Need to open an excel file, and don't have excel?

Try Excel Viewer 2003.

I used this on 2 computers before I got Open Office. It was very useful, and I didn' have any trouble with it. You can't actually change anything in the file, but you can at least open the file, print it, and copy the data to another file.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Have you ever wanted to make your own font?

Then check out My First Font

I've seen several webpages that had what looked like a handwritten note on the web page, and I always wondered how they did it.

Now I know!

My first font is a neat little site that tells you how to build your first font.

So if you have an hour to kill, and want to make your own font, check them out and send me a link to the font you make!

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

More HTML Tutorials

Everyone knows you can never have enough html tutorials! Sometimes the way a person explains something makes it easier to understand, so here are a few more to get you going.

Annabella's HTML Help

Lissa Explains It All HTML Help and Tutorial For Kids

HTML goodies offers an HTML primer and tons of other goodies.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Free banners and buttons!

Ok, if you're like me, and can't figure out the free serif software - or if you don't have enough time to figure it out, you can use these free banners and buttons. They don't give you anywhere near as much control as doing it all on your own, but you can still get decent banners and buttons.


Adam Kalsey Buttonmaker
Although this button maker is made for RSS feeds, if you move the bar position to 0 and put your text in the right box you can get button without a divider.


Button Generator offers a wide variety of free and members only buttons and website navigation buttons. You are able to change the colors of the buttons, and add text before you download the buttons.


Freebuttons.com offers 14 free button styles. You can edit the text by using a graphics program.

Cooltext offers free logo and button designs.

Cool Archive offers free logo and button generators. I used the logo generator to make banners. They aren't fancy, but they work :-) They also have icons and other useful things.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Free Serif Software (Image & Photo Editing & More)

If you're looking for some affordable software for image and photo editing check out serif software. I downloaded the PhotoPlus 6 a while ago, and I've had no trouble with it other than the fact that I never took the time to learn how to use the program.

The have several other programs, including PagePlus SE (Desktop Publishing), WebPlus 6.0 (Web Site Design & Publishing), DrawPlus 4.0 (Graphic Design and Vector Drawing), and 3DPlus 2.0 (3D Animation and Modeling.)

And oh yeah, it's free, although rumor has it they will try to get you to upgrade if you register by phone.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Open Office Update

One problem. I can't open up microsoft works documents, which means I lost my recipe database. Of course since it was crazy anyways, I'd end up with three recipes mixed together...which is great when you end up with 1 cup of okra in your brownies :-) Just kidding. I don't have any recipes with okra in them...but you get the idea. Things for one recipe would be saved with another one, so it's probably time I copy them all to something new.

You are supposed to be able to save regular microsoft works documents into word format, so after you do that you can open them with open office. Unfortunately I ended up installing word on the computer with microsoft works, so I'm not sure which program is doing what, so I can't tell you how to do that.

Ooh, I just realized that I could convert documents to PDF in Open Office, I am so excited. When you open up a document in Open Office, there is a little PDF file, and all you have to do is click it, choose a file name, and it will save it in PDF form.

This is great if you want to offer little downloads to your users (such as Mystical Beauty's Free Beauty Tip Ebook, which I did not make with Open Office :-) .)

Ok, off to play :-) And no, I'm not getting paid to say this!

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Wish you could open those pesky word documents without word?

I'm so excited. I recently downloaded open office, and now I can open the word and excel documents that I haven't been able to open forever.

Best of all it's free!

I downloaded the stable version, but if you want you can open the newest beta version. It might still have bugs though, and I wasn't feeling that brave today.

I haven't done much with it other than open the documents, but so far it seems great!

You can also save items in several different formats, including several versions of word and excel.

Open Office runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Windows, Mac OSX, and Irix, so it should work on your operating system. Installation was very easy, although it did not automatically install. I had to open the folder, and read the pdf with instructions, then basically I clicked on setup. You should read the instructions if you are running a computer with administration rights, or if are installing it on a network.

If you have any more question go ahead and ask, or check out the open office site. I wish I'd downloaded this earlier!

Now I'm off to see if I can send my recipe from my old computer and open it with this one :-) Please, please, please, lol.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

How I Moved From Blogger to Wordpress

I just moved my Mystical Beauty blog from Blogger to Wordpress. I only had one major problem. None of my individual blog posts or category links worked. I have spent hours trying to get the links to show up in their own pages. I finally ended up changing the permalink structure to /%category%/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/,(in wordpress click on permalinks, then insert this where it says structure) and it works. I am so relieved. Moving from blogger to wordpress was much easier than I thought, other than that one issue.

I found a lot of useful resources. I could not figure out how to migrate from blogger to wordpress by looking at the wordpress info-I ended up figuring out how to do it by googling it.

I followed the tutorial from Catsutorials in order to import my data from blogger to wordpress. I don't have too many comments, so I did not use the hack to import comments. The process was very easy, and I didn't have any trouble at all.

All in all this process was very easy. I'm not sure what caused my category pages not to show up, but that was the only problem I had, and hey-you know how to fix that now :-)


Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

RSS info at GNC Web Creations Seo Classes

As if you aren't tired enough of me telling you to join the GNC Web Creations Seo Classes now the tech hideaway, which is a separate group you can join if you are interested, but don't have to join to be a member of the SEO classes, is offering a course on RSS feeds. You do have to be a member of the SEO groups to join the tech hideway! I'm excited.


Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

W3 Schools - Free Web Building Tutorials

I just ran across this site today. I love the examples, which allow you to adjust the code, and immediately see how it looks, without messing up your own pages!

W3 schools has HTML, XML, Browser Scripting, Server Scripting, .NET, Multimedia, and Web Building tutorials, and examples.

