The before and after sites from the presentation are also available.

For the uninformed, A VPS has hidden dangers

You have a successful website (or blog).

Congratulations!

You installed WordPress, and found a cool theme.

You figured out plugins and widgets.

Best of all, you figured out how to bring traffic.

Take a bow and pat yourself on the back. I raise my drink to you, Rock Star of the Internet! But excess can bring a hangover…

Your site is so successful that your traffic is slowing other sites on your shared server. Your hosting company has suggested you switch to a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

You might think, “I got this far. I’ll save a few bucks and manage the VPS myself.” If you are truly a tech ninja this is fine, but there are hidden dangers with managing a VPS yourself.

PC users might appreciate an analogy.

• Imagine that you have a program that requires MS Access and a special framework to handle the network interface.
• Your program won’t work with the plain vanilla version of those, it needs some add-on modules installed.
• You have to manually install and configure the software and add-on modules.
• In Iambic Pentameter. From a DOS prompt.
• It’s all keyboard. No mouse. No drag-and-drop.
• Undaunted, you search Google, but the only documentation you can find is at least 2 years old.
• Oh, there’s no Undo button, either.
• What about security? Or will you just leave the door to your house open with your wallet on the dining room table?

THAT is a Debian Linux VPS. I love the idea of open source software, and Linux is an incredibly powerful and adaptable system. But it’s also extremely complex and requires a lot of care and feeding, especially in the harsh environment of the Internet.

I’m new to the world of VPS, but I have a few questions I would ask before diving into it.

1. Is your site or business bringing in enough revenue to support the higher server costs?
2. Will they provide support (managed service), or do you do the heavy lifting yourself (unmanaged service)?
3. Is it included with your monthly subscription, or is it by the hour?
4. What flavor(s) of Linux do they provide?
5. Can you find documentation for it?
6. Do they have experience with the requirements of your platform or CMS  (Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress)?
7. Do you have the knowledge to maintain a secure environment?
8. Is it really worth your time (and sanity) to try administering your own server? (A: No.)

Share your experiences and other questions in the comments. I would love to learn what your experience has been.

It was mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve, and I was walking reluctantly through the aisles of the store. Despite my best efforts, the Christmas spirit managed to find a crack in my armor: I couldn’t get the sight of that woman out of my head.

When I pulled into the parking lot, she was standing by the road holding a cardboard sign. A quick glance over my shoulder caught the words “Single Mom” and “Will work for Xmas.”

Completing my purchases, I requested cash back and stuffed it in my jacket pocket where I could reach it easily. I tossed my purchases in the back seat and started the car.

She stood on the snow piled to the side of the road, the sign held high before her face, like a shield to deflect the judgment of affluent shoppers. I pulled up to the light at the edge of the parking lot and pushed the button to open the passenger window. She didn’t move, and I wondered if she noticed me.

I called out, “Merry Christmas,” she lowered the sign and turned her head. Under her hood, her face looked older than I expected. I wondered how many kids she had, and how old they are. She started to climb down the snow bank, moving slowly, limbs nearly paralyzed from the cold. I leaned across the seat and stretched my arm out.

“My feet are so cold,” she said, reaching slowly in to accept my meager offering. I smiled weakly and nodded. The light turned green and I called out “Merry Christmas” again as I pulled away.

This encounter affected me. I spent a lot of time thinking I should have given her more money, wishing that my business had been in a better place. I thought that maybe I should have given her a ride somewhere, bought her some food, done something. But what?

After Christmas dinner, I told the story to a good friend over tea.

Never mind that it was Christmas Eve, why should anyone ever have to stand outside, shivering and shame-filled, hoping for a handout? How did our society fail?

My friend wisely pointed out that we are responsible for our own reality. We can’t control circumstances, but we do choose how we react to them. Our decisions and actions have consequences. This is true for everyone, including Sign Lady.

Is it sad that Sign Lady was begging on Christmas Eve?

Yes.

Should I (or any of the hundreds of other people who drove by that day) done more to help her?

Yes.

Did she have to wait so long to ask for help, or in such a dramatic fashion?

No.

There is a societal failure here, but it isn’t about charity, or lack of opportunity.

