Pro Socialgo > For web community software

When I get a private question that may be relevant to you I'll try to post the answer here on the blog so others can benefit. 

Sometimes you need to adjust where your header background image starts, to either align it better with the repeat function, or to align it better with your body content. Here is how you do that. This will push your background image (that was set to "FULL WIDTH" in the network designer header section) over to the left see pictures. We will use the #wrapper-header-outer, that is where Socialgo Network designer places the FULL WIDTH image: 

  This is what it looks like without doing anything:

div#wrapper-header-outer.has-full-header-image {
background-position: 200px 50%;
}

This is what it looks like moved over 200px:



Now, you can also tell the image not to repeat with this code:

div#wrapper-header-outer.has-full-header-image {
background-position: 200px 50%;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

And, this is what it looks like:

 

This has been a question going round and round since the beginning: how to hide the birthday. It's been answered in forums, but I thought I'd put it out there. Unless Socialgo has added another solution (if the have let me know) this is how I do it on this site. Place this code inside of your "header" inside of the custom html section of your admin:

div.bday {
        display: none!important;
}

Now of course your members can disable the birth date in the security settings, but for some networks, this is just not a viable option.

I shouldn't write this article because I haven't tweeted in awhile, but that's because my iphone is broke, and that is how I tweet. But I just have to tell you, (ya you the one that thinks twitter is a waist of time) how great this micro blogging platform can help your traffic. 

When I'm tweeting regularly, I pick up another 10% -15% traffic spikes, and that's big, just think if I tweeted more than two times a day. As I've pointed out before, I don't do allot of SEO, marketing etc.. for my Socialgo networks but I do in my 9-5. 

What is twitter? 
Heck if I know. It's called micro-blogging and 95% of everything I read on there makes me feel like I've waisted 10 seconds of my life. But there are those jewels I pick up here and there,  latest news, funny stuff, and business advice. If I ever have a question, or am making a decision in blockbuster, I can tweet it and get plenty of good advice. 

Grab on to those last words "good advise," That is what you want to be known for on twitter. You want to be the come to guy or gal in your certain speciality (or what your network is about).  If it's about hanging out and making friends, you should be hanging out and making friends on Twitter, then invite them over for a chat, or to check out a funny blog. If you have a fishing network, you should send out some good websites, news, videos on fishing regularly. Not like every tweet, that gets old, and everyone knows what your doing. It should be very natural.

This is what I do with littleprayerbox. I follow the 50-50 rule. %50 percent of my time on twitter is spent trying to be funny, responding to tweets and yak'n it up. The other %50 is spent either sending a relevant news link, a link to someone who needs prayer (on my site), or answering tweets that are in my network's speciality. So %50 chillin, and %50 promoting me and my site. 

Tools of the trade 
On the go - If you have a iphone there are several (12-15) free twitter apps. I love Twitterrific. It is very clean and easy to use but I also use Twinkle for m other twitter account. It's nice to have two apps so you don't have to login and out. You can also text your tweets from any mobile phone read about it here.

Desktop -  On m desktop I use tweet Deck, I've tried others and this one is the mostest. You can split up your screen to view different information, like direct tweets to you, messages and even just your favorites (i think). This is a must because, it's like the pro-tweet tool. 

Broadcast twitter on Socialgo -  Now with the socialgo Layout manager it's easy to broadcast your tweets anywhere on your SG site. you can see my broadcast, how it works on littleprayerbox.com about page.

It's very easy to do this just go to twitter widgets here sign in  select "other." grab the html code and drop it in one of your widget areas of the Layout Manager. You can see it working, and also styled with CSS on my prayer site.  Now your network can keep up with your everyday minutia. 

Twitter Marketing tools - There are many tools that help you manage your twitter account with more precision than twitter allows. 

TweetLater -   This is probably the most popular tool. there are others that do similar functions, but so far I haven't found one better. One of the best things you can do with this service is in it's title, you can schedule tweets. I do this sometimes, but don't do it too much, people catch on, and don't like it when your tweeting but not there. Another great thing you can do is have a email sent to you of tweets with any keyword you define. So for me, I have a daily email sent with every tweet with "socialgo" in it. This is a great way to find friends or a market directly targeted to your service or network. For your red snapper fishing site, you could have every tweet that has "red Snapper Fishing" Then add those people. The last thing I'm going to touch on is the auto friend. You can set it up that whenever someone ads you as a friend, you automatically add them and it sends them a email that you specify -- keep it chill, like "thanks for adding me, hope I don't bore you, here is my site if you want to know more about me (site)."I wouldn't suggest this for your personal twitter account. Only for biz.  