They also have quizzes so you can see how much you know-I got a 70 on the HTML quiz. Oops, guess I need to study a little more.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Do you have an ad for your link exchanges?

Do you have an ad for your business? Do you have an ad that's ready to use at a moments notice, if you just happen to find a quality site, that you think would benefit your users, and that just happens to have a link exchange program? I know it's hard to have something ready at all times, and to be perfectly honest, I never feel like anything I write is ever finished - I can always figure out a way to polish it some more, and more, and more.

However, since quality incoming links from other sites are vital in order for your pages to rank well, a good prepared ad for link exchanges is a must!

Today, I checked my email, and I had several messages from people who wanted me to place their link at the Etailers Mall Mall. However, none of the people had followed the directions I'd given them. I had some people who didn't put their name, or the business name in the form. Now the business owners name isn't as important - I just like to have it when I email people to tell them where I put their link.

But what am I supposed to do when they don't give me their business's name? That means I have to go to their website, and figure out what their business name is (which can be harder than you think!) This wastes my precious time, and makes me not want to put their link up. (At Etailers Mall, I do not require a reciprocal link in order for etailers to be listed in the mall, because I am offering a list of etailers as a service to my users, so there is nothing in this for me, other than making my users happy. I do have an Etailers Mall Links" page, and an Etailers Mall "Other" page for sites that are not stores, or that aren't bath, body, candles, cosmetics, or jewelry etailers and would like to do a link exchange though.)

Although not having your business name is bad enough, today I had a link description sent in that was just a list of random words describing the products. They were in no certain order, and did not make sense. I spent at least 20 minutes working that description into a useable description, because, to be perfectly honest with you, I would have been embarrassed to put the description that was given to me on my website.

Although I realize that every one makes mistakes, it is important for your website to have a professional looking ad, that accurately describes what the user will find when he or she clicks on it, and makes people want to click on your ad instead of all of the other ads that are listed on that links page. Now when I say professional looking ad, I don't mean the ad needs to be professionally designed, but the ad does need to make sense (yes, I'm only writing this because of the ad I got today :-) It also needs to be free of grammar or spelling errors.

If you'd like feedback on your ad, feel free to leave a comment with your ad description in it, and I'll tell you what I think.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Free Online Education/Classes, etc

BBC Learning Homepage

This site has a lot of useful information, including adult learning, children's learning, language classes, and business skills.


Barnes & Noble University I Love Barnes & Noble University. I actually learned HTML here (I am almost positive it was the web pages made easy class), and designed all of my sites, with the exception of the new layout of Etailers Mall with the info that I learned here....and I didn't even buy the book that was recommended for the class.

B&N University has liberal arts and life improvement classes, and online reading groups. You can go at your own pace, so if you get behind it's not a problem-most of the classes repeat every month.

CNET's Free Online Courses I haven't really looked at these too much. Right now they have a Home Theater Workshop up, and a free online course on HDTV made simple. They do have classes on adobe photoshop basics, powerpoint 2003, and master buying and selling on ebay coming up soon. You can register to be notified when these classes come up, and although you do have to register to be a part of the class, I was able to look at some of the lessons for the Home Theater workshop, without registering.

Free-ed.net These are free educational webcasts. They have more than 120 classes and tutorials, including anatomy, finance, mastering quicken, powerpoint 2000. You don't have to sign up for most of the classes-just click and watch.

Ok, more coming later :-)



Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Emergency Party Room!

Unfortunately, I've been to several online parties where people could not get in the room. I know this results in frustrations, and lost sales.

I had an extra chat room from the old Mystical Beauty forums, so I decided to turn it into an Emergency Party Room!

So if you're ever stuck and can't get in the room to have your party, just head on over to the Emergency Party Room! As long as there is no one else in it you can use it. This is java script, and opens right in your browser, so you don't have to worry about people not being able to get into it because they are using aol. I know I have that problem with the Etailers Mall Chat Room

You can also use one of the Etailers Mall chat rooms in an emergency, as long as there is no one else there-or you can plan to hold your party there if you are having a bath, body, candle, cosmetics, or jewelry party. Just request the date on the Etailers Mall calendar.

Of course I hope you never have to use the Emergency Party Room, but if you do...it's nice to know it's there.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Finding a Craft Show from teachsoap.com

I ran across this today, the list of things to take with you is very useful, even if you aren't selling soaps. I never would have remembered to take the coffee beans, or tape and scissors.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Wish you had a way to try scripts before you download them?

Then check out Open Source CMS - Try Before You Install

I found this today while I was looking up chat rooms for Etailers Mall. I really wish I had found this when I was installing my forums, lol. I think I ended up installing SMS, then going back and installing phpbb.

Anyways, this has site lets you try out some mysql/php based free and open source programs.

Not only do you get to see the program, you get to the administator username and password for every program, so you can fix it up, and change it however you want to to see if it will work for what you need it to work for. The sites are deleted and reinstalled every two hours-so you can see what it's like when the site is new, and what it's like after you get done.

Anyways, they have lots of cool stuff..including a promising sounding phpmysurvey in the Misc. folder-that's where phpmychat is too :-)

Next time I'm adding something to the site, I'm definitely looking there to see if I can demo it!

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah

Free HTML Class from about.com

I ran across this class a few days ago, and I figured I'd put it up here. I'm not taking this class, since I learned html from Barnes & Noble University, and since there are lessons with the SEO Online Training classes.

Apparently these are 11 week classes sent via email, and they are interactive. You will have homework, but it won't be graded, and you can take the class at your own pace, but you will still get lessons each week.

They also have a test at the end of the classes, and you get a certificate if you pass the test.

If you do take these classes please leave a comment and let me know how you liked them.

Best Wishes For a Prosperous Business,

Sarah