The failure is that our educational system doesn’t teach people the difference between self-esteem and pride. People equate being wrong or asking for help with weakness. I know many smart people who mistakenly believe that being wrong is a failure. How many more believe that they should be able to do everything by themselves?

The reality is that asking for help fills a need: Givers need recipients. And you are worthy of help!

I needed a reminder of what it felt like to give. Sign Lady provided that.

I can’t know the circumstances that Sign Lady faced on her journey to the snow bank, but it’s a pretty safe bet that it took her a while to get there. She probably had many opportunities along the way to ask for help. Did a sense of pride hold her back?

Whether at work, school, business, or personal life, have you been reluctant to ask for help? In the last year I have struggled mightily with many areas of my fledgling my business because I thought “I should be able to do this myself.”

While I will probably make that mistake again, I am grateful for the reminders Sign Lady gave me.

1. Givers need recipients.
2. You are worth asking for help (and so am I).

I hope it’s easier for you to internalize those lessons than it has been for me.

Dear Lady with the Cold Feet and Cardboard Sign,

I don’t know anything about you, but I thank you. By doing what you did, you gave me a chance to give, something I desperately needed. You also reminded me that it’s OK to ask for help.

I sincerely hope your night and Christmas day got warmer, and that your future is filled with hope.

Now if I could just find a way to ease the guilt about not giving more…

While the whole twenty minutes is good (I have watched this a few times and taken different things away each time , and I was on the couch!), the highlight starts with Dave’s closing remarks at 14:04. Hilarity ensues about a minute later. (I won’t be offended if you turn the volume down for my answer.)

Enjoy!

What was the question that intimidated my prognosticator?

Will an Internet power shift from Google to Facebook have an impact on small businesses?

I clicked a link in my Twitter stream that set my head spinning. It’s a long article on TechCrunch that speculates that Facebook will grow larger than Google within five years. It raises questions about the future of internet advertising, influence, and the complex relationships between multi-billion-dollar companies. Among them: Where will the advertising budgets go?  Are higher click-through rates more important than highly targeted ads? What will happen to the cost of online advertising?

These are important questions for companies like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Amazon. Those companies are not my clients.

I’m far more interested in what impact will this have on the people and businesses I work with. The MI-SBTDC defines a small business as having fewer than 500 employees.

What if Facebook wins a  sumo wrestling match with Google? How will really small companies with fewer than 50 employees be affected? Here are some reasons why this would have minimal impact on small businesses, at least for the next few years.

• I may be in the minority, but I (almost) never click on ads. It doesn’t matter whether they’re on a Google search results page or a Facebook page. If I want to find soy-based candles, I’ll hunt them down when I’m ready. I will continue not clicking on ads regardless of whether they’re on Facebook or Google. (Maybe this doesn’t support my point, but it’s my blog.)
• Sometimes I want an answer to a question where my network lacks expertise. What does my local building code say about GFCI outlets? Where can I find documentation about a specific WordPress function? I’m not likely to ask on Facebook.
• People establish relationships with other people, not with businesses.
• Just because I like your business page on Facebook doesn’t mean that I will interact with you there. I “like” dozens of pages, the majority of which were “suggested” by friends who own (or know the owners of) a small business, group or cause. Guess how many times I have commented or asked a question there? Not many. In most cases I have never visited the website let alone set foot in that business.
• I have considered cleaning up my list of likes, but I don’t want to offend the people who suggested those sites. I could just remove them all, but then I would be a hypocrite if and when I ever make a Facebook page for my business.
• When I need to get the street address for a first-time visitor to Goldfish Tea I go to their website, not Facebook. That may change, but it will take a while before people switch that habit.
• Imagine that the faucet on your kitchen sink breaks and you can’t shut the water off. Do you:

1. Update your Facebook status and hope that a knowledgeable friend replies in the next few hours?
2. Open a search engine and look for a local plumber?
3. Look for a phone book and find a plumber with emergency service?

The relevance and usefulness of the printed telephone directory is declining. Currently Google fills that need for me. I don’t see Facebook taking over any time soon. Facebook’s interface is cumbersome and confusing, and given their track record I don’t expect them to simplify or streamline it any time soon. If I want information quickly I don’t want to poke around to find the menu that does what I want.

