A picture of my mom and friend when they lived in Hawaii in the 60s. Great jeep!

If you haven’t heard already, all Facebook fan pages will be changing over to the timeline format at the end of March which still leaves you a little time to update it (us included!). One of the big changes is that Facebook will no longer allow customized landing pages. I know there are many businesses out there that may be upset with this, but it is for the better. I never understood why a business would want to drive viewers to a static page on Facebook. When people go on Facebook, they want to see interaction, and that the people behind their favorite company are human beings and not some kind of social media robots.

Businesses can still have custom pages that are accessed in the form of tabs just to the right of the about us section; this is a much friendlier UI than the previous design, and should increase the number of views to custom Facebook pages such as a contest or donation page (for non-profits of course).

Since you can’t direct users to a particular landing page, the “Cover Photo” at the top of the page will be a very important piece of real estate. Per Facebook, the “Cover Photo” should not contain and price information, a call to action, or anything else that could be placed in the about us section.

Finally, one the best new features is that users can now direct message organizations through Facebook which will lead to more fruitful B2C relationships.

It is no secret that non-profits are well-behind the for-profit world in utilizing social media to promote its cause. But recently, there have been a good number of blogs, books, and case studies that shine a light on this underutilized relationship. We all know the overwhelming majority of non-profits lack the necessary funds to hire an individual strictly for web work, much less an outside marketing firm to develop a fully integrated web solution. If they have a functioning website, it is often updated and maintained by a volunteer or a staff member who has 100 other things to do in the day and updating the web calendar or posting pictures on a blog aren’t high on their list.

Non-profits need a platform which allows them to easily add content without needing to know about a widget or a whatsit, and maybe most importantly be FREE! (We will save the dicussion of the “you have to spend money to get money,” for later!)

That is why Tumblr makes so much sense! It has a very intuitive UI and is about as fool proof as possible when it lays out posts. If a staff member would like to add a picture to their latest blog post, they can do so without worrying about how the picture is going to be formatted in the post. If they want to add a video, you just need to click the video post and voila! All the social media functionality is already built in so you can easily link your Tumblr blog to Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. There are many free and premium themes available as well, so hiring a web designer won’t be a necessity if you have someone knowledgeable of html in the organization. Even if an organization needs to hire a designer to do some customization for the blog the bill will be more around $1000 than $5000.

So, if you support or work for a non-profit organization that currently does not have or utilize a blog, do them a favor and get them on Tumblr!

Was able to take a few pictures while I was recording. The AP Reporter had a very nice Leica!

If anyone would like a free, 140 character appraisal of their domain, please tweet me @michaeljkrell. I will be happen to respond!

Here are some really basic rules when it comes to choosing a domain name…

1. .Com is King… With dozens and dozens of new extensions that have been released, .com domains are still king and there is a good reason. All things being equal, they will rank higher in Google, they are the most common extension used by for-profit organizations. Now there have been plenty of business that have succeeded in running successful companies without a .com domain, but it makes your life that much harder.

2. Not too long… The general rule of thumb is 14 characters or less for domain names; basically the shorter the better

3. Avoid hyphens and numbers… Including hyphens and numbers makes it more difficult for potential customers to remember your domain name.

4. Passing the radio test… If someone were to hear an ad for your company on the radio would they be able to easily understand the domain name? If you followed the first three rules, than the answer to this question should be yes!

Here are a few simple tips on how to secure your WordPress installation.

1. Update, Update, Update – It can be a pain to update WordPress installations, plugins, and themes because your website may not function or look the same, but these updates often times contain security patches that will make your site less vulnerable to attack.

2. No More Admins – When making a clean WordPress install, pick another username for your admin to make it more difficult for hackers to break in.

3. Create Strong Passwords – This is an obvious one, but one of the most important. It is a good rule of thumb to create a password of at least 8 characters with upper and lowercase letters and numbers. To make it even more secure add punctuation!

4. Use Better WP Security – This is a fantastic plugin that allows you to perform a multitude of different functions including: Changing your table prefixes, securing your .htaccess file, stopping brute force attacks, and changing your login page. If you are going to have one security plugin, this is it!

5. Deactivate Plugins – If you aren’t using a plugin, make sure to at least deactivate it. Plugins may contain security flaws that make your site vulnerable to an attack, and it would be silly to risk a security breach over a plugin you don’t even use.

Following these simple 5 steps will make your site more secure than the vast majority of WordPress installations and will send hackers scurrying away, looking for easier targets.

Before I started to get my nose in the domain industry, I was always baffled by how terrible pages for parked domains were, and how it seemed so difficult to just contact the owner if I was interested in purchasing one. Selling the domain wasn’t its primary purpose; its primary purpose was generating ad revenue. I think I can speak for many amateur domainers when I say that I don’t have parked gems that are generating thousands of dollars years, but I do have some solid ones that get a respectable number of WHOIS searches a month.

I saw a twitter post about a week ago from @domainsushi saying that she might consider making a custom landing page for each one of her domains instead of parking them, and I thought, that I would just go and try it out.

I use WuFoo quite a bit for forms and I thought that they would offer the easiest way to implement a simple contact us landing page. I was able to create the form, download a full html page, change the title and heading on the site (thanks to @domainsushi for these suggestions) and voila, I have a simple landing page that clearly states that this domain is for sale and a way to get a hold of me. If you are fairly fast, you can knock out a site every minute or two, so it is really isn’t that bad time wise. Since you only need to create one form that will go on each page, WuFoo is free, as long as you receive under 100 submissions a month, so that won’t hurt your bottom line!

You can see what it looks like here at bgreat.com

Now lets hope this will help me generate more leads!

Picked up these two domains at a recent GoDaddy auction. Really happy with these! I think they have a lot of potential in the non-profit sector.