Most likely you already have a personal Facebook account. And most likely you want your personal account to be in no way, shape or form connected to your business account. That would be smart. Why is this smart? Consider these scenarios– you set up a page under your personal account but then you want to sell your business. How do you hand over the Facebook page? Or worse yet, you create a page, have an employee like it, and you make them an admin so they can update the page. But then the employee leaves and decides to get in there an un-admin you from your own page! How can you get back in? Bad news — you can’t. Not unless your page was set up as a separate stand-alone business page.

But how do you set up a stand-alone Facebook Page for your business totally removed from your personal account?

Facebook would like you to think that this is not possible. Facebook would prefer that you do everything under your personal profile, not your business name. But hold tight. I am going to show you a work-around.

1) Set yourself up an email address that you will be using exclusively for Facebook. If you have your own domain name do it there. If you don’t know how, call up your ISP or webmaster and find out how. If you don’t have your own domain, set up an email address at gmail or yahoo. Make sure the email address is unique. Facebook will not let you use an address such as facebook@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com or webmaster@yourdomain.com — you get the idea.

2) Write this email address down, write the username and password to access it down and put it in a safe place. Don’t do anything else until you have done this. No hurry. I’ll wait . . . .. . . .

4) Do not proceed any further until you have the above steps accomplished and you are sure you can access this new email address.

Okay? Are we all on the same page? Still with me?

Now go to www.facebook.com — if you are logged in as your personal profile, LOG OUT.

See on the main Facebook page where it says “SIGN UP” — Do NOT sign up. Instead underneath that is a link that says “Create a Page for a celebrity, band, or business. Click on that link.

This will take you to the “Create a Page”  page. Fill in the appropriate information to create and Official Page. Not a Community Page

Facebook will now take you to a Create Facebook Page Account. It has a selection at the top that asks you to specify if you already have a Facebook Account. Yes, yes, I know you do for your personal account, but for your business, you DON’T!!! Check “I do not”

Then fill in all the information, using the NEW email account you set up in the first few steps. Remember, make sure that new email is set up and working and you have access to it BEFORE you do this! This is very important!

It asks for your birthday. Just go ahead and enter in your regular birthday. Or make one up. Just make sure your birthday makes you more than 18 years old.

Click Sign up Now! And you will get this screen.

Now, go to your email. You will have a new email from Facebook –

Click on the link. It will take you to your NEW Facebook Page!

But WAIT!!!!! WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT!!! You are not out of the woods yet!!!! Remember how I told you that Facebook does not like you to have a stand-alone business page? How it wants you to connect the page to a profile? Facebook is going to keep asking and asking and asking you to convert this “page” into a “profile” Let’s make a deal right now — you have to pinky pinky pinky swear with sugar on top not to ever, ever, ever click on this link at the top that says “create your profile” –once you do that, all is lost. You will have converted your page into a profile and you will never, ever, ever, be able to change it back.

What I would recommend, to avoid potential pitfalls in the future of maybe accidentally clicking somewhere not so great and converting your page, is to logout of the page you just created. Step back. Log all the way out.

Now Log back into Facebook as your personal self.

Do a search at the top of Facebook for your new page.

Then “like” it as yourself.

Now Log back out again.

Log back in as your new page using the email and password you used to set up your page.

Now click “Go To Page” REMEMBER DON’T EVER CLICK ON CREATE PROFILE! YES I AM SHOUTING. IT IS THAT IMPORTANT!!!!

You will see yourself down there as your first “like”

See how cute you are!!!

Now click on “Make Admin.” You want to make your personal profile an admin of this page.

Logout again — and log back in as your personal profile. Still with me?

You will see that your new page made you an “admin” in your notifications.

I would HIGHLY recommend that from now on, as your personal profile is an admin of your business page, that you make all updates to this page through your personal profile. This will avoid the potential risk of you converting your page into a profile. Write that email address you used to set up the account, along with the password, and put it in a very safe place. Then write a note to yourself reminding yourself where you put it.

To get to your new page through your personal profile go to www.facebook.com/pages when you are logged in as yourself.

At the top you will see Pages I Admin. Click on that link. Your page will appear there.

Technically, now you won’t ever have to admin your page from the login we set up above. What it is, is an insurance policy. A back-door if you will. It gives you ownership of your page exclusive of your personal account.

Now, post a link on your personal profile and get all your friends to “like” your new page. Promise them candy or your undying devotion or something fun. Once you get 25 “likes” you can create your own unique username.  Yes, yes, I’ll help you with that too. But another day. My fingers are tired from typing.