Here’s the big question: Should small businesses abandon their website in favor of a Facebook page?

NO!

Here’s why.

You alienate potential customers.
I know plenty of people who are not on Facebook. I know many more who have Facebook accounts but log on less than once a month. These people are not going to search for you on Facebook.

Control.
When you establish an account with any web-based service (Facebook, WordPress.com, Flickr, YouTube, Tumblr, etc.) you are bound by the Terms of Use, regardless of whether you read them (disclaimer: I haven’t either). It’s not a stretch to think Facebook has reserved the right to take down content that is inappropriate or illegal. (No, I don’t find it interesting enough to go look. Feel free to enlighten me in the comments.) By hosting your own website you retain complete control over appearance, content, who can interact on your blog, and much more.

The TechCrunch article hints that Facebook is planning to add other services (like keyword search) that might compete directly with Google. All well and good, but even if their service works better than Google’s, it will take time before they can pull a significant share of the search market.

So, what should your small business do?

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Facebook is important, Google isn’t going away any time soon, and there are other places to interact and share your message. Each has strengths and weaknesses. Test and compare multiple methods to find what works for you. If you don’t know how to do that, hire those skills.

Stay alert. Things that were working may lose effectiveness. People will keep inventing ways to interact with current customers and find new ones. Some of these will be viable, others won’t.

Leverage your agility. Small organizations can react and move quickly. Pay attention to trends, and shift when it makes sense for your business.

There are a lot of websites and analysts that will keep an eagle eye on the “battle for the internet” and report every jab, feint, and parry as if it’s going to turn the world upside down. In the end, small businesses will grow and thrive based on their own merits, not whether people search on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Facebook. You control your destiny. Remember that.

I created my account a few minutes later. I took a Twitter class at InSights Group a few days after that. I learned about “@-replies,” RTs, #hashtags, how to connect my (non-smart) phone to my Twitter account, and how to use a few tools outside of Twitter.

I began by following the few people I knew on Twitter. Then I started following people my friends were talking with. Guess what? Some liked to complain, some were smart, some were funny, but they were all people. And they were interesting!

I broke away from the limitations of Twitter’s web interface and started using other tools (I still like TweetDeck).

I attended my first #Tweetup, and I was hooked. Here were people who wanted to make new friends.

I shared my newly acquired Twitter addiction with a friend. I sat down with her for a few minutes and showed her some of the things I had learned. She played with it, and a few days later she said, “I see why you like Twitter. There are all these people, and they’re right there, smiling at you!”

As of this writing (18 months after my first tweet), I follow 794 people and I have 1242 followers, but I don’t measure success by these numbers.

Twitter has changed my life. No, I didn’t gain 30,000 followers or become a millionaire, but my life is much richer for it.

How? Here are some ways that engaging people on Twitter has directly enhanced my life:

The friendships I have made have challenged my thinking, broadened my horizons, and stretched my limits.

What is my “secret” for Twitter “success?”

Engage in conversation with other people. Read what they write, retweet things you find something funny, fantastic, or noteworthy, and reply to people. Jump into a conversation. People won’t bite.

In short, do the same things you would do when meeting somebody new at a party. You won’t mesh with everyone. That’s OK. You will have more in common with some than with others. That’s OK. You will follow some people who tweet three times then never log in again. That’s OK. You will follow some people who tweet Way Too Much and create a separate column for them in TweetDeck. That’s OK.

If you haven’t tried it, give Twitter a chance. You might have to ask for help at first. That’s OK. I did. I don’t regret it.

“It just doesn’t feel right to me,” didn’t seem like an adequate response. I struggled with it for a little while, and here are my thoughts on the subject.

Have you ever noticed the weekly flyer displayed at the front of a Target store? Would you expect to see comments scribbled on the wall below the ad? Imagine the flyer was posted Monday morning, and these comments were posted by 3 PM:

• Great price!
• This was cheaper at WalMart. FAIL.
• That was out of stock. Can I get a raincheck?
• Wow, I love the color of these! Do you have them in small?
• The toilet in the men’s room is overflowing and my shoes are #@$^ ruined!

