Tigertech Special – 4 months free hosting!

tigertechspecialMy favorite hosting provider, Tiger Technologies, is offering a special incentive for web hosting until the end of July. If you sign up for hosting, or transfer your hosting to TigerTech by 11:59pm PST on July 31, you will receive your first four months of hosting FREE!

TigerTech has long been my hosting provider of choice, for MANY reasons.

  • You never have to pay for Domain Name Registration
  • They have a track record for environmental advocacy, and they are carbon neutral
  • The user experience with a hosting account couldn’t be any easier – no horrible jargon, advertisements, or hard to read control panels to decipher.
  • Above all – THE BEST customer service I have ever encountered from an internet hosting company – hands down!

The best advantage also, if I work on your web design project and you host with TigerTech, I will not charge any time for set-up of emails, hosting, or any other issue you may have that pertains to your hosting. I’ll take care of these these things for you FREE OF CHARGE, because I believe they are that good, and I trust that I will rarely, if ever, encounter any technical problem with regard to host servers with TigerTech.

To take advantage of this offer, click the image above to sign up for 4 months of free hosting!

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It’s About Relationships

Some of the questions I am asked all the time are “Can you really make it financially as a freelancer?” or “Can you make a lot of money that way?”, “Isn’t that risky?”, and a more recent one from a ‘former’ freelancer – “How can you compete with companies and online job bid sites that have such low prices or just want to put in the lowest bid?”

There are a couple of things that I believe separate the happy and successful freelancers I know from the “other guys” for lack of a better word. Continue reading

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Web Maintenance for Leigh Ann Phillips


Photo by John Lorenz

Recently, I assisted Leigh Ann Phillips, a musician and Sound Healing Therapist, to make many additions to her web site – www.leighannphillips.com.

I absolutely love working with other alternative and holistic practitioners, as well as musicians.  It allows me to collect and gather all of my passions together – music, healing, and web design!

Leigh Ann’s website was already beautifully in place, with the help of photographer,  John Lorenz.  However, adding almost 30 pages of new content seemed cumbersome with both Leigh Ann and John’s busy schedules.  So, Leigh Ann contacted me to place new pages for CDs and Books, as well as Crystal Tones Singing Bowls that she is now selling!

Kathy McTavish

Kathy McTavish

I was also very lucky to meet Leigh Ann at a sound healing workshop she held in Duluth, MN, and to connect her with Cellist, Kathy McTavish, who played just beautifully with the 20-something singing bowls brought to the Spiritual Deli last month!

For more information about Leigh Ann Phillips, her music, singing bowls, and sound healing, visit her web site:

http://www.leighannphillips.com/

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From WordPress.com to your own hosted blog

I recently helped Sonia Warmack, a bookkeeper and owner of SRW Books, Inc, to move her WordPress.com blog into her own hosted web site. Because the job was very straightforward, and she already had a blog, and simply wanted to migrate everything to her own website (with a few modifications), Sonia took advantage of my new Pay-as-You-Go service option.

WordPressOne of the great features of the professional social networking site, Linked In, is all of the great additional applications which you have access! One of the best applications that is integrated with Linked In is your very own blog on WordPress.com. This is a great way for people to get started with wordpress as a blogging tool.

After you’ve mastered the inner workings of WordPress.com, your next step might be to integrate your blog into your business web site, or to step into a WordPress-based website completely.

If this is your stepping stone into the world of WordPress, I congratulate you! When you migrate your blog into your site, or upgrade to a WordPress driven web site, you’ll notice that your back-end interface is almost completely THE SAME as what you used on WordPress.com! Easy!

Be sure to visit SRWBooks if you are in need of part-time bookkeeping as well!
http://www.srwbooks.com/

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Computer Problems?? Call That Girl!

Call That GirlIt has been a huge pleasure for me to complete a new WordPress site for my good friend, Lisa Hendrickson, of Call That Girl!

For the longest time, Lisa had a simple one page site that I designed for her, and she was very happy. Then, her business grew! She started blogging. She started putting together YouTube videos. She wanted to feature her promotions. Then, she wanted to tie all of her efforts together! Her new site is a wonderful example of all of the integration and customization that is possible using WordPress.

How do I know Lisa? Well, some time ago, Lisa and I met while working as contract employees for a large helpdesk organization in Minnesota. Then we both struck out on our own and have never looked back!

Now, Call That Girl has grown and moved to a larger office in St. Louis Park, MN. Lisa Hendrickson, the owner of Call That Girl, is not only an excellent computer support specialist for home and business users, but she is a master networker on LinkedIn.com.

To celebrate her new office and her new web site, if you mention HolisticGeek.com, you can receive $15 off your first hour of phone support from Call That Girl!

Visit her web site or call her today!
http://www.callthatgirl.biz/
612-865-4475

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Here in the North Woods – Robi Meyerson sings beautifully

Robi MeyersonI recently finished a web site for a wonderful singer-songwriter from Duluth, MN named Robi Meyerson. This was a wonderful project filled with audio samples of songs, embedding YouTube Videos, and creating a fun and interactive first page with light-up notes to take you to her subsequent pages.

