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[pagetitle] => Pulling the Weeds from your Web Site
[longtitle] => Pulling the Weeds from your Web Site
[description] => Pulling the Weeds from your Web Site
[alias] => pulling-the-weeds-from-your-web-site
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[introtext] => Pulling the Weeds from your Web Site
[content] => <p>If you’ve had a web site for awhile, it likely has a few
weeds in it; pages that are orphaned, missing titles, descriptions, poorly
organized content, and more. So do you clean it up, or completely redesign it?<img style="border: 0pt none; margin: 10px; float: right;" title="Here's your Sign!" src="assets/images/Commerce_Sign.jpg" alt="Run Down commerce Sign" width="300" height="200" /></p>
<p>Before embarking on a site redesign, you should first
measure the performance of your existing site(s) and take action to improve the
existing site first. One way to make your site work better has nothing to do
with the content or the visuals of your site- it has to do with Standards
Compliance. Well designed HTML will always perform better than bad or broken
HTML. I highly recommend using the FireFox Web Developer Extension by Chris
Pedrick to automate checking your site at the W3C. You may download it at: <a href="http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/">http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/</a>
</p>
<ol>
<li>Make sure you declare a Doctype and Encoding
method in each document</li>
<li>Troubleshoot your coding errors starting at the
top and working down from there.</li>
<li>After you clear the HTML coding errors, make
sure you have proper META tags on your pages for Description and Keywords.</li>
</ol>
<p>After you have HTML issues cleared up, take a look at Google
analytics and add it to your site- GA started life as the Urchin web server log
analysis program. As a Google product, it is now free and all you need to do is
add a few lines of code to your tracked pages to start using it. You can set up
tracked actions, monitor what search terms your visitors are finding you by,
and see what sites link to you. After you do this awhile, you may find the
search terms may not match your perceptions, and that some terms you rank well
for may bring visitors who simply bounce away. You can use this info to fine
tune your content for keywords that convert well and avoid those that don’t. </p>
<p>After you’ve done the above, you should be able to get a
handle on whether you should redesign your site- but I caution you not to
simply replace an old site with a new one. You need to identify pages that
bring you traffic and keep them alive (with the same or similar content) on the
new site using redirects (e.g. 301 redirect). You also want to avoid using
technologies that do not fully expose your content when you do a redesign (e.g.
database query URLs, Flash based sites or Flash based shopping carts).</p>
<p> </p>
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[pagetitle] => The Data Web, Social Web, how to Publish and Tweet in the future
[longtitle] => The Data Web, Social Web, how to Publish and Tweet in the future
[description] => The Data Web, Social Web, how to Publish and Tweet in the future
[alias] => the-data-web-social-web-how-to-publish-and-tweet-in-the-future
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[introtext] => The Data Web, Social Web, how to Publish and Tweet in the future
[content] => <p><img style="border: 0pt none; margin: 10px; float: right;" title="Tweet to the Future" src="assets/images/AreYouAFutureTweeter.jpg" alt="Are You A Future Tweeter" width="300" height="225" /></p>
<p>Anyone who’s been on the web for awhile is familiar with the
“Data Web”- this web is powered by Search engines like Google and Bing
(formerly Live Search). The Data Web is
easy to understand; a web crawler goes out on the web and indexes the content
of web site pages. Visitors to the
search engines type in their search terms and if your pages match the terms and
content (with lots of other secret criteria depending on the engine) the visitor
should see your pages in the “natural” or “not paid” results. </p>
<p>The “Social Web” is an entirely different beast. Remember
when Dean Martin sang “You’re nobody ‘til somebody loves you”? Well, nobody is going
to give you love unless you give them a reason. Today, the reason is (for
business folk) compelling content filled with good advice. If you’re not
blogging, your competitors likely are. With free services like Wordpress.org there
really is no excuse not to- I prefer to have the blog linked to the main web
site rather than free services, though I do have some on different domains than
my main sites. Make sure you also create and publish or expose an RSS feed for
your blog. In addition to blogging, you
should probably use twitter too. If you’re not familiar with twitter, it’s sort
of like “micro-blogging”. You are limited to 160 total characters so you can
use twitter to “tweet” about your full article or other news with a compelling
headline. Make sure what you tweet adds value, people won’t follow you long if
your tweets look like spam.</p>
<h4>Automate your Social Web</h4>
<p>Another feature of some blogging platforms or Content
Management Systems is to create the article and set it to publish in the
future. For example, this article was created days prior to posting. The Modx
CMS I use has this article set to publish at a future date, when the time is
right- it will just show up on the web site. This allows you to get started
blogging and update your site regularly (something Google likes) without
running out of steam. I recommend you create ten or so articles in advance and
try to write a new one each day. If you use WordPress (hosted or on installed
on your site) and write using Word 2007, you can post your articles directly
from Word using Publish->Blog. How cool is that?</p>
<p>For automated tweeting you can try <a title="FutureTweets" href="http://www.futuretweets.com/">futuretweets.com</a> (free).