And when you are ready to look REALLY professional, call me and we’ll set up come custom graphics for your new business page. Like these:

When you set up a new website, you are making a very large investment in a very important part of your new web experience. What am I talking about? Your domain name:  .com, .net, .org — name for your site.

I can’t stress to you how important it is that you set up your domain name properly from the get-go. It is crucial that it is set up in a way that you will ultimately have access to your domain name no matter what happens.

Here’s  the usual scenario:

Very important, very busy business owner is too busy to find out about how to purchase one of these domain name things so they delegate it to “Someone Else” within the company. “Someone Else” purchases the domain name for them. But what does “Someone Else” use for contact information? THEIR personal email — not the email that goes directly to the business owner.

By and by “Someone Else” leaves the company for one reason or another. Hopefully it was an amicable split — because guess who is the only one now who has access to YOUR domain name? Yep: “Someone Else.”

And “Someone Else” doesn’t work for you any more! Bummer.

Here is another scenario:

You took the time to purchase your domain name yourself and used your own email. Yay! You did this part right. But then, down the line, you switch ISP’s and your email changes. You forget that your domain name is registered under your OLD email which you no longer have access to. Bummer again! Remember, if you switch emails, update your domain name before you make the switch so you can verify the change through your old email — that’s where the verification email will go.

The really big downside to both of these situations is this:

You are not getting renewal information if your domain name can’t find you! ICANN doesn’t care who owns a domain name. So if yours expires and someone else purchases it you will be out of luck. Think of all that money you spent in developing your website and marketing your website and having brochures, and business cards printed with your domain name that now belongs to someone else! And if you tattooed your domain name across your forehead Oh boy! Now your tattoo.com points to someone else’s site. Most likely a site belonging to scab who now wants to sell Viagra using your old domain name. And short of offering that scab a bunch of cash for your old domain name (and believe me, it won’t be cheap) you have lost that domain name forever.

Be careful. Protect your investment.

This question would have been a lot easier to answer about 10 years ago. Back in “the day” there was only one go-to place to get your domain name, Network Solutions. They weren’t cheap, either. About $80 per year to register your .com name. Try to register several and you would be racking up a mighty large bill rather quickly. Finding what you wanted for your domain name back then, in the good ole days, wasn’t that difficult. For instance, I wanted lisadesign.com but it was already taken. Hmmmm? What to do? Well, I was in a hurry to start this business, and a little brain dead from all-night feedings with infant twins, so I just tacked an “s” on the end — lisadesigns.com was born. Worked for me. One less thing I had to worry about.

But then! Oh boy — domain name deregulation happened. Suddenly Network Solutions wasn’t the only game in town. Domain resellers started popping up all over the place! Register.com, tucows, godaddy. They were all out to undercut each other in price. It dropped to about $10 per year and hovers right around there now. The sky became the limit for domain names. Everybody wanted one. Everybody bought them. Enterprising entrepreneurs bought them to resell them. The field was wide open. Soon, most everything worth buying was already bought. Sure you can buy from a third party, but you will have to pay for it. Sometimes pay dearly.

So what’s a new website wannabe to do? First, try and see if your #1 choice is available. I just bought www.lonelyrangers.com for my band. Our band was already named The Lonely Rangers. Either I got lucky or our band name was so ridiculous nobody had thought of it before. (Just kidding! I love our band! Hi guys!!) It was a good deal that even though I thought it would surely be taken, I went ahead and checked anyway.

If your #1 choice is not available you may have some options to move a few things around like I did with my domain name and the “s”.

Add the location of your site into your domain name. For instance Motions, a site I do for a local dance apparel store, was already taken. However, our Motions is in Rapid City (hi Google) so we bought motionsrapidcity.com for Motions Rapid City.

If your business name is really long, it may help to abbreviate a little bit. South Dakota Overhead Doors becomes sdoverheaddoors.com

Use a thesaurus or a rhyming dictionary to come up with ideas. I love that Sheilatom.com, one of my first clients, has a sing-song rhymi-ness to it. Sheila Tom Dot Com! She got lucky — she came with that name.

Some theories say to use “power” words like super, mega, plus etc. to make your domain name more exciting. Several of the domain companies listed above have domain generators that will automatically combine words to help you with ideas.

Bottom line is to make sure you try your first choice before you do anything and you may get lucky. If not, don’t despair. Keep playing around with different combinations and ideas. Sleep on it. Make sure the combination of words you are thinking of purchasing don’t combine to spell something else you don’t want associated with your business. Run it by friends, co-workers, even your kids. They might notice something you don’t.

