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How to build a small business website with wordpress in 25 minutes

May 2, 2018 by Reporter Leave a Comment

Article updated 02 May 2018

If you’re selling online services or products, or just have a small business – then having a website today is essential and wordpress makes this easy. But even if you don’t sell anything directly online, the website can be useful just like a business card of yours on the internet to get more customers in touch with you, with information about you, your business, and the services offered.

What we will show below in short ( summary )

1. Pick and purchase a domain

2. Set up hosting ( 1& 2 are both covered together with bluehost hosting)

3. Install WordPress and a Theme

4. Add content and set up your site (part2)

Well for many of you who possibly don’t know what is wordpress, it’s one of the most popular website building software on the internet and its easy to use. This Website software is being used by tops brands like BBC America, Sony Music, FORD Social, Ourselves and Beyonce.

Latest Bluehost Website starter 2018 Offer

You can easily build your website for a small business in 25 minutes flat and it can take a bit longer than that if you’re not as computer savvy as some. With the wordpress easy set-up, you can be up and writing for your website the same day after it’s installed.

You will need to sign up with a hosting company to set up your website. Installation of your website is made easy in this process with the 1 click install available from bluehost hosting which also provides a free domain with their 36 month plan. More details below..

This software is so versatile and flexible you can use it to create a professional looking website or just a personal blog, in-fact you can create a many different kind of websites with it – be it a Ecommerce shop website, A fashion blog , a photography webpage, a gadget showcase or a personal story blog.

You get hundreds of free designs from within word press ( wordpress themes) to change and customise the look of your blog. Free is good, but I always recommend that you purchase a paid theme from a good wordpress theme provider (I have good experience with elegant themes-Great designs at an affordable price and a large number of themes to choose from) to ensure your blog is always upto date and secure and doesn’t break.

What is wordpress themes ?

It’s a skin that you can put over your blog to change its look or design. You get pre-made designs for a word press website that you can get free or then purchase from a wordpress theme provider.

All you need to do is, to download that design and upload it to your blog and click install. It will change the whole look of your blog and this can be done in less than 5 minutes

Having a well-designed website can also be an effective way to market your business and compete with larger brands in your industry.

Whether you’re creating your first website or rebuilding an outdated one, here’s a step-by-step guide to help you design, market and maintain a great professional site.

Below is a quick Step by step procedure on how to get your wordpress website installed and started in 25 minutes

I have provided bluehost hosting for this tutorial as I have used them before and I am happy with them and they also provide a domain name with your hosting which makes the whole process easier and quicker to do.

Here is the step by step guide

1. Go To bluehost – Click here

( or click on the get started now button image)

2. Get your Domain Name

It It will tell you if the name is not available and you can search for another name

3.Enter your details for sign up,once you find and appropriate domain name

4. Choose what additional options you need with your website like privacy ,backups etc (as you can notice below the domain name is free with the 36month plan,which gives you a discounted price of $3.49 a month)

5. Enter your credit card details on the bluehost secure site and click submit.

You will get emailed your receipt and login details and You can access their 1 click install set up after login into the admin panel to set up your word press website by following the prompts.

Here are the steps you should follow after logging in ( this should be similar/same on all the major web hosting companies):

Log in to your hosting account.
Go to your control panel.
Look for the “WordPress” icon.
Choose the domain where you want to install your website.
Click the “Install Now” button and you should get access to your NEW WordPress website.

Your wordpress website should be ready now

Choosing a Design Theme or Template for your site

Once you have successfully installed WordPress to your domain, you’ll see a very basic yet clean deafault site
But while default design is basic ,you need a good looking site – a design template that tells people that you mean business and attract people to your blog/website. Once you have found a good looking theme you like, installing it is as simple as clicking “Install” followed by “Activate” to change the look of your site

Pros: Of building your own website

· No technical skills needed. You can create a website in minutes.

· Affordable. Also, reduce costs by making your own site changes.

· Often includes, free integrated hosting.

Cons:

· Advanced functionality is limited to number of plugins available in the website builder program
Small business offer from godaddy

A$1.99 per month Website Builder™ with Free domain

Some other website building options

Moonfruit

Moonfruit is a free website host and editor with a plethora of fresh designs and detailed editing options.

Weebly

Weebly’s online website designer is a little easier to use than Moonfruit’s. Quite a few of Weebly’s themes are the same as those offered by WordPress, though Weebly optimizes your site for mobile devices.

Why wordpress ?

