The newest installment in the Jewelers Website Assistant Series is ready:

Setting Up Static Contact, Privacy, and About Pages

As always, if you have questions, you can ask them here, on the JWA website, on Facebook or email me.

Enjoy!

goldie

The newest installment in the Jewelers Website Assistant Series is ready:

Basic Plugins You’ll Need And How To Install Them

As always, if you have questions, you can ask them here, on the JWA website, on Facebook or email me.

Enjoy!

goldie

Since I have the website up & running for the Jewelers Website Assistant series, I’m going to be posting the actual lessons there, but I will always post here, too, and let you know when there’s a new one ready. Like now. I’ve just posted the next session about installing themes:

http://www.jewelerswebsiteassistant.com/how-to-select-and-install-a-theme

As always, if you have questions, you can ask them here, on the JWA website, on Facebook or email me.

Enjoy!

goldie

Before you can have a website, you must have a Domain Name. This is how you tell people where to find you. Having a domain name that is an exact match for your business name is the ultimate goal, but hard to do these days, especially with a .com extension. Sometimes you have to get pretty creative to find a good one. One option is to use your name, followed by another word like Designs or Studio. You might even have to add a middle initial to come up with a unique domain name that works for you.

I personally like to buy my domain names from one source and my hosting from another. The reason for this is that in this day and age, anyone can go out of business at any time, usually without warning. If your hosting company goes out of business, but your domain name is registered with someone else, you can easily point your domain to a new host and be back up and running within hours. If your domain name is registered with your host, and they go under, it can take days or weeks to get control of your own domain name again. Does that sound like the voice of experience? That’s because it is. It happened many years ago, but it was one of those lessons that stick with you forever. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

So I buy my domain names through GoDaddy.com because I think they are going to be around a very long time. After I purchase a domain name, I point it to my main hosting company: Bluehost. Another hosting company that I use and recommend is HostGator. If you are looking for the cheapest possible solution, they offer a “Hatchling” account with a single domain name for as little as 4.95 per month, depending on your payment plan. If you are 100% sure you’ll never want to add another website, this could be the best choice for you.

It is a simple procedure to point the nameservers to your web host and I’ll walk you through it. After you have paid for your new domain name, go to the domain manager and click the domain name, then Manage Domain. On the next page you’ll see all of the information about your new domain.

The section we are interested in here is Nameservers. Start by clicking on the Set Nameservers link. A new window opens up and you want to select “I have specific nameservers for my domains”, then fill in the nameservers from your new host and click OK.

Right about now you are thinking “OK, where did she get the nameserver information in the first place”?  That should be the easiest part for you to find. Every hosting company WANTS you to point your domain at them, so they make this information easy to find. If you don’t see it displayed prominately, then search their help section for the word “nameservers” and it should pop up. If you are having trouble finding yours, send me a message and I’ll find it for you.

After you have made the change on GoDaddy.com, it takes a few hours to take effect. If you are like me and want to get started right away, do this step right before you go to bed at night. By the time you get up in the morning, it should be ready for the next step and you will have saved yourself the aggravation of checking every 5 minutes to see if it is ready (there goes that voice of experience again…).

I use Bluehost for my website hosting for many reasons, the main one being reliability. Someone asked me once if they had good customer service and I had to say I didn’t know. And I still don’t. I’ve never had to use their customer service. Maybe I’m just lucky, but I haven’t run into any problems. Another reason that I love Bluehost is that they use SimpleScripts, which automatically installs WordPress, among many other things. A few clicks and you have the latest version of WordPress installed – super easy.

So now we’ve pointed our domain towards Bluehost, but we still need to add it to our hosting account. If this is your first, or only, domain name, you’ll add the name while you are signing up for the hosting account. The first screen you see after you click the Sign Up Now button asks if you NEED a domain name or you HAVE a domain name. You’ll put your new domain name in the second box & go from there.

If you already have a hosting account and just want to add the new domain name to it, you log in and go to the Domain Manager. Once there, you click Assign A Domain Name To Your cPanel Account. Select “use a domain that is not already associated with your account” and put the domain name in box. In the Step 2 section, you’ll notice that it already shows that the nameservers are pointing to Bluehost. If you’ve been impatient, it will give you some ways to verify that you actually own this domain. It is far easier to wait for the nameserver change to take place. For Step 3, you’ll want to choose Addon Domain and Step 4 will have filled itself in automatically. All that’s left for you to do is to click Add Domain.

