syncing Web design and a little extra cash
Posted in countdown to my mac book on Sunday 01. 24. 10
I was recommended for a 16-hour project about a year ago. One of the larger Houston hospitals needed its newsletter formatted. The editor was on vacation, and no one else on the marketing staff knew MS Publisher. Marketing was in a panic, my agent was in a panic, and I got the call because my agent remembered I used to list Publisher on my skills-based resume. The marketing department had already invested 20 hours in trying to get the software to open, and they figured that pouring the current info into the program would take about two full days.
It took me three hours. I got free sodas, free lunch and worked my way out of 13 hours of cash. It took me three hours because I knew the program, so all I had to do when I got there was get to work. The newsletter stories had been written and already edited. I think I corrected all of one typo. If you know what you’re doing, sometimes work is called breathing in between trips to the refrigerator.
Not so with modifying the PHP on my blog. I wanted to get rid of the large banner above the individual posts, and most online advertisers and publishers now accept the rotating 125×125 sidebar banner as the most effective type of ad. I found a plug-in to rotate the sidebar ads, but I can’t figure out how to disable them on the home page, which was a check-this-box option with the previous plug-in.
Somebody who knows what she’s doing? 20 minutes at the most, and the home page would have been ad-free by bagel time. Me? All day and look ——>
Through this article, I did find a very cool post keyword generator that came bundled with a powerful SEO machine. My tags now look all official and Nigerian spammy, but the point is to pull people into the blog from the search engines to read useful content and, hopefully, buy the latest Skechers for their daughters from my rotating sidebar ad. If I build it, they will come, but they gotta know I’m here.
[I also blindly but fortuitously installed a plug-in that searches for similar, relevant content on my blog, then auto-generates a hyperlink within the post itself in case you all want to read some other stuff while you’re here. WordPress is love.]
Wow. This is getting really complicated! I really like my dump and click blogger blog, even though I know it makes your eyes burn a little bit.
Since being out of work, I’ve learned to code, cook and crochet. Not really on #3, just going for the alliteration. Will relinquish all hobbies once assigned a new cubicle.