The site is also built in WordPress, and makes use of Page Templates to create the custom front page which appears to lay “outside” of the site. Special thanks to “The Geek Goddess” in the UK for a beautiful theme, which I customized, as well as expounded upon for the front page.

Robi’s calendar is filling up with many gigs, and she has two new CDs out! If you are up “here in the North Woods” you should definitely attend one of her shows!

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Got Che?

cheProbably one of the most fun and challenging sites I’ve put together, CheSpotting.com is all about everyone’s favorite iconic revolutionary – Che Guevara!

The concept behind CheSpotting.com came from two friends, Jen and Kelly (whom is also known for her collaborative HaikuByTwo site!), and their obsession for finding and “spotting” all things Che Guevara. It’s full of photos, links to books and videos, news and commentary, as well as ways to get your ‘Che Fix’ through even Facebook or Twitter!

CheSpotting.com’s design is based on The Morning After WordPress theme (with a few CSS and code magic customizations thrown in by me!). This site is a good example of the versatility and power that WordPress can bring to a site.

So, take a gander, browse the great information, and if you “spot Che” – send them a photo, and maybe they’ll post it!

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I like the title – “Web Oracle”

Celtic Fire and Faerie

Celtic Fire and Faerie

Sometimes a web site just needs updates and edits. Or, perhaps you lose your previous webmaster, for whatever reason.

Over the last month I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Áine Armour, and I’ve enjoyed very much – providing updates and edits to her website, CelticFireAndFaerie.com.

As a “holistic” geek, Áine’s site, and especially her work, have been most intriguing and joyous to discover! Over the past month or more, I’ve helped to edit information on Bach Flower Remedies, changed and updated links, added new pages, assisted with iContact email campaigns, modifying paypal buttons, and now am editing recorded audio and placing it on her site for her newest ongoing class called Rose of Light Meditations for Ascension. She also hosts many upcoming workshops, and is a guide for annual Sacred Journeys to Ireland.

For me, it’s been very gratifying to help another healing arts practitioner share their uniqueness and offerings over the web. It’s also been great getting to know her, and to find out how much we have in common. I’m just discovering information about my ancestry – leading me to English and Celtic roots. We even share a love for common music and art, and the need for people to express their true selves in service to the world.

Once, she gave me the honorary title as her “Web Oracle” – and I’m thrilled! I see in her future, very much continued prosperity and sharing over the web! Plus, a new friend in Duluth, MN (me)!

I’m very humbled and privileged to work with this wonderful, healing woman!

Please do visit her website – www.celticfireandfaerie.com.

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Eliza One, Inc . – from CSS/HTML to WordPress!

BEFORE
before

AFTER
after

Recently, I had the privilege to “upgrade” a client of mine’s website from a standard HTML site to WordPress. This was a great opportunity, because I designed her first site for her as well! I took it as a wonderful learning journey to really see the great power of WordPress and how various plugins can do “code magic” as I call it.

Mary Chapa of Eliza One, Inc., is a nurse, care-coordinator, energy healing practitioner, and business consultant. She wanted to both upgrade the “look and feel” of her site, as well as start blogging. Once her site was migrated to WordPress – instead of paying me every time she needed text changes or an additional page added to her site, she’s now learned to do these types of changes and additions on her own through her site’s content management login page.

Please browse her website!
http://www.elizaoneinc.com/

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Urban Admin – A Virtual Assistant site built by WordPress

Urban Admin Site by HolisticGeek.comOne of the things I love about designing web sites for other people is engaging in the creative process with them. Sheryl M. Snitkin’s site, Urban Admin, seemed to come together so nicely – because she and I were both open to engage that “creativity” together.

I love to email back and forth a lot with clients. It’s a time to bounce ideas back and forth, and it gives me a chance to really understand where someone is coming from when they say words like “professional, but not corporate!”, “faces and diversity”, “And Purple! I love purple!” Sometimes it takes a bit of clarifying – a bit of hand holding – and ultimately, a sense of “interdependence” – because both of us, me and my client, want to get it “just right.” Working with Sheryl was a pleasure, and her site was fun to create as well!

So.. more about Sheryl and Urban Admin. Urban Admin, located in Minneapolis, MN, is in the business of “Virtual Assistance.”

Just what is a Virtual Assistant (VA)?

Imagine all those mundane tasks you have to do to run a business. You need to make handouts for potential clients for a networking event. Maybe there’s a PowerPoint presentation that you need to do for a seminar you’re giving. Oh, and don’t forget that you need to check your voice mail, update client databases, order supplies, fax documents, etc. If you are like me, these tasks get overwhelming, and a person ends up spending half of their time doing these things, when in reality, what should be happening is what needs to be done to bring in revenue.

This is when you need a Virtual Assistant!

So… Take a deep breath – then get those tasks delegated to someone else, and get yourself back to doing what you do best – YOUR BUSINESS!

So, check out her website, and if you need a Virtual Assistant, contact her!

A bit more about the website… Continue reading

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