Twitter blasts - If you have a Facebook or Linkden, myspace and others, you can funnel your tweets into the accounts. Facebook actually has a app for this, read about it here. But what I do mostly is use my BETA quub.com account which feeds into like 8 social networks, and it is a social network it's self, so I make friends there too.. very cool site. There is another one I've been playing with that also does this called this moment also in beta. This Moment is so very useful and fun. It trys to tie all your networks to gather, like you tube face book and on.. Havn't spent much time on there yet. 

Social book mark your tweets - Click Ball  is by far my favorite way to tweet. It is a social bookmarking site that lets you update your status both on twitter and clickball with a firefox plugin (get when signing up). What's cool about this, is you can easily send TINY URLs with just a click. When your just surfing around and you see something useful for your twitter community, just click the red ball. A form drops down, you write, "check out this funny monkey," it shrinks the URL and tweets it. I've made allot of friends at Clickball also because it's easy to find people with the same interests and follow them, on the other side some people like my bookmarks and can follow me on twitter just the same. There are other twitter plugins for firefox, but none this simple, and don't forget your getting two times the broadcast because you are broadcasting to click ball and twitter at the same time. This is great for link building. I send out a clickball with every blog I write on here (well I did, I'm behind)

Tweet your way to traffic  
I hope that's a start for you.  Twitter traffic is good targeted surfers, IF, ou don't just go adding willy nilly every body on this side of earth. Use tweet Later and pick your friends well. Have fun with it, make friends and contribute good content to your community. I (and others) can smell someone just out for my traffic a mile a way. 

Well the beans have been spilt :) over at widget laboratory  on Pro Socialgo's new templates.. So why not spill the rice too? We've been working hard to create some attractive and functional templates that will break the mold of the Socialgo-squarpants look. Above you see one from the Lost-n-Found series which will cover many interests and topics. I hope to do a podcast on creating the wood shelf, but how many times have I said that. 

That's about it for now, there are many MANY more designs, but I have to keep something secret. Besides a few "just for fun" templates, I'm trying to hit on many different styles and topics so as to cover the bulk of SG user's needs. If there is a style or topic you think would reach a wide Socialgo audience please drop me a line and let me know. I would love to hear the thoughts of those out on the battle field and what kind of designs your looking for.

In what you love, there is no end to inspiration.

I won't lie. I was a terrible hack when I first started web design. I would grab CSS from this site and that, HTML here and there, but it showed, they all looked like frankenstine, because they were ideas of many different people, and as much as I want to, I can't make another artist's ideas look good. 

Quit making it such a dredge by forcing creativity upon your self that is not yourself. It really does leave you with a un-satisfied taste in your mouth, because, you go back and look at the stuff you hacked from, and there is something missing from yours. some balance or invisible grid you can't quit make out. It makes designing your web site more of a experiment than a creative decision.  I'm not talking about inspiration. I constantly find inspiration in other work and try my own twist on their idea. I'm talking about the code and graphics. 

Design what you love 
What do you love? Do you love the ocean, or rusty old trucks--the candy dish your grand mother had on the dresser beside her collection of glass angels. 

I loved junk. My Grandfather had a thrift store, and it was full of junk. Old junk, that even back then I couldn't believe people would buy.  Every time we came to spend the day with him, he would let us pick one thing out of the store to take home. I usually went for the army gear, rusty grenades (no pin :), helmets and canteens. As I got a bit older I started picking photographs. He would buy from estate sales so there would be boxes of boxes of old torn weathered family photos. What people did with them back then? I don't know. But I loved them. I still do. I go to estate sales and buy pictures of their family, old letters and medical forms. 

I use these in my designs, or for inspiration in a design.  I almost can't get passed flowery old textured looks, but I have to to keep my job. Everyone wants the web 2.0 slick minimalism.  Don't get me wrong, I have a special place in my heart for that kind of design too, but it is not my true design. 



Put it together
To incorporate what you love in to your designs is one of the most satisfying  accomplishments a artist can have, especially when you do it well, which is about half the time. 

But you say, "I don't know how to incorporate what I love".  Everything has a feeling to it, and sometimes that feeling is all you have to go on in design. You may love women :), well women have inspired great design all through time. Think of the majestic curves, and the soft textures, the colors of beige, pink, stunning red lips, all of the tones of brown in her hair. The Ocean is liquid, so make your site a liquid design with subtle colors and make use of blur, smear and ripple.  Even video games bring about certain shapes and colors in your mind. Take a snap shot of your video game in play, horizontally blur it, brake it up, copy and paste until it's unrecognizable as that game, but instead colors, balance, shapes and harmony. 



