Category: Web Site Development

Info on website development, including content management systems (CMS), new coding standards (HTML, CSS), and search engine optimization (SEO).

So This Is Happening

For the last seven years I’ve offered a website service wherein I provide a year of hosting, a domain name search, and the latest WordPress installation with theme configuration and initial SEO settings, for $180.00.  That’s super cheap and I believe it is a quick way for a person or business to achieve a web presence without the learning curve of doing it themselves.

I’ve had clients come and go, and those that let the hosting lapse have done so because they don’t see their site appear on Google.  Invariably, the lack of search engine traction is due to a lack of regular content addition.  Now, I do include training on the use of WordPress with my package, along with a discussion on the importance of posting to the site on a regular basis with two to three paragraphs of relevant, truthful, useful information in the blog section.  Without fail, it is that section of their site that remains fallow.  It seems that spending an hour a week adding something to their site is just not a priority.  And that’s a shame as no one would know more about their site subject than the owner, and spending four to five hours a month on self-marketing the business is far more cost effective than paying someone else to do it.

However, it seems that content creation and management is a viable service and one that I can provide.  For as little as $250.00 a month I will research and create content for your website for regular updates and posts.  I can also offer video creation in a range of production values for reasonable rates.  If you have an interest, see my pricing list here.

 

The Real Story Behind Facebook Moderation and Your Petty Reports | The Internet Offends Me

Love it or hate it, Facebook is a big thing in our society. Something that big is going to have some really good things happening within. Unfortunately, something that big will also have some of the worst things imaginable within. It is, after all, made of people. The following blog post gives a glimpse behind the curtain of Facebook:

“THE REAL STORY BEHIND FACEBOOK MODERATION AND YOUR PETTY REPORTS

Imagine going to work every day and at the start of your day, with your first cup of coffee, you sit down to glance at be-headings, children in the process of being raped, human bodies in various stages of decomposition, the living and dead results of domestic violence, hanging bodies of 10 year old boys accused of being gay, real-life snuff films and bloody dog fighting rings and their subsequent results. Can you think up a human horror? I’ve probably seen it or a picture or video of something very similar. It’s fair to say that some of the people who work around me do not fare so well. Often they end up suffering from the endless barrage of horror they witness 8 to 12 hours per day. Did I share that *most* of these people make around a dollar per hour to do this job? That’s the truth. Not me though. I am an American who demands rights and all, so I make approximately $29 dollars per hour more than them. Technically, I don’t even have to do anymore than make sure they are clicking the buttons in the correct order. I don’t have to look at the images, but most of the time my focus on remaining unbiased in the face of, makes me do so anyway.

It’s Not All Blood and Guts, Sometimes it’s Worse…”

Read the full article here:The Real Story Behind Facebook Moderation and Your Petty Reports | The Internet Offends Me.

A Little SEO Juice

Nothing really special about this post; just giving a little inter-blog SEO juice to a couple of clients.  You might want to follow the links and check them out if you are in the Northern Michigan area.

West Branch, MI Little League

Extreme Clean exterior cleaning and power washing in West Branch, MI

And some props to the people who host me. They do a good job, for a good price:
Byet
Byet

A Little Project Failure, Anyone?

This is a story of a small project that went nowhere and ended by slinking off with a whimper to the land of wasted time.

I was working for a small internet marketing start-up, performing the role of website developer and search engine optimization (SEO) specialist. Our standard package involved tweaks to a client’s existing website meta-data, a series of marketing videos linked to the website, implementation of a mailing list system for subscriber capture and newsletter broadcast, and creating a linked blog site for the client to draw Google search-engine interest through regular addition of new content. The typical project was un-complicated and small in scope.

We were contacted by a local business to increase their website traffic with the goal of increasing their business volume. The client asked if some modifications could be made to the site to “punch it up a bit”. To close the deal, I agreed to some aesthetic improvements in addition to performing the typical SEO work. As part of the project, the client was given a training course in the use of their blog, and the value of this blog was explained in depth. It was shortly after this point that the project began to degrade.

As part of the website aesthetics sub-project I met with the client to discuss the particulars. I proposed a list of  modifications (background color, a simple cascading style sheet (CSS) to get away from obsolete table formatting, a change to the images in the existing slideshow) and noted the client preferences for layout and color scheme in a text document on my laptop. At meeting end, I assured the client that the changes would be done in a week and that I would schedule a meeting at that time to close the project. That scenario played out, but not as I expected.

