Question #1: What do you think the most important aspect of my project is going to be?

Posted on April 21, 2010 by mikelinville

Website Project Questions

This is an interesting question that all businesses should ask of their potential web developer. The answer that you get will tell you two VERY important things.

Are they listening to me? Do they actually answer the question correctly or do they answer another question that they are thinking of such as “What will be the most difficult task?” or “What are the key graphical features of the site?”. The key phrase that we want to stress here is “most important aspect”. Some people may think we are splitting hairs here or strictly dealing with semantics but the ability for you and your website designer to communicate with each other is crucially important. If they didn’t listen to this section what else didn’t they listen to?
Do they understand the purpose of the site. To bring it back to terms I like to use … Do they comprehend my GOAL. The goal of a website is in essence its purpose for being. This is the foundation on which your scope will be created and site will eventually be developed. If the developer doesn’t fully understand your goal(s) for the site – it will never be a success. It can’t be.

When all is said and done don’t be afraid to ask questions. You are paying your developer good money to create your vision and realize your goals. A good developer will understand this and will not mind one bit.

7 Musts for Local Search Engine Optimization

Posted on April 14, 2010 by mikelinville

Local SEO
A list of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) “add-ons” that will help raise your localized search rankings.

Local Business Listings (Google, Yahoo, Bing)
Use your business address, not a PO Box
Use your local phone number, not an 800 number
Add a locator map and business hours to your contact page
List the names of the cities that you serve
Include city and state in site content, titles, headers, etc.
Create a printable coupon to drive traffic to your location*

* 82% of local searchers follow up with an offline in-store visit or phone call. (comScore)

WordPress Blog Upgrades 101

Posted on April 13, 2010 by mikelinville

WordPress makes a fantastic product. It is great for when you have a relatively simple website that the client wants to control the content. I like to consider it an entry level CMS.

Anyway, as with many 3rd party applications – it often times need to be updated. This could be due to new security issues, patches to old issues or just an update in functionality. Whatever the case, you need to know what is happening before you go and update blindly.

Typically with 3rd party apps there are three main areas of concern. Each of these areas must be reviewed and taken into consideration BEFORE the upgrade is applied. If something goes wrong, you will want to have a backup plan in place. With WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and other open source CMS’s there is a 4th.

The four areas that I consider for WordPress upgrades are:

Application Logic
Application Display
Data Storage
Plugins

1. Application Logic – This one sounds the most intimidating but is actually the least of your concerns as a user. Unless otherwise specified in the uprade notes the inputs and outputs of these files are going to be the same so for you as a website owner, there will be no changes to your code necessary. The application will just be performing better or new features will be added.

3. Application Display – Most 21st century application developers have grasped the concept of separating logic and display. In WordPress, all of the display templates are stored in your “themes” directory. So, check the documentation and see what, if anything, is going to change here. This will be more of an issue of you are using a default template as opposed to a custom template. But still, check it out.

4. Data Storage – This is the “meat and potatoes” of your blog. This is what you have been working so hard to create so you had better pay attention to this. Depending on what is happening with the upgrade and how many versions you are jumping, a database modification may be required. ANYTIME you are going to modify a database, please do yourself a favor and make a complete SQL dump before you do anything. This way if something goes wrong you can get the data back immediately instead of waiting for your hosting company to pull it off of the archive disks, etc. causing hours if not days of downtime (assuming your hosting company has the backups)

5. Plugins – These are all of the extras that are added to give your blog more features and functionality – photo gallery’s, SEO plugins, social bookmarking tools, database backups, etc. Make sure you check these to see if the plugins that you are using are supported in the new version. There are many threats with plugins:

They may not work with the new blog version
They may work but the display/functionality may hange based on the blog upgrade.
if you upgrade the plugin, it may update the styles/codebase which can cause more problems.

A side note – if your plugin hasn’t been updated in a year or more – you may want to look for another.

So what is a person to do? Upgrade, just be smart about it.

STEP 1: Backup your file system.
STEP 2: Backup your database.
STEP 3: Review your site real quick to refresh your mind of the look.*
STEP 4: Upgrade the blog.
STEP 5: Test the site (check posts, check display, everything).
STEP 6: Fix any issues.
STEP 7: Upgrade Plugins (one at a time)
STEP 8: Test the site (focus on plugin functionality)
STEP 9: Fix any issues and return to STEP 7
STEP 10: If all is well, write a new blog post.

* This may seem funny but as a blogger – I spend most of the time looking at my blog backend interface, not the frontend display. You want to refresh your mind so that you can see if anything goes wrong with the upgrade.

Black Dog Studios

Monthly Archives: April 2010