Am attempting to determine why the “comments” function is misbehaving. Am going to do some quick experimenting which will completely discombobulate the appearance of this site for a few moments if you’re happening to visit while I’m troubleshooting…

UPDATE: Many, many hours later. It is seeming to me that the comments function may have disappeared when I upgraded WordPress from 2.0 to 2.02 in late summer or early fall.

The newer version may have some imcompatibility with my design (known as a “theme” in WordPress speak). I haven’t found where the possible imncompatibility lies but have proven that the problem is not with WordPress itself. ‘Comments’ works and all the old comments are there when I switch to Wordpress’s highly functional but not so pretty default “Kubrick” theme. Going to continue slogging away at this.

It is also possible that I corrupted some code somewhere while validating the site in October.

TUESDAY UPDATE: About 8 hours into this I’m as puzzled as I was at the start. Haven’t located the source of the problem. I have a request in at the WordPress support forum and am hoping someone there may spot what it is I need to fix. So far no takers.

Wow. The site is working again in both IE and Firefox. And the code is validated.

Next on the agenda (after I completely back-up the newly fixed and validated files) is to do some more design work. Some neatening. Some simplifying.

- Going to cull down the “Sections” display to less than a dozen key categories.

- Going to replace the Google Adsense ads with targeted affiliate network ads and my own offerings as I roll them out. Going to experiment with ad placement, as well.

Completely dropping Google Adsense as a revenue model since it is only paying a few cents per click on website-served ads. That is the result of a Google policy change made last November. Hopefully it will kill all those spam “scraper” sites that are clogging the search engines. But it also makes it pretty pointless from a business sense for legitimate sites to run Google ads.

- May widen the sidebar columns a bit (and narrow the main content column to compensate) so the sider columns are more content friendly.

All underway and changes should be visible within a week or two.

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For the next little bit, the site will appear even more broken as I experiment with a few options to see if I can troubleshoot the current problems.

Sometime in the last week or so, undiscovered by me until last night, this Wordpress-designed site broke.

Several things are wrong.

Haven’t yet found the cause of the problems.

Only the portion of the page that you are reading now is showing up when you click on an individual post or the ‘read more’ link.

If you are using Firefox, the page background has gone gray and is washing out the type.

Not sure why or how either of these happened since I hadn’t touched the site or (more…)

Technorati Profile

Am just beginning to learn about what are known as social bookmarking and tagging.

It appears that by joining Technorati and adding (more…)

Just found a great directory of sites offering free clip art.

Need artwork for your web pages, reports, e-books, assessments, Power Point presentations, flyers, etc.?

The site makes one big mistake that I’m finding a lot of people making. Mentioning it here so you won’t fall for it.

It describes Google Image Search as a source for free clip art.

Wrong.

Google Image Search is a handy index of images found on web pages. Just as regular Google search is a handy index of written content found on web pages.

Most images found on web pages — just as most written content — are subject to copyright laws. You need permission to use them, may have to pay a licensing fee and may be required to publish a line crediting the artist or photographer.

There are copyright-free and royalty-free (meaning you pay nothing for each use) clip-art collections available on the web.

Some you have to pay for. This listing is for ones that are completely free — and includes photos as well as drawings. (more…)

List your holistic site or blog, services, product, etc., at Mind Body Spirit Journal. For free.

• This builds community.

• Builds partnerships.

• Increases traffic for both of us. (The right kind of traffic.)

• Gives more interesting copy for our visitors to peruse.

• And, can help both of us with search-engine rankings.

(They are based in part on how many quality incoming links you have from complementary sites.) List your compatible site on the Mind Body Spirit Journal site and you have one more incoming link from a quality, complementary site.

Want your listing and link in Mind Body Spirit Journal? It’s easy to do.

Two simple steps: (more…)

by Ken Winston Caine

If people like you and what you are about, they want to buy your stuff. They want you to have stuff for them to buy. They want to learn more of what you have to offer. They want to talk to you after you give talks. They want to buy your books at the back of the room. They want to “invest” in you — or actually, they want to invest in themselves through you.

They expect to have those opportunities if you are a professional working in personal development and self-help. They expect to find those opportunities if you are for real and not just some pretender who figured out how to build a website.

You disappoint and confuse them if on your website you don’t offer a report, an e-book, a program, various ways for them to (more…)

Next couple weeks I’m going to be focusing on commercializing Mind Body Spirit Journal, which is long overdue. Believe I’ve got enough editorial categories started to give me something to work with.

This site really doesn’t work until it begins offering useful self-help products and opportunities that readers are eager to hear about and invest in. And until it begins drawing folks because it delivers really useful and valuable offerings. When the site is clearly a vibrant marketplace as well as an inside information source and community, it will instantly command the kind of respect I expect it to grow into and deserve. And I’ll be able to easily draw big names from the greater world of Mind Body Spirit for interviews and online workshops and meetups and other cool (more…)