Yes, it’s actually true – The TweetMeme button is going away. Gasp! That’s ok, though. It’s actually being replaced by a similar (slightly improved) OFFICIAL Tweet button from Twitter!

If you like your Tweet button “plugin-style,” you can get it from Share This. They are partnering with Twitter for the launch of the new Tweet button.

If you’re wondering whether this was a hostile takeover, the answer is “no.” It’s very amicable, and there is benefit to both companies. You can read what TweetMeme has to say about it, and then go check out what Twitter has to say. You can also watch an interview with Nick Halstead, founder of TweetMeme (and now DataSift), conducted by Robert Scoble.

The interview provides a good explanation of why this shift took place. It was to facilitate the creation of DataSift, which Nick Halstead describes as “Track on steroids”.

This is all very interesting, and there is already a lot of good info out there. Tons of big sites have already integrated the new Tweet button, such as Youtube, Gawker Media, CNN.com and more.

But as a web developer specializing in WordPress, my big question is, what will happen to this: TweetMeme Plugin for WordPress? Will TweetMeme still develop it? When will it integrate with the new Twitter Tweet button? Or will Twitter take it over and/or make a new one? The TweetMeme plugin is excellent, easy to install and works virtually flawlessly. I hope that will remain the case!

As a Work At Home Mom, I find myself in need of certain things usually only available if you work in an office or have a lot of extra capital to work with. I have to keep my overhead as low as possible just to stay afloat, so I use free online resources wherever I can.

Here are five resources that I virtually could not work without, in no particular order. (I am not affiliated with any of these sites or resources.)

1. PDF Online – PDF Online is a free, online PDF convertor. I use it for creating PDF files of Word documents that I want to be “static” (unchangeable by the person receiving it), such as business proposals, contracts, etc. I also use it when I need to sign a document and send it back to someone. I sign the document, scan it, save it as a jpg, and then use PDF Online to convert it to a pdf file and e-mail it back to the party who needs it. It’s intuitive, easy to use and I’ve found it to be very reliable.

2. Google Docs – I use Google Docs primarily for creating invoices. There are many templates to choose from, you can archive all your old invoices and you can export it as a pdf file for easy sending to the client. There is also a document sharing feature you can use when you need to share a large number of documents with a client or vice-versa.

3. AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) – I use AOL Instant Messenger for consulting and communicating with clients about projects. I don’t hear very well on the phone, and chatting online is often easier than a phone conversation anyway, because you often need to check a file or a part of the site or an online resource. It’s really easy to just shoot someone a link or a file while chatting online with them, and it also creates a “to do” list to refer to so that I don’t forget anything after the conversation is over.

4. WordPress – WordPress, of course, is especially key to my business, since blog and WordPress Help is 98% of my business. Even if it weren’t, I would still build my website using WordPress because of its extensibility, expandability, blogging capabilities, plugins and built-in SEO readiness. It makes creating and updating a website so much easier, and makes interaction with clients and potential clients that much easier through comments, contact forms, etc.

5. Email – Email might sound like a given, but it all depends on how you use your e-mail. Utilized correctly, your inbox can help you be more organized, efficient and save you time. I use my inbox like a “to-do list.” I make sure that clients outline each task they want me to do in e-mail so that a) I can give an accurate estimate and b) make sure each item they want completed is done. Additionally, outlining projects via e-mail creates a “paper trail” if there are ever any conflicts or questions about what was to be done, when it was to be done, etc. It’s a CYA kind of thing. I personally make sure to get an e-mail with what the client wants done in their own words in an email from them to me.

That’s it. Five online resources for this Work At Home Mom. I hope this list comes in handy for someone else as well. Feel free to add your own in the comments!

I just finished an original site design and built a static site on WordPress for a new client, criminal defense attorney, Jonathan Dichter. I’ve recently honed my design skills, and I am more proud of this site than any I have done in the past. And the fact that it is a static site built on WordPress just makes it that much more of an accomplishment!

Now the site can use all of the SEO plugins available for WordPress installations and is easily updatable. I just ran the Google SiteMap Generator for the first time, linked it in the footer and added the update services. Now Google will be pinged as to the location of the site map and, with any luck, will come visit and crawl the rest of the site very soon!

The next step is integrating a matching WordPress blog to go with the site, for even more SEO success! I think I have him sold on it!

[ This is part 8 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

But I made it through that. My son started school, the large blog was launched, and more business was pouring in. I’ve had some very short periods of slowness with my business since then, but they are always short-lived, and I wind up with almost more business than I can handle very soon after every dry spell.