I chose WordPress for this guide because it was the easiest CMS or (website platform) I found that non-web savvy people could get installed and work with. There is lots of free web-site automatic software and websites out there that let people build a website for free.

The problem with this being

1) it only works on their hosting so you don’t really have full control of your own site

2) When it comes time for you to have a designer come in to add functionality you need to or improve the site according to your needs, they won’t be able to use that software, and likely ask you to start all over again.

Don’t procrastinate and get your business online and give it a good chance to get more customers to your business. Good luck!

Jeff is an avid blogger and website builder and writes about website creation when he is not blogging on start-a-website.info or talking about technology at digitalgrog.com.au his Australian blog.You can get in touch with him here on twitter and G+.

Tax time and Claiming the IRS Mileage Rate in US

July 1, 2014 by Reporter Leave a Comment

If You Claim IRS Mileage Rate Deduction: Keep a Log! If you drive your car for work and your employer doesn’t reimburse you, then you’re probably looking to take an IRS mileage rate deduction when you do your taxes. No problem, the IRS handles these deductions all the time, it’s perfectly fine. One thing to know is that you should keep a written log of your business miles driven.

To Claim the IRS Mileage Rate, You Must Document Your Driving

In fact, if you don’t keep a written log of your business miles, the IRS can disallow your mileage deduction partially or even altogether. Some people drive a lot for business, and there are people who stand to lose $10,000 or even more if they don’t substantiate the claims they make for the IRS mileage rate. Even if your mileage deduction is denied and you go to court, don’t count on being able to write up a log after the miles were driven.

There are court cases where the defendants created written logs after mileage deduction was denied and these cases went to court. No go, said the IRS! Mileage summary must be entered at the time the miles were driven. Denied! The IRS is very good at winning travel deduction cases. Especially when the defendant doesn’t keep proper records. What’s needed is called proper substantiation.

Your mileage rate substantiation is especially important. In addition to a written log of your business miles driven, keep all your receipts as well. You may have guessed but there are some handy tools for keeping records of receipts, too. There’s a service called Shoeboxed which allows you to take a picture of a receipt and upload it to your own receipt account, where they will store it and digitalize it for your tax records. Way cool.

How to Keep an IRS Mileage Log for Your Business Mileage Deduction

You should keep a notebook in your car. Or get an app for your phone, even easier. There are already at least a dozen out there, just search on mileage tracker, trip log, business expense tracker app etc.

You will need to record the number of miles driven for each particular trip
You will need to write down the time you drove
You will need to record your destination
You will need to record the reason for driving these miles (business purpose)

These records will help you prove that your business miles were not for commuting. Miles you drive to commute to work are not tax deductible. You cannot apply the IRS mileage rate to commuting miles. Keep good records and you will be able to prove you drove your miles for business.

When you multiply your miles by the standard IRS mileage rate of around $.55 per mile, they really add up to a nice tax deduction. For more on the IRS mileage rate visit the IRS website page called Car & Truck Expense Deduction Reminders. Floyd Davis CPA IRS Publications

US gun laws Now arms teachers

January 3, 2013 by Reporter Leave a Comment

The shooting massacre in the US town of Newtown – in which 27 people died, mostly little children aged just six and seven years old – has left America in mourning and has stressed the need for a national debate on gun control.

(Credit: gabriel12 via Shutterstock)

This horrible massacrehas brought the nation to a tipping point? Does the US government have the political courage to take a stand?

But what has happened since then, Alarmingly quite the opposite and instead of stricter gun laws the teachers are now arming themselves. The political powers in the US are controlled by the rich backing the NRA and the politicians , putting the powers in a weak situation with no power.

The NRA and the ISRA and Guns Save Life and the Second Amendment Sisters and CORE and the new kid, Illinoiscarry.com, began to work together and coordinate their efforts more and more, but alas its all falling apart.

The New York Times has referred to Australia’s gun laws as a "road map" for the US, saying that "in the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings – but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect."

Philip Alpers from the Sydney School of Public Health at the University of Sydney looks back at how Australia tightened its gun control laws in 1996, on the CNN website.

On the ABC’s Religion and Ethics portal, Michael Stafford says America seems to love its guns more than the lives of its citizens.

We must re-establish a clear link between gun violence in our society and public policy. Passing an updated, and stricter, version of the old Assault Weapons Ban (which also prohibited high capacity magazines), coupled with a vigorous voluntary buy-back program targeting existing lawfully-purchased assault weapons already in private hands, as well as legislation closing the Brady Act’s gun show loophole, are critical first steps.

