In this post, I’m going to cover three out of the many other methods for simplicity’s sake. Besides, I really don’t want to scare you off with a bunch of high tech stuff that could go over your head.

The ‘Click To Watch/Listen’ Method

If your customer is using a modern browser that supports HTML 5, audio and visual will simply play when people click on the audio/video URL in the email. There is no need for you to build a web page but this is huge but. You can’t bank on that. Lots of people use outdated software and you really want something that will work no matter what they use. So, your best bet is to set up web pages and embed that audio/video in your page. This can be easily accomplished in WordPress with some video player plugins that will play videos that reside your site.

The Download Method

When it comes to email delivery, nothing is easier than giving people the URL to a zipped package on your web site. When people click it, they are prompted to download the files. This is not always ideal either because it could take a long time for some people depending on their connection. It’s not always practical on a mobile device.

The Private YouTube Video Method

Another simple low tech method is to use YouTube or Vimeo, make these private only. Then include the URLs in your email. This is perhaps the most simple and easy way for you to get going. There are some down sides though, like video length limit when using these sites and there is always a chance of people getting distracted with other videos especially on YouTube.

The methods covered here work super well for an audience who is not comfortable with logging in anywhere and not as tech or web savvy. You can of course get more sophisticated with page protection, protected downloads and all that jazz. As with anything online you can make it super simple or scale it all the way to a gorgeous super professional system that looks like they came from a large corporation. The only thing that separates them all is time and money

Sometimes terminology gets in the way so let’s be clear what nested or threaded comments are. These replies to a comment that appear indented under the original comment. It is a great to help you and readers follow a conversation.

WordPress integrated this feature into the basic install beginning version 2.7 so it’s been a while and many themes should have caught up by now. However, I know for a fact working with a lot of different people and installs over the years, some of us still use antiquated versions (dangerous) or use themes that are antiquated (just as dangerous). Knowing this, there are three ways you can turn on nested comments in WordPress.

Turn It On

No, I’m not trying to be funny. There are many many times especially on a site that has been around and using WordPress for a long time. You may not realize the feature is there when you upgraded and simply never looked at it.

Log into WP as admin user, go to Settings >> Discussion. Under comments settings, check the box Enable threaded (nested) comments, select how many levels you want to nest and Save Changes. Check your site.

If that doesn’t work, then…

Contact The Theme Author Or Whoever Built The Site For You

This indicates the issue is not exactly with WordPress but your theme. You see, for threaded comments to happen, the theme has to also support it. So check in with your theme designer to ask if there’s a new updated version to support that. If you used a free theme from a hobbyist designer you could be out of luck and need to call in the pros to fix the theme up for you.

If you don’t know the developer, get up with whoever built that site for you. It might cost you but a good WordPress designer who hangs out their shingle as a pro should know how to do this. It really isn’t that complicated. Here’s a secret. Making an older theme recognize nested comments doesn’t really require any techno mumbo jumbo hacking skills. It just requires thinking out of the box.

No one to help you?

Use A Third Party Comment Plugin

We use Livefyre but there are others out there too like Intense Debate and Disqus. This is perhaps the simplest and quickest low-tech way to get it. The trade off is you are hooking into a third party system which may not be all bad because sometimes people do find you through these systems and automated spam control is taken care of.

Don’t want to do that? Then…

Change your theme

Yeah. The solution is simple but not an easy decision if you have a lot of things riding on the current theme so now you have weigh if nested comments are worth all that work. Generally I’d recommend switching to something more modern anyhow. If the theme you’re using is so outdated (at time of writing nested comments have already been out for a little over 3 years), you’re better off updating anyhow because you’re probably missing out on a lot of cool new possibilities with newer themes. These are what we use and recommend.

Recommended Themes

There are plenty of gorgeous ones out there these are pretty much the only two we work with regularly and love them to pieces.

• StudioPress – their All-Themes pack pricing is set to increase. Save $50 by getting it today (before Jan 31, 2012)
• iThemes Builder

Then… I found MOO! I’d spend hours just admiring those beautiful cards. Take a look at these. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Question is, can I the geek and just about anyone who is design challenged make such lovely creations? You see, one of my problems with business cards is, I do so many things within technology. How can I pack all that in a card? Seriously, it hurts when I have to tell people “I make websites” because what I do is way, way beyond that. I decided to try. There’s something about MOO that gives birth to inspiration.

The grand idea – use word clouds. I headed over to Tagxedo. You can use Wordle too but I like Tagxedo better because you can make shapes out of your words. Entered a bunch of words that describe what I do. I created 5 different clouds in different shapes. Why 5? Because MOO oh! MOO! I’m so in love with it – they can print different cards in one order. If you order 100 cards, you can make every card unique or you can split it all up like I did and have 20 cards in 5 designs. Gotta love technology.

At the end of it all, here’s the result. I opted for the mini cards because I thought they were cute and would be a great conversation starter – and boy were they ever! The choices too made great conversation since sometimes people chose what they wanted

Here’s another reason to love MOO the quality is absolutely fab. The card stock is heavy and rigid. I’m getting ready to order another batch this time I want to try no graphics only text with tips on them e.g. “Make your site mobile friendly. Try MobiPages” or something like that haven’t quite thought them all out yet.

If you need business cards, I highly recommend MOO. They may be a little higher than say Vistaprint or other online printers but it really isn’t that much more if you consider the design flexibility and the results will wow you. You’ll get a 10% discount too if you use this link. Try it.

The Tools

One of them – believe it or not – is an app I bought for my daughter. It’s called Drawing Pad. She absolutely adores it and despite my challenge with drawing and graphics I love doodling on it too.

