Internet Marketing Blog » ZeppOS Users

Email & Web-Based Tools from Google

Michelle Harrington — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:02:43 +0000

I recently helped a client configure their domain-based email accounts to use Gmail instead of their website host email service. The client preferred to use Gmail (as many of their employees were already familiar with it from using it for their personal accounts) and the client liked the ability to manage their email user accounts in one easy-to-use control panel.

With a bit of configuration on the server side and some set up within Google “Apps” business account, we were able to point the email to Google’s servers and they are now using that service for all of their email accounts.

Some of the benefits of using Gmail’s email service is their 99.9% uptime guarantee, hugh storage limits, a full-featured and user-friendly email interface and the ability to sync with Outlook if desired. Another benefit is having online access to your inbox, including historical emails and folders. Google “Apps” offers a Free Standard Edition which is limited to 50 user accounts and a fee-based Premium Edition.

To learn more about Google “Apps” including web “apps” for Gmail, calendar, instant messaging (IM), documents, spreadsheets, presentations, sites and video – which help businesses and organizations improve collaboration and productivity go to: Google Apps.

If you’d like to watch a short video on the highlights of using GMail for your domain-based email accounts, click here.

The only downside I can see is that Google uses Gmail to serve up text ads in the sidebar when you click into an email message. The ads aren’t obnoxiously large or “in the way”, but they might “creep” you out at first, because you’ll find the ads relevant to the subject matter of the messages in your inbox. For some people, that’s just too invasive. For the rest, the benefits of this free, full-featured application hosted on Google’s infrastructure seems like a solid choice.

While I haven’t used Google Business “Apps” myself, I do use Gmail for a personal email account and have found it to be very user-friendly. If you are considering using Google “Apps”/Gmail for your business or organization you might want to try out Gmail for a personal account first, just to give it a “test drive”.

To sign up for Google “Apps” for your business or organization, click here.

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Is your business featured in Local Search?

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:05:57 +0000

Here are two articles about a new tool called www.GetListed.org – the perfect solution for small businesses to ensure they are well represented in Local Search. The neat thing about local search is you don’t even need a website to get some exposure online for your business – just make sure you claim your listings and provide accurate information on the many local search directories that are available. You do need a physical address for your business, not a P.O. Box.

Get Listed or Weep! by Miriam Ellis

New Service for Small Businesses Launches – GetListed.org

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Preparing Photos for the Web

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:46 +0000

The following steps are recommended for cropping, adjusting and optimizing your images to be used on the web. You can use Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks or your favorite image editor:

1) Adjust color
If your photo needs some adjustment to make the colors more vibrant, choose:

Filter, Adjust Color, Choose “levels”….
Adjust the slider bars below the histogram to be lined up evenly with the starting points of the histogram on either side. Then begin adjusting further (make sure “preview” is on so you can see the changes “live”) and adjust the image to your preference. When you are happy with the adjustment, click “ok”.

2) Crop the image
Cropping an image can give it more impact and provides a means of eliminating any unwanted image data in a photo. Click on the crop tool (see image icon below), then click and drag on the image, starting from the upper left corner of where you want to crop from moving towards the right and down. Once you have the crop area the size you need you can click on the canvas again and then position the crop box precisely over the image – when you are ready to apply the crop, double click within the crop area.

3) Sizing & Optimizing for the Web
When working with images for the web it is best to set the image resolution to 72 dpi. Typically images taken with a digital camera are at 300 dpi (which is a great setting for print). Photos used for websites can be a variety of sizes from 50 pixels wide up to 600 pixels wide (on average). Change the dpi setting for your image first and then adjust the pixel dimensions for the width and make sure to choose “constrain proportions” which will automatically adjust the height to be proportionate to the width.

4) Sharpen the Image.
Now that you’ve cropped and sized your photo, it’s time to sharpen up the image, as some quality has been lost in the sizing process. Choose “select all” and then “filter”, “sharpen”. You should visibly see the image get clearer.

5) Save the image for the web
Save your edited image with a new file name as a jpg, medium quality is fine. Avoid using spaces or special characters in the file name.

Now your image is ready to upload into your content management system.

Add an appropriate title for every image, set alignment and in some cases you can add a border around the image if desired.

ZeppOS Tips & Tricks

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:28:49 +0000

Here’s some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your ZeppOS website.

1) Use Internet Explorer when working with the ZeppOS control panel. The image uploader and tables are finicky in Firefox. If you run into something that is not working in the ZeppOS control panel, you can report “bugs” here: support@zeppospro.com.

2) Keep your images and documents organized by creating sub folders in each directory. Overtime your image library can grow to an unmanageable size. By creating sub folders you’ll be able to find images and documents easily and quickly. Folders can be used to store newsletter photos by edition, documents for a particular year, or images from an event. Choose Library, Image Management or Document Management (whichever applies), scroll down and on the left there is a box to “Add a Subfolder”, name the sub folder and press “create”.

3) Use the “Paste from Word” Feature.
Anytime you are working with the “WYSIWYG” (What You See Is What You Get) interface (the tools look similar to Microsoft Word) and you are copying/pasting text from another program (doesn’t have to be just from Word), always use the “Paste from Word” tool. “Paste from Word” strips the text of any unnecessary formatting that can through off the look of your text once it is pasted into your ZeppOS website, newsletter or database.

ZeppOS Member Group Functions

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 05:27:33 +0000

The Member Group functions in ZeppOS are a great way to segregate members into groups which can be used for sending email blasts and newsletters as well as enabling permissions for access to “members only” areas of a website.

Deleting Members from a Group
In the Member Group screen, if you want to delete a member from that group, simply click on the red “X” next to that members’ name. Deleting a member from one group will not remove that member from any other groups they are subscribed to.

