone’s page, clicked “blog”, and was forwarded to a horrible looking WordPress.org or Blogger blog that didn’t match the look or feel of their site at all. Not to mention, blogs are EXCELLENT ways to be found for all types of key phrases… and people are doing it all backwards. For a small business, you don’t want to send your traffic to your blog page if it’s not actually on your website. The idea of a blog for small business owners is to give your visitors the ability to get to know you AND bring traffic to your site from your blog. This is another reason why I highly recommend WordPress. You might not be ready to blog now, but when you are, it’s easy to integrate it seamlessly.

There are so many other reasons why WordPress rocks, but those are the biggest and best ones!

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

I am so lucky to have such great clients to work with! This certainly holds true in working with Donna Conrade of Brennan Hypnosis. I met Donna through Craigslist – and boy, let me tell you – there are two types of clients I meet through Craigslist:

1.) I meet lovely people, like Donna, that are so easy to work with, don’t change their mind 1,000 times, and have very realistic expectations.

But then there’s… (insert your own horror mood music here)…

2.) The people that make me want to poke my eyes out with something really sharp so I don’t have the ability to read their emails. And you know, most times I catch these types of people before things are final and simply refuse to work with them. Really… it’s that bad. Perhaps some day I will write another post about it – but really, this post is supposed to be about Donna, so let me get back to the subject at hand

Donna certainly falls into the first category of the types of people I meet on Craigslist. Working with her was so easy and natural, which I’m certain she’s heard before in her practice.

If you’re looking for a hypnotist in the southern NH area I highly recommend Donna, not only because she was awesome to work with, but because she really knows her industry!

Tags: Brennan Hypnosis, NH hypnotist, WordPress Customization

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

I loved working with Jack from Ace of Connections! We originally picked a different WordPress theme – but I wasn’t happy with the way it was coming out so we switched to Thesis. Jack put his entire trust in me to develop a website for him that he could use to help promote his affiliation with Send Out Cards – which, may I add, is a fantastic service that you should certainly check out. When I emailed him to tell him that I wasn’t happy with what I had created so far – I feel I gained his trust. Because you see, my goal isn’t to create as many websites as fast as I can – my goal is to provide my client with the best site that I can. I take great pride in my work and if I’m going to put my name on it, I want to be happy with it.

Tags: Ace of Connections, Send Out Cards, WordPress Customization

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

I just finished up working on The Doggie Snack Shack. Now let me tell you – this was a FUN project! I really enjoy what I do and have fun designing every web site, but with The Doggie Snack Shack, I was able to let the whimsy side of me show through. The folks over at The Doggie Snack Shack hand bake all sorts of delectable (and nutritious!) goodies for your pampered pooch. Really… the doggie snacks they have look better than most of the stuff my kids ingest. Head on over to check them out and don’t forget to buy something for your four-legged best friend!

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

Just finished up a website for Dr. Albert Snow, Holistic Gastroenterology. Dr. Snow specializes in helping those suffering from Inflammatory Bowel conditions through the use of natural medicine. You can check out his website at http://holisticgastroenterology.com.While I wish I could take credit for the graphic design, I can’t The graphics were done by the lovely Rosanne Menard. Rosanne is fantastic person, phenomenal graphic designer, and a pleasure to work with!

Our sister site, Small Biz Web Whiz, now heads our design business. Please click this message to visit Small Biz Web Whiz for all of your design needs.

I just completed a website for fellow virtual assistant professional, Jody Higgins of My Virtual Assistant Service. I love doing websites for virtual assistants. I get them. I understand their services, what they need, and what they want their website to do for them.

Jody came to me with a very basic website, which was void the enthusiasm she has for what does. This is what it looked like before:

After chatting with her via Skype and email, I knew right away she needed something more vibrant – something that gave her business a more inviting space on the web. I created the following for her:

How does she like it? Just read the announcement on her site, Welcome To My New Website.