VIP eMarketing & Virtual Assisting » Tools & Tips

A New IDX Solution for Real Estate Sites on Wordpress

Marisa — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:42:03 +0000

By Marisa Moleiro

You may have no idea what that means, so let me explain: My current favorite internet platform, Wordpress, has just been made more friendly for Real Estate Agents and Brokers with a product created by a company out of California. A new App/Widget/Add-on (insert the term you prefer) has been created which will now allow all of your listings to feed to your self-hosted Wordpress site or blog!!

Prior to this new product, there was no way to feed your listings from the MLS system to your Wordpress site or blog. All properties would have to have been entered manually – and we all know what a drag that is!!

Of course, Wordpress is a wonderful platform to run many different kinds of websites, not just real estate sites. They can be easily optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), are easily maintained and updated, and offer hundreds if not thousands of add-ons to customize your site’s interface and user interaction.

If you don’t currently have a site powered by Wordpress and would like to know more about getting one set up for you, contact me. Or, if you do currently have a Wordpress site and would like maintenance help, or to find out more about the new IDX plugin, contact me! (Wordpress is my specialty – my site, VIPAssisting.com, is powered by it.)

Thought Y2K Was Over in 2000? Guess Again!

Marisa — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:06:21 +0000

This blog entry is a little late on this topic, as it’s something which has been affecting email users since January 1st, 2010 but for people out there such as myself who didn’t realize there was a problem until recently, or ever for that matter, I wanted to be able to educate you.

You could be missing out on vital emails!

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce to you… Y2K10

Y2K10 is a rule coded into SPAM Assassin (the most commonly used server SPAM filter) which causes the software to flag any email written in the year 2010 as ‘far into the future’ and therefore it flags it as SPAM and therefore, depending on your SPAM settings, it could do one of the following:

Flagged an email as SPAM but still deliver it to your Inbox.
Mark the email as SPAM and deliver it to a separate SPAM-designated folder.
Bounce the email back to the sender and you will never have received it. Yes, even legitimate mail – which is my reason for bringing this to your attention.

Personally, I had the first scenario. And the most annoying, perplexing thing to me was that it marked EVERY single piece of mail as SPAM. Thank GOD I didn’t have my settings configured to send it to a separate folder or else I would have missed out on 2 weeks worth of email (I only turned on SPAM Assassin 2 weeks ago).

I have read other blog posts which claim that there must be other factors besides just the date which are causing these emails to be flagged, however such was not the case in my situation. It outright marked all of my mail as SPAM.

SPAM Assassin tells us that they have released a patch to fix this problem, however depending on your email server/host, if they haven’t deployed the patch you will not see any improvement until they install it.

So, for now, if you wish to prevent emails from getting lost, bounced or otherwise marked as SPAM, the only way to “fix” this is to go into your email SPAM settings on your server and disable them. If you don’t know how to do that, I advise you contact your web administrator and have them go in and do it for you.

And if you don’t have an administrator or anyone to help you with your website and related services, contact us! Technical assistance is something we can provide.

Tips for Choosing a New Web Hosting Company

Marisa — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 01:52:50 +0000

by Marisa Moleiro

There are many things to consider when choosing a new web host. And with so many providers out there, some may think “Where do I begin?”, so I thought I would help by giving a short list of some important criteria to help narrow down your options. In my experiences not only with my own websites, but in assisting others, these seem to be the most important things to consider when shopping around.