My very first client is still a regular client, as is the Seattle attorney who hired me to finish his web site. I have many regular clients and gain new ones all the time. My biggest client ever is now working with me on business development, and there are some exciting changes in the wings for Blog Solace in the very near future!

What is amazing to me is that, yes, I worked and educated myself and was prepared for this opportunity. But currently owning a successful back end web development business would not have been possible if I hadn’t been *forced* into it. If Kindercare had been the right place for my child, or if adequate care for him had ever appeared, I would be an Administrative Assistant right now.

Instead, I’m a Work At Home Mom who owns her own small business, and the future is bright! That’s how I accidentally started my own business and became a WAHM. I guess it’s a lesson in making sure you never stop learning and being open to change, following your passion, recognizing opportunity when it knocks, and following through on it no matter how hard it is.

Never give up!

[ This is part 7 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

So I decided that even as much as I hated the idea, the time had come to put my son in daycare and go back to seeking an Administrative Assistant position. I knew I was over-qualified for that position by then, but that I would never get a web development job without a college degree.

So I took $200 and took my son to Kindercare on a Monday morning and started my job search in earnest. I went back to Kindercare to pick him up on Monday evening, and, with apologies, they handed me back my check and told me they could not keep my son. It was not safe for him there, and he needed to be in a specialized environment.

I spent a huge amount of time after that attempting to get specialized care for him that I could afford, trying to get help from the state (he was diagnosed as Developmentally Disabled when he was 4) and hitting brick walls every time I sought out help.

Time was passing and rent and car payments were coming due. I had to borrow money from my sister, and right when I was to the point of desperation, a large job rolled in. I decided to work as hard as I could and get through the summer, and when school started I would be able to concentrate even more on getting new business.

Taking care of my son while trying to work on my business was not very effective and beyond frustrating. But it was my only option. I fought through having almost no money, caring for a constantly-interrupting and behaviorally challenged child and trying to develop a large corporate blog from the ground up all at the same time. I’d say August of 2008 was probably the hardest time in my life.

AND FINALLY, SUCCESS . . . [READ PART 8] . . .

[ This is part 6 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

That was in early February of 2008. Over the next month or month and a half, I scoured all the cities on Craig’s List looking for WordPress gigs in the Computer Gigs section on Craig’s List. And they were out there! An advanced theme customization for a stocks web site built on WordPress in Austin TX, some layout changes and customized widgets on a sustainable gardening blog in Washington D.C., a real estate blog in Florida… The list goes on.

Lot’s of small to medium sized jobs paying me actual money to do something I absoloutely *love* to do! I was in heaven! During a bit of a lag in business, I posted my first ad in the Computer Services section in Seattle and got my first really big job. It wasn’t even WordPress. It was finishing a web design that some designer had desserted for the owner of a Seattle Law Firm. That job drove home that this business was real, multi-faceted, was something that I could do and was booming.

This was great for a few months, but then a very slow time hit. As in hit the wall! Business just stopped for a few weeks, and I was scared. My instinct was to ride it out, but with a young child counting on me, I felt the responsible thing to do was to go back to work.

FORCED TO RIDE OUT THE SLOW TIMES [READ PART 7]. . .

[ This is part 5 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

So as I did all of this as a hobby, something else was happening concurrently with that. I lost my job as an Administrative Assistant and my developmentally disabled son was becoming harder and harder to deal with. I was not able to find a new job for about 6 months after losing that Admin job. I was on food stamps and unemployment and absolutely desperate.

So I started poring over Craig’s List ads in every city in the country looking for *something* that I could do to make a few extra dollars. I was looking in the Computer Gigs section for something like data entry or something like that – I didn’t know what I would find. I just needed to find *something* I could do and do quick and get a paycheck.

Low and behold in the San Francisco Computer Gigs section of Craig’s List section I found an ad asking for “WordPress Help.” What??? WordPress? Hey, I can do that! The pay was listed as “A Little Moo-La For Your Latte.” I didn’t know what that would equal exactly, but it was more than I had at the moment, so why not give it a shot?

The need, as it turned out, was for a customized widget for the sidebar on a blog for car enthusiasts. The pay wound up being approximately $20. I had done that particular thing before, but there was something unique about the theme this site was using that made it a bit of a challenge. So I think I spent about 3 hours earning that $20, but I didn’t care. I was ecstatic! I had $20 in my PayPal account headed towards my bank, I had learned something new about WordPress, and I had hope! An opportunity was knocking, and I wasn’t about let it go by.

