I have a dedicated landing page for each of my plugins, which is standard practice for the majority of plugin developers. For myself, it would be much easier to answer support questions on my own site, as I log in each day. Users would get faster responses, that’s for sure.

Obviously, you can’t get each person needing help to come to your site and ask for it, most of them will ask their questions at the repository.

Recently I clicked the support tab of one of my plugins and realized someone had asked a question over 4 months ago, and I had failed to notice. To remedy this, I decided to get daily notifications right to my inbox. Here’s how I did it…

First, find the rss feed from your support tab.

Go to your plugin’s page, click on the support tab. Near the lower left corner, you’ll see the orange rss button and feed link. Click it and copy the url, it should look something like this:

http://wordpress.org/support/rss/plugin/santas-christmas-countdown

Burn the feed at feedburner.

Go to feedburner and burn the feed by pasting the url and clicking next. You will need to be logged in to your google account.

Subscribe via email to your feed.

Now, click the publicize tab, then click on Email Subscriptions, select options – I set mine to daily notifications, then activate.

All that’s left to do is subscribe to your new feed and Voila! You’ll now get daily notifications of support requests right to your inbox.

I just wanted to take a minute to make sure you guys update to the latest version of Santa’s Christmas Countdown. If you’ve got our Christmas Countdown Widget installed on your WordPress blog please install the update immediately.

To place the countdown on a post or page, you must first have the plugin installed. Then, use the shortcode [countdown] in your post. This will display the countdown to the left of your text. Use the shortcode [countdown-right] to display the countdown aligned right of your text.

What does TinyPNG do?

TinyPNG uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG files. By selectively decreasing the number of colours in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is nearly invisible but it makes a very large difference in file size!

While TinyPNG claims to compresses your PNG images by 50-70%, I’ve found that it’s usually closer to 90%.

I was working on a set of icons today and thought I would demonstrate just how easy it is to compress your images. Just highlight and drag, then drop multiple images, up to 20 at once. I love using TinyPNG because it’s so easy.

Voila! Reduced my images by 92%.

Can you tell the difference?

In my example below the file size has been reduced by more than 90%. Can you spot the difference? Probably not, but using the compressed image will save bandwidth and loading time and your website visitors will thank you.

WordPress Favorites is a new site that Crystal, from over at the CinnamonHollow started back in December. She recently invited me to guest post and I’m super excited to be a part of it – because I do love all things WordPress!

The plan is simple, we’re going to post reviews of our favorite free and premium themes and plugins. Nothing in particular mind you, just our personal favorites – and yes, I do have a few favorites that aren’t Christmas related.
Each plugin or theme that we include on the site will be ones that we have personally tested (and love!) on our own blogs.

For my first plugin review, I went with one of my all time favorites, the Custom Smilies WordPress Plugin. This fun little plugin gives your comments a truly personalized touch by giving your users the ability to post smilies in their comments.
Not only that, you can use your custom smilies in your pages and posts throughout your site… how cool is that?

It’s definitely one of my favorite plugins, so be sure to read my full review – it’s thorough and has a lot of screenshots included.

I plan on sharing another little gem reallly, soon, so be sure to click on over and check it out!

As you can imagine, maintaining a network of nearly two dozen Christmas websites can be quite a chore. So, being a Christmas Webmaster is my full time job, and I absolutely love being my own boss and working from home.
While I’ve learned a lot about making money online by years of trial and error and my network of sites are all self supporting and generate a small revenue stream, it’s taken years of hard work and long hours to even begin to accomplish my goals.

The thing is, running a blog or website and doing business online is a continuous learning experience, because the internet and trends are ever changing and you need to keep up. It’s all about getting traffic to your site. Here’s a great article you should check out: the good, the bad and the ugly ways of getting traffic to your blog.

With the new year and a new set of goals in mind, I’ve come to realize – and it really hurts to say – that it’s taken me well over a decade to learn some of the most basic and simple concepts for building the traffic to my sites. Mainly, because I did it on my own, without slowing down and seeking advice – but that’s something I am changing. (new year, new goals)

For one thing, I’m putting a few of my personal projects on the back burner so that I can spend extra time learning. It’s good to take a break to step back and brush up on the latest design techniques, SEO and marketing strategies, social networking trends, etc., by learning from others.

So where to start? Well, my first stop is Dukeo, by Sté Kerwer. Let me tell you – some of the things it’s taken me years to learn, are things that you can learn in ONE day over at Dukeo! It is truly an impressive site, chock full of more goodness than you’ll find stuffed into Santa’s sack! (yes, a Santa reference in January!)

For instance, I’ve been giving away free seasonal downloads on my first Christmas site since 1999, and I know first hand that giving something away is definitely one of the best and easiest ways to drive traffic to your site – and lots of it, year after year. But some one brand new to the game might not know this.