24-7 Phone support When something goes wrong and you don’t know how to fix it, this is crucial! E-mail support could take forever, that is if someone even answers you in the first place!
Automatic Backups It is always good practice (if not mandatory) to back up your site in its entirety before installing any kind of update, but not many people remember to do so. I have known too many people who could have easily resolved a site problem by restoring a back up copy, but none was available either because they didn’t manually back up or their host didn’t provide automatic backups. This is why I prefer to use a web host that offers automatic backing up. Every day, my host creates a snapshot of my site which can be restored by a few clicks of the mouse if something were to go wrong. I love it!
Simple Website Software Installation I am a big fan of Wordpress, and have built my site on its platform. I was able to install it in only a few clicks, rather than having to go to the Wordpress site and download it to my hard drive, then unzip it and install it to the server the right way. It was up and running within minutes and I was able to start creating my site! Besides Wordpress, my host also offers easy installs for Joomla!, Drupal, and many other add-ons and applications to make your site cutting-edge.
Bandwith and Storage Many hosts nowadays offer adequate storage and bandwidth to accommodate even the largest of business websites. So, unless you are planning on launching something like a community site or social networking site where you will allow people to upload and share files, you will be fine with almost any commercial web host. However, your level of need will depend on your site’s content. If you don’t know what level of storage/bandwidth you should be looking at, contact me.
Hosting Company’s Reputation/Server Stability I have used all types of hosts–from small companies to large companies, well-known and obscure–and ended up with my current host, GoDaddy which is a large, well known brand. Now, I never usually let a big brand influence me solely because of their market share because a lot of times there can be a “little guy/gal” out there who offers service just as good. But with web hosting what I found out is that a lot of “little guys/gals” are re-sellers, or middle-men if you will, who sign up to sell hosting service to make a few extra buck$ but then don’t pay attention to customer service after they make the money off of you. So what I ended up with was site outages and no one to get in contact with, (I even looked up the WHOIS information and it was erroneous) and I was left dead in the water–with a down website! I also tried Yahoo! web hosting–another big name–however, my site went down on a monthly basis and even though they had 24-7 tech support, it didn’t matter because there was nothing the tech support staff could do but tell you to wait it out. I was shocked at their lack of server stability. So, I finally ended up at Godaddy (after resisting because I didn’t want to conform to mainstream popularity–silly, I know) and have been ecstatic with their reliability and customer service. I would recommend them to anyone and everyone.

That just about sums up my top 5 crucial things to think about when choosing your next web hosting company. Also remember that based on the kind of site you’re planning to build, there may be other factors which will influence your decision as well.

If you need a new website, or have an existing site that needs maintenance or updating, contact me… I can help!

3 Simple Steps to Make Outside Calls Appear from Your Phone Line Using Toktumi Virtual PBX

Marisa — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:24:45 +0000

As a business owner, one thing that can come in very handy is the ability to have your Virtual Assistant make phone calls on your behalf. Since a Virtual Assistant works from her own office, it is her information that will appear on the recipient’s caller ID. There can often be situations when this might not be preferable to you. One solution is for her to dial *67 before dialing to block her calling information. This would make the number come up as “private.” The problem, however, is that not all numbers accept private, unidentified callers. I’ve identified a solution to this issue using the Toktumi Virtual PBX service.

Step 1: Set up the Toktumi Virtual PBX service either using your existing phone number, or by establishing a new/secondary number. For example, let’s say the number is “555-1234.”

Step 2: Once service has been established, log into the control panel and specify the phone numbers that you want to have dial-in capacity (i.e., the Virtual Assistant’s number who will be making calls for you). This is where you can also customize what information is displayed on caller ID.

Step 3: Your Virtual Assistant simply dials in to place an outgoing call.

That’s all there is to it!

How It Works When you call the specified new/secondary phone number (in our example, 555-1234) from any of the numbers designated in step 2, rather than placing a call to your business line, the system recognizes the number and instead sends you to a menu where you can either check messages or dial out. This is the number and information that will then be displayed in the recipient’s caller ID.

Toktumi includes this feature in their basic monthly service, so there are no additional fees, which I think is great! Toktumi also has a software interface which you can download to your computer so you can make and receive calls right from your desktop or laptop. You just dial the number you want to call and it automatically comes up on the recipient’s caller ID as being from the business registered with Toktumi. Of course, if you want to use a regular handset, you would have to place calls using the steps above.

Happy calling!

RESOURCE: Toktumi offers a rich array of options for Voicemail and call directing. Find out more about Toktumi Virtual PBX service and features at their website: http://www.toktumi.com. Be sure and take advantage of their no-cost 30-day trial!

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Marisa — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 04:24:51 +0000

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