We’ve updated the Reverbnation plugin, which uses “shortcodes” both inside your blog posts/pages as well as in your sidebar widgets.

This is much better that copying/pasting all that “embed” code that comes from Reverbnation.Why? Because we no longer have to deal with the problem of WordPress removing bits of the embed code for security reasons.

Shortcodes are great for 2 reasons:

1. They’re short
2. WordPress doesn’t filter them out and mysteriously remove certain chunks of your code

As an example, a shortcode looks like this:
[reverbnation widget=tunewidget artist_id=212165]

Here’s another one:
[reverbnation widget=pro_press artist_id=212165 skin_id=PWPS4008 width=470 height=180 fontcolor=333333]

To find these so-called shortcodes:

1. Go to Reverbnation and go to your “Control Room” or “back office” or “admin” area.
2. From there, click on “Widgets & Apps”
3. Choose a Widget and click the “get widget” button
4. (optional — for “pro” widgets only) Select the skin you want
5. Configure any available options (like size, font color, etc.)
6. Click the “Place Widget” button
7. You’ll see that old “embed code” but ignore it! Instead, look at the buttons above. The WordPress.org button is right in the middle — that’s the one you want.
8. Clicking the WordPress.org button will give you the shortcode you’ll need to copy/paste on your site.

NOTE OF CAUTION:

Sometimes Reverbnation screws up the short code by putting the closing bracket ” ] ” in the wrong place. For example, here’s a screwed up shortcode I just copied from their site.

[reverbnation widget=pro_video artist_id=117570 bgcolor=EEEEEE bordercolor=000000 skin_id=PWVS2008 width=262 height=200] fontcolor=333333

It’s an easy fix — just move the closing bracket to the end of the shortcode.

[reverbnation widget=pro_video artist_id=117570 bgcolor=EEEEEE bordercolor=000000 skin_id=PWVS2008 width=262 height=200 fontcolor=333333]

Hope this helps, gang! Leave us a comment if you have any issues.

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Regardless, the dirty secret they try so hard to hide is that (almost) ALL of them have hidden fees they love to tack on.

We’ve tried LOTS of domains, and here are a few *gotchas* to avoid.  (Plus, we’ll reveal our favorite domain registrar.)

If you’re planning to register a new domain name for a new website, blog, or business, you want (1) Quality, (2) Reliability, (3) Value, and (4) Privacy.

Quality, reliability, and value are easily solved by always working with the big boys. It’s safe to say that big domain companies like GoDaddy, Yahoo, and 1&1.com aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.  Plus, they’re all really competitive on price.  (At least on the surface.)

Watch out for these hidden fees and “discounts”:

• Entry-level discounts ($$ off your first year)
• Bundled discounts (Save $$ when you buy lots from us)
• Private domain registration
• ICANN fees
• Included Email Accounts

Price is important — especially for bootstrapping internet entrepreneurs. 

But the 500-pound gorilla that almost no one talks about is privacy.

Did you know when you register a domain name, you’re forced to put in your name, phone number, address, etc., and that information is publicly available to anyone?

Anyone — including spammers and telemarketers — can find your contact information just by looking up your domain name online.

That’s right. The Internet’s governing body, ICANN, requires that every domain owner’s name and contact information be listed in an online database. Unfortunately, many solicitors regularly go through this database to gather contacts for marketing campaigns.

If you’re concerned about your privacy — as we sure are — you can keep your contact information out of the public eye using “Private Domain Registration.”  But beware — most companies charge extra for this!

I say “most” because our favorite registar — 1&1.com –  gives it to you for free.  In fact, 1&1 is arguably the best domain registrar we have come across. With annual prices as low as USD 8.99 a year, we can have any dot com registered. Compare that with Godaddy and Yahoo and other registrars, and you will realize that 1&1′s pricing is the most competitive.

1&1 service also provides a dashboard from where you can mix and edit the DNS and MX settings. You get an email address on your custom domain and five sub-domains free as well. The customer service is prompt and I receive replies to my emails in a few hours.

One thing to be wary of while registering multiple domains with 1&1 — they’ll try to sell you a hosting package as well. With Skyrocket.me — we take care of this for you. All you need is the domain name(s) you wish to use.