The other is AirSketch. This one is a work tool. AirSketch is essentially a whiteboard type application but it has a neat feature that allows you to broadcast your whiteboard locally so anyone in your office can just pull up a web browser, type in the IP address for the app and voila! Everything you draw or write shows up on their browser. It is so very cool.

The How

How can these two apps replace PowerPoint? Remember, I said I was not working on the computer but I still wanted something that look like slides.

Step One

Using Drawing Pad, I loaded a fun background and used a brush to write my slide heading. If there was text I could add them otherwise I just left the space blank so I can use AirSketch to illustrate my points later. I created a bunch of blank slides with headers and saved them all to Photos.

Step Two

Next in AirSketch, I loaded the photos as the background and saved them in the correct order of my presentation.

Step Three

When it came time for class, I used the share desktop feature in my conference room, opened the browser and loaded AirSketch into it. Now, I am ready to display each slide and free to annotate, draw, illustrate to my heart’s content. Loved it!

Even though my conference room has the ability to do white board, I find it a million times easier to draw on an iPad using a Stylus than trying to draw with a mouse. It’s also more natural, like teaching in a real classroom except you’re writing on the iPad instead of the chalk board.

More Reasons To Love It

You can get pretty creative, fun and even polished and professional if you want. Drawing Pad app is not required. I used it because I wanted to create slides while away from the computer. The key is AirSketch and the ability to share your desktop in your conference room. If you are teaching in a real life classroom you will need to hook your computer up to a projector.

There are other neat features in AirSketch too like import PDF’s so you can essentially load your slides into the app and draw/annotate on it as you present. You can change the colors of your pen, there are 5 pen types to choose from and you can undo – great feature. I messed up in my annotation during class once and just hit undo.

Watch A Demo

My drawing skills aren’t the best so the ‘slide’ may not be up to par for some of you but you can certainly load up professionally created graphics as your background.

What It Costs

AirSketch cost me $9.99. There is a free one but with very limited options and Drawing Pad was $1.99 definitely so easy on the wallet and worth every single penny. What more, the freedom to step away from the computer is hugely liberating. Highly recommended if you teach a lot of webinars or love doing recorded videos.

Image courtesy of CrossGL

Sometimes the solution or the path to a solution is right under your nose. While on the job, one of my friend’s clients asked if she knew of a way to make the photos on her site be displayed it does on iPhoto.

This posed a problem because my friend doesn’t use a Mac. There are screen shots all over the Internet of course but that’s still not helpful because from what I understand, there are several ways iPhoto displays them. I don’t have the iPhoto app installed and couldn’t help her either. There are many different screens within the iPhoto app. Which portion is the client talking about?

When outsourcing, the old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” is so true. Many times in classes, interviews, webinars, writing etc, my favorite advise is – “Don’t tell, show“. It’s not just for your sanity. It’s for your team’s sanity too.

You can show what you mean by grabbing a screen shot or making a screen recording. Here are some tools you can use.

Tools to grab static screen shots:

• Snagit
• Screenshot Captor
• SnapDraw
• Photoscape

Tools to record screen videos:

• Camtasia (Windows and Mac)
• Jing (Windows and Mac)
• Wink (Windows)
• Capture FOX Official Website (Firefox)
• ScreenFlow (Mac)
• Skitch (Mac)

You don’t have to use all these of course. Especially for static screen shots. Windows 7 has a basic Snipping Tool packaged in it. You can always hit print screen for other versions or Command + Shift + 3 on your Mac. However, these tools give you editing options, easy ways to annotate and edit as well. Besides, once you get used to them, you will find plenty of other uses for them too like in your products and blog posts and freebies.

I know many people use WordPress like that and it’s great because it is so versatile and there are such wonderfully easy plugins like MarketerCMS and WPSalesletter that make it incredibly easy to put up an attractive, effective opt-in page(s).

Unfortunately as I mentioned in my interview with Kelly on Detoxing Your Blog, this is also this type of sites have a huge potential to leave security holes and be spam bait because they aren’t in the forefront of our minds. So save yourself some time. If you’re building an opt-in where you know you will unlikely review the page regularly, get rid of obvious spam baits before you finish the project.

• Delete, trash or un-publish the Hello World post
• Close all comments and trackbacks
• Check individual posts to disable comments and trackbacks
• If you’re a bit more techie and truly will never need comments, nor trackbacks either rename or remove the wp-comments-post.php or wp-trackback.php

You can tell I'm so not a designer!

Fortunately, while poking around at CodeCanyon one day I stumbled on this great plugin that does this very thing in a much more attractive manner – not to mention less coding for me. Take a look at Dynamic Step Process Panels. I think you’ll agree with me it’s such a nice looking and useful plugin to guide people through the steps they need to complete. They also have a non-WordPress version.

Graphic courtesy of Quanticalabs

While in CodeCanyon, I also found this other impressive plugin called Timetable for WordPress. I’m thinking it might look great for schools, community sites, theaters or even a gated community to display webinar schedules.

Graphic courtesy of RikdeVos

It’s very flexible. You can change the colors, size, add text all on the fly. Below are some placeholder images generated. Check out, bookmark and use Placehold.it.

1. Why keep up with updates.
2. Are some plugins no longer necessary?
3. Is my theme hopelessly outdated?
4. How to deal with broken links?
5. How to deal with non-automated spam. This one is tough as most spam filters are good at detected automated spam, not human generated spam.

We had a great conversation some good info. Listen in here (nothing to pay).

P/S: To expand on plugins that are no longer necessary, here are some I used in the past but no longer because new WordPress features have rendered them unnecessary for our projects.

• Exclude Pages. We now use the built in WordPress menu feature.
• Page Links To. This plugin used to help create navigation menus that redirect to outside sites etc without having to edit code. Again we just use WordPress menu. However there are times this is still useful.
• Plugins to close comments on old posts. This feature is now built into WordPress.