By Amy Armitage
Our 5 entries for round 6 are:
Twilight Crown by Nicki Faulk
Aakon by Tomas Sramek
Lilicious by Liza Kliko
Butterfly by Mehmet Ozekinci
Moo by n252
Vote Now!
Good luck to everyone this week!
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Original post by Amy
By Amy Armitage
The winning finalist for round 2 is TeamRejoice by Edgardo Canape Jr.
Well done Edgardo! We hope to see more entries from you.
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Original post by Tiara
By Amy Armitage
Round 1 voting for our WordPress design contest (series 2) starts today.
To check out the prizes up for grabs, visit our contest/submission page. Designers can submit as many entries as they want and entries close June 22, 2008 so there is plenty of time to get amongst it!
Below are the 5 themes for round 1. We will take into consideration the community vote and also staff votes and declare a finalist from this round on April 28th based on this week’s votes.
Professor by A. Mignolo
iPhone Theme by indocontest
Dream Home by Ophelia Nicholson
Whitepaper 2.0 Beta by Fath
Mag On Wood by ChiQ Montes
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Good luck to our designers 
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Original post by Amy
By Mitch “The Marketeer” Keeler
There is no doubt in my mind that social networks of all shapes and sizes help, not hurt, you when it comes to building your own name, presence and fan fallowing with your web site. You have your MySpace, your Facebook, your Twitter and more.
I think you should get your name out there anywhere and everywhere you can.
I hate that AT&T commercial where the British-sounding guy is “trying to find the Internet”, the great thing for them though is that even though I hate it I have seen it so many times I have picked up on the commercial’s main purpose. It is for AT&T’s wireless Internet services.
You can use the various social networks in the same way.. hopefully you will be less annoying about it.  Join up, toss your links in there and do your best to use the service to build new friendships, followers and fans.  I know with my own presence on both MySpace and Facebook - I have entries from my RSS feed going right into my profile so now that group of people I used to go to high school with can now see just about everything I publish.  These are eyeballs seeing my content that would not have without spreading out to the social web.
Finally this all comes down to, well what do you have to lose? So maybe you don’t get any followers or dedicated fanboys knocking on your virtual social door. You have gained a few more links back, and you now have a new place where people can find you. Your creating a new path to yourself so if somebody stumbles upon it they know exactly where to look for more. On the other side if things go well, then you might be able to get in better communication and contact with those who like what you do with your own web site and well, having fans is never a bad thing.
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Original post by Mitch
By Mitch “THE April Fool” Keeler
I have to say there have been a lot of “creative” stories Online today. Here are some of the best (or maybe the worst depending on how many you have seen) April Fools 2008 stories so far.
I love April Fools Day! Seen any other good ones?
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Original post by Mitch
By Mitch “Your Talent Agent” Keeler
If you have a nack for writing or helping other people out please feel free to submit your own work to us. We are looking to feature one customer written article per month in our web hosting newsletter. The only thing that we ask is that the work is your own and does not belong to anybody else. Each month, month after month we will select one to toss into the Newsletter for the month.
Interested? Submit your articles to mitch.keeler@lunarpages.com with the title “LP Newsletter Article Submission”. Also be sure to include your Lunarpages hosted URL and name so that we can give you a shout out for your fabulous work. Starting next month we will feature one customer article per newsletter. If we don’t use your article one month, we will keep it on record and we may use it the next month.
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Original post by Mitch
By Mitch "Self Helper" Keeler
The question is, "How do I make my web site better?" and the answer could be given to you many different ways by many different people. There are often seven rules I tend to live by when it comes to webmastering, so I thought I would share them with you so that you too can learn from my own trial and error.
1. Look towards your friends - Many people overlook their friends as people who can help with their web site. You can use your friends to write up content for you, hire them for work (design, writing or other) or even just ask them to spread the word around about your online resource.
2. Update on a schedule - You need to find a schedule for updating your web site and stick with it. If your web site it static (not updated often) then you might be able to get away with checking up on things every two weeks or so. If you have a lot of content being posted though, you need to set aside a certain time to work on the web site.
3. Do it right the first time - Don’t half way do things right and then think, "well, if it becomes a problem I can always fix it later" because chances are later will never happen because you’ll find something else to fill your time with. Even if it takes a little more time, doing it right the first go around might save you on time and aggravation later on down the road.
4. Branch out your ideas - Don’t be afraid to branch out to related topics. For an example, if you are running a web site about shoes and you want to add some more content to your web site, then why not talk about shoe laces or those gel thingies you stick in your shoes to make them feel better? Find areas you can branch out in so your idea well never runs dry.
