How to easily create a group and send a SMS Text Message to everyone in it on iPhone

connect-contact-managerMy boss at work asked me if there was an easy way to create a group of contacts, and send a message to everyone in the group on her iPhone, and with a little digging I turned up this free GEM app called Connect Contact Manager for iPhone. An example of its use would be if you were a coach of a team, and you need to let all the players know practice is cancelled, you just select the group, type “Practice is cancelled” as a text message, and when you press send, the same message is sent to the entire team automatically (Assuming you have all of their mobile/cell numbers on your phone).

Go to the app store and download the free app. Find it by searching for Connect Contact Manager, or go HERE.

Connect Contact Manager Download

Once downloaded, open it up.Contact Screen

Create A New Group

You can scroll through the groups you have already made by swipping left and right on the group names, and if you want to create a new group click the plus icon in the top right corner. If you have already created the group you want to message, skip down to the “Send A Message To The Group” section

Add Group

Give your new group a name

New GroupSelect the contacts that you want to be in your group

Confirm Create

When you have selected all of the contacts you want in your group, confirm your selections by clicking create in the top right cornerconfirm-createSend A Message To The Group

Now, select the group you want to message by scrolling left and right, and hold down/press the groups name for a few seconds

Select GroupThen select “Message”

Select Message

Now you can type your message

Send Message

When you are done typing, simply press “Send”, and everyone in the group will get your message

Easy Fix or Work Around for iMessage bug problem on iPhone running IOS7

iMessage iconSince updating to iOS 7, a lot of iPhone users are finding that iMessage does not send their messages. It looks like it is sending, but stops or freezes at last minute. I have discovered a work around, I am not sure if it is a “Fix” but I have had good results using this method, and have tried on on some friends phones with success as well. I hope it works for you!

httpvh://youtu.be/Y0JZ0R51e9I

Firstly, go into iMessage on your iPhone.

imessage-fix-001Clear off ALL messages and threads by swiping to the left on each conversation to make the “delete” option appear.

imessage-fix-002and then press delete.

imessage-fix-003Now go into settings.

imessage-fix-004Then select “Messages”

imessage-fix-005Turn “iMessage” option OFF

imessage-fix-006Now turn your phone off by pressing and holding the power button on the top right edge, and then swipe across the red “Slide To Power Off” message on your screen.

imessage-fix-007Once your phone has completely powered off, you can press the power button again to restart it. Once your phone has booted up again, select “Settings”

imessage-fix-004Go back into Messages

imessage-fix-005Turn on the “iMessage” option and you will see your phone re-activating and syncing with the iMessage server.

imessage-fix-009When it has finished, it you should see confirmation that you can now use iMessage.

imessage-fix-010Now, Hopefully, you should be back in business.

WordPress Robots Txt

Robots TxtAll web sites need a good robots.txt in my opinion. For those reading (Ha….what a joke!) who don’t know what that is, a robots.txt file is simply a text file that tells search engines what they are allowed to tell the world about, and what you dont want them to promote. Now, you might be thinking “I want them to index every page on my site”, and that’s a fair call, but what they can also do, is promote the folders and files that exist behind the scenes of your site, that you would prefer to keep private for reasons such as privacy and security.

If you are new to the web/site design, and this is all news to you, and you have realised there are some folders on your server that contain files you don’t want the world to find through a search engine, you can easily generate a robots.txt file using the free robots.txt file generator at McAnerin HERE. Once you have told the generator the directories on your server you want to keep private, copy the code it generates, and then create a new text document on your computer, and paste it in. Call the file “robots.txt” (without the exclamation marks of course) and then upload it into the “public_html” folder of your website.

Now, for those of us who use WordPress, there are quiet a few directories that I think should be blocked. There are also others who have the opinion that your WordPress site ranks higher if you don’t use one. There’s still a lot of unanswered questions about the internet, and this is one of them. Until it is resolved, I personally will continue to use robots.txt.

So for now, below is my robots.txt file I use – If you think I have missed something, or if you think the whole robots.txt idea is junk, please comment! I’d love to hear your thought’s for and against.

 

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/
Disallow: /wp-icludes/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /tag/*
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wp-*
Disallow: /login/
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: /*.php$

User-agent: All
Allow: /

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /