Posted on Tech Notes

Using Amazon S3 to Backup Your WordPress Site

We are big fans of the Amazon services and the free tier in particular.  The site you are on includes a WordPress server, and we like to use Amazon to help out our administration of the server and its applications.  One of our regular tasks is backing up and migrating applications to other servers.  In this article, we will look at how to easily backup and restore your server to Amazon S3. The Amazon S3 Plugin One of the strengths of WordPress is the number of plugins available to it.  You can add too many plugins however there are some that just make sense.  With that in mind, let’s look at a plugin that will help us simplify a common task.... Read more

A grid of example domain names
Posted on General

Whats in a Domain Name?

Do I need a Domain Name? A new business is rarely going to skip out on a domain name these days.  A website and Internet presence have become a cost of doing business.  However, a small operation or a blogger might decide that they can use other options for their Internet site and skip the domain registration process. The free options available from social networking sites, blogging hubs, and even Google provide a way to create some web pages or even a blog site within an existing domain.  Many of these options are tempting as the hosting provider touts that you will become a part of their network and provided some free advertising and access to their community. Your Content,... Read more

Posted on Introductory Course

Personal Brand Building – You are the Brand

The Internet not only allows us to launch a business, it allows us to create and build a personal brand.  A brand has always been associated with a product in the past and that has not changed.  Now you are the product and your personal brand will help you build awareness that can lead to revenue across a family of services or businesses.  Building a brand takes time and effort.  In this class, we will take the first steps in creating our brand.  After the first steps, we will set ourselves on a course to continue to build our empire. This class focus is marketing and how to use the Internet to solve common marketing problems.  If you have not had much... Read more

Posted on Introductory Course

Balance Your Time in a Busy World: Tools and Techniques

Work-life balance is a popular topic these days.  The world has gotten smaller.  That reduction has lead to jobs feeling like they require attention twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week.  However, we still have personal lives and families that need our time as well.  Thus, we have to learn how to make use of the time we have. The concept of work-life balance often seems to be focused on reducing work.  We see that as a limiting view of the problem.  Instead of only focusing on time spent at work, we find it beneficial to look at everything you do as a whole.  Then we can find areas where our approach can combine tasks and shift effort... Read more