5. Find others like yourself - You can’t run a successful site these days without socializing yourself. Get out there virtually or in the real world and meet others who do the same thing that you do. Talk about how they cover things, how you cover things and you might even build a business relationship that will benefit you later on down the road.
6. Don’t waste time on design - Having a aesthetically pleasing to the eye is a grand idea to be apart of, but if you have all cosmetics and no guts to your web site, then you are left with 9/10 of the Baywatch life guards.
7. Features are nice, but content is king - I feel like I have given this last tip the most, mainly because I would consider it the most important and if you can hit this proverbial nail on the head with your webmastering hammer you don’t need me helping you. Make sure the content you have is not just there to take up space. Make sure it is both quality filled and that somebody is getting something out of it. Check out each of your pages, and if you can’t say that somebody is better off by reading your page then you need to ditch it or re-work it till it is serving a purpose for the average user.
One more suggestion, not on this list, that I can share with you is have a passion for what you are doing. If you are working on a web site of any kind, and you don’t care about it - it will show in your final product. You have to think of your web site as a child of your own, and treat it as such. Take care of it right, and it will grow to become a success, no matter what your final target might be.
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Original post by Mitch
By Mitch “Tipster” Keeler
Think of it as one of those sticky fly traps you hang outside in the summer to keep the flying insects away from your BB&Q. You don’t want to just lead people to your site, you want to lead them to it - get them interested and then catch them. Don’t let them go because they might not come back. Hooking visitors is a sweet science I am not sure anybody has really mastered to a T (or Mr. T). These tips should help you get on the right track though when it comes making your visitors come back.
Social Interaction - Add something like the AddThis.com or ShareThis.com badges to your web site so that people can share that information with others in the way that suits them best.
Vote - Don’t overlook the idea of adding polls to your web site layout. Giving your viewers something to do will keep them on your web site a little longer. One easy way of getting a poll up and running would be via PollDaddy.com.
Blog it - Think your web site is a little light weight, and could use some more “meat and potatoes”? A blog would be a great way to fill your web site out a little more and keep your visitors coming back for more. I would highly suggest installing WordPress for your blogging needs, but there are many alternatives.
Build a Community - Forums always come in handy to help build a community or start one. SMF is probably the most reliable of the bunch in my opinion. With it your visitors can talk with you and each other.
Syndication - If you can, toss in some RSS feeds for your visitors to grab. This way they can subscribe to your web site’s content, get updates about your latest news, and have a trail back to your web site past that first visit. Once you do get an RSS feed going hook it up with a service like FeedBurner to track how many people are subscribing.
Know of anymore helpful tips to make you web site viewers come back for more? I’d love to hear ‘em.
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Original post by Mitch
I have gotten a handful of e-mails from people asking me to go over and explain blogging. From head to toe, first you need to find a blogging script to use, then you need to find the best way for you to blog and lastly you need something to blog about.
Blog and Content Management Scripts
Of course, to setup a blog you must first have a good blogging script or content management system. Here are a few of the best alternatives out there to choose from:
Best Tools to Blog?
There are a number of tools out there that will help you to post to your blog. One of the best of the best out there (and yes, it even surprised me!) Is Windows Live Writer.
I can tell you from personal experience it is a superb companion to WordPress (because it is what I am using to write this, right now!). All you need to do is plugin your WordPress login info and address and it does the work for you. If you are using Firefox, then you might want to look at the ScribeFire addon.
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Original post by Mitch
By Mitch “Better than a Newspaper” Keeler
There have been several little things to share going on here at Lunarpages, so let me see if I can sum things up:
Lunarpages February newsletter is out! There are tons of goodies in store for you too. You can browse though the links here or just visit web-hosting-newsletter.com for February’s issue and any past issues you would like to browse though.
Need a layout or design? Time to rejoice! Lunarpages now has an awesome designer’s directory.
In other news, Lunarpages has also started delivering Basic and Business plan customers unlimited addon domains. This is a feature that should come with all new orders and older customers will be upgraded to the new limit over the next several weeks. This is a feature you wanted, so we delivered.
The Lunarforums Site of the Month voting is underway. Be sure to vote, and check back on March 1st as I’ll come in on my day off to announce the winner. Really excited about the line up this month, and I am really looking forward for this to be a returning contest month after month!
Also don’t forget to check out our new free hosting downloads page to get tons of free and open source applications to help you with your own web site creations.
Be sure to check out the LunarNews post form this month’s newsletter to read up on more fantastic offers, upgrades, deals and specials from us to you.
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Original post by Mitch