At the same time, we should also enact legislation applying strict limitations on the number of guns that people are permitted to purchase at one time – no more than one gun every three months sounds like a reasonable limit to me – coupled with mandatory waiting periods of a meaningful duration after any purchase is made before an individual can actually pick up their new weapon.

Read more

A former head of Australia’s anti-gun coalition says US president Barack Obama should use his status as a two-term president to push gun reforms through Congress.

CBS News reports:

The Utah Shooting Sports Council said it would waive its $50 fee for concealed-weapons training for the teachers. Instruction featuring plastic guns was to start Thursday inside a conference room at Maverick Center, a hockey arena in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Valley.

In Ohio, the Buckeye Firearms Association said it was launching a test program in tactical firearms training for 24 teachers initially.

A gun store in Texas also announced last week that it would offer teachers a 10 percent discount for a concealed carry class.

It takes just one armed teacher to lose his or her cool and pull the trigger on a defiant student to open another unfortunate chapter

Guar – The mining gold from India Coveted by US Miners

July 17, 2012 by Reporter Leave a Comment

The people of rajasthan India often live in poverty, specially a lot of the farmers in the desert land of Rajasthan India. But suddenly a small little bean grown in rajasthan India is changing many lives for the better , creating a flutter in the Indian commodity market and also worrying a lot of us miners who use this bean for a mining method called fracturing

Guar the Indian Bean and Mining by Fracturing

A recent discovery that guar could stiffen water so much that a mixture is able to carry sand sideways into wells drilled by horizontal fracturing, also known as fracking has made this bean a commodity in demand.

U.S. companies drilling for oil and gas in shale formations have developed a big appetite for the powder-like gum made from the seeds of guar giving many small-scale farmers in India a nice bonanza who produce 80 percent of the world’s beans.
Halfway around the world, earnings are down for an oil services giant, Halliburton, because prices have risen for guar (The bean that is used in fracturing), the bean that many Rajasthan farmers have now started to grow, abandoning their traditional farming crops. . The increase in guar prices is helping to transform this part of the state of Rajasthan in north-western India, one of the world’s poorest places.

The magic bean Guar from India

This hard little bean when ground up, it becomes an essential ingredient for mining oil and natural gas in a process called hydraulic fracturing. This bean Guar is so hard that it can crack teeth, has become an unlikely global player, and poor farmers in India have suddenly become a crucial link in the energy production of the United States.

For centuries in Rajasthan India , farmers here used guar to feed their families and their cattle. These beans are easier to grow in the Rajasthani desert, a land poor in rain. Commercial interest in guar first developed when food companies found that it absorbs water like a souped-up corn-starch, and a powdered form of the bean is now widely used to thicken ice cream and keep pastries crisp.

Fracking boom in the United States

The fracking boom in the United States and now spreading in Europe has led to a surge in natural gas production, a decline in oil imports and a gradual transition away from coal-fired power plants. "Without guar, you cannot have fracturing fluids," said Michael J. Economides, a professor of engineering at the University of Houston who is a fracking expert. "And what everybody is worried about is that there is virtually no guar out there now."

In March, the United States bought 33,800 metric metric tons of guar gum from India, the highest amount ever. Last year, U.S. firms bought an average 22,000 metric metric tons from India a month.

India produces about 85 percent of the world’s guar. Worries for this year’s monsoon, which is vital for an adequate crop has risen in speculation over commodity prices for guar

Vikas WSP, an Indian company that specializes in the production of guar powders. Vikas signed contracts with farmers guaranteeing a return of nearly $800 per acre if they planted guar, no matter what this year’s monsoon brought.

"Last year was an extraordinary year," said S. K. Sharma, managing director of Lotus Gums and Chemicals in Jodhpur. "In 35 years in this business, I’ve never seen that."

Mr. Sharma said his company would soon open a second plant dedicated entirely to serving gas companies, adding that he was cautiously optimistic that guar prices would remain robust. "But we know there are efforts to grow guar in China, Australia, California and elsewhere, and it has us worried,"

Neil Beveridge, an oil analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, said demand for fracking services should continue to grow rapidly as the industry expanded outside North America. "We’re already starting to see a big increase in Eastern Europe, Argentina, Australia, China and India itself," he said.

Mr. Economides, the Houston fracking expert, said. "There are no easy or cheap alternatives to guar,"

guar sowing increases
price of sugar
guar prices 2012
guar
guar gum price monitor 2012

That is good news for guar producers and farmers of Rajasthan India.

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How to build a small business website with wordpress in 25 minutes