Blog | Michael G. Stults

Don’t Quit

January 11, 2018 By Michael G. Stults Leave a Comment

I've had this poem below on my wall in some fashion for over 17 years staring me right in the face. I've carried it early on throughout my business endeavors to find inspiration when it all seemed to be crashing down or going against me. As I worked from my home office today, it just stuck out today from the wall.

It has always served as a reminder that things will go wrong in every facet of your life. It will appear daunting in it's struggles but it calls for a greater vision than what we can see set before us. A fortitude unlike no other that you can't pick up at a store for easy access and is really beyond your powers! [Read more…]

Hosting Your WordPress Website With Confidence

December 10, 2017 By Michael G. Stults Leave a Comment

You'll find several articles written about “How to choose the best WordPress hosting” or “Best hosting for WordPress website” and come to the conclusion that they are all over the place! The opinions vary! What matters most in my opinion is hosting your WordPress website with confidence so you can focus on your business at hand. Having that piece of mind to know that if you need help… you have a strong customer service team available to help you through any related issues to hosting.

When looking for the best WordPress hosting, recommendations you may come across are based upon whom is going to pay the writer/site owner the most affiliate commissions if you choose to click their link and sign up for services recommended. Let's be truthful here… that is most of the posts on the interwebz these days.

Not So Good Customer Service Situation

About 4 years ago I experienced a situation where my hosting provider made a big change on their servers that severally disabled a few of my sites. [Read more…]

How to Fix Google Apps Account Already Exists Error

March 3, 2016 By Michael G. Stults 7 Comments

There is a good chance if you land on my post that you have been trying to setup your Google Apps for Work account with your primary domain but ran into the “red letter notification of death”. That notification warning says, “That address is currently used by a personal Google Account. Use a different address for your organizational account.”. [Read more…]

How to Backup Email Moving to New Hosting (Gmail – POP3)

February 28, 2016 By Michael G. Stults Leave a Comment

Setting up Gmail to check and/or backup email using POP3 when moving to new hosting is a viable option that most sometimes overlook. If you are currently using Google Apps, Outlook365, or another email hosting company, this may not apply to you but wouldn’t you agree backing up your email is important just in case something happens? Using Gmail’s options under Settings > Accounts and Import > “Check mail from other accounts (using POP3)” will give you a way to do this. This article will address a simple way of getting that setup and how to do that.

TIP: The best method if you have a current cPanel account is to go to your Dashboard > Backups > and then backup your entire cPanel account. Most new hosting companies can take your “cPanel profile” backup and import it which could save you a lot of setup time besides moving/pointing domains. [Read more…]

A Little Rambling On Story Telling…

November 15, 2015 By Michael G. Stults Leave a Comment

Telling your story to motivate an audience or customer to buy your product can be a unique challenge at times. You look at big brands that have flourished to become mega successes and wonder how did they blossom into what they are today? Of course it looks so easy now that they've been successful and have all that money in the bank for whatever endeavor they want to pursue to magnify and continue to resonate their brand in the minds of consumers worldwide.

Your story can have the same impact.

Persevering

You look at Apple and the foundation that was set to bring personal computers to the masses that were sleek, less parts, and more efficient than then present day models. Then you have Mircosoft whom saw the opportunity to provide an operating system bundled with other computers. Each of these companies leaders had a compelling reason that motivated them to take bold chances such as Job's securing a 250K credit line or Gates promising to deliver a concept before they had even started it.

This same attitude of persevering can be relayed to all levels of employees. Each employee is the face of your company and has the ability to move business or utterly damage the story of your product. Are you effectively communicating this with the people involved with your company? Have you created your “story” to communicate this to your customer?

Over time your story will evolve but at the heart… it never really does change. [Read more…]

The Impact of Your Call To Action In Email Marketing

September 1, 2015 By Michael G. Stults Leave a Comment

The impact of your Call To Action (CTA) in your email marketing efforts is so vital in today's marketing world. Email marketing serves as just one tool out of the arsenal that we have to maximize the opportunity to further gain the attention of our customer but also convince them the time is now!

The crowded market place everyday forces us as consumers to make quicker decisions on what we want to learn more about or instantly disregard. Competing to gain our customers attention is so critical yet a very difficult job to accomplish. All industries use common terminology yet their Call To Action has drastic differences to the value of that company.