TURNS OUT THE NEEED WAS OUT THERE JUST WAITING FOR ME TO FILL IT [READ PART 6]. . .

[ This is part 4 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

Diary-X was gone, but my Diary habit was well-developed, and I really missed it! I tried making my own site, but the dynamic nature of diary entries made it impossible for me, as all I had were HTML/CSS skills and no programming skills to make something work dynamically.

I tried a couple of different options for self-hosted installations of blogging software, and wound up liking WordPress best. WordPress is a wonderful, beautiful, clean blogging/content management application that gets installed on your own web server. It’s easy to install and has a web-based dashboard where you can write new blog entries with the newest entry appearing first on the front page of the blog. Every time you create a new entry, the new one appears on top, dynamically! It also automatically creates archives by month, categories, tags, etc.

The way WordPress does this is by combining HTML, CSS and a new (to me) ingredient: PHP. PHP is a programming language created specifically to affect, organize and render web pages in HTML and CSS.

So I had one more thing to learn! You don’t need to know PHP (or even HTML or CSS) to write entries in your WordPress blog. But if you want to configure or create your own theme and make customizations to widgets and the layout, understanding at least a little bit about PHP is necessary and a strong understanding of HTML and CSS is critical.

And I wanted to have my own theme for my blog. Boy did I! It was a pride thing – no pre-fab themes for this self-taught handcoder who works in notepad and considers Dreamweaver and Front Page to be products of the devil!

Anyway, struggling through, and eventually learning, the ins and outs of WordPress as pertains to PHP and paths to the theme and how the widgets and plugins work really started to give me an edge when it came to all things WordPress. I even gained some some web server knowledge and understanding that helped me troubleshoot some frustrating issues when it came to upgrades and other problems that would pop up.

ACCIDENTALLY FINDING A NEED AND FILLING IT [READ PART 5]. . .

[ This is part 3 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

Eventually I got divorced and had a great need to generate some extra income. A friend of mine suggested I go back to doing web sites, but things had advanced so much that my design/coding was looking really dated. CSS was all the rage, all of a sudden, and I didn’t know it at all. And I guess my faith in my ability to teach myself new skills had waned a bit.

But my friend really pressed me to give it a shot, so I built a few basic sites in CSS, and just did like I did when I learned HTML. I immersed, analyzed and absorbed. Then came the practice and practical application and voila – I had the foundation of a new skill set.

Something else that was happening at the same time was that I was keeping a diary on a web site called Diary-X. I had been doing so for about 5 years when the server running Diary-X had a catastrophic hard drive failure and every diary on that site was just suddenly *gone* never to return.

HOW THIS DISASTER HELPED PREPARE ME FOR MY CURRENT VOCATION [READ PART 4]. . .

Hello, welcome to the launch of my blog!  For awhile I had a website here attempting a Web Design service, but I soon learned that straight Web Design was not my thing.  WordPress and backend administration is my thing!  A much different animal.  I am attempting to improve and hone my web design skills, but I don’t think they will ever truly be my forte.  WordPress will always be my love!

This blog will probably reflect most areas of my online life, mostly professional.  The line gets blurred a lot, though, for a lot of reasons.  Clients often become friends, social networking is very social even though it’s used mostly for business networking, and I’m a “Work At Home Mom.”  There will probably be a lot of issues/strategies I can address here that will be interesting to other Mothers attempting to make a go of working from home, so that might be the subject of some of my blog posts.

By way of short introduction, if you don’t know me already, I’m a 41-Year-Old divorced mother of a Developmentally Disabled six-year-old boy and am running my own business (Blog Solace) and living in Bothell, Washington near Seattle.

My business is described as being “expert WordPress help” and I use self-taught, hand-coding skills to manipulate the CSS, XHTML and PHP within the WordPress platform to optimize both static and blogging WordPress sites.  I have vast knowledge of the ins and outs of WordPress and keep up-to-date on its advances, plug-ins, capabilities, updates, etc.  It truly is a passion, and it is not just my job, it’s my hobby.  I truly love what I do.

Please watch this space for my thoughts, insights, queries, and more on WordPress, life online, Twitter, social networking, social marketing (it’s just an interest, I’m no expert), SEO tips (again, not an expert, but I probably know more than the average joe), WAHM posts, and whatever I feel would fit into this space!