Carol's Photos

Carol Cohen, one of our showcased sites’ winners, believes you should do things you are passionate about, things that get your creative juices flowing.   For Carol, that passion is photography.  As a young child Carol collected postcards and was extremely fascinated with landscaping pictures.  Although Carol is a professional, she enjoys photography as a hobby with friends, especially now that her children are grown.  She day trips and travels to capture nature’s beauty at its best.

With Photoshop and Lightroom available, more and more photographers are literally staying out of the darkroom, and the same is true for Carol.  Intrigued, I asked Carol if there were any other special software, social media, or techie things she was particularly interested in.  Her response, “Twitter and Facebook.”  Carol tried Twitter at the urging of her daughter, to help Ashton Kutcher be the first to reach one million followers.  “Once I saw how this social media worked,” Carol said, ” I thought it was a great way to see what my grown children are doing throughout the day. How cool is that?’

You’ve already seen Carol’s old site; now you can see her new site (using her winning Business Plus plan on IX Web Hosting). Carol, we thank you for sharing your passion.

“If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.”

T. Alan Armstrong

Carol Cohen's New Website

Facebook

Facebook has reached 6 Million custom usernames. Was yours taken when you arrived?

In case you missed it, Facebook opened up to custom usernames. That announcement created an Oklahoma Landrush type of event as everyone logged in to grab their handle.

Were you able to snag the username that you want? No? Well, unless your name is something unique (like “Banjo” or “Kazooey“), you’re out of luck. According to Mashable, there were 200,000 usernames gobbled up in the first 3 minutes, and more than twice that after 15 minutes of its debut. No surprise there, considering the user base of Facebook (175 Million users as of February 2009).

So what does it mean to have missed acquiring  the username you’ve always wanted in Facebook?  Will people be unable to find you on Facebook? Of course not. Hey, it’s just a name… and since it’s attached to Facebook.com, it’s not really yours.

Facebook is another free service on the internet, and we love free just as much as the next person. Facebook is a great social media application. All we’re saying is, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Remember Geocities. MySpace’s numbers continue to dwindle. We know the value of ownership. After all, bailing out websites that have lost their free hosting is our reason for being.

Facebook Usernames

In addition to having your custom username on Facebook, why not have your own domain name? Web hosting companies now offer free domains with their very affordable hosting packages.

When you register your own domain name remember Facebook is currently one of the most (if not the most) popular social networking website on the internet. You can use it to increase the visitors to your own website. Exercise your creativity with the freedom ownership provides!

Which Path To Take?

Chris Brogan Blog

On the topic of startups, Chris Brogan says if he were to start today “No matter what, the very first piece of social media real estate I’d start with is a blog. It’s a website, with lots of built in features that make it useful from a search perspective, and simple from a content creation perspective. That alone is worth the price of admission.” And Chris should know.

Chris Brogan is a ten year veteran of using social media to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Chris blogs at www.chrisbrogan.com, a blog in the top 10 of the Advertising Age Power150, and in the top 100 on Technorati.

With a blog virtually anyone can publish their thoughts, ideas and opinions to millions of potential readers.  In return, those readers can “participate” by expressing their view points or comments.  This method of communication is allowing all of us a means to become involved in information rather than just being passive consumers of it.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary awarded “blog” as “The Word of the Year” in 2004, when more and more people started using them as a means to express themselves personally.  Today, blogs are reaching new heights in popularity.  Many businesses and corporations are increasingly implementing blogs as they discover the flourishing opportunity it provides to build relationships with their existing customers as well as developing relationships with prospective new customers!

We’ve talked to many of our customers who say they want a web-presence.  Cash is tight and they don’t have big advertising budgets. Blogging is a very inexpensive way to help accomplish this goal (all you need is your IX Webhosting account).

Some of our customers haven’t started a blog because they are intimidated by the setup process. That’s where the other Chris comes in.

The 2nd Chris

Now that you’ve heard the reasons that a blog is the first thing to do from Chris Brogan, it’s time to hear from another Chris. Our own Chris Testerman. Chris will help you with the “how” do I start.  Chris created this really awesome video that will show you how to set up a WordPress Blog in your IX Webhosting account in under 2 minutes!

If you don’t have a hosting account here’s an earlier post to let you know why you should.

Now, there’s nothing to hold you back!
Now that you’re ready to start creating your content, you are going to have to start sharing it with someone, right?  So please, feel free to comment to this video with links to the blogs you’ve created.  We’d love to take a look at them!

By the way, here’s a link to the tutorials Chris mentioned in his video: http://www.ixwebhosting.com/index.php/v2/pages.customerCenter