The zen of ones and zeros
In what you love, there is no end to inspiration. When you start to indulge this part of your design you will be amazed at how far it will take you. And don't ever take the easy way... As in the example above, don't put pink flamingos and pictures of the bahamas (unless your a travel agent), Don't just put a woman's body (unless your Zauku), dig deeper. Challenge yourself by scanning things that represent that love, find colors that best represent the many emotions it gives you. Shapes that harmonize.

Your on the computer all day anyway, why not make it something that adds to your life rather than takes from it. Yes, you can have spiritual, existential moments even with ones and zeros.  

I've been a designer for almost 15 ears, though most of that time was spent in print and video graphics, I love web design the mostest. I think I love it so much because it doesn't have to end. As a songwriter I learned a long time ago that the joy was in the making more than the product, and with web design, the making never has to end, especially with your Socialgo Template.  

Another reason to love the web is it provides the perfect problem for creativity to exist.  Creativity is problem solving -- that's it. The greater the problem, the greater the creativity it takes to overcome, and as we all know, the web is one big problem, because it evolves constantly, never sagnet, never standing still. 

Have you ever had someone say, "Just do whatever you want." I hate that. Because there is no problem to solve. It's much better when they say, "Our colors are dirt brown and lime green, and our logo is two feet long."  

I find as the years go on that I  have more and more customers that tell me to do whatever, so I've started providing my own problems, to force me to solve them with creativity.

Working with someone else's code is always a great creative problem, so Socialgo is just one big problem. Because you can't move the menu above the header -- you can't put a class or ID where there is not one and so on. 

So here we have the perfect formula for successful creativity.  Don't get frustrated--get creative. See it as a adventure. Try something that our not sure is possible, or try something you don't know how to do. 

If anyone asks me how to learn coding of any type. I tell them go out and sell a web page, specifically with something you don't know how to do. Tell your wife and children you will see them in two weeks, and lock yourself in a room until the job is done. By the end, you will have learned more than a semester at college. Then of course you will get the call that it doesn't work in IE6 7 or 8 and you have to lock yourself in a room for another 3 days. 

In the same way, charge yourself to do something your not quiet sure how to do, and commit to it until it is through. continue to do this with any code you want to learn. I tell you, most of the great coders, CSS, HTML etc.. I know have done it this way. I don't know many, actually only one, that went to school for it.

If you get stuck give me a ring, or widget lab is real helpful with SG. Just continue to challenge yourself. Just make sure you backup every thirty min. Keep them by date and time so you can always step back if you need to. Or, you could just buy a mac and use CSSedit.  

Make your article and content good and relevant... that is the key, and has been the key since the beginning of media.

SEO quick boost Part: 2 >> 1

I'm sure you've heard of the Long tail. It's actually been around for quiet awhile in different industries, and under different names, even before the Internet. We're going to do a series on using the Long Tail to rock your Social Network Google stats, but right now I want you to get a head start, because as the name suggests: it's a Long process.  So, if you start now, then you might start getting the results in time for my series, which will be helpful in understanding what I'm doing.

Long Tail Research
There are many ways to research your Long tail, and I'm not even going to explain them all here. Instead, I'm going to send you to the best Long Tail tool I have found on the net, and it really works. Like Alcoholics Anonymous says, "it works if you work it"... but what's cool is you don't even have to be sober to do this :) 

I haven't done this yet for my networks, but I use this web site almost every day in my business, and it will work on anything with a blog, or forum (something with updatable and lasting content). Go to Hittail.com and sign up for the free 30day account.  They have some videos teaching you about Long Tail Traffic, but you don't have to watch them to make it work. Just do this. Enter your web site in your account. Wait about a week, sometimes two (or longer) if your traffic is real slow, and check in occasionally on the SUGGESTIONS tab. Until you start getting suggestions, it's fun just to watch the real time traffic widget, which shows (REAL TIME) hits to your site and what they searched for. When you start getting suggestions in, click the check mark to put them in your "to-do" list. Now, all you do is each day (or each time you have a new suggestion) Write a blog, forum, or Article, with the keyword they suggested, cleverly embedded in your Title. It's also a good practice to use it again in the body, and maybe (once we learn this) search for similar niche keywords in Market Samurai and using those in a subtitle, bolded text, linked text, italic text... but don't go crazy. I would use only two niche keywords in one article, and use the HITTAIL keywords in your title. 