Hope this helps clear the air. We always opt for private domain registration, and so our preference for domain names is 1&1.

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And its becoming more accessible to the individual computer user too through blog CMS’s like WordPress. Zenoss recently conducted a survey to backup these outlandish (to those at Microsoft and Oracle) claims.  The findings are encouraging for those in the opensource fields, but there is one thing holding it back:

• 98% of those surveyed indicated they used open source software of some kind, and on a scale of 1 to 10, rated their satisfaction with that software very highly, between 7 and 8.
• 71% of those surveyed considered open source software easier to deploy, this is a marked increase from prior years where only 48% in 2008, 38% in 2007 and 26% in 2006 considered open source deployment efficient.
• Financial constraints as the reason for adopting open source software doubled between 2008 and 2009.
• The number of sysadmins preferring the use of open source software of its proprietary counterparts came in at 76% of those surveyed.
• More than half of those surveyed said they used some form of cloud technology such as offsite backup solutions or project management services.
• Monitoring, Configuration Management, patching and provisioning, and security came in as the top IT management priorities and plans for future open source development.
• 46% of respondents said there was not reason not to choose open source.

But…

• The #1 reason for not going with open source was a lack of support, followed by poor documentation.

That 9.5% whose main reason for not choose open source is ‘lack of support’ (and who could blame them!) is why Skyrocket Websites and Skyrocket.me is here, and a great place to begin blogging for the online community.  An active support forum plus hundreds of usage and configuration articles written specifically for Skyrocket users makes your blogging easy as, well…. 9.5% of that pie you see above.

So get blogging, and let Skyrocket.me help you get started!!

Give a Skyrocket.me Blog a Try! Its Fun and Free!

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And even though we offer great videos, discussion forums, and a thorough help site, we find that one of the biggest challenges faced by our users is that the back office (or “dashboard”) can be a bit too complex — especially for our younger, older and novice users.

So today, we’re rolling out a new easy-to-use option with a much simpler interface.

Switching between interfaces is as simple as clicking on the ‘Go to the Easy Admin Area’ or ‘Go to the Advanced Admin Area’ at the top of your dashboard.

Wizard

We’ve also set up a “wizard” for new users to get started even faster. Now, when your friends sign up for a Skyrocket Website, they are given the option of going straight to the Easy Blogging admin menu -or- going through our step-by-step wizard to get their blog up and running.

Tooltips

And finally, we’ve added tooltips throughout the back office, explaining what each button and tab does, and making life much easier for you!

All you have to do is to roll your mouse over a ‘?‘ and you’ll get a useful tip popping up!

We hope this helps you get started even faster with your Skyrocket Website!

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This upgrade adds in several new things a fixes a bunch of old ones.  The coolest new stuff from a user point of view is:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

For the full upgrade announcment, including all the bug fixes, please see this page.  Enjoy!

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1. Post materials and resources

The web is a fantastic tool when it comes to distributing resources – all you have to do on your Skyrocket Website is upload, or copy and paste, your materials to your blog and they’ll be instantly accessible by your customers and fans. What’s more, you can easily manage who gets to access them through password and plugin safety measures.

2. Host online discussions

If you’ve ever struggled to create an online discussion space – you’re going to love what Skyrocket will do for you. Fans can simply respond to blog posts and discuss topics you’ve set them through comments or through our simple forum functionality – commentators can also sign up to receive emails when their comments are replied to and you can easily manage and edit all responses through your blog’s administrative panel.

3. Replace your newsletter

Always enjoyed photocopying and stapling pages and pages of newsletters on a Friday afternoon? Though not! It’s ridiculously simple to post class information, news, events and more on your Skyrocket Website.

4. Get your fans blogging

It’s all very good sending your fans off to blog sites, or even creating them for them, but you need to operate as a hub for their work and a place where they can easily visit each others blogs from. Your Skyrocket Website can be used to glue together your fan blogs, and besides which, if you’re asking your fans to blog about you… you should certainly be doing it yourself.

