This tip is one of the most important… 

If you are building a website you should strongly consider using a “contact form.”

For many years I never believed anyone would take the time to fill it out a form online. 

Big mistake.  After adding one to my business web site, to my surprise, a lot of people prefer to fill it out. 

I’m not sure why this is.  Somehow the form breaks the ice and allows the customer to introduce themselves first before I contact them. 

I try to keep my form super simple, asking for name, phone and address, using a drop down box or two to condense the form as much as possible but also provide a commet box so the client can tell me as much as they want to about themselves.

As soon as they fill out the form we try to follow up as soon as possible.

To protect yourself from spammers;  Always use your Web Host provided “Form-mail” system.  Your Web Host usually offers this service for free and provides instructions for how to hook it up.

Happy Web-IT

Tom Jones

Be sure to check out our FREE video series.  ”How to make your Web IT Work”  You will learn step by step how to create and develop your own web site and blog from the ground up.

Click Web-It Video Lessons or the top navigation bar to get started.

People often ask me why a person would choose to self-publish their own blog vs. using a format such a Blogger.

There is a very good answer for this.  With a self-published blog like Wordpress, you will own all the rights to your blog and domain name and with Blogger you don’t. 

If your blog is important to you then you need to own the rights to it.  I have heard many horror stories about people spending a year working on their blog only to have the free Blogger randomly cancel their account.

When they try to get it back someone has already snatched up the name and they lose the blog forever.  This can never happen if you have your own hosting account, domain name and a self-published blog of your own.

You can imagine how devastating it would be to lose all of your hard work and perhaps even your entire concept. Don’t let this happen to you!!!  It can easily be avoided.

All you need to do to protect yourself is to find a good solid and dependable web hosting company that offers free Fantastico so that you can easily create and install an unlimited number of self-published blogs and websites all by yourself.

By using Fantastico’s auto installer program you can easily create self-publish blogs in only a couple of minutes.   

I highly recommend Expert Online Hosting.  They offer quality web hosting with Fantastico included with every plan and all for less than $5.00 a month.  You can create and publish an unlimited number of self-published blogs, mail list, forums, guest book etc. for this one low price. 

Expert Online Hosting even offers free web hosting for the first 30 days so that you can try everything out risk free.

Also, be sure to check out my free video lessons that will teach you how to set everything up.  You can follow along and watch me do everything.  You’ll get an over-the-shoulder view as I create and publish this site, the Webit Geek blog from start to finish.  It’s really quite easy to do.

Happy Web-IT

Tom Jones

Web-it Lesson #20

With so much mis-information about what Google wants these days I though it would be nice to go directly to the source.

Google has several new tools available at Google Webmaster Tools. It will take you just a few minutes to set up your free account.

With a few clicks of the mouse you can have them check your site to see if everything is working properly and most importantly to be sure that their spiders can index your sitemap and blog correctly.

Proper connection to the major search engines is essential to the health and happy ranking of your blog or website. That’s one reason I love to self-publish with the Wordpress blogging platform (learn how to set up), because it is so search friendly in the first place and already setup with the correct structure that the search engines like.

Sometimes the very best way to get to the truth of the matter as to what Google wants  is to get your information directly from Google and stop listening to any one else who says otherwise.

Be sure to also submit your Sitmap to Yahoo (here’s a post I found that shows how) and don”t forget to submit your site to MSN Live (just your site, not your sitemap).

Happy Web-It,

Tom Jones

Web-it Lesson #18

Here’s the latest on Google Sitemap Compliance.  

The Really Simple Sitemap we created in Lesson 13 is super simple, easy to navigate and can be crawled by the search engines but it isn’t fully Google compliant.  I found this out while writing my last post and verifying my new sitemap with Google. 

In order for your site to be Google compliant it needs to be in the XML format.  The problem is that most of the plug-ins that meet the requirements these days are really ugly.

So what you want to do is keep your Really Simple Sitemap that you just installed a couple of lessons back and install a second more ugly sitemap that the public doesn’t see.  

• The Really Simple Sitemap is not only great looking but also functional and helps your site visitors get around with ease.
• The ugly XML sitemap is totally compliant and only the search engines see it.  See my ugly Google XML Sitemap

To get a Google Compliant Sitemap for yourself simply click on Add New Plug-Ins in your Wordpress Admin and  search for the word “sitemap”. Choose the Google XML Sitemap and activate it.  

Once activated you need to submit the new Sitemap URL to Google Webmaster Tools.

Note: Your new Google compliant sitemap url should look something like this once it’s created - http://yourblog.com/sitemap.xml