When you have a web presence and sell a product, customer service is very important! One way to allow instant conversation between you and your potential customers is to allow them to contact you online and in real-time using a chat program. These allow you to receive and answer questions as your customers have them. Most programs allow those customers to leave a message if you are not online as well.

There are a lot of powerful chat programs that allow for multiple operators, logs, canned replies and more. What if you don’t want to pay for a chat program and don’t need all the fancy options? If you don’t mind a bit of advertising or link back to the chat provider you have several options.

Because I am focused towards small business and work at home moms I will focus on the free software available. For information on the pay type of chats with all the extras just do a quick Google search for “chat program” and you’ll have lots of options. Here are a few that I have used and would recommend. We’ll touch on Chatango, Volusion and Crafty Syntax Read More…

Technorati Tags: chat, chat program, Chatango, Volusion, Crafty Syntax

Plugins are one of the easiest things to include on your blog, but are very under used. Plugins can make your blogging experience a much more enjoyable one if you are dealing with issues like spam!

After searching plugins on my own and getting some feedback and information from Michelle at Waterswebblog, I found some plugins that I think every WordPress user should at least look over. First you need to know how to install a plugin. That’s the easy part! After downloading and unzipping you connect to your host via FTP and find your “plugin” folder. Then upload the applicable parts into the plugin folder. Each plugin comes with a readme text that will tell you exactly what parts to upload to your host. Then login to your WordPress admin and click Plugins and activate your plugin! Some plugins will have features that can be managed through the admin and others will need a simple code placed into the template, this varies per plugin and the information should be available in the readme file or on the website you downloaded it from.

Spam: Lets start with the most annoying experience related to blogging: SPAM. You post a new message and start getting umpteen comments all in reference to the newest drug craze or adult entertainment website. Puh-leaze, do I look like someone who would benefit from an “all natural male enhancement”? First thing on my list to conquer. A quick search at WordPress led me to this lengthy list of spam fighting plugins http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins/Spam_Tools. But which one will work for me? That’s when I IM’d Michelle (like us geek mommies have anything else to do at 11pm?) and asked her advice on a spam plugin. She led me to Spam Karma: http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/ Spam Karma was an easy plugin to install. No need to place code on my template,just upload and activate. There are settings for how strict you want to set your spam protection that you can mess around with on the admin. Spam Karma checks all my comments messages before it posts them and rates them on how spammy they are and assigns numbers to those characteristics. A URL in the comment may kick back a negative rating but not enough to “spank” it. (Spank is what it calls nipping the spam in the bud). Multiple URLs will red flag the comment and it gets spanked and placed in a managing area of your admin for you to view when you get time. It also rates based on linkback URL and how quick the comment it was made after the visitor logged onto your blog. Each day I get an email stating how many comments were flagged and how many were passed. At anytime I can manually go in and approve a comment that was flagged or vice versa. This turned out to be a very handy tool and saves me a bunch of time.

Technorati Tags: The next plugin I checked out was a Technorati Tags plugin. Have you ever visited the Technorati website? http://technorati.com/ You can find blog enteries based on tag words. Its a great way to find new blogs based on a few keywords. Technorati is also a great way to get your blog out there more! Being able to tag words in your enteries to appear in Technorati searches is a neat idea right? It’s not hard either! This plugin called Simple Tags is a easy to use plugin that lets you create tags in your entries: http://www.broobles.com/scripts/simpletags/ When you put install this plugin and tag words the keywords show up at the bottom of your entry as well and let your reader search Technorati for more blog entries with the same tags. To create keywords or “tags” you tag words with brackets as illustrated on the Simple Tags site I liked to above. Simple enough?

AdSense: How about earning some money from your blog? You’ve seen it elsewhere: AdSense. AdSense is a Google advertising system that lets you place little text or graphic ads on your website. When a person clicks on the ad you get money. An example can be seen here: http://momsfavoritestuff.com You have a few ways of adding Google AdSense code. You can add it to your template directly or you can add it using a plugin. The plugin method is easier to manage and change out the code. The plugin used on Mom’s Favorite Stuff blog is this one: http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/ After loading the plugin all you have to do is add a plugin php tag to your template where you want the adds to show up and the rest is manageable through the plugin manager in your admin. With this plugin you can also include adds directly in your posts. But remember, Google only allows 3 ad blocks per page so some will disappear if you add more than that.

There are endless plugins but I’m going to leave you at those 3 for now. Do you have a plugin you’d like to share? Post it in the comments and I will check it out!

Technorati Tags: Plugins, WordPress, SPAM, Technorati, Simple Tags, AdSense