Every New Year’s people set resolutions…but rarely do they follow-through beyond a couple of weeks (or less!).

Sometimes it’s because they aren’t really committed, but more often, it’s because they don’t have a system in place that makes it EASY.

That’s because of The Law of New Year’s Resolutions

The more you have to DO to keep a resolution,
the less likely you are to keep it.

That’s all well and good for some things, but not when it comes to your WordPress website.

So…I want to invite you to set one, simple New Year’s Resolution -

To back up all your websites on a frequent and consistent basis.

That would be a nuisance if you had to ftp your entire site once a day or week – and even worse if you had to rely on yourself to remember to do it, right?

Me, too. Although that is what I relied on for a long time. It wasn’t pretty!

Now I recommend – and use – BackupBuddy, the 3-in-1 plugin from PluginBuddy.
It does all that for you – making it much more simple to keep this critical New Year’s Resolution. I like to make things easy…hence the reason I like it so much.

And to make it even easier to keep your resolution, the company is offering 25% off through January 31st. That’s pretty awesome.

BackupBuddy:
(Use the coupon code: RESOLVE2011)

The team at PluginBuddy isn’t doing this just to get you to buy it…though of course I’m sure they’d like it.

They are actually doing it to get you to do what you know you need to do anyway – back up your site frequently and consistently.

They know what happens when you don’t…and would rather you not have to go through what they went through.

BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution to backup, restore, and even migrate your entire website. You can even choose where you want the backup to be sent – to your server, Amazon S3, FTP accounts, or to you and your team by email.

For an overview – and to see it in action, go to the dedicated website.

Remember to use the coupon code RESOLVE2011 for your 25% discount – available through January 31^st.

Yes, I do work with PluginBuddy and help them promote their products, but I couldn’t do it if I didn’t believe in how good they are. I’ve met these guys personally, have visited their offices in Oklahoma City, and have picked their brains halfway to Tuesday. They know their stuff – and they are known for World-Class customer service.

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Me, too. Very frustrating. Not only have I just contributed to the unnecessary destruction of a couple more trees, I now have a bunch of fairly useless pages because the content I want is spread out and not very reader-friendly.

Print-Friendly Plugin to the rescue!

You’ll notice at the bottom of the posts on this site, there’s a small green button that says “print” and “PDF”. Just click on it and you’ll see a much friendlier version of the page, with the option to show or remove images, print to your printer, convert to a PDF, or even send a print-friendly tweet.

How cool is that?!

And no worries about goofing things up, you can always “undo” any changes you make.

I’m sure you’ve seen the “printer friendly” option/link on lots of websites – mapquest, CNN, etc. – but didn’t know how to code it in properly.

That’s part of what is so great about WordPress! There’s a plugin for just about everything.
Remember, it is easy to go overboard on the plugins and slow your site down, but if you’re publishing posts that are full of meaningful, useful content, I suggest you check this one out.

Print-Friendly has multiple options. Yes, they are all green…it is part of the “green” movement, after all. But you can select which button works best for your site. And if you’re comfortable with coding, you can actually use your own button. If you use a blog excerpt page as your homepage, you can select whether you want the button to appear on the that page or just on the individual post-pages.

And, if you happen to be on someone’s site who doesn’t have the print-friendly option, never fear. You can go directly to Print-Friendly and put in the url and generate your own print friendly version. Or get a bookmarklet to put on your own browser bar.

Also, if you have traditional html pages on your site, you can also generate a button specifically for those pages. For those situations, it’s even easier to use a button you make or customize yourself.

All around…the print-friendly plugin is a good egg.

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Have you looked at your site on a smartphone? If not, I encourage you to do so.

Some of the problems you run into are error codes, unreadability, excessive scrolling required, and confusion on the part of the reader. If it’s not easy for them to find what they are looking for, they’ll go somewhere else.

If you don’t use a smartphone, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. If that’s the case, go to the high school student or Gen Y professional next door and get them to show you. You might be surprised at how clunky your site is on mobile devices.

The folks at iThemes and PluginBuddy – my favorite resource for WordPress themes and tools – have developed a plugin to make it super easy to create a smartphone-ready version of your site.

“Mobile” is a professional WordPress plugin that allows you to easily build an iPhone version of your site in minutes using the built-in style manager, mobile-ready themes and custom header uploader.