Deleting a large number of Email addresses from the database…
If you ever want to delete a bunch of members, you can copy the list of email addresses into “Member Tools & Reports”, choose “Duplicate or Missing Data”, then “Remove Members”… paste the email addresses in the white box and click “submit”, that will remove those members completely from the database.

Changing Member Subscriptions
To change member subscriptions from one group to another, find the member in the group you want to delete them from and click the red “x” next to their name in that group, this deletes that member from that group. Then go to Member Manager, Manage Groups, and click on the group you want to subscribe the member to and click on the “add members to group” button (top, right). From that screen, click on the magnifying glass to get the screen with all members, navigate using the alphabet to get to the member you want and then click on the person icon on the left. Then choose “Add Member”.

Free ZeppOS Online Training

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 04:51:49 +0000

For those Emagine clients whose websites are built using the ZeppOS content management system, please feel free to take advantage of the following free online basic training if you are new to the content management system or need a refresher course.

ZeppOS Online SupportTutorials:
How to manage your website using the ZeppOS tool.
http://zeppos.ws/support.asp

ZeppOS User Manual:

http://empoweredinternet.com/_library/documents/zeppos/ZeppOS-Manual.pdf

ZeppOS Essentials Virtual Walkthrough:

http://empoweredinternet.com/training/

Setting Up an Email Auto Response in ZeppOS

Michelle Harrington — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:43:05 +0000

Going on vacation or a business trip? Need to advise those writing to you via Email that you are away and when you will return. You need an Email auto respond message, here’s how to set one up using the ZeppOS content management system:

1) From the Control Panel choose “Settings” and then “Mail Setup”.

2) Click on the “Click here to launch” link under ZeppOS Mail

3) Place a check mark in the box next to the user account you want to set up the auto response for…

4) Click “Create Auto Responder”

5) Make sure there is a check mark in the box that says “I would like to enable the autoresponder for…”

6) Fill in the subject and the message the way you would like it to read and click “Submit”.

That’s it…

To Disable the Auto Response Message, login the same way as described above and for step number 5, be sure to uncheck the box that says “I would like to enable the autoresponder….”, this will disable the auto response.

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ZeppOS Virtual Walk Thru

Michelle Harrington — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 22:54:16 +0000

If you are interested in a website where you can manage content yourself via an easy-to-use web-based interface, you will want to check out ZeppOS. This full-featured and highly customizable content management system is my favorite for designing beautiful sites with a wide range of functionality. To learn more about the features of ZeppOS I invite you to visit the ZeppOS information site and view the virtual walk thru and demonstrations.

If you have any questions about how this content management system works, its capabilities or would like a proposal for a website built using this technology, please contact me. To view samples of websites built using the ZeppOS product, please click on the links below:

Jean & Abbott Luxury Kauai Vacation Rentals
Kauai Realty, Kauai Real Estate Experts
Princeville Community Association
The Kauai Chamber of Commerce
Leadership Kauai
Kauai Economic Development Board
Kula – K-12 School on Kauai’s North Shore
Hale Puka`ana, a Kekaha Bed and Breakfast vacation rental

ZeppOS Training on Kauai

Michelle Harrington — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:00:46 +0000

Rob Bertholf of Empowered Internet (Honolulu) and developer of the ZeppOS website content management system, visited Kauai last week for a 2 hour hands-on training session for ZeppOS users. Rob shared some of the exciting improvements and features that have recently been built into ZeppOS including the FTP manager, image library configuration, and the new “lightbox” flash image gallery to name just a few. The following is a recap of some of the features I thought most ZeppOS users would be interested in.

Automatic Image Sizing:
ZeppOS now offers a library configuration page where you can specify your preferred image size (in pixels) and whether or not you would like thumbnails generated automatically. By choosing options similar to those shown below, you can upload your photos directly to the image library in ZeppOS and the images will be sized as specified in the library configuration screen (see below). The extra resolution/file size is discarded beyond what is needed to size the photos to the designated size. This is a great feature to use when you want to upload a lot of photos and create an image gallery quickly. Be sure to make separate image folders in the Library for your different image galleries as this will enable you to use the variety of image gallery options in ZeppOS and will help to keep your images organized over time.

Flash Lightbox Image Gallery:
There is a new “Lightbox” option for the dynamic flash image galleries in ZeppOS. To use the “Lightbox” image gallery option, click on your photo gallery interaction on your page (you must be logged in) and the following configuration screen will appear. Make sure under “Open Option” that “Lightbox” is checked and then click “update”. Now when you click on any of the thumbnail images the site will launch the Lightbox Flash slideshow viewer, see example below.

Configuring the Flash Lightbox Image Gallery

Flash Lightbox Image Viewer

FTP Manager:
This new component provides an easy interface for adding FTP Accounts to ZeppOS and integrates seamlessly into the Library of the ZeppOS Control Panel allowing administrator management of member files. The member interface provides access to upload or download files hidden to the public. Contact Michelle for component pricing and more information.

Online Training Options:
If you are a ZeppOS user and missed the training, please click here to learn about other online training opportunities provided by Empowered Internet:

http://empoweredinternet.com/zeppos-training.asp

Internet Marketing Blog » ZeppOS Users

Email & Web-Based Tools from Google

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Is your business featured in Local Search?

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Preparing Photos for the Web

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ZeppOS Tips & Tricks

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ZeppOS Member Group Functions

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Free ZeppOS Online Training

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Setting Up an Email Auto Response in ZeppOS

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ZeppOS Virtual Walk Thru

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ZeppOS Training on Kauai

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