How To Set Up A Branded Short Domain

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You work hard to ensure a consistent brand across multiple social media and web sites. However, a key opportunity is often missed and it is one that really makes you stand out: a custom short domain. I decided to set one up for my site MWGblog.

A short domain allows you to shorten long convoluted URLs to something more manageable. To go the extra step, you can set up your own short domain so that the links you post carry your personal brand across the web. As an example, let’s say I want to link to one of the books I wrote a few years back. Now I can link to the Amazon page for the book like this: http://mwgblog.link/ZkYqN5 or I can customize the link further like this: http://mwgblog.link/podcastsolutions.

Here is what one looks like on Twitter:

Example Short Domain Twitter Post

I accomplished this in under 30 minutes using a Bitly account. Here’s how I did it.

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Paleo at Pei Wei

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I have finally figured out a good Paleo friendly order at Pei Wei.

Order: Teriyaki with steamed chicken, no rice, no sauce and extra vegetables.

If you want to sound like you are a Pei Wei insider ask for “stock velveted chicken.”  Stock velveting is their term for steaming protein and cuts about 30% of the calories. 

MWGblog Resurrected – 2014

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MWGblog, my personal site has been resurrected… again.

Over the last few months I’ve toyed with the idea of using MWGblog again. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook and Twitter are great, but posts on those sites are ephemeral by design. They come and go in that constant stream of updates. I miss the more permanent approach that a blog provides. Just in cleaning up the theme and WordPress install I came across posts from the early days of podcasting and lot’s of great pictures of my kids marking various special events. I don’t get that experience on Facebook. Besides, it’s nice to have a place to call your own on the Internet.

In a bit of a coincidence, I noticed that exactly nine years ago today I first resurrected MWGblog after splitting off Reel Reviews. That was a good run but my posting to the site dropped off in 2009. I hope to remedy that moving forward.

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Great iPhone WordPress Theme Plugin With AdSense

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Ever since the advent of the iPhone, I’ve always tried to have an iPhone optimized theme for my sites. For the last 2 plus years I’ve been using the iWPhone plugin for WordPress. It did the job with a simple straight forward approach. However recently, I switched to WPtouch. This plugin is a power house. It also provides a feature I’ve always wanted for my mobile themes – Google AdSense integration. More on that in a minute.

iphone_small.jpg

To start it lets you set up a simple theme and then, when you are ready, you can really dig in an customize all types of features. As you can see, the home page displays a simple chronological listing of your most recent posts (I chose calendar display – it also has thumbnail view), allows for a number of menu functions and a feature to read the first few lines of the post before committing to the next screen. [Read more…]