What you will see if you are diligent in doing this is a snow-ball effect. It will start leaking in for the first months, but soon your Niche Keywords from HITTAIL, will compound the interest, and will began to bring in significant traffic targeted just for your content. When I'm doing HITTAIL on a site, I try to write a article from their suggestions every day. Sometimes I'll do it on our blog, or, even better, submit a summarized article to other sites with a link back to a more complete article on ours (works in forums too). Either way, you will get the Search credit for the keyword. 

I hope you know by now that there are no magic buttons for traffic, it takes dedication and work , and anyone who tells you different is probably making allot of money (for the moment), but I promise you, they don't have any magic for you. And if they do have something that works like magic, it's spam, or manipulating google in some way and will be gone before you even get started. (and you might get your tail slapped)

Make your article and content good and relevant... that is the key and has been the key since the beginning of media. More Later...

I went from literally 5-10 hits a day to 90-110 a day within the span of one week and I did it with just three easy to implement keyword placements.

I'm working on a Podcast and Deep tutorial Series that will focus on marketing your Network using a tool we talked about in a earlier Blog Market Samurai. Now I have to admit, even though I am a Marketing Director in real life, doing SEO (site engine optimization) everyday, that I haven't done much in the marketing dept. for either one of my networks beyond submitting them to search engines and directories, but I have done a few things that gave me a huge boost (at least on one of them) while I try to find some time to do proper SEO work on them. Here on ProSocialgo I bare it all, so I'll let you in on some of my own stats, though they are hardly impressive, but, what is impressive is I've literally done nothing more than about thirty min. of work bringing in the traffic I have.   The tips I have today are just the tip of the ice-burg, they are just enough fuel to get you off the ground and running.   My little prayer box  receives 2500 hits a month or 90-110 a day, I get 1-2 (on averg.)  members a day, and 1-3 email prayer requests, for people who don't want to sign up. I know, that's not much, but it's actually fine for me, I don't think I could handle much more with my time restraints. 

I went from literally  5-10 hits a day to 150-200 a day within the span of one week and I did it with just three easy to implement keyword placements. All I did was put my (well researched) Niche keyword in the title of my Network (you do this in the ADMIN). So, it used to be "little Prayer Box," now it is Little Prayer Box: Online Prayer Requests and intercession. This uses two of my NICHE keywords in one understandable phrase: 1. Online prayer Requests 2. Prayer Intercession.  If you weren't raised in Catholic or Christian Schools your like: what the? It doesn't matter.  What matters, is through my research these are the keywords people are searching with to find sites like mine, and one better, they are not saturated keywords, which means I don't have to compete with many sites because not many prayer sites are tapping into these keywords believe it or not. The saturated keywords for LPB are "prayer blog and prayer forum"

So if you have a  fishing site, I bet a shark fin that the keyword "Fishing Website" will do you no good because it's saturated beyond belief, but "Trout Fishing Fly" will bring in a Niche audience (I actually researched that keyword > 400hits/day, 40,000 competing pages. that's great!) Now compound that with "Snapper Fishing" (400hits/day 40,000 comp.) and you will receive even more hits. You see, it's useless to go after the obvious and saturated keywords. Unless you have big bucks, they will et you no where. Even Socialgo seems to understand this. If you look at their meta tags you'll see some strange keywords like "web Builder" (Something like that). If they tried to go after "Social Network," forget it! 

Ok, I'm rambling, let's finnish up. Second! You need to gather about four NICHE keywords for this. Place your main one (online prayer requests) in a h1 tag on your home page. Then scatter the rest through your home page content. When you do this, put them in sub titles (h2) or bold them, link them, italicize them, but whatever you do make it coherent. It doesn't matter if they bring people or not if your shoveling a bunch of crap on your home page. Do no more than four of these keywords on your home page and write your content around them. If your using the fishing example you could use a h1 title like "From Trout, FLY to Snapper Fishing, we're the Network for you!" Ok, you could do better... but see I got two key phrases in one H1 title.

Now this blog post is a little bit backwards because there is so so much that underlines these quick helpers. But until I get the new series out, I thought, why not? Why shouldn't you start playing with your SEO right now. We'll delve deeper later, just try it out, watch your stats about once a week. If you've used a tool like Google SEO (get a free adwords account), or Market Samurai correctly in finding your niche, you should see a jump. 