In our next session, I’ll show you how to install the WordPress software using Simple Scripts on Bluehost and Fantastico on Hostgator.  Then we’ll get started setting it up properly so that the whole world can find us & admire our creations. Talk to you soon

goldie

You may or may not have figured this out already, but the News section of Golden Maille runs on WordPress software. If you’ve never heard of WordPress, it is a content management system, most often used to publish Blogs. Since being introduced in 2003, it has grown by leaps and bounds, and today over 300 million websites use it. WordPress itself is free, but several cottage industries have sprung up around it. Many folks are gainfully employed designing themes and plugins, some of which are sold, though the majority are given away freely.

I discovered WordPress in 2004 when I added the first News section to my website. Since then, I have installed it dozens of times for myself and for family and friends who wanted to start blogs. As more and more jewelry makers are discovering every day, the internet is a great place to show off, and sell, your jewelry, and WordPress is the easiest way to build a website for that.

I am often asked how the Golden Maille site was built, who do I recommend for a web host, how did I do this or that. I don’t mind answering these questions, I have helped several people get their sites up & running. Since the questions are getting more frequent, I feel like there’s a real desire for more information, so I’ve decided to start a new series of posts designed to help everyone create a website with WordPress and get it set up properly so Google, and the rest of the world, can find you. And once they find you, they can click a button and buy your jewelry right then. To do this, I’ve set up a new website named JewelersWebsiteAssistant.com.  There is actually nothing on it right now, but I’ll be using it as a demo site to show you how to do things as I go along.

The first few lessons will be basic: how to register a domain and change the nameservers to point to your hosting account. How to install WordPress with a couple of clicks. Then I’ll talk about selecting a theme and which plugins you need and how to install them. Later on, I’ll get more in depth about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and why you need it. And how to customize your theme, how to add advertising to your site if you want to go that route.

If you’ve already set up a website, but have questions, send me an email or leave a comment – I’ll be happy to help.

Talk to you soon,

goldie

Sorry folks, but I’ve had to deactivate all Rose Gold Filled 16ga Rings due the annual RGF wire shortage coming early this year. This effects certain Rose Gold Filled Refill Kitpacks, too, so those have been deactivated also. We’re hoping to have the wire back in stock in August, but can’t give you an exact date yet.

I had originally said that I wasn’t going to offer this particular Ringset in Gold Filled, especially now with gold prices so high, but I keep getting questions about it and requests for it, and as you know by now, the squeaky wheel gets the Ringset. If you have the Silver version, you know that it is just pure creative freedom in a box! Here’s a direct link: http://www.goldenmaille.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=12&products_id=243

My frustration with my mess of disorganized earrings boiled over this weekend. I love to wear earrings but it has to be easy to grab them & put them on or I won’t mess with it. Yesterday morning as I was untangling several pairs, the perfect solution came to me – chains to keep them separated but secure. I used YGF 14ga/7.5mm rings for the main part, RGF 16ga/3.5mm rings as connectors and 14ga/6.0mm for the ones on the ends but the sizes aren’t really important -these are just what I happened to have the most of at the time. I have a stash of small brass screws that I use when I make custom display boxes, so I used those to fasten the finished chain to a white velvet tray insert.

Charlie used 3M picture hanging strips to hang it on the inside of the door to the cabinet where I keep my makeup and stuff so every morning while I’m getting dressed, my nice neat earring collection is hanging there, waiting for me to select the ones I want.

My Organized Earring Collection

Looks like I need to get busy and make some more to fill this thing up!

I’ve had several requests to make a Yellow Gold Filled version of my handmade earwires. Some people like the look better than commercially available varieties and others want a 100% handmade end product, so I’ve added a YGF plain earwire that is just like to ones I’ve offered in Rose Gold Filled for quite some time. I’ve also added a larger handmade hoop in both YGF and RGF. These are my personal favorites – they’re about 1 inch wide and 1.5 inches high.

And now a question for you: what do you want to see next?  I’ve had a couple of requests for YGF versions of the handmade hook and eye clasps, a couple for the Earring Designer Ringset, the 16 ga and 18ga Designer Ringsets, and some for the Barrel Weave kits.

Let me know in the comments which one you want next.