Just create your tweet, set the date and time to be just after your post is
published, and include a link to the posted article. Now you can have a big
part of your social web automated- so go get your <a title="Twitter" href="http://www.Twitter.com/">Twitter.com</a> account, write
some content on your blog, tweet about it, build your list of followers, and enjoy
the results. You should find as you build more content that your site will
naturally build inbound links and when you get hundreds of pages indexed about
your topics, you should see positive results. <strong>This is all free to do, but it is
work</strong>- there is no reason to avoid it now that you know- even if you must hire
someone to write for you. With the
downsizing of so many newspapers there are lots of well qualified journalists
are available today.</p>
<p>Of course there are many other components to the Social Web;
some of these include:</p>
<p><a title="Reddit" href="http://www.reddit.com/">Reddit.com</a>, <a title="FaceBook" href="http://www.FaceBook.com/">FaceBook.com</a>, <a title="Digg" href="http://www.digg.com/">Digg</a>, <a title="Linked In" href="http://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a>, and of course the major
search engines themselves are now seriously taking an approach to capitalize on
the Social Web.</p>
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[pagetitle] => All sites seek attention- do you follow the 3 B's?
[longtitle] => All sites seek attention- do you follow the 3 B's? Buy, Beg, or Bug
[description] => All sites seek attention- do you follow the 3 B's? Buy, Beg, or Bug
[alias] => all-sites-seek-attention-do-you-follow-the-3-bs
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[introtext] => All sites seek attention- do you follow the 3 B's? Buy, Beg, or Bug
[content] => <h4>Yep, we all must face facts- we <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">want</span> need attention. You can Buy it, Beg for it, or Bug people for attention</h4>
<p><img style="border: 0pt none; float: left;" title="Animated Gif Circa 1996- WOW" src="assets/images/animorangecircle.gif" alt="One of my early animated GIFs- 1996" width="40" height="40" />When I set up my first web site (in 1995 on CompuServe) I vividly remember showing it to a customer and the reaction he had to my really cool GIF image (Wow, that's cool, how did you make that?). Yep, things have changed, but they have not. The State of the art is improved- but there is no doubt there are even more people looking for answers today than there were in 1995- problem is- there is a lot more NOISE today. People don't use the old ways much. Newspapers are history, Direct mail response is lower than ever, few people (with money) watch TV or cable, and with Caller ID- fewer still answer the phone unless they know who you are.</p>
<p>If you believe you can build a web page, place a product to sell there, and nothing else- well; I've got a great deal on a bridge for you. Nobody cares about your page, your product, or you- people have questions and need answers. Provide the answers for the questions, and if your products are the answer, they'll find and buy them. </p>
<h4>Attention </h4>
<p>Buy - the price you pay for not being interesting is buying ads- if a "designer" made your site, well it may be pretty (and invisible to search engines). </p>
<p>Beg- Look at me. Free naked pictures of Pam Anderson might work, but it may not get the right attention. There are better ways.</p>
<p>Bug- Go ahead, call me at dinner time.</p>
<p>
<object width="400" height="300" data="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6955359&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />
<param name="src" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6955359&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" />
</object>