At the next meeting I was presented with a new list of vague changes by a client that was very unsatisfied. Their complaints ran the gamut of the site “just not looking right” to disappointment in the number of “hits” the site received. Taken aback, I once again explained what our marking processes did, the time that it took for the SEO modifications to “mature”, and the large part that their contribution to their blog would make (I had been checking their blog since installation and they had not made one entry). Being one who does not like to say “No”, I reviewed their list with them, culled some things that were too impractical to work on, and promised that I would work on the rest. This had not been a good day, and I resolved to redouble my efforts to satisfy this client.

Sadly, this was not to be. On subsequent meetings and visits for video shoots I was met with more verbal change requests and comments of disappointment with the site. Clearly, this project had stopped being about SEO and had become a full-blown website design and development project, without any budget increase, defined schedule, or discernable goal. If you are shaking your head then you’ve probably been there.

Businesses exist to generate cash flow and make a profit. Any activity conducted by a business must have some tie to this rule, even those that are tangential (i.e.: the company picnic, which is part of team building and morale boosting to spur employee retention and production). In the project world, where large expenditures of time, effort, and money are consumed, it would be wise to know that the expenditures would have a return on investment (ROI). There are some simple guiding categories that can be used to determine if an ROI is in the offing:

  • Cost reduction – The elimination of hardware, software or “wetware” (people) expenses that can be attributed to the proposed project.
  • Cost avoidance – The avoided cost of additional resources for a specific job function because of an increased capacity to perform that job function in the future.
  • Increased revenue – The increased dollar amount of sales attributed to the project.
  • Retained revenue – The dollar amount of sales that will be lost if the project is not pursued.     (Monteforte, 2005)

The returns may not be all about the money. In a closing address to the PMI global congress in North America Dr. Harold Kerzner put it like this: Time and cost used to drive all decisions. Now we’re saying, ‘Wait a minute, are we providing value?’ (Miller, 2009). Kerzner suggests that the issue goes beyond purely monetary consideration to include goodwill or reputation (Miller, 2009). As the old Canon ads used to say, “Image is everything”.

The marketing project my company proposed had a defined business objective that was aligned with the business strategy: Improve the Google search-engine ranking for the client’s website, based on a variety of commonly used search keywords, to place them in the top ten of page-one search results. So, how did that work out? The project was hijacked by the client’s wish to redesign their website, a task that would do very little to help their business. Oddly enough, while pulling the alignment from the business goal made the project futile, it did not stop the project from continuing. I believe the project continues in other hands, probably with the same results.

There were plenty of mistakes made in this fiasco, not least of which was in my neglect in setting the scope of the additional website development (a lesson well learned!). But the largest error was the client’s focus on a task with minimal value to the business. Even admitting that the website is an extension of their “image”, and that a minor update in aesthetics could provide a little intangible ROI, the goal of the project we were selling was an increase in revenue through increased visibility and awareness of their business, something that they agreed to but never followed through on. In retrospect, changing the website was probably a pet project that had been simmering for some time, a sticky trap for an eager sap that became “the job that never ends”.

Learn from my unfortunate experience. When you get a client that wants a “little favor” on top of what you are offering, find out exactly what it is, clarify the scope with them (in writing is best. Just bang out the document right there on your laptop), and make sure they understand what to expect. You may even be able to negotiate the price up. Most of all, have a definite measurement for completion of the work, or you may be caught in an endless loop.

References

Miller, C. (2009, October 15). Harold Kerzner: Project Managers Must Understand Business. Retrieved January 28, 2011, from Voices on Project Management: http://blogs.pmi.org/blog/voices_on_project_management/2009/10/harold-kerzner-project-manager.html

Monteforte, J. (2005, November 15). Five Steps to Business/IT Project Alignment. Retrieved January 29, 2011, from CIO Update: http://www.cioupdate.com/budgets/article.php/3564406/Five-Steps-to-BusinessIT-Project-Alignment.htm

All Flash, little bang

If you have ever visited You Tube you have seen a small example of Flash.  This Adobe creation is dandy for putting video on the web just about anywhere you’d want it.  In fact, there will eventually be some small flash vids on the sites I have here.  The video files are small compared to some of the other formats, and the “progressive download” nature of the beast means that videos can begin playing before they are completely downloaded (though having the video stop every few seconds while the file “buffers” is annoying on slower connections).

