In fact I have three wordpress blogs! Brandstar, PCToolbox and a Personal Blog. I also have a personal and business twitter profile and I was thinking, there must be a way of linking all this! After a bit of digging I found, there is!

Basically I decided that I want to get information, updates and more off the WordPress and Facebook accounts and published on Twitter. It seems like the logical way round to me.

The key tool for doing this is TwitterFeed as it makes it nice and easy with just these steps

Register for a TwitterFeed account (you only have to do this once and you can then link lots of RSS feeds to twitter through your TwitterFeed account.)

• Link to your Twitter profile, (make sure twitter is open in another tab), then in TwitterFeed choose ‘Create New Feed’ and choose Connect your feed to your Twitter account
• Give the Feed a name
• Link to the RSS Feed of where the information is coming from!  (more info below)

Ok, so the last bit might be the hardest for some people I admit. On WordPress you just have to look for the icon that looks like the orange one to the right (some themes have varied the style and colour but should be recognisable) or you can go direct to the feed by typing /feed after the blog address … e.g. for PCToolbox it is www.pctoolbox.co.uk/feed and the brandstar.co.uk feed is www.brandstar.co.uk/wp/feed  (the wp is teh directory wordpress is installed in).

Facebook doesn’t make finding the feed that easy … so follow these instructions and you will be away

1. Log into Facebook
2. Click notifications in the bottom right hand corner of the screen
3. Press ‘See All’ when the notifications pop-up appears
4. Under all the tick boxes you will see ‘Your Notifications’, click that
5. You will then see a big list of ALL your notifications, this could be the feed you want, but if you just want YOUR status updates like I did then keep reading
6. The URL in the address bar at the very top will read something like “http://www.facebook.com/feeds/notifications.php?id=123456789&viewer=1234567891&key=t4654562v&format=rss20″
7. You need to change the word ‘notifications’ that I have bold-ed above to read ‘status’ so the URL reads similar to this “http://www.facebook.com/feeds/status.php?id=123456789&viewer=1234567891&key=t4654562v&format=rss20″
8. Hit ENTER and that will show you all your Status updates, copy that URL from the address bar and that is you FEED when you are setting up TwitterFeed to send info to Twitter!

I hope that helps, enjoy, have fun and stay connected!

Grae.

The tool came about when Graham, from the Brandstar and pctoolbox team, noticed that many people want a simple tool that can be used for storing information such as; people’s contact details so they can print off labels at Christmas or email address’s for email newsletters.

The database has many features:

• Easily store Friends, Family, Customers, Subscribers or Supporters Contact Details: Name, Address, Phone, Email, Website etc.
• Sort users by first/last name
• Easily add/edit/delete records from a simple user friendly interface
• Print individual records
• Print labels of those registered to receive a newsletter
• Email direct from the system those who you have registered to receive an email newsletter
  • These emails are sent BBC (Blind Carbon Copy) so that you are not spreading everyone’s email address
• Search Contacts
• The latest version (1.2 standard) comes with a new style user interface, just as easy to use as before, but a bit more … interesting!
• And most importantly….it’s free!!

Now you know what it is, I better tell you how to use it……

How to add a contact:

Adding a contact is extremely simple, firstly open your database. You will then see a similar screen to the one below, (To make the picture larger click on the image)

Then click the ‘Add New Contact’ button.

Then just add the contact details of the new contact. If you wish for the contact to be added to the newsletter and/or email newsletter just tick the box.

It’s so easy it’s scary!

Edit Contact Details:

If you thought adding a contact was easy you’ll be shocked how easy it is to edit a contact. All you do is click on one piece of the contacts information from the list of All Contacts, for example their first name, so that the information appears in the boxes above.

Then just change the information that you wish to change, done, it will automatically save those changes when you move away from the contacts details to do something else, or when you close the program.

Delete Contact Details:

Click on the contact like above so the details are shown in the main form.

Then simply click ‘Delete Contact’.

To confirm you wish to delete the record click yes on the small window that appears.

Print Record:

Click on the contact so that their details appear on the information boxes, e.g. First Name, Last Name, Address 1 etc. Then click ‘Print Record’.

Print Labels:

By clicking ‘Print Labels’ you will be able to print off all the name/addresses of all those that have had the newsletter box ticked. The program is set to use Avery Label layout L7160.

Email Newsletter:

If you click ‘Email Newsletter’ the application will open up a window with the addresses all added and ready to send to. All you’ll need to do is type the newsletter! (Unfortunately this will not work with web based email systems like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail)

Sort:

You can sort your contacts by first or last name by clicking on the drop down and selecting.

Close Program:

To close the program safely click ‘Close Program’.

Please let us know what you think of the Address Book and How we can make it even better!

The more observent reader will notice the “search” feature in some of the screenshots, this didn’t quite make it into the 1.2 release but is a sign of more to come

Download the latest Address Book Database v1.2standard here

You don’t even need to own Microsoft Access to use this tool, you can simple download and install the free Runtime environment and the Access database will run!

Well worth checking out: Brandstar Address Book Tool : Standard Edition