In this post, I’m going to cover three out of the many other methods for simplicity’s sake. Besides, I really don’t want to scare you off with a bunch of high tech stuff that could go over your head.

The ‘Click To Watch/Listen’ Method

If your customer is using a modern browser that supports HTML 5, audio and visual will simply play when people click on the audio/video URL in the email. There is no need for you to build a web page but this is huge but. You can’t bank on that. Lots of people use outdated software and you really want something that will work no matter what they use. So, your best bet is to set up web pages and embed that audio/video in your page. This can be easily accomplished in WordPress with some video player plugins that will play videos that reside your site.

The Download Method

When it comes to email delivery, nothing is easier than giving people the URL to a zipped package on your web site. When people click it, they are prompted to download the files. This is not always ideal either because it could take a long time for some people depending on their connection. It’s not always practical on a mobile device.

The Private YouTube Video Method

Another simple low tech method is to use YouTube or Vimeo, make these private only. Then include the URLs in your email. This is perhaps the most simple and easy way for you to get going. There are some down sides though, like video length limit when using these sites and there is always a chance of people getting distracted with other videos especially on YouTube.

The methods covered here work super well for an audience who is not comfortable with logging in anywhere and not as tech or web savvy. You can of course get more sophisticated with page protection, protected downloads and all that jazz. As with anything online you can make it super simple or scale it all the way to a gorgeous super professional system that looks like they came from a large corporation. The only thing that separates them all is time and money

Sometimes terminology gets in the way so let’s be clear what nested or threaded comments are. These replies to a comment that appear indented under the original comment. It is a great to help you and readers follow a conversation.

WordPress integrated this feature into the basic install beginning version 2.7 so it’s been a while and many themes should have caught up by now. However, I know for a fact working with a lot of different people and installs over the years, some of us still use antiquated versions (dangerous) or use themes that are antiquated (just as dangerous). Knowing this, there are three ways you can turn on nested comments in WordPress.

Turn It On

No, I’m not trying to be funny. There are many many times especially on a site that has been around and using WordPress for a long time. You may not realize the feature is there when you upgraded and simply never looked at it.

Log into WP as admin user, go to Settings >> Discussion. Under comments settings, check the box Enable threaded (nested) comments, select how many levels you want to nest and Save Changes. Check your site.

If that doesn’t work, then…

Contact The Theme Author Or Whoever Built The Site For You

This indicates the issue is not exactly with WordPress but your theme. You see, for threaded comments to happen, the theme has to also support it. So check in with your theme designer to ask if there’s a new updated version to support that. If you used a free theme from a hobbyist designer you could be out of luck and need to call in the pros to fix the theme up for you.

If you don’t know the developer, get up with whoever built that site for you. It might cost you but a good WordPress designer who hangs out their shingle as a pro should know how to do this. It really isn’t that complicated. Here’s a secret. Making an older theme recognize nested comments doesn’t really require any techno mumbo jumbo hacking skills. It just requires thinking out of the box.

No one to help you?

Use A Third Party Comment Plugin

We use Livefyre but there are others out there too like Intense Debate and Disqus. This is perhaps the simplest and quickest low-tech way to get it. The trade off is you are hooking into a third party system which may not be all bad because sometimes people do find you through these systems and automated spam control is taken care of.

Don’t want to do that? Then…

Change your theme

Yeah. The solution is simple but not an easy decision if you have a lot of things riding on the current theme so now you have weigh if nested comments are worth all that work. Generally I’d recommend switching to something more modern anyhow. If the theme you’re using is so outdated (at time of writing nested comments have already been out for a little over 3 years), you’re better off updating anyhow because you’re probably missing out on a lot of cool new possibilities with newer themes. These are what we use and recommend.

Recommended Themes

There are plenty of gorgeous ones out there these are pretty much the only two we work with regularly and love them to pieces.

• StudioPress – their All-Themes pack pricing is set to increase. Save $50 by getting it today (before Jan 31, 2012)
• iThemes Builder

Image courtesy of CrossGL

Sometimes the solution or the path to a solution is right under your nose. While on the job, one of my friend’s clients asked if she knew of a way to make the photos on her site be displayed it does on iPhoto.

This posed a problem because my friend doesn’t use a Mac. There are screen shots all over the Internet of course but that’s still not helpful because from what I understand, there are several ways iPhoto displays them. I don’t have the iPhoto app installed and couldn’t help her either. There are many different screens within the iPhoto app. Which portion is the client talking about?

When outsourcing, the old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” is so true. Many times in classes, interviews, webinars, writing etc, my favorite advise is – “Don’t tell, show“. It’s not just for your sanity. It’s for your team’s sanity too.

You can show what you mean by grabbing a screen shot or making a screen recording. Here are some tools you can use.

