All you who work on web design or development will eventually find a need to fill spaces and your CMSes with dummy content so you can see the effects of our tweaks and edits. Normally I’d go to Lipsum.com it’s one site I’ve visited over and over and does the job. Generate, copy and paste. Problem is, sometimes you want more like the text formatted with headings headings, bullets and stuff like that to mimic real content. Of course you can do that either through regular HTML or inside your CMS WYSIWYG editor but that takes time. I love finding ways to shave off time on stuff we have to do regularly so I’m quite happy to find these two dummy text generators. They each have their own strengths and will come handy depending on the task. Loripsum.net Fillerati

It usually takes a lot to impress me when it comes to software and plugins then once in a blue moon comes a plugin that gets you really excited. Frankly, I didn’t expect to be excited about WP Squeeze Pro at all when it was demo’d to me in a webinar. Good thing I decided to pay attention – great lesson there, don’t write things off at first glance – and it was worth it. What Makes WP Squeeze Pro Different? Sometimes, I need to get opt-in pages setup lickety split so I can move on to other things. I don’t want to think about copywriting, I don’t want to be logging into Aweber to grab form codes, I don’t want to mess with design options like adding images, page widths, font types or add a gazillion testimonials. Don’t get me wrong. Those can be important in the long run. Good copy obviously helps with conversions and so does the right design. However, there are times you need to throw something up fast and tweak later. This is where WP Squeeze Pro shines. It lets me get it all set up super fast with very little tweaking. My copy may not

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Design, graphics *sigh* what can I say? I’m just no good at them and when it comes to business cards… let’s not even go there. In the past I’ve always opted for the uninspired plain old boring white card with a dash or color in the text perhaps and some cheesy art that the card printer suggests. I’ve gone as far as adding a photo to my cards and that’s about it. Then… I found MOO! I’d spend hours just admiring those beautiful cards. Take a look at these. Aren’t they gorgeous? Question is, can I the geek and just about anyone who is design challenged make such lovely creations? You see, one of my problems with business cards is, I do so many things within technology. How can I pack all that in a card? Seriously, it hurts when I have to tell people “I make websites” because what I do is way, way beyond that. I decided to try. There’s something about MOO that gives birth to inspiration. The grand idea – use word clouds. I headed over to Tagxedo. You can use Wordle too but I like Tagxedo better because you can make shapes out of your words.

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After a long day this week, I decided to tear myself away from the desk but alas, there was preparation for our tech training class to be done. So, I pulled out the iPad, got cozy on the bed and fired up two apps. The Tools One of them – believe it or not – is an app I bought for my daughter. It’s called Drawing Pad. She absolutely adores it and despite my challenge with drawing and graphics I love doodling on it too. The other is AirSketch. This one is a work tool. AirSketch is essentially a whiteboard type application but it has a neat feature that allows you to broadcast your whiteboard locally so anyone in your office can just pull up a web browser, type in the IP address for the app and voila! Everything you draw or write shows up on their browser. It is so very cool. The How How can these two apps replace PowerPoint? Remember, I said I was not working on the computer but I still wanted something that look like slides. Step One Using Drawing Pad, I loaded a fun background and used a brush to write my slide heading.

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A lot of web work require graphics but I’m so graphically challenged it’s not funny. So it’s always a problem when you need a mock up for your own work or clients and don’t have something to put in its place to indicate there is a graphic coming soon. Today I found a tool to solve that. Woo hoo! It’s very flexible. You can change the colors, size, add text all on the fly. Below are some placeholder images generated. Check out, bookmark and use Placehold.it.

According to Wikipedia… “Deep Linking is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on a web site instead of the home page” A real live example is in the paragraph above. I just deep linked to Wikipedia so you will land on the exact page explaining this term. You may not even think twice about it when you’re on blogs and other people’s site. You may even be actively doing it because it helps make your content rich and relevant. Deep linking is also good to establish usability. The last thing you want to do when creating content is to frustrate readers and make them search for the page or item you’re referring to. People expect logical continuity when they click on a link. As an affiliate, I always love it when marketers allow me to use deep links to their content and still cookie my referral. It makes me want to talk about that program, their content and link to their stuff everywhere in all types of content I create – videos, blog posts, reports, tools, landing pages etc. In short – deep linking is good for you and your affiliate. Many shopping cart and

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It seems like there are so many sales letter and landing page themes and plugins popping up everywhere. One of the latest to join the fray is WP Sales Letter. What attracted me to it is The headline, guarantee, opening text, PS suggestions. You won’t believe how much I struggle with these It can work with my existing theme (or most themes) Pre-Written Copy Suggestions The moment I got my hands on it, I ran a quick test and managed to cobble up a landing page in 15 minutes. Obviously, I’d need a lot more time when writing a real opt-in or sales page. However, I can already see how much it will speed up this process for me. You need to understand that for me, writing a sales page even a simple landing page is like asking me to jump off a cliff. The result – big time procrastination and that’s never good. With copy suggestions, the plugin helped me start and re-start my thought process as I work through the different sections a landing page should address. It is like a little nudge to keep me going. That is just as important as getting started – to keep

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