Pisces Moon Studio

Previous entries:

• #1: Why WordPress?
• #2: Domain Names, Hosting Plans, and installing WP
• #3: 10 Free Basic PlugIns You Should Add

Now that you have your recommended plugins installed, let’s go through the basic settings for your blog. Some will be self-explanatory, while others a little more obscure.

All of the settings are located in the lefthand column of your blog dashboard. Look at the bottom link, cleverly called Settings, and click the arrow next to it to open the submenu.

Click on General.

General Settings

Your blog title, tagline, and email address should have been set up when Fantastico installed WordPress for you. If it isn’t right, you can correct it now. The WordPress address and blog address were also automatically set up. Do not change these — this tells WP where to find your blog, and if you change them, you and your visitors will see only a database error where your blog should be.

Next comes Membership. The “Anyone can register” box is unchecked by default. Since your Subscribe2 plugin requires that people be able to register, you should check this box.

“New User Default Role” is Subscriber. Leave this as is.

Timezone: Choose a city in your time zone. It’s a long list divided up by continent, so you may have to do a little looking. Or, if you don’t see one and you know your local offset from Universal (Greenwich Mean) Time, you can enter that instead. It’s better to choose a city if possible; WordPress will automatically account for Daylight Savings Time when a city is listed, but it will not if you use a UT offset.

Date format, Time format, Weeks starts on: Self-explanatory. The default values are usually fine.

Scroll to the bottom and click on Save Changes.

Now click on Writing.

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In which I bring to you every Friday five cool sites or items or other things I’ve noticed during the preceding week, many (but not necessarily all) fiber- or art-related. Feel free to chime in with your favorites in the comments.


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Previous entries:

• #1: Why WordPress?
• #2: Domain Names, Hosting Plans, and installing WP

One of the most versatile features of WordPress is the thousands of plugins available to make tasks easier or to add functions to the main program. Using plugins, you can set up WordPress as your entire website, as a PayPal shopping cart, as a membership site, as well as other exciting possibilities.

This week, let’s talk about the most useful plugins that I think every installation of WordPress should have. The first four are must-haves, in my opinion. #5 is optional, and the rest are ways to help increase reader interaction on your blog. Because who wants to write just to themselves without a conversation?

After the list, we’ll talk about how to install them.

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Even if you don’t subscribe, you have to read Robert Genn’s newsletter today. Dry plot summary: He is painting plein aire in a town plaza somewhere in Mexico. He describes the scene around him, a conversation with a passerby, the sounds of mundane daily life.

Yet because of his practiced eye and cultivated voice, he makes this experience completely come alive with gorgeous sentences: “A two-litre bottle of Fresca came by with a four-year-old girl attached.” Isn’t that so much more evocative than an ordinary description of a little girl drinking a big soda?

Read. Observe your surroundings today. Then plan how you can translate that experience into your art — in words or in images — and go make something beautiful from something utterly ordinary.

For everyone who has been following along with the Month Zero goal-setting, here is a gift for you:

Click on the image to download a PDF version. Print it out and post it on your wall.

Then head into 2010 knowing that you are a month ahead of the rest of the world… and that you don’t have to be perfect!

Happy New Year!

In which I bring to you every Friday five cool sites or items or other things I’ve noticed during the preceding week, many (but not necessarily all) fiber- or art-related. Feel free to chime in with your favorites in the comments.

This week:

- Visual Thesaurus
- Rice Freeman-Zachery on Getting Rid of Stuff — and why we are afraid to do it.
- Picassos With Pixels: 12 Groundbreaking Pieces of Digital Art
- Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2010
- Facebook Privacy Update: Don’t Use the Default Settings

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Other entries:

• 31: Why WordPress?
• #3: 10 Free Basic PlugIns You Should Add

After reading last week’s WW, you’ve decided that having your own WordPress on your own domain is exactly what your marketing efforts need. So how do you get started setting it up?

I’m going to walk you, step-by-step, through the process of doing it yourself. It’s not difficult to do, but it is a little complicated. Note: If you are not a techno-nerd and just want it Done! Now! then the easy way is listed at the end of this post.

If you’d rather do it yourself, read on and I will teach you how.

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Last week I spent much of one day with my accountant doing my year-end tune-up and planning for 2010, and I impressed the heck out of him with how much I’ve done this year and what I have planned out for next year. This isn’t easy to do, so I feel really good about that. Month Zero is on its way to helping me create a great 2010!

So how to start Month Zero?

Well, first of all… do you have goals set for next year? They don’t have to be big goals like “restore world peace” or “stamp out hunger.” They do need to be measurable, though. You can’t say something vague like “I’ll make more quilts next year.”

Nope. Make it concrete. “I made XX quilts this year. Next year I will make YY.”

Or “I will enter one exhibition/quilt show this year.”

Or “I will take a class from (teacher I’ve always secretly admired).”

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Why don’t we manage to get things done? We make plans and set goals and then things happen and another year has gone by and we haven’t accomplished anything we set out to do.

(Raises hand. GUILTY.)

Part of it is, of course, that “life is what happens while you are making other plans.” Your energy gets poleaxed by a lengthy illness, you trip over a footstool in the middle of the night and break something important like your dominant hand. A family member needs extensive care. Not much we can do about these things.

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