A Wiki-dy split way to set up a Quick Response code

The bloggers at Council Blogs found a quick way to add a Quick Response (QR) code to your web-site. There are three major steps to putting this code on your blog:

1. The first step is to generate the code graphic. This can be treated like any image.

2. The second step is to save this image to your computer and reload it to your blog-site.

3. The third step is to use the graphic as an image on your sidebar with a widget.

The precedure for the first step we learned from another blogger. You can link to the original instructions here. Here’s the wiki version

1. Go to goo.gl

2. Load your URL and click the ‘shorten’ button.

3. Copy (Ctrl-C) the shortened URL and paste in your browser’s URL box.

4. Add .qr and hit enter

Voila, your qr code appears. This finishes the first step.

The second step is to save this image for later use on your computer. You can use the right mouse button and ‘Save picture as…’ to put it in a safe place on your computer. Now we want to load this graphic on to our wordpress site. We use the Media menu item in the dashboard of our wordpress site. Add New. Select the file from our safe place and once it is uploaded we have a URL (gray box at the botttom) to copy and use for step three.

In step three we want to add an image widget to our sidebar to display our QR code. Under Appearance/Widgets drag an Image widget to the sidebar. Use the URL from step 2 and paste in the Image URL box. Click the blue save button and the graphic will appear on your sidebar once you visit the front.

Discovering Sidebar Widget Codes – 3 fields for a Text box

Here at Council Blogs at the Cyber Wigwam we like to have pictures as hyperlinks in our sidebar. The folks at lept Like A Blog have made it easy to develop these by supplying a starter code for a text widget. Click on the screen dump to be directed to the site. Here you can copy the code in the gray boxes and paste it in a text widget in a sidebar of your WordPress blog.  Once there you can modify the 3 fields to suit your needs. How easy can it be? There is even a code for having someone click to send you an email. Please comment with other widget ideas you have come across or would like to see added.

Don’t forget Tags when posting in 2012

Tags are your best friend when it comes to SEO. What the heck is SEO? SEO is Search Engine Optimization. This is a fancy term for “findability” or in other words how do you develop a pathway for someone to find you when they are searching for your product or service on a search engine like Google or Yahoo. Tags or “post tags” are the words that accompany your post when it is published. Tags then are used by the search engines to classify the topic of your post. When developing the content of your tags you want to keep in mind what people are going to be searching for when you want them to find you. Feel free to comment with your tag success stories. We would love to hear about them.

390 years of Pilgrim’s Progress – being social

There is a lot of interesting history on the making of Thanksgiving as a legal holiday. The first Thanksgiving is assumed to be 1641. The story goes that the Pilgrim colony invited the native Indians to help celebrate and give thanks to the new life the pilgrims had found for themselves. In this case their social medium was food. Can we learn anything from the pilgrims? Well, one thing that is true today in social media is that you have to offer something. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all provideYou have to interact or extend an invitation to interact. Our blog engine makes it easy to invite comment. It is easy and natural to invite interaction on various discussion topics. Feel free to comment below with your thoughts about being social.