Lastly! You probably already comment on blogs in your Networks niche, so stop using your web URL or name as the link anchor. That's right! Use The trout fishing fly guy.  Here is a article on using anchor keywords. 

One last NOTE: It's even better if you have a really good Niche keyword (tht you know the stats on) in your actual URL and the title of your Socailgo Network.

Part 1 >>2

We're going to mak a little web 2.0-ey starburst and then place it in the header of our Socialgo Network. We will use this as a button for prosocailgo that directly links to our latest  CSS 101 series. But first things first. Here is how you create the graphic using Photoshop. 



Create a new doc around 200px by 200px.  Now select the shape tool in the tool bar.

 

In the toolbar at top center you will see the Shape drop down click on it and look for the starburst shape. If you don't see it, then click the options drop down (a small arrow, top right of pallet. ) and select all. You should find it now.. 

 

click on it and draw a shape hold down the SHIFT key to keep it proportionate.  you will need to fill this shape with the color you want I went with black.

 

Once you find the color, click ok and fill the shape by using key command alt + Delete. You have to colors in the tool bar. The foreground (the one ontop) the background. You can use this key command to fill with either foreground or background. Foreground is alt+delete, Background Command or control Delete.  

Now Make a new layer above the shape.
 

Now select you marquee tool (the dancing ants tool)



Now drag a circle once again holding the Shift key to keep it a true circle. Draw it about 40% to %50 over the shape creating a half moon.



While it's still selected,  (make sure your on the new blank layer) fill it with white. you can do this with key commands b hitting the D key, that sets your colors to default (black and white.) then hit the  X key, that puts white to the foreground, and as we know you can now fill it with alt+delete. 



Now we are going to delete the outer section of this white circle. We will retain the starburst shape by using it as the selection for deleting.  

Ok, Make sure your new white layer is still selected and  caommand (apple) Control (sucky computers) CLICK the shape's mask layer.



You will now see that the shape has been selected with the dancing ants. 




Now we want our white highlight to be a few pixels in from the edge of the shape. So while this is still selected go to your SELECT menu drop down and click Modify > Contract. In the Pop-up enter 3 for three PX, press enter.

Now don't touch anything and go back to the SELECT dropdown and select "Inverse"



Hit Delete. You have now deleted the outside parts of the white, and left a cool little outline for our highlight.

That Highlight is too bright so we will just drop the transparency. NOTE: it's also a nice touch to do a very subtle gradient on this highlight, from White to transparent. But first transparency. Select the layer and slide your transparency down to around 30%. 



Now for a few effects. We will put a outline at 1 px, with a color that is only a few degrees bellow our starburst color. So I'm using a very dark gray.





While we have that open select the "drop-Shadow" radio button at the top of the panel.  adjust the occupancy to about 50.



Almost done. Now on that starburst shape we created we want to make a gradient to give it some more dimension. 

The way we will do this is close to the same way we deleted the white circle. Create a new layer, while the layer is still selected Control or Command click the starburst mask, just like before. 



Make sure the blank layer you just created is selected and go to your color picker on the tool bar. Now to do our very subtle gradient, I'm going to pick black as my  foreground and a few degrees lighter gray for my background. Now we are going to fill that selection that should still be dancing ants on the stage. 



Select Gradient tool and then click the gradient properties in the horizontal top toolbar. You have the option (usually default) for the foreground to graduate into transparency -- we don't want that, we want the one that is fading our foreground to our background color.



Now drag the gradient to diagonally across the selection. (It it's still not selected, just command click the shape mask again, then select the blank layer we want to fill. )



Well thats it! You can of course play with it more, try some different gradients, maybe bevel / emboss.  I'm just going to throw some text on there (text with slight drop shadow) and we're done. In part two we will put this into our header. If you want to see a example go to littlepraerbox.com look in the banner and see our beta burst. this one is not linked though, like the one we're going to do.

 


>>>Download PSD Starburst 2.0
GoTO: Part 2 

Sheww.. Just on the back end of designing the Widget Laboratory Socialgo Template. It was allot of fun, tried some new CSS tricks and Java Script. Take a look! I Hope to do a big long drawn out series either by blog or podcast to show the inner workings of WL. For now though...Here is a CSS cheat sheet I made for a friend that keeps all the important elements of CSS within reach. I hope it helps you out. I'm also doing one on XHTML and the big feat a map of Socialgo Classes and Id's, probably more of a booklet than a sheet. 
Enjoy!