Maybe the plumbing problem is patched within 15 minutes and new stock is scheduled to arrive Tuesday morning, but the comments are stuck there until the next week’s specials can be posted.

I see pages on a website like that flyer. As the website owner, you are well within your rights to delete (or not approve) comments at any time.

For those of us who think too much, this could spark an ethical debate: Should you approve (or delete) bad comments? What if a problem were fixed immediately, or a product or service has been discontinued? Are the comments still relevant? Should you delete them?

I would rather avoid the hassle (and the questions).

Blog posts, on the other hand, provide a natural opportunity for discussion. I think of them more like a conversation with someone at the customer service counter. There is a specific context. You may be glad that a painful discussion fades away and loses impact as new posts are added. The reverse can also happen, where the record can turn into a testimonial for your business.

You will note that comments are disabled on pages on my site. I will happily accept comments below.

Not as much as I would like, but that’s changing as my small business grows.

What is Tungle? It’s a great way to simplify scheduling meetings. Let me give you a few reasons why I use it. These are my response to the questions posed on Tungle’s blog.
Inspired by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing’s post, 5 Questions You Should Ask Every Customer, we’d like to ask you these 5 questions:

1. What made you decide to start Tungling?

• I saw someone Tweet about it one day and thought I would check it out. The quick video intro on the home page sold me.

2. What’s one thing we do better than any other productivity app out there?

• I like the ease of seeing different people’s schedules vertically. I haven’t researched these in great detail, but I helped a client schedule a meeting with another online scheduling tool (I honestly forgot which one) that was less intuitive. I also think the name is memorable. It reminds me of a Jethro Tull song…

3. What’s one thing we could do to create a better experience for you?

• It would be nice to be able to look up friends or business contacts via their email address. I’m not looking for a directory, I would just like to be able to enter the email address of someone I know and find their Tungle calendar.
• While we’re at it, maybe we could go so far as to look up someone’s schedule based on a Twitter ID. I have people I know on Twitter who I don’t use email to work with.

4. Do you refer Tungle.me to others?  If yes, why?

• Yes, I have recommended it to several people. A few of them have signed up with it, too. I really appreciate that your availability is well, available. My tungle.me link is both on my business card and in my email signature. Why isn’t yours? It makes it easy for someone to schedule a meeting.

5. What would you Google to find an app like Tungle.me?

• I don’t know, I haven’t thought much about finding better productivity tools. If I did, I might look for “schedule meeting” or “calendar management.”

I’m still green enough as a solopreneur that I haven’t thought to look for tools to improve my productivity. That will change, though. I hope your small business grows even more quickly than mine does. If you Tungle, it might happen faster than mine is.

My new website will definitely have a Tungle link in the sidebar.

[disclaimer: I'm totally gunning for a free T-shirt and gift certificate. But I promise, I will never endorse anything here that I don't have personal experience with.]

I had an elaborate plan to run some tests on a sandbox server. It involved backups of the database, extensive use of a text editor, messing with some settings in various .php files, and seeing what happened. When I broke it, I would just restore the backup and try again.

I was about to start, then I thought, “Maybe I should search Google to see if any one else has done this.” The first two hits linked back to the extensive and detailed WordPress documentation.

Guess what? After a few setting changes and some work with my FTP client, it worked! Mostly. No text editor, no shell scripts, no extensive *NIX-style hacking skills.

“Wait,” you say, “did you just write mostly?” Yes, I did.

I even fixed the “mostly” by–GASP–searching for my new problem. It turns out the original instructions overlooked another setting change.

The whole thing took less than 15 minutes. I learned several things about WordPress, but more importantly I learned this:

When productivity is on the line, set your pride aside and Read the Fine Manual*.

* I know, there is a more colorful interpretation for RTFM, but this is a family-friendly blog.

It took all of 8 hours to do it, but I’m glad that I went through the process.  It helped bring me clarity about what I do for people.  Now that I have a template in place, the next ones should be much easier.

I sent it off and called my client to let her know it’s there.  With a little luck I can get started next week!