If you had dropped by Dukeo and read this article 10 Ways To Get More Traffic To Your Website, you’d already be one step ahead! And this article is just one example of what you’ll find at Dukeo. Each post there gives clear cut, easy to understand tips – on everything from SEO, blogging, affiliate marketing, generating traffic, email marketing, to how to start a blog, working with WordPress and sooo much more!

I’m an avid reader of Dukeo and trust me, the site is spot on with it’s tips, advice and strategies.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that just because you build some awesome website that your automatically going to get tons of traffic, because most likely, you aren’t. It WILL take work to build an audience and sometimes the simple things are the easiest to overlook.

Things such as guest blogging, creating sharable content, giving something away and so on, are things that I’ve learned from my own experience, and things that Sté writes about regularly. Sté even writes articles about the pros and cons of working from home, about success and failure, gives tips on how to stay focused, reduce stress and other gems that I really enjoy reading daily.

If you work from home or want to supplement your income by starting a website or blog, or any other sort of web based business, you definitely need to check out Dukeo.com. While there are zillions of websites out there giving advice for making money online, Dukeo is a cut above all the rest.

If you’ve ever been lured in by one of those “leave your job” type blogs that tell you can make money online, but never seem to give any actual advice on the how, you know what I’m talking about. Most “quit your job” sites just give you the “buy this ebook to find my secrets” spiel, or ask you to subscribe to their mailing list to get these ‘secrets’, which they follow up by sending out 2 emails a day, everyday, teasing their subscribers with “you’ll learn this or that” by clicking here… again to only be led to content that has little meaning or worth, or is another sales pitch.

Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to mess with all that. Make life simple and go bookmark Dukeo, right now. Actually, you should not only bookmark it, but make it a shortcut on your desktop and visit it everyday!

I really enjoy the articles Sté posts in his Mindset category, like this one – 15 Tips For Those Who Want to Make Money Online – which is a motivational list of things for you to keep in the back of your mind, as Sté writes, “for those days when you need some inspiration.” Or this one – Does Working Online Isolate You from the World? – which really hit home for me.

Seriously, Dukeo has nothing but actual, worth while, practical tips for making money online, and great advice for working from home… And you don’t have to jump through hoops to get the good stuff, because EVERY article is the good stuff. Be sure to follow Sté Kerwer on twitter @dukeo.

The only thing I don’t like about Dukeo.com? The fact that it took this contest, to inspire today’s post. And I would love to be able to view the categories from the main page some day

Dukeo is celebrating their two year anniversary this month, so congrats! Be sure to check it out, it’s a trove of knowledge… I should have shared this resource with you guys long ago! If you love the site as much as I do, be sure to enter the write a review contest for your chance to win $200!

Do you have more than one twitter account? Find it a hassle to log in and out of multiple accounts every day? Then fret no more! With this web based tool you can manage multiple twitter accounts from one easy dashboard – and it’s completely FREE!

Since I run a network of nearly two dozen Christmas sites, keeping up with social networking has been one area that I have completely dropped the ball on. At one point, I seriously thought about farming out the job to my teenage daughter, but I’d really rather do it myself.

It’s just such a hassle logging in and out of multiple twitter accounts every day. I even keep four different browsers logged into different twitter accounts, but I’m still slack about posting to them, because of the time involved.

I recently stumbled upon Splitweet after a quick google search, and woah!! What a relief it’s been. Now I simply login to one website, in one browser, lol, and I can post to multiple twitter accounts with ease, in no time at all. Yay, I’m going to be productive again!

Here’s a few screenshots:

1. Adding Twitter accounts

Find Add a new account and click the Authorize button.

Next, just click on Autorize App, login to your twitter account. Add as many as you want.

Now go Tweet!

Click the check box next to the twitter account you’d like to send your tweet to – you can send to one, or all. Type your message, maybe post a photo. click Tweet It!

This is a great tool to lighten the workload for those of you who tweet to multiple accounts.

All site owners have their niche, for me, it’s Christmas. I’m a full time Christmas Webmaster. I built my first Christmas website back in 1999, and eventually it grew into a network of over 20 sites that keep me busy year round. (And all of this is the the result of a bored housewife, left alone with the internet, but that’s for another post… )

A couple of years ago I converted a few of my bigger static sites over to WordPress, simply to lighten my work load. But it wasn’t until this past year that I completely fell in love with all things WordPress.
I can sum up why in one word: versatility. Or should that be two words? Infinite versatility.
Not only has it made maintaining my own network of sites 1000% easier, working with WordPress has added a new level of productivity, which results in happier clients. And honestly, the geek girl in me loves playing around with it

It’s fair to say that 2012 was the year of WordPress enlightenment for me.

