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What’s Next? A Site For People Who Love to Make S’mores?

by on Aug 25, 2008 (0) Comments

Has the social-networking phenomenon gotten so hot that it’s about to burn out? You’ve got to wonder. There are niche sites for everybody — and I do mean everybody.

Case in point: Burnt Marshmallows, which bills itself as “Canada’s fastest-growing social network dedicated to everything camping.”

That’s undoubtedly true. The site, part of the Ning network of microsites, appears to have been created just a few days ago and has grown from one member to more than 100 as of this writing. That’s exponential growth, as any mathematician would tell you. Among the highlights of “B.M.,” as I like to call it: a video showing you how NOT to light a bonfire (hint — don’t use gasoline).

Forming Good Title Tags for Local Businesses

by on Aug 25, 2008 (0) Comments

If you’re looking for a quick improvement in your local business site’s rankings and don’t have a lot of time, you can’t go wrong with making some simple improvements to your homepage title tag. The text within the title tags is one of the top signals used by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines to decide what keywords are relevant to a page, and it’s also one of the most frequently neglected parts of a site design. If you have a good title tag, you can rank at the top of the search results for users seeking your business — and a bad title can leave you in the dark.

Below are a few details on how to make better titles and get your pages to rank higher.

Steve Espinosa also recently highlighted titles as a top factor for enabling sites to appear in the Google OneBox and Yahoo! Shortcut for local searches. As he states, using keywords in the title tag is very important. But, how should you choose the words you use and how should you assemble them for best effect?

Whither DART Search?

by on Aug 25, 2008 (0) Comments

SES San Jose 2008 is now in the books and another Google Dance — that annual bash that provides us all with so much safe, clean YouTube fodder — has come and gone. Among the various features and benefits — upscale backyard barbecue fare, free beer, modified karaoke, dancing, and light shows — is the most fascinating spectacle of all: Googlers meeting other Googlers. (Oftentimes, I ran across Googlers just sticking with their own little clique and talking among themselves, but what do you expect… it’s a “campus”.)

Google is such an enormous entity by now that it carries a real risk of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. Overall, though, the company does a pretty good job of keeping its initiatives in sync.

But if Googlers are always needing to meet other Googlers for the first time, imagine the effort of digesting a large company in the digital ad space whose founding predated Google’s by two years, and which brings to the table a variety of legacy technologies and platforms along with its own corporate culture. Googlers, meet DoubleClickers!

My Umbraco Experience with Shared Hosting

by on Aug 25, 2008 (0) Comments

I was so excited to start my Umbraco project to move WebDatamation site from DotNetNuke to Umbraco CMS, until I hit a brick wall. Umbraco can’t work 100% on Medium trust.

Now this shocks me. Most of the personal websites and small business websites are hosted on Shared hosting facilities and most of them don’t support full trust or high trust. Now for WebDatamation, I can move it to one of our dedicated servers and take the risk of moving to High/Full trust. My Datacenter network guy advises me not to do so. At this point I am stuck and need to make a decision.

If there are any of you who need Full/High Trust for your Umbraco hosting and would like to host it for a monthly fee, let me know. I am trying to get a new server added to our datacenter and to offset the cost, I am looking for other Umbraco fans who would like to host their sites on this server for a monthly fee. Add comments to the post with your info.

World Wide Web Consortium

by on Aug 25, 2008 (0) Comments

World Wide Web consortium is an international standard consortium which works toward web development standards with specific developing protocols and guidelines drafted under its web enhancement goal called ‘Web Interoperability’.

Tim Berners-Lee – the director of  World Wide Web or W3 Consortium, along with other experts in the web  field, created this dedicated platform to generate a consensus around inter-compatibility of all the web technologies availed by people and industries across the globe today. It is an exclusive organization framed with a mission standardized by various web languages and web protocols. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web, has been serving this organization as director since 1994.

It is an organization which is basically run in the form of a consortium. It constitutes member organizations, full staff and various certified independent bodies who work for a long term growth of web.

W3 Consortium Mission:

W3 Consortium’s mission, as stated on its web site is – To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web. Its mission is primarily executed through predefined guidelines and standards. There are 110 such standards which govern the smooth functioning of W3 Consortium. These standards are generally represented in the form of published guidelines which are often referred as ‘W3 Recommendation’. Each recommendation published by the W3 Consortium undergoes proper value edits to make any web page informative and valuable in its context.

Who can become a W3C Member?