</p>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/6955359">David Meerman Scott keynote at BMA 2009 national conference</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1237111">David Meerman Scott</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p>The above three B's are from David Meerman Scott. He did a keynote at the BMA conference and just released the video a few days ago. I've enjoyed watching it more than once, as David embraces and validates many concepts I've promoted for years. The tough part is not knowing what to do- the tough part is actually doing what should be done, and not getting bored with repeating myself.</p>
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[pagetitle] => APO FPO and DPO addresses
[longtitle] => How to add support for customers with APO FPO and DPO addresses
[description] => APO FPO and DPO addresses not available by default CartIt
[alias] => APO-FPO-and-DPO-addresses
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[introtext] => APO FPO and DPO addresses are not available by default in CartIt- simply modify cartitlib.cgi to add it
[content] => <p>CartIt does not have APO FPO and DPO addresses available by default. Luckily this is easy to change; the cartitlib.cgi file contains the Country Codes and American States. Military addresses are in fact US addresses- so for a military address the customer would choose US as the country and either AA, AE, or AP as the State. There are other areas not included such as FM Federated States of Micronesia,
MH Marshall Islands, and
PW Palau; you can add them easily- just have a look at the file. You can also check the USPS site for the <a title="USPS State and Region abbreviations" href="http://www.usps.com/ncsc/lookups/usps_abbreviations.html" target="_blank">official State abbreviations.</a></p>
<ul>
<li><strong>City field:</strong> Use "APO,""FPO," or "DPO." </li>
<li><strong>State field:</strong> Enter the two-letter code for
the region where the recipient is stationed. Most often "AE" is used for recipients stationed in Europe, Canada, Africa, or
the Middle East; "AA" for the Americas, "AP" for Asia or the Pacific recipients. </li>
<li><strong>Country field:</strong> Always choose "<strong>United States</strong>" from the drop-down menu.</li>
</ul>
<p>Here is how to add APO/FPO/DPO support to CartIt:</p>
<ol>
<li>ALWAYS backup your files BEFORE making changes.</li>
<li>Replace your default cartitlib.cgi with this <a title="Modified cartitlib.cgi- rename as cartitlib.cgi" href="assets/files/cartitlib_APO.cgi.txt">modified cartitlib.cgi</a> file.</li>
<li>Check that you can create an account as above.</li>
<li>You may wish to modify cartit_checkout.cgi to add something like: "U.S. Customer: Please enter only your <span style="text-decoration: underline;">2 character</span> State or APO/FPO/DPO code" around line 1066.</li>
<li>Place a test order using an APO/FPO address.</li>
</ol>
<p> </p>
<p>Here is a sample APO address:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">Pvt Bailey, Beetle I.<br />
VMM-132<br />
UNIT 99909<br />
FPO AE 09509</p>
<p>09509 is the 5 digit military postal code.</p>
<p>This <a title="APO FPO DPO support for CartIt- rename as cartitlib.cgi" href="assets/files/cartitlib_APO.cgi.txt">cartitlib.cgi</a> also corrects a typo in the spelling of Belarus and adds Iraq to the country list.</p>
<p>
[[$Comments]]</p>
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[contentType] => text/html
[pagetitle] => Welcome back CartIt
[longtitle] => CartIt is back
[description] => CartIt Shopping Cart
[alias] => welcome-back-cartit
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[introtext] => Welcome back CartIt
[content] => <p>Hey guys-</p>
<p>If you looked for the official site of CartIt and had trouble finding it recently- it's because the site has moved here! If you're looking for CartIt Shopping cart and supportt- you're on the right page. The site is run by Bill Laakkonen, who started Im1 Web Hosting and ran CartIt support for CartIt Corporation (back in 2000-2002). CartIt is a great shopping cart software system- Give it a try if you're not already using it. There is a forum to ask questions, I'm still building pages (over 120 so far) so use the search feature to find an answer or post to the forums.</p>
<p>Bill</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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