Dave Anderson

Time is certainly not unlimited so here is some idea's that I've learnt (the hard way) that will help you automate your manual administrative tasks can so you can spend more time doing the things that matter. Like above.

This is the first post in a series that will cover:
- The Website
- Email Marketing/Database Software
- Rich media website
- Event promotion
- RSS (Real Simple Syndication...yes it is real simple!)

Note: This is fairly simple stuff and is aimed at people starting out, or those looking for advice to save time. Not hardcore programmers or techies!

#1: Your Website
It goes without saying that your website is one of the most import promotional tools you have. It can also be one of the biggest time wasters! I used to spend days and days tweaking even the smallest little things, manually updating and designing each page in Dreamweaver.

In fact I estimated at one stage that I was spending 30-40 hours per week on my website alone, and that was on small details. Doesn't leave much time for music that's for sure, and my relationship was...mmm...what's the word...tested!

Things are far simplier now thanks to Wordpress and Blogger. I'm a Blogger user, but have played around with Worpress as well. I can barely separate these two. Most of the guru's suggest that Wordpress has more plugins and widgets which essentially allows you to add more cool things, but I think Blogger might have caught up now.

I've been using Blogger for quite a while now and just can't bring myself to relearn something else (more time on the beach remember!).

Essentially both sites are so simple you could have a website up in 5 minutes. If your serious you would then probably look to buy your own domain name like I did. i.e my blogger address is something like www.blogspot.com/daveandersononline, but of course I market www.daveandersononline.com or www.daveanderson.com.au

Blogger can also help you do that as well!

Dynamic Publishing

My primary reason for moving to Blogger was it's ability to dynamically publish. What does that mean? Here's an example:

- I have a gig coming up. I used to open my music page in dreamweaver, add the details, save and publish.
- I would then have to open the homepage and add a link, or a message to say I had done that.
- Of course people land all sorts of places on your website through search, so I used to open every page, add this link to the right hand column and save/publish.

That's like 8 or 9 different pages! I would also always find little design faults and then would tweak away at them for hours!

Now I just login into Blogger, write my content in a window that is as easy to use as a simple version of Microsoft Word, and publish. I don't have to visit my site or Blogger for that matter. I can email my posts from my email account or my mobile!

My site automatically creates archives of content, and I can tag content so that people can easily find what they are interested in. The various pages on my site are tags. i.e each time I make a post I say where it should be filed. This will get filed in Blog, Technology and Learnings, and will therefor appear on these relevant pages.

Design and CSS

With Blogger I have one design template using CSS (cascading style sheets which essentially tell my pages how they should look), and I publish once and it updates all over the site. Takes me probably 5 minutes as opposed to 2 hours.

If I want to tweak the look of my site, for instance I want to change the banner at the top, I do this in the CSS style sheet and it updates the entire site.

Now ensuring that your page is designed correctly, has content in navigation pane so you can see easily find what your looking for takes a bit more skill and plenty of tweaking. There is no 100% this is how you to do it formula which I guess is the fun part. I suppose this is what I spend most of my time doing, updating little chicklets, changing the web banners, playing with my jump menu's.

There are plenty of free templates around which you can easily tweak or of course you could get someone to build it for you. If you don't know how to do it, either get someone to teach you or get them to build it. You have to get Photoshop and learn the basics as a start.

Web 2.0
The other fantastic thing about these sites, and the reason why they are so popular is that they allow comments, sharing, and RSS. It's all managed by the Blogger code so I don't have to do anything to it. I'll go into RSS detail in a later post.

I think that's about it. My site is actually hosted externally blogger so I can't use a number of the easy templates. I've had to tweak a lot of scipts and codes to get it right but I guess it's all learning.

So what are you waiting for. www.blogger.com

Labels: Learnings, Technology

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I found a great script that I thought might help those that are looking to embed RSS feeds on their website. I understand that Blogger and Wordpress have built in plugins with some great functionality, however for those that are using their own custom template, finding this functionality can be quite an ordeal.

I'm still treating each of my pages on my site as separate blogs largely because I wanted an RSS feed off each page. Now that I know I can get RSS feeds off labels, thanks to this wonderful post - Consuming Experience, RSS Feed FAQ I can essentially pull my whole site back into one blog.

So using the site above you should be able to work out your RSS feed without too much trouble. You can get any number of different feeds including comments. Once you have this information you are probably wanting to embed it in your right hand side navigation.

So I found this website which makes it simple:
http://commons.ucalgary.ca/feed2js/build.php

Best thing about the site is that it's free! If you have a look at my right hand navigation you see an example. If you are familiar with CSS styles you can style them till your hearts content.

Hope this helps!

Labels: Blog, RSS, Technology

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I've been annoyed for a while with my itunes library. I have 3 computer's and I never seem to have my itunes library up to date, with me, when I need it.

So after a bit of searching I have come across to website services that let's you access your iTunes library where ever you want! Even on your blackberry.

The first site I found was this one:

LaLa
Originally a CD Trading service, LaLa now allows you to upload your iTunes library to the web for remote access. You can also transfer DRM-free songs from the LaLa catalog directly to your iPod.

Only downside...well it's a big downside...you can only use this site if your in the US.

The other site I found was this one:

NuTsie
nuTsie provides the ability to upload your iTunes library and access your playlists via your mobile phone. You can use the nuTsie Web player to listen to your music wherever you have a connected PC, even though you're away from your iTunes collection. And you can share your nuTsie page with others so they can listen to your music too.

Of course it's never as good as you think! You have to upload your xml file of your itunes library. It then allows you to listen to anything that they have on file, that is in your itunes library. If you have any rare stuff then...bad luck! Still it's better than nothing.

Labels: Blog, Technology

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