5. Integrate multimedia of all descriptions

With a couple of clicks you can embed online video, multimedia presentations, slideshows and more into your home website and mix it up with your text and static resources. No CDs required, no coding necessary – just select the video, podcasts or slidecast you’d like to use and whack it in your blog to illustrate, engage and improve your marketing toolbox.

6. Get feedback

There’s nothing that says you can’t allow anonymous commenting on a blog (although you’re also entirely within your rights to put all comments through moderation!) but why not think about using a blog as a place for fans and customers to air issues, leave feedback or generally tell you how great you are.

7. Create a fully functional website

One of the great things about Skyrocket Websites are that they are much, much more than just blogging tools. In fact, you can use your  Skyrocket Website to create a multi-layered, in-depth, multimedia rich website – that hardly looks like a blog at all. So, if you’d rather create a set of static content, archive of important information or even index for your library – you can bend a Skyrocket Website to suit your needs.

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We are absolutely delighted that so many musicians, writers, artists, speakers, and small businesses have been able to use the service for so many different reasons, and we want to continue improving, expanding and developing the site so that we can make Skyrocket available to thousands more people.

To do that, we’ve been working feverishly to set up, configure, manage, and deploy hardware and a system which will allow this to happen – so that your site(s) will be quick, reliable, safe and ever improving over the years to come.

But in doing so, of course, we had to revisit our business plan because planning on hosting several thousand blogs is a pretty costly endeavor!

Now, a lot of you may know about Launchpad – our full-service website design/marketing solution used by our top clients, but there are lots of DIY, web-savvy folks out there who could benefit from the service.

Well, today we’re rolling out a new option (in Beta) to accomodate you.

Introducing Skyrocket Professional, which allows you to subscribe to receive extra features and more storage.

Pro members will get massive amounts more storage (we’re increasing 100MB to 3GB… a 30-fold increase!), along with exclusive access to tools like the Blog & User Creator, existing plugins (and new ones to come) and other great features.

Also, occasionally, we have displayed ads on sites to assist with covering hosting costs. This is something we’re going to have to increase on free blogs, but of course Supporter blogs will not have any third party advertising on them.

And more importantly, what we’re also now allowing Pro members *turn off* advertising on up to 2 different sites – as well as your own blog being turned off automatically.

There are a couple of catches, first up we’re having to increase the price of upgrading to Skyrocket Pro to $49.95 per year (that’s still less than $5 per month!).

Also, as I mentioned previously, extra functionality (plugins, premium themes, blogs & user creator and a few others) will only be available for Pro blogs, and there will be a reduction in storage for free blogs too.

Is this ideal? Well, in a utopian world we’d like to give everyone, everything, entirely for free and without any ads! But we’ve got bills to pay too… so, barring that, we hope to still provide great free blogs alongside an absolutely premium Professional service that is more than worth the price of a large coffee per month.

We welcome your feedback, thoughts and requests for new Supporter features in the comments.

Also, if you are experiencing any issues with your Pro subscription or previous credits that you may have lost, please email us at support (at) skyrocketwebsites /dot/ com, and we’ll fix you up (there are always hiccups in a big move).

You can find a bit of a better write up about what Skyrocket Pro offers here.

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As of today, we’ve implemented an automatic sitemap generator, along with the famous All in One SEO pack – all set up and ready to go for your site.

What’s even better is that it’s already done for you — nothing more to worry about!

We will automatically create sitemaps for every site you create with us, then submit them to Google and automatically update them every time a new post is made.

Our All In One SEO pack is smart — it adds dynamic keyword and description tags based on post or page content to every post and page on your site – making them extremely tasty search engine morsels indeed!

Just another way Skyrocket Websites is making your life easier!

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First and foremost, 2.8 is way faster to use. WordPress has changed the way it does style and scripting.

You can now browse the entire theme directory and install a theme with one click from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard.

Finally, you should explore the new Screen Options on every page. It’s the tab in the top right. Now, for example, if you have a wide monitor you could set up your dashboard to have four columns of widgets instead of the two it has by default. On other pages you can change how many items show per page.

Finally, if you’re feeling especially nerdy, you can find all the details here.  Enjoy!

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