Tools to grab static screen shots:

• Snagit
• Screenshot Captor
• SnapDraw
• Photoscape

Tools to record screen videos:

• Camtasia (Windows and Mac)
• Jing (Windows and Mac)
• Wink (Windows)
• Capture FOX Official Website (Firefox)
• ScreenFlow (Mac)
• Skitch (Mac)

You don’t have to use all these of course. Especially for static screen shots. Windows 7 has a basic Snipping Tool packaged in it. You can always hit print screen for other versions or Command + Shift + 3 on your Mac. However, these tools give you editing options, easy ways to annotate and edit as well. Besides, once you get used to them, you will find plenty of other uses for them too like in your products and blog posts and freebies.

I know many people use WordPress like that and it’s great because it is so versatile and there are such wonderfully easy plugins like MarketerCMS and WPSalesletter that make it incredibly easy to put up an attractive, effective opt-in page(s).

Unfortunately as I mentioned in my interview with Kelly on Detoxing Your Blog, this is also this type of sites have a huge potential to leave security holes and be spam bait because they aren’t in the forefront of our minds. So save yourself some time. If you’re building an opt-in where you know you will unlikely review the page regularly, get rid of obvious spam baits before you finish the project.

• Delete, trash or un-publish the Hello World post
• Close all comments and trackbacks
• Check individual posts to disable comments and trackbacks
• If you’re a bit more techie and truly will never need comments, nor trackbacks either rename or remove the wp-comments-post.php or wp-trackback.php

1. Why keep up with updates.
2. Are some plugins no longer necessary?
3. Is my theme hopelessly outdated?
4. How to deal with broken links?
5. How to deal with non-automated spam. This one is tough as most spam filters are good at detected automated spam, not human generated spam.

We had a great conversation some good info. Listen in here (nothing to pay).

P/S: To expand on plugins that are no longer necessary, here are some I used in the past but no longer because new WordPress features have rendered them unnecessary for our projects.

• Exclude Pages. We now use the built in WordPress menu feature.
• Page Links To. This plugin used to help create navigation menus that redirect to outside sites etc without having to edit code. Again we just use WordPress menu. However there are times this is still useful.
• Plugins to close comments on old posts. This feature is now built into WordPress.

GQueues

I so really need to write a full fledged review of this system. When someone in my Google + circle asked about it, here’s what I shared.

“I’ve been using it for a few months I REALLY like it, the simplicity, the ease of adding tasks etc. I held off from upgrading before as it needed one premium account for every person you want to share tasks with but now, you don’t.”

While they don’t have a dedicated mobile app, they are accessible online via mobile. Mobile is very very important to me and it does not matter if there is an app or not. Actually, I rather prefer not having dedicated apps.

GQueues is also very affordable compared to many other tools in this space. That is definitely a plus since it falls right into my motto – “Just because you have money doesn’t mean you have to spend it”. You have to experience it.

ManyMoon (Now Do.com)

This is the system we came from prior to GQueues. There are a lot of things to love about it too and leaving was really hard. In the end, I had to because back then, they didn’t have mobile access. Just found out they are re-branding to Do.com with iOS support which is great. A step in the right direction. Unfortunately that would still not work for us because we have both iOS and Android systems. Hopefully it will for you.

RapidTASK

Just found out about this so not much to say about it. Looks intriguing.

Wrike

This is one system I’ve had my eye on for the longest time. The biggest attraction factor (in my opinion) is how well it is supposed to integrate with your email. It can be a little pricey but they do have a basic plan that’s free. Although the job doesn’t do a really good job explaining that.

GoPlan

This looks a lot like a BaseCamp alternative at a much more palatable price. Plans start at $10. Friends who use this say it has less features than industry Gorilla BaseCamp but still good especially if you don’t need (or miss) those features.

Now on to the question she asked me in return it’s actually two parts so let’s tackle the first part:

Part One: So many people rely on you for your tech expertise. How are you going to balance helping others with growing your own business projects in the new year?

Years ago, very early in my business, I decided I was not taking in new clients. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure why. That’s how inexperienced I was. All in all, it worked out great. I charged enough to keep money coming in but high enough that I didn’t exactly need a gazillion clients who’d take up all my time.

This was great because it allowed me time to give the handful of clients full focus when I was working on their projects – this is important to me as I’m sure it is for them – at the same time, it gave me more freedom to work on my own projects. Since my own projects and client work are closely related it also allowed me to create synergy.

Here’s what I mean. Often, when working on a client project, I’d have to dig deeper, learn new techniques, write new code or simply discover different more effective ways to do things. This information, I could later use to post on my blog or teach in classes which are part of ‘my business’.

