WordPress tip: What to do if your Visual tab does not work in the editor

This is how your WordPress visual tab is supposed to look in the Dashboard!

On one of my hosting accounts where I have 2 WordPress sites, I noticed in the Dashboard on both sites that the Visual tab was not working in the editor, and I could not make new posts. I could see the tab, but it was grayed out and nothing happened when I clicked on it.

So I went about searching for possible solutions and trying various things. Since I didn’t check both sites at first, I suspected it was the free theme I had uploaded on the first site. Sometimes themes can do strange things! So unfortunately, I wasted a lot of time looking at other themes and trying them out, only to realize that did not solve the issue.

Then I tinkered around with the plugins I had installed. That wasn’t it. I dug around in my WordPress template files, but nothing jumped out at me as being faulty. So then I moved to doing a fresh install of WordPress. That still didn’t solve the problem!

Finally, I came across the right solution, and it was such an easy fix! Apparently, this issue with the Visual tab has been a common problem with the release of WordPress version 3.5. If you have this same issue, just give this a try:

1. Log onto your server and go to the root directory. Look for the wp-config.php file and open it up for editing.

2. Before you tinker with code in any file like this, be sure to carefully copy the code and paste it into a Notepad file, as a backup copy in case you mess something up!

3. Write the line of code define(‘CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS’, false); toward the bottom of the file, just above where it indicates to “stop editing,” which you will probably see between a set of /* …….. */ marks, which are programming comments. Don’t forget to include the little semi-colon! And save and close your file, and log back into your Dashboard. This is how the code looked in my file:

define('CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false);
/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

by imsluggo2 / June 18, 2013 / Posted in: Wordpress Tips

Tagged: visual editor tab, Wordpress, WordPress 3.5, WordPress can't post, WordPress dashboard

Your Website Can Be Your Best Salesperson!

Your website can provide a showcase for your products and services, presenting information 365 days a year, 24/7, because the internet never closes. It is available from anywhere in the world. You can put as much information as you want on your website, so it becomes an inexhaustible source of information for prospective clients that want to check things out first.

While in the past, a business owner had to rely mainly on printed materials for their brochures and ads, a website is now actually the most economical way to go.

You can very easily update information about your products and services online, as opposed to the time, hassle, and expense involved in reprinting all of your paper-based marketing materials. You will save on printed brochures and other conventional resources by providing information online.

The information you put on your website can be a great way to do your “pre-selling.” People will often return to the same website to repeatedly view information about a product they are interested in, and a website takes the pressure off them the might feel when they deal with talking in person to a salesperson. I don’t know about you, but most of the time I really don’t like a salesperson following me around. I like to take my time to look and make my own decision.

True, printed brochures still have their place, but you have to be able to hand them to a prospective client, or mail to them. However, a website is a much quicker and efficient way to get important product information to clients when you aren’t speaking to them face-to-face. When you speak with customers on the phone, say “I’ll email you some more information,” and then in the email you send, simply provide the link to your website, even to a specific page of your site. How efficient is that?!

It’s like your best salesperson!

Ready to start your own website?

Buy a domain name

Set up web hosting with All In One Profits (AIOP)

Photo Credit: Alison Christine via Compfight cc

by imsluggo2 / June 18, 2013 / Posted in: Why have a website?

Tagged: best salesperson, showcase products, showcase services, virtual storefront, website

Do you really need a website for your business?

Are people searching online for your business? If you do not have a website of your own, you are losing potential customers.

A survey conducted by The Discover Small Business Watch in 2009 revealed that 62 percent of small business owners still did not have websites for their businesses. I haven’t come across a similar survey yet with more current stats, but I think it’s safe to assume there are still quite a few small businesses out there lagging behind. I still find that some businesses don’t have a website.

If you find yourself still dragging your feet about creating a “web presence,” I want to really encourage you to take this crucial step forward. It’s really nothing as difficult as you might imagine!

In this day and age, potential clients are going to assume that you have a website already, and they are going to be searching for it online. Many times, a website is the first point of contact, the first impression for a client. That’s right, a website…not you personally, nor your front desk receptionist, nor a glimpse of the building where you have your office.

Even if your business is small, failure to have an online presence is a big way to undermine your credibility in the eyes of others.

So, having a website is a necessity for these basic reasons:

to lend legitimacy to your business
to present a professional image
to show clients you are fully invested in your business
to gain more of your clients’ confidence and trust
to show clients you are interested in serving them
to expose a wider audience to what you have to offer

Don’t let your business get left behind because of lacking a web presence. Get started now with your own website!

Buy a domain name

Set up web hosting with All In One Profits (AIOP)

by imsluggo2 / June 8, 2013 / Posted in: Why have a website?

How To Get Lost Website Content Back

Have you ever wondered if you can get lost web content back? How do you find it? Some time back, I lost some content from a website. My sites hosted with Godaddy had gone down, and when I called tech support, they acknowledged that the problem was on their end. They soon restored my sites…but OLD versions of my sites! (I had several sites under one account, so they were all affected.) Any content I had added during the past year or so was not there.

After quite some time spent on the phone, I was finally informed that my recent content could not be retrieved. At first, I was pretty annoyed, but really, I had not written such a great amount of content over the past year, so this was not such the horrendous disaster that it might have been. I really have not been such a proficient web writer when it comes to content for my own sites. So I told myself that I needed to update my site anyway and this would give me a bit of a push to do just that. I think it was just a freak thing that could happen with any hosting company. Also, it’s really my responsibility to back up my own site, and I been lax about doing that.

I found some of the lost content in files I had saved on my computer, but not all of it. But I knew that the Internet loves to save copies too, so I wanted to share a little shortcut you can try in case this happens to you. It’s called The WayBack Machine, and you can find it here: http://archive.org/web/web.php . I was able to pull up archived copies of my web content, and I simply copied-and-pasted what I wanted to restore into new posts on my site, nice and quick. There are more technical and thorough ways to retrieve your lost web content, but as I said, this is a shortcut, it works well if you’re not needing huge amounts of content restored, and many times it’s all you will really need.

So now, as my dad would say, “let that be a lesson to you.”

Photo Credit: CyboRoZ via Compfight cc