No, the mobile version of your site won’t look exactly like your website, but that’s the point. You want it lean, easy to navigate, and easy to see what is most important without having to scroll around too much.

To make the setup even easier, this premium plugin, which is currently only $45 for use on a single site (quite the steal!) has:

• starter themes – so you don’t have to create anything from scratch
• custom header uploaded – so you can make a smaller version of your header for instant recognizability for your mobile readers
• mobile style manager – which makes it super easy to match your colors, fonts, headline styles, etc. to those on your site, keeping your branding consistent and in perfect order.

The Mobile plugin includes Smartphone and Mobile Platform Support for …

* Android Devices
* Apple iPad
* Apple iPhone
* Apple iPod, Touch
* BlackBerry Device
* LG Phones
* Motorola Phones
* Nintendo DS
* Nintendo Wii
* Nokia Phones
* Opera Mini Devices
* Palm Devices
* Sony Ericson Phones
* Samsung Phones
* Sony Playstation Portable
* Sony Playstation 3
* Windows CE Device, Mobile IE
* Apple Safari (desktop; for development)
* Google Chrome (desktop; for development)
* Microsoft Internet Explorer (desktop; for development)
* Mozilla Firefox (desktop; for development)
* Opera (desktop; for development)

If you need help setting this up, let me know.
My guess is you won’t, though, since it’s such a piece of cake!

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Most people do it rarely, if at all. My guess is they are relying on their hosting company to have up to date, reliable backups. Well…..

You can’t always count on that since, well, things do happen. So it’s always good to have another backup plan in place.

You might even be surprised how many people who have lost their sites (or hard drives) still don’t back up. I’m not saying this so you’ll feel comfortable because you have plenty of company.

I’m saying it to drive home the point that human nature being what it is, if we’re left to our own devices, we don’t always do what we know is in our best interest.

So in order to get us to do what we really should do, we need to:

1. make it easy
2. make it as automated as possible

You don’t have to go overboard like I do and back everything up to an external hard drive and then store it in your safety deposit box. That’s a tad overkill for most people’s needs. (My whole business is on the web, so I’m not leaving anything to chance!)

Backup Buddy is a powerful plugin from the folks at Plugin Buddy. 
It meets these 2 criteria above, so if you haven’t been backing up your site, or haven’t figured out how to do it more easily, you’ll want to take a look at the plugin.

It’s already running on thousands of sites – if not tens of thousands – and really serves as an all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration. So it’s also great for whenever you need to move your site, such as switching to a new hosting company.

You can back up to your server, Amazon S3, a FTP/FTPS account, or an email.

If you are already backing up your site on a regular basis and have a system in place, then you wouldn’t necessarily need this. That’s assuming you really are working the system you have in place.

But, if you have NOT been backing up your site regularly, or don’t know how, or don’t want to pay someone else to do it for you, this is a great solution.

And it can bring you peace of mind and added safety in the event of data loss. The goal is to keep the backup, restoration, and migration processes easy, fast, and reliable.

As of this writing, Backup Buddy is only $45 for use on a single website.

Is your peace of mind worth $45?

Is your business?   [superemotions file="icon_biggrin.gif" title="Big Grin"]

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Nina East, Lead Developer at www.BasicBlogSetup.com and WordPress expert, knows plug-ins – the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you use WordPress to run your site or blog, you most likely have plug-ins installed on your site. And, if you’re like most WordPress users, you probably have some that you don’t use or don’t understand. The problem with this is that you may have some that conflict with your theme, interfering with performance, or even worse, shutting down your site.

Nina has more than a thousand of hours of experience working with WordPress and a whole variety of plug-ins. In this webinar, Nina will show us her favorite WordPress plug-ins and how they work, as well as how to evaluate if they are right for you.

If you use WordPress to run your website or blog, this webinar is a MUST.

Join us on Wednesday, February 17, to learn about the best plug-ins for 2010, and how to select the ones that make your site work better so that you can work less.

Register Today:
If you are not yet registered for the Free Webinar Wednesdays series, click here to register. We look forward to seeing you online!

Free Webinar Wednesdays was created as a community building tool to bring professionals together to share pertinent business development information, provide subject matter experts with a platform to open a learning dialog, and inspire small business owners to reach their professional goals.

Free Webinar Wednesdays is sponsored by Community Bank Consulting, Inc. and WSI Internet Consulting.

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