My personal accomplishments:

I converted this site to WordPress and have somewhat embraced the concept of blogging – it’s a long story… a long, boring one, as I’ve been told.
I designed, wrote and released my first WordPress plugin!
I released a second plugin!
I completed an entire WordPress theme from scratch* (*see also: failures)

While these things were just for fun, it was a big deal to me and has been an invaluable learning experience. You really can do ANYTHING you set your mind to… if you can focus.

Other worthy mentions…

I broke the 12,000 post mark at my Christmas forums… that’s a whole lotta Talking Christmas, let me tell ya! =D

I was interviewed for an article about Christmas events for USA Today!

My failures, and what I learned from them.

I learned some things the hard way this year…

~ My Christmas theme project got completed but I failed to submit it in time for theme review. It seems to take about 3 days per theme, and there were like 32 ahead of me by the time I decided to submit it in late November. So, what I learned was this:
If you pour your heart and soul into a seasonal theme project, don’t procrastinate! Finish it and submit it for theme review WELL in advance. By this, I mean give yourself a couple of months to fix things and re-submit, in the event that you don’t get approved!

~ Reaching out to bloggers can sometimes be unpleasant – I was insulted by a self proclaimed “a list” blogger for being boring, and trying to reach out to someone “above my level”… and a host of other rantings. ;( What really sucked was that it was the first time I had ever written a blogger to say hello! I was just saying “I can relate” and asked for NOTHING. So it stung to say the least. (Since then, I’ve met some awesome nice bloggers who made me forget all about the one not so nice one!)
What I learned: some people just want to talk, and could care less to listen. If you reach out and are sincere, don’t let the negative meanies get you down. Develop yourself a thick skin!

~ I had to fire a client, and it was just awful. But the thing is, I had a feeling from our very first conversation that this guy might be difficult.
So, what I learned is this: Since taking on a new web site project requires working closely with your clients, if there are obvious communication problems from day one (or more like a serious clash in personalities), it probably isn’t going to work out. Trust your gut instinct and be selective in taking on new clients, it’s ok to say no. Save your sanity.

What else? Other things I figured out…

Coffee is pretty much my best friend.

I love Twitter. I follow all my favorite sites, plugin and theme developers, and everyday sift through mountains of useful links… it’s addicting.

I don’t like facebook. At all.

I realized that when in doubt, don’t freak out.

Think simple. Check for the latest version release, and update!

Most importantly, I realized that you don’t have to be a great writer, just write about what you love.

What I plan to change in 2013

Since my weekday mornings are spent answering emails, filling and shipping orders (depending on the season), making and drinking coffee, followed by tweeting, reading tutorials or browsing my favorite sites, or even sometimes working on a personal project to get myself ‘in the mood’ and other goofing off in general, I seem to get more dev work for clients done in the evenings and weekends than I ever do on weekdays.

This year, I hope to find a way to stay more focused, so that maybe I can have more time to myself.

Staying organized and keeping on top of my paperwork is another area that needs work… baby steps.

Another thing I need to do less of is watch netflix.

Tis the season for giving!! – Here at Square One we want to give all you lovely people a little WordPress something… so simply click on our WordPress advent calendar every day to reveal a useful WordPress code snippet. Or better still simply submit your email and you’ll get them delivered to your inbox daily – after all we know its a busy time of year but we wouldn’t want you to miss out on all of our 25 little gems!

Simply paste the following code into your functionality plugin, or your theme’s functions.php file if you’re not using one, changing the information as needed to match your site.

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add_filter('wp_mail_from', 'new_mail_from');
add_filter('wp_mail_from_name', 'new_mail_from_name');
 
function new_mail_from($old) {
 return 'jing@christmaswebmaster.com';
 }
function new_mail_from_name($old) {
 return 'Christmas Webmaster';
 }

Snow Storm

One of my all time favorites is Snow Storm. This awesome little plugin displays falling snow flakes on the front of your WordPress website for a truly festive presentation. You can see the cute wintery effect in action on Jinglebell Junction.

Christmas Message

This plugin helps you setup a custom message with cool graphics for all your visitors. This message can be a welcoming season’s greetings or may be a news for the new attractions on your website. It’s like putting up a billboard to grab your visitor’s attention.

Christmas Countdown Clock

Christmas countdown clock showing days and hours until Christmas day. Select from several designs, sizes, animations and backgrounds.

Christmas Countdown Widget

And of course, a shameless plug for our own plugin – The Christmas Countdown Widget displays a cute Santa Claus counting down to Christmas in your sidebar. On Christmas day Santa displays a “Merry Christmas” greeting to your visitors. The Christmas countdown will appear in your sidebar on a transparent background so it looks good with any theme.

Christmas Lights

This little plugin simply adds a string of lights to your WordPress powered site. Nothing to configure, install and activate and you’re ready to go!