my life mission

I have been reading a new-to-me book by Jack Canfield "The Success Principles".
In the first chapter he has an exercise through which you write your life mission. I have tried this kind of exercise time and again in the past to the point where I started to believe I didn't have a purpose. But I gamely tackled it because it seemed wrong to skip Exercise 1!

What a great exercise. Simple. Logical.

Step One
List two of your unique personal qualities.
I chose: listening and creativity

Step Two
List one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others.
I wrote: to engage in the dreams of others during strategy sessions to inspire them, excite them and create tools, connections and strategies to help them launch their biggest dreams into reality.
(Entrepreneurs sit so alone in their businesses losing the excitement and freshness. When we work together in this deep brain-storming, strategy developing session they are surprised to discover some of their "sillier" dreams are truly doable. I also help them by giving an outside perspective on what is unique about them.)

Step Three
Assume the world is perfect right now. Describe it.
My perfect world (in part) is a place where entrepreneurs are not competition to each other - they complement each other. Each an important part of the picture. Each has a unique niche they develop with confidence, focus and fun.

My purpose is to use my listening skills and creativity to engage in others' dreams in order to help them create the tools, connections and strategies needed to bring them to reality.

Just another reason I love Joomla - a great tool to communicate your dreams.

New Joomla Course - hands-on learning

I finally launched my new course - 6 Weeks to a Self-Managed Website.
During the course participants create and optimize a Joomla! website - with my help.

The course is offered over 6 2-hour sessions with the first week one-on-one and the following 5 weeks group coaching in a computer learning lab.

We had our first session last Wednesday during which we had an overview of Joomla, started our site maps and set up content and navigation.

Week four we diverge a bit from Joomla to show how to use Google tools in conjuction with Joomla for google analytics, website optimizer and google ads.

Simple photographer site

I needed a simple way to create user specific photo galleries in a joomla 1.x site.

I came across Simple Image Gallery http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/17/42/ - this allows my completely web newbie photographer to upload all user images to a folder assigned to them, then create an article that creates a page of thumbnails from that folder as well as creating a lightbox slideshow.

Then I completed this hack:

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=178&t=124296

Once she is done all of the previous, she logs into her Joomla backend and enters the Joomla User Manager and specifies that after login, the user will arrive at their personal photo gallery to preview their shots.

AEC SOBI2 workflow

I have been working with paid membership sites using Joomla, SOBI2 and AEC Automatic Expiry Component.

After chasing my tail for a couple of weeks, by George I think I get it... mostly.

SOBI2 controls all of the directory listings but just the directory listings. Everything must be set to free.

AEC control all of the payments AND the membership levels. (Your do not want to have to manually set to Author or Publisher - sobi2 does this for you!)

I only have this running with three membership levels right now because I do not have ioncube on my host to allow advanced usergroups. Free Basic at $150/year or $15/month Pro at $247/year or $24/month

Some customizing of the Entry form, Vcard and Details templates must be done in SOBI2 - but it cannot be done without a query to AEC to determine the subscription the owner has.

The AEC - SOBI2 - AEC workflow looks something like this:

(click the image to view full image)

Butterfly Marketing without the Software

You know me.

You know I love Joomla!

You know I am going to find a way to apply Mike Filsaime's Butterfly Marketing with Joomla.

What are the keys?

A Community site

That is free

With paid upgrades

Quality downloads

Discussion board

An in-built affiliate program

Automated affiliate email series

But what about having staged content reveals... after sign-up you immediately get product one.
After 3 days you get product two and video one.
After 7 more day you get automated email two, product three and video two....
and what about having a coaching discussion board where paid members can ask for coaching?
And premium audio content for paid members?
And real world mailings to platinum members?

Get the idea?

So far that looks like a Joomla site, with Acajoom, timed content release based on date of sign-up, several levels of discussion board and, of course, the AEC component for paid members.

Most Important Element of a Website

As a designer/developer/marketer, I work with a lot of small businesses. They always ask me "What is the timeline for development?"

My real answer would be: "It depends on how much planning you have already put into it."

Planning.

Why do you want a website?
Why will people want to go to your website?
What incentive can you provide to get them to join your community or mailing list?
How will you regularly communicate with list members? customers? affiliates?
have you written the emails that you will send them?

If you plan on having a newsletter - have you planned it? Frequency, Content, Uniqueness?

Plan

What action do you want someone to take from your homepage?

What action do you want them to take from your email? from your newsletter?

What is your personality? What is your persona? How will you bring that to life on your website?

How often will you update your website? your blog?

Whether you are using wordpress, Drupal or Joomla! the planning is the most crucial element. Without Focus and Purpose you are just wasting time....
Need a plan? Download my "Creating a Website for an Expert" at http://www.clicktostart.com/expert

SOBI2 Customization

I have been working on 3 Joomla sites that have a SOBI2 business directory at the core. All of them needed customization

The BIA site needed only a custom look and images.

The Dental site need custom display to prevent viewing of contact information and details unless logged in.

The Mr. Bob site required 3 levels of membership: Free, Basic and Pro with Paypal subscription payments, many custom fields, and automatic expiry using the AEC - Automatic Expiry Component.

What a learning curve. All 3 sites will be launching this week - I still need to create the images for the BIA site, the dental site needs minor cosmetic tweaking and menu edits.

The Mr.Bob site was the biggest challenge. I found I could not have SEO turned on with the AEC plugin or all payment plans were disabled. Not so good - a paid community site nobody could subscribe to.
The next challenge was just offline planning - with all of the extra components and the three access levels.
All paid members can post ads, only pro members can post events and content. Free members can add simplified listings to the SOBI2 directory. All paid members get advanced listings but Pro members also get an image gallery and extra fields.

I eliminated all paid fields in SOBI2 because their a-la-carte style is kind of irritating.
All paid items are packaged in AEC. Then when editing their entry in SOBI2 the entry form does a database call to AEC to determine their plan id # and shows or hides fields for editing and submitting based on their plan level.
AEC also sets as Registered, Author or Publisher - other components are controlled by those levels.

Thanks to SOBI2 forum member k2xl for inspiring this solution through his Author name solution.
This is a huge amount of work and customization. Contact me if you want this for your site.