In reality they are ALL ‘my business’. Client work, my own projects. All one and the same, all working together, one big beautiful cycle. This way, I’m not grudgingly working on client work, in fact many days I’m energized when we have client work because they all feed one another. I doubt I’d feel the same way if the client work and my own projects were worlds apart.

This leads me in to the second part of the question:

Part two: What advice do you have for service providers who are getting burned out on trading their hours for dollars?

I loathe to use the word ‘luck’ but I am fortunate because my client work and other business ventures have the same over-arching topic. Marketing technology. Fortunate or not, it was not by chance. There was a time years ago where being an affiliate manager was the hot thing. It seemed like everyone was teaching that, seemed like lots of people were making big bucks being an affiliate manager with massive overriding commissions. There have been many, many times I’ve wished to offer that as part of my services. At the end of the day I never acted upon it (sometimes inaction is good) because I knew where my strength is, I knew where our brand stands.

That wasn’t the only thing there have been a lot of different shiny objects along the way. Some days it took everything I had to sit on my hands, to not go down that road and just focus on tech. I think it has paid off. Long story short. If you can, try to find synergy between paid work you accept from clients and your own projects.

Even with a nice symbiosis going on there are times your work load is higher than usual. You need to set aside one day of the week at least that you don’t work for clients. You can do that internally or let clients know. Schedule both types of work with equal importance.

Also if you can or are able to, charge what you’re worth, watch out for a handful of good clients who pay well, you work well with and treat them right. Drop everyone else. With the time freed up from smaller one-time clients, work like crazy on your own projects. When client work is taking up all your time give them your all and stash up the extra cash to tide over slower times. When work is slower, sieze that opportunity to work hard on your own projects that could build passive streams.

Here’s my next question for you Kelly.

When you start a new project, what is your process? Do you sit down to list the things you need to do and pull out the stuff your VA can do? Do you give yourself so much time a day or week to work on it? What happens to the other (older and ongoing) projects while you focus on the new project?

Note:  Some of these posts are not necessarily posted in 2011 but I only discovered them in 2011. Another testimony why good posts bring you traffic again and again.

Pretty CSS3 Button

This one is almost 2 years old by now but still very good. I have the code snipped and these buttons make into a lot of my sites. There are a lot of CSS button tutorials but I like this best because it’s easy to understand and edit.

WordPress Tutorial – Load The Template You Want

It’s one of the best illustrated posts about template_redirect in WordPress. Extremely helpful to me for developing plugins, could definitely be used in themes too. Just a fair note of warning this stuff is pretty geeky.

Google Web Fonts v2

This is the post that got me started and loving Google Web Fonts.

Top 20+ jQuery Accordian Tutorials

Having to dive headlong into jQuery this year, I needed al the help I could find.

Automatically Add A Home Link To wp_nav_menu

This introduced me to the wp_page_menu_args filter. Something I had to use quite a bit on a recent project.

Custom Columns For Custom Post Types

When working on a client project in the summer, I had to get deep into custom post types and it was fascinating. This post helped me make the interface even better for the client.

Certainly these aren’t the only posts. A lot of ‘stuff’ and help I find are not in blog posts at all. In fact they are more likely to be in a site like StackExchange, WordPress Answers, help desks and forums both public and private. Perhaps another time I’d followup with a most helpful forum posts article. Meanwhile, I hope this will be helpful to you too especially if you are involved in web development and a lot of WordPress.

P/S: If you don’t want to float from tutorial to tutorial, piecing things together on your own and want more thorough  technical training, we can help. Visit TechBasedTraining to learn how.

To kick it off, Kelly asked me this question.

Lynette, Why Did You Decide To Focus on Tech?

Answer: I’ve always been somewhat geeky. When working at my last job as marketing exec, I hung out with the IT manager a lot. Mostly because he was unlike any other IT guy I knew. He had some really cool ideas how to use technology in our marketing.

Then I started this business, with a heavy marketing focus. After all, that’s what I just came from. But a good friend kept asking me to help with the technical aspect and it all just kinda fell in place there.

As my knowledge of both tech and marketing grew, I’m finding I like the tech a lot more – sounds like something I should have realized all these years right? And so I trimmed a big, very visible and profitable product early this year that wasn’t quite ‘techie’. I still have the site as part of my funnel it’s great for that, just the paid product wasn’t.

I’m going to be starting the year off with a well defined focus. Technical training and developing plugins – so looking forward to it.

Ok now, my turn.

Kelly, when I decided to stop producing that profitable product, I was a wreck, worrying about a ton of things like what I’ll have to create to replace that income, would customers hate me, what if I’m making a huge mistake and on and on.

I’ve always admired how you can start something fast and just as decisively axe them when they don’t fit your goals anymore even if they have been profitable. You’re almost ruthless. What goes on in your head How do you keep your emotions out of that process? What do you have to say to those of us who have trouble letting go?