W3C is not meant for an individual. It is an organization which has several other independent organizations as its members. They have either a great reputation in the web business or they are well organized to keep the web platform always updated. Small as well as big organizations can find their place in this esteemed consortium, but, they have to pay an annual fee depending on the revenue their companies generate annually. Fees set for membership also depend on which particular area of the world the member company is located. For example, European and American organizations have to pay slightly higher fee than the African and Asian organizations. Also, the fee structure, to some extent, is based on the type of organization, whether profit or non-profit.

W3C standards are of extreme importance in the web world. Any web designer, who organizes stuffs for a web site, will have to surely keep in mind the guidelines put across by W3C.  The given standards not only help in getting a desired reputation but they also protect any web fragmentation which, at anytime is bound to happen, to any organization.

The Trendy Concept of Behavioral Marketing

by on Aug 24, 2008 (0) Comments

The term ‘behavioral marketing’ is being increasingly heard across the world these days. The entire concept of behavioral marketing involves noticing consumer’s online behavior and then target them using advertising which is tailor made for their online conduct. It goes needless to say that the whole process is done unobserved by the consumer.

It won’t be a misnomer to say that the advent of internet has completely changed the business scene around the world. No longer are physical and geographical barriers a hindrance for communicating in a fast and reliable manner. These days, after the advent of the internet, it has almost become imperative for companies to concentrate on online marketing. The internet has become one of the most important media for advertising. A major chunk of a company’s revenue can be generated through online marketing and advertising. This is where behavioral marketing steps in with its proven capabilities.

There is intense competition prevailing over the internet, with thousands of companies trying to woo consumers to buy several thousands of products and services. This being the case, it is not necessary that a consumer goes through your particular website or online advertisement. With behavioral marketing though, you can target specific consumers, who could drive your business growth.

In today’s competitive business scenario behavioral marketing makes sense for both advertisers and marketers alike since they can target specific core groups, instead of frittering away money and energy without any focus. This in turn converts to tremendous savings of both efforts and money for advertisers and marketers. Importantly apart from saving significant amounts of money on other forms of advertisements, behavioral marketing also results in increased profits.

The entire concept of behavioral marketing focuses on targeting the consumers online behavior, rather than go by the page contents that they view. Advertisers and marketers collect data from various sources including click stream data and IP details in order to ascertain the internet behavior of their target customers. Once any targeted internet user visits a particular web page of interest to him or her, they are then targeted though advertisements that is specially created using a ‘run-of-site’ or ROS placement.

How Can Joomla Web Design Help a Start Up Company?

by on Aug 23, 2008 (0) Comments

Web design companies are using Joomla increasing to develop cutting edge websites for their customers. Joomla is a powerful content management system that is free to use.

Joomla is equally beneficial for a start up company or small business as it is for an established business. A Start up company (start-up venture) often has limited budget whether it is for website design or for any other business needs. Unless the business is an online venture; it is a common practice for start up companies to invest only in a simple informational website to begin with. Such a website may have a visually appealing design but often offers limited functionality.

Although all businesses small or large understand the value of an up market website; limited funds often prevent a start up company from investing in a powerful website to start with. In later stages when the business has grown a business can justify the higher costs involved in developing a full fledged database driven website.

Joomla allows a start up company to meet this challenge as it allows them to utilise a powerful website at a fraction of the cost. A Website designed in Joomla is powerful and rich with features found mostly on websites of established businesses. Joomla enables a start up company to have a strong online presence from the start thereby gaining competitive advantage over its competitors.

Joomla reduces the cost of developing a powerful database driven website manifolds.

Internet today plays a vital role in our day to lives. The changes in consumer behaviour pattern have made having an effective online presence a necessity for any business to succeed.

Lack of in-house technical expertise is another reason that prevents a start up company from utilising advanced websites or web based applications. Traditional database driven websites and content management systems can be complicated to use and require technical knowledge or training to use. Lack of funds for training coupled with lack of manpower with technical knowledge may prevent a start up company from using a content management system or a powerful web based software.

Joomla on the other hand is easy to use and does not require technical knowledge to use. Commonly used tasks do not require any training or technical experience. In most cases a Joomla website configured properly at launch will not require any maintenance or administration.

Websites designed in Joomla are interactive. Unlike traditional informational websites designed in Joomla are interactive and facilitate two way interaction between the company and users. Features such as customer registration, Registration for newsletters and enquiry forms come built into Website designed with Joomla.

Joomla is free to use and does not have any on going licence fee. This is appealing for start up companies and smaller businesses as cost of maintaining the website is almost null. This does not compromise the quality of the website in any way and some of the most successful websites are designed in Joomla. Established businesses as well start up and smaller companies across the world have preferred to use Joomla over other content management systems.