Once you’ve set up your MySQL database and installed WordPress, it’s time to start creating your blog. WordPress is extremely flexible and makes it easy to get going. You don’t need any special programming skills. You can go the simple route and just write and publish your blog. Or you can customize your blog and even turn it into a complete website. Continue reading ‘Getting Started: Setting up WordPress’
Because we love books at Easton Communications, and use them all the time to learn new things and help us deliver stellar client solutions, we’ve added a new Books area to our website highlighting some of our favorites. Besides providing a little information about why we like a book, we also provide a link to each book on Amazon
. This makes it easy for you to get more information and even order a book if we’ve really sold you on it.
In this day and age, no list of books is complete without mentioning Amazon’s amazing Kindle. We highlight the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX in our Books area.
Be sure to visit our Books area from time to time to see what’s new. You may end up stumbling on exactly the right book right when you need it.
Throughout this website, several books are mentioned. Find them here, along with several other books we’ve found useful as communicators and business owners. And of course, no list of books is complete without mentioning Amazon’s new Kindle 2 and Kindle DX.
The Kindle 2 is as thin as most magazines and barely weighs over half a pound. You can download books at anytime–no need to be connected to your computer or near a Wi-Fi hotspot. If you’re like us and running out of space on your bookshelves, you’ll love the convenience of the Kindle 2. Its display measures 6″ (diagonal) and holds up to 1,500 books. Ladies, it fits nicely into many purses.
The Kindle DX is larger than the Kindle 2, making it ideal for reading newspapers, magazines, and textbooks. One of its coolest features is its auto-rotating display that changes from portrait to landscape as you turn the device. You can easily view full-width maps, graphs, tables, and web pages. If you read a lot of periodicals, the DX is the Kindle for you. Its display measures 9.7″ (diagonal) and it holds up to 3,500 books. Even at its larger size, it’s still as slim as most magazines.
You can order the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX from Amazon.
Now For the Books . . .
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink describes our current status quo regarding technology workers: “Mere survival today depends on being able to do something that overseas knowledge workers can’t do cheaper, that powerful computers can’t do faster.” Pink makes a good case that we are entering a new age called the Conceptual Age, where knowledge workers will need to “supplement our well-developed high-tech abilities with abilities that are high concept and high touch.” Check out Cindy’s Blog for more about this book.
Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read
by Scott McNulty provides a lot of detail about setting up a WordPress.com or WordPress.org blog, including setting up MySQL for WordPress.org blogs. This book is written in a folksy way that’s easy to understand and follow. The only problem is that it’s based on a previous version of the WordPress dashboard that has all functionality organized in tabs across the top of the page. The current version has basically the same functionality, but it’s accessed by selecting commands in menus on the left side of the page. If you’re comfortable mapping tabs-in-the-book with menus-in-WordPress, then I highly recommend this book. When you read it, it’s almost as if you’re sitting in a classroom with a teacher who’s skilled at interacting with the students.
WordPress For Dummies 2nd Edition by Lisa Sabin-Wilson is a handy reference to the ins and outs of just about everything WordPress-related. If you purchase this book, be sure you get the second edition. It covers the latest upgrades to WordPress through version 2.7.x. The older version of the book has the “Dummies Guy” on the cover. The newer version is shown in the thumbnail at right. I had a little trouble finding the second edition on Amazon. All my searches took me to the first edition. The links on this page go to the second edition of the book on Amazon.
As you’ve probably noticed, this blog is a WordPress blog. WordPress makes it extremely easy to start, update, and manage a blog. You can even build an entire website around a WordPress blog. That’s what I’ve done. Continue reading ‘Getting Started: Setting up MySQL’