Call To Action Has To Be Clear & Concise

Recently I signed up for a newsletter for an online eCommerce luggage company. My eyes instantly start looking at the element structure on what is important for myself when I open the majority of marketing emails. This one just stuck out to me and I felt I would do a quick post about it. [Read more…]

How to upgrade PHP 5.2 to PHP 5.5 in WordPress – 1and1

June 30, 2015 By Michael G. Stults Leave a Comment

[Video] One of the most visited articles I've written on my site has been “How to upgrade from PHP4.0 to PHP5.0 in WordPress using 1and1.com hosting“. I wanted to give you a quick update since things seem to change quite a bit over time online. Keeping your PHP version up to date is critical to many popular web applications we run such as WordPress and WordPress Plugins.

1and1 has continued to update their user interface/control panel. So below is a quick way to manually update your php version for all your websites especially for WordPress. Sometimes you just need a quick visual to give you confidence in getting it accomplished.

I have been using PHP version 5.2 (I know… please forgive me) on this server for a few years or more. I decided I better get that updated to version 5.5 which is the recommended PHP version out at this time. Shoot, you can even go to PHP 5.6 but keep in mind that most WordPress plugins and other softwares you may be using… could be behind a bit. It is always a good reminder to make sure you check your software on what the current recommended PHP version is before any changes.

Some hosting companies automatically update this and others give you a bit more power. [Read more…]

The Most Flexible Coming Soon Plugin for WordPress 2015

April 21, 2015 By Michael G. Stults 2 Comments

SeedProd Coming Soon Plugin

Have you found yourself in a situation where you're building a WordPress website on a live domain yet you don't want the whole world to see your “progression”? Maybe you have some extended maintenance to do? I'd tend to think most people have encountered a project that is going to take more than a few minutes but you just don't want to risk the world wide web seeing the disarray in the meantime. Look no further for the ultimate coming soon and maintenance plugin, SeedProd.

SeedProd offers the best coming soon plugin for WordPress on the market today. Yes, I'm bias because I've used this plugin multiple times over the past couple of years. There is no doubt that you want the Pro version if you are serious about your branding and WordPress development. It is my go to for new websites I start. It is one of my best investments I've ever made for website development work. Multi-dimensional is the best description because of how it is packed with feature rich options that can be used with any level of knowledge from a true “beginner” to an “expert”. I love this PLUGIN! [Read more…]

Extract Valuable Insight From Google Analytics With Quill Engage

March 16, 2015 By Michael G. Stults Leave a Comment

Raise your hand if you've ever had information overload looking at your Google Analytics? For all marketers the toughest part about having so much data at your fingertips is how do you process it and put it in an easy to understand format for those whom you may have to share this with. For others, how do you find a way to streamline your time and efforts to make decisions based upon your analytics if your not sharing it with anyone else? Business never sleeps but unfortunately your human.

Organizations of every size struggle with getting true insight and actionable information from their website data. Quill Engage provides instant analysis in the form of easy-to-read, written reports that empower people to do their jobs better. ~ Stuart Frankel – CEO

Quill Engage by Narrative Science from Narrative Science on Vimeo.

Meet Quill Engage

Quill Engage is an easy way to extract valuable insights from your Google Analytics data, powered by Narrative Science's patented artificial intelligence engine, Quill.

[Read more…]

How To SetUp Branded Domain Name With ZOHO Email (Alternative to Google Apps & Outlook.com)

March 2, 2015 By Michael G. Stults Leave a Comment

[Video & Screenshots] I've found that many are still searching for alternatives on how to use your branded domain for email. The giants in the game like Google Apps are no longer offering a free account (some still have a grandfathered account) and also Outlook.com (domain live manager) ended that party last summer. ZOHO Mail has been the quite little engine in the background that stuck to it's core competencies offering a suite of products to individuals and small businesses a like. Their free account is free of Ads and offers 10 inboxes (5gb ea) and the ability to tie in other programs like their CRM, Calendar, and Password Storage – Vault.

ZOHO email is pretty easy to set up and I've done this for a handful of people when they are looking for more products and flexibility than using their hosts email servers. One could argue that mixing your hosting and email together is a recipe for issues down the road because if one goes out… they both do. Not like that has ever happened to anyone I knew before…. hrmmm.

I have a quick video on how to set up ZOHO. Due to time, I wont' be able to step you through each registrar out there but will try to give you a few screenshots to help. I'll use for my video Hostgator / cPanel which is a common “look” amongst most hosting/registrar companies. The concept is the same no matter what company you have.

How To Set UP ZOHO Mail Video

I recommend to watch the video first and then back fill with any information below. 🙂

Link: http://youtu.be/Af52zIjbGdQ [Read more…]