Within the last few years there has been a trend (still small, but growing) of creating entire websites in Flash.  This is done by creating the pages in an Action Script code, then compiling the code into a Flash SWF (a type of Flash file) that is then played through the Flash movie player (currently version 10.x). There are some interesting advantages to that, mostly for developers (primarily, that no one can see or steal your coding).

But, there are some dis-advantages, too.  One of my pet peeves is that the scroll-wheel on my mouse doesn’t work on the Flash player.  Not such a big deal when the player only takes up a part of the page, but really annoying when the entire page is a Flash player.  Another thing that doesn’t work is the “auto-fill” function of my browsers (IE8, FireFox, and Chrome).  I rely on that function to speed my logins for the sites I work on.  I’m sure these issues will be cured eventually, but even if they are no longer issues for new sites it’s likely that existing sites won’t get fixed any time soon: that will cost money!

I’m also not keen on the idea of having to have a proprietary player to see a web page.  Sure, it’s given away freely for the client (your browser).  But for how long?  And, not only are there occasional glitches with the latest version, there may be some security issues as well, issues that may not be readily visible.

Another issue is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.  Because the Flash page code is closed to view, the search spiders don’t know when content is updated.  They are curious when new pages appear, but lose interest after a while because nothing seems to change.  I don’t think that’s too helpful.

Finally, to develop a Flash website requires either a working knowledge of Action Script (AS3 is the latest) and a development environment such as Eclipse or Flash Develop (both excellent open-source tools) or shelling out the cash for Adobe’s Flash Builder ($699.00!) and maybe a few more expensive applications if you want to go whole-hog (Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, etc…, the CS5 packages start at $1899.00).

There are some options emerging, and I am playing with a couple: AuroraFlash and Silex.  Both are Flash Content Management Systems (CMSs) that by-pass the coding and just require installation to begin building your site.  Silex goes on your host, Aurora installs to your computer and creates the files and folders that you upload.  So far, I find that any changes you want to make in Aurora require uploading new files and Silex hasn’t got an intuitive method of adding or editing text content.

If you are interested in alternatives to Flash, feel free to ask: jeff@jeffdoesit.biz

Dot Net Nuke

I am playing a bit with Dot Net Nuke on my home IIS server.  If that makes any sense to you, then you are probably a little familiar with Asp.NET.  If not, let me preach on it.

IIS stands for Internet Information Services and is a web server that comes with certain editions of Windows, usually for free.  With it you could host your own website for all the world to see, as long as your internet service provider allows you to (most won’t without some type of “Business” account and higher fees).

Asp.NET is the Microsoft framework for Web applications and services.  That covers the gamut from simple web sites on the internet to corporate enterprise information systems on private networks.  It is intended to be a robust and secure framework that is also easy to work with.  I have worked with Asp.NET on a couple of websites and have had generally good luck with it.

Dot Net Nuke is a CMS created specifically for this Microsoft IIS/Asp.NET environment.  It is more complex than Joomla, but has more things that can be tweaked for look and feel.  It also has an active development community that produce business-ready modules (extensions, plug-ins, etc.) for shopping carts, catalogs, and the like.  So far, I like Dot Net Nuke.

If you don’t have a site yet, and have heard of Dot Net Nuke, here’s some things to think about before deciding that is the way to go.  The top three are Money, Money, Money.

Dot Net Nuke comes in two flavors: Community and Professional.  The first is free, the second costs.  You can get the particulars at http://www.dotnetnuke.com/.

IIS and Asp.NET hosting are another matter.  The reason that I don’t have an example site up for Dot Net Nuke is that I have not been able to find an adequate free or cheap Asp.NET host.  Because of the licensing fees to Microsoft for Server 2003-2008 and the necessary MSSQL Server (the database needed to handle content, user authorization, and so much more), free hosting with any kind of storage capacity or traffic bandwidth just doesn’t seem available.  And the cost for a Microsoft hosting solution is just plain prohibitive.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining (well, maybe a little).  Microsoft products have their use and fill a need for highly complex and secure sites.  It just depends on what you need.

To be perfectly honest, I am only mentioning Dot Net Nuke for comparison.  If your business website needs require a Microsoft platform, you are probably beyond the realm of my comfort zone and beyond the scope of my little enterprise.  However, if you are contemplating a website for your business and are looking at your options, I’d be more than happy to help you compare DNN to the other systems that are available so that you can make an informed choice.