For $10 a pop, you can most likely afford to purchase several of your choices while you mull them around. It is probably a good idea to grab them before somebody else does. Good thing I did. Or we might have had to change the name of our band to the notsolonelyrangers.com

Working on a big project, fixing a site for a new client that was originally done by her brother’s uncle’s friend’s cousin, or something like that. Which brings to mind this quote:

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.”
Red Adair

Apparently MySpace is a “must” if you are:

A. In a band

B. Wanna be in a band

C. Have friends in a band

D. Want to communicate with friends in a band

Who knew? Oh okay, of course I knew. I just went there kicking and screaming. I have a hard time with using other people’s software on their servers with their own TOS and all that other junk that could potentially make my work, their work. You know — like where I actually AGREE to give up the copyright to my work? That’s a tough pill for a designer to swallow.

But, the guys in my band wanted a MySpace page. I wanted to communicate with my friend Jimmy from LA who is always setting up shop somewhere new and only communicates via MySpace. And, since I’ve been bringing the old bass guitar out of retirement more and more, I wanted to find out how to work this “MySpace” all my musician friends talked about all the time. I just did a jam session with this guy, (amazing bass player!) and this girl (Awesome singer!) and they are all fabulous musicians and they are all on MySpace!

Me! Me too! I want to be cool and on MySpace!

So I went on MySpace. And immediately — Oh! My eyes! My eyes!! Ow OW OWWW!!! Could the graphics BE any larger? Could they BE any more annoying??? The flashing ads — the table cells dropping off everywhere! Ewwww!!!

Once I calmed down I started thinking about how I could generate a MySpace page for the Rangers that:

A. Would appease my design sense.

B. Use existing graphics so my original stuff can’t be stolen used by someone else.

So first I did a search for custom Myspace layouts. Holy Moly! Could there be more websites like: pimp my space and profile pimp and getcha pimped up space. So I visited. Yeah. If you like skulls or skullz or Britney Spears you would have it made with these layouts!

However, I think the guys in the band would kill me if I did a layout with skulls and Britney — I have a feeling that won’t quite jive with our image.

I finally found a nice layout I could use the css graphics structure on to compose graphics that approximates the Lonely Rangers look of Old West meets today. It complies with Myspace TOS (meaning you can’t take the myspace generated ads out or they shut you off) It is similar to Kubrick on Wordpress, and once I tweaked the graphics, I think it works pretty well.

So, here ya go: http://www.myspace.com/lonelyrangers

I’ve been surfing the web for a long, long time. Back in the day, you know, it was AOL and it was so pretty and user-friendly that who needed a real actual browser? Not me! Ha! It was like a sippy-cup for the web. AOL held your hand through everything. Of course I grew up and started taking my web experience like an adult! I graduated to Internet Explorer and started saving all the nice websites I frequented under my “favorites”. Then I grew up even more and started using Netscape — then Netscape went away and now it is all about Firefox. Firefox is the browser du jour. Anything to stay away from that pesky Internet Explorer that creates more problems than it is worth — at least in my opinion.

Okay, so enough of the opining! What to do with all those favorites or bookmarks as Firefox calls them, when you move to a new computer?

Easy, peasy — just bring them with you. Firefox makes it super simple to do.

First Export your bookmarks on the old computer — to open export, select File–> Export from Firefox’s Bookmark Manager. A dialog window will open asking you where you want to save the file to. In my case, I put them on the Cylon-like external hard drive in a little folder called “bookmarks” lest I forget what the heck I did with them.

Then, unplug the harddrive from the old computer and put it to work on the new computer. Open Firefox, go to the Bookmarks Manager and choose File–> Import. It will ask you where you want to import the bookmarks from. Choose “from file.” Find your file on the handy-dandy Cylon harddrive in the folder you so wisely called “bookmarks” and click on it.

Viola! There they are!

A few little Firefox bookmark tidbits:

You can view your Firefox bookmarks on any browser. All you do is open or drag & drop the bookmark file to the browser window. That way if you want to take your bookmarks with you on vacation or whatever, you can put them on a memory stick and access them from any computer. Pretty cool!

Worried about losing your bookmarks? Firefox has you covered there too. It automatically creates backups of your bookmarks. They are saved in a file called bookmarkbackups in your Firefox profile directory.

If you don’t have Firefox, do yourself a favor and get it! You can download it for free from here. You’ll be glad you did.