Hello Thailand!
This post goes to all my fans in Thailand - I knew my message of Content Management Systems and open source software was getting across to my Thai Friends. But how do I actually know of I have viewers over there?
Well thanks to the minds behind StatCounter and a very special StatCounter Wordpress Plugin I use on The Blogosaurus. Of course most hosts will give you the ability to get very detailed stats about your visitors, but not to this level.
Actually viewing where your visitors are located when they view your website is so amazing, and using Google Maps to do so is even better. Each visitor point lets you zoom in so you can even view the house they are looking at your website from, and other amazing tricks you would see when you use Google Maps for your everyday activities.
Dear viewer in Spring Valley, New York: Is this your house?
That, my internet friends, is amazing.
N.B. If you want to get really creepy you could copy and paste the address into the Google Maps website, then go to street view (StatCounter’s Google Map version doesn’t have the ability to do street view) and then actually see the house that is viewing your website much better - from the street!
Tables For Your Website is So 1990
I remember when I worked for a web design firm a few years before I graduated from college. Ah, the good ole days when Style Sheets on every website was just starting to take effect even in design firms, while the smart freelancers in their underwear had been privy for quite some time. I remember my manager simply could not believe websites with CSS was a smart, viable, or time-saving idea. Weeks and weeks of trying to persuade him, and he wouldn’t budge.
One day the company’s owner came in and looked at the design we had up that day. Everything was fine, she said, but she had one wish: to make the title’s to be a bit smaller and another color. She immediately left the room, leaving us to figure out how to make her day happy. What sounds like a very simple - and all too common - request left my manager searching for the bottle.
Needless to say we all quickly realized the importance and need of CSS on every website.
Such a small change would take hours to make! With a website of even 30 pages, going through each page of code and adding/deleting the necessary code to make the titles smaller and with a different color was going to make us stay much later than our anticipated lunch, and let’s not even talk about the time we would have to take away from other projects (and if you work in a design firm, you know how this is the dreaded situation).
The smart 18 year that just got hired walked in the room and was curious about all the commotion. When told about the huge inconvenience we had in store for us that day, he was confused. “But we use style sheets. This will take about thirty seconds.” Yes, he was right! We were lucky enough to make the new website using Style Sheets behind the code, so any changes we needed to do to the text, format of the website, or image changes could be done in one location - and not each and every page of the website’s code. Needless to say we all quickly realized the importance and need of CSS on every website. The best part of the story is we broke early for lunch, and our boss was happy.
I recently found a great website anyone can use that quickly and easily shows how CSS on every website today is a basic idea, and should be the basic framework of any website. If you’re website is still using tables and needless markup in this century, think about looking elsewhere for your web developer (I’m free).
The Blogosaurus - now with WP 2.6
It is official - The Blogosaurus is now running Wordpress 2.6. With approximately 194 bug fixes, it should be a good improvement. Learn more below:
Social Networking Let You Down?
A few years ago I used a Myspace account to bring in some serious views on a website project of mine, but it wasn’t a personal account. I created an account for my website to try and get a slice of that Myspace pie that was so huge two years ago, and it paid off very well. Over 70% of my daily views (of over 7,000 from all over the globe) came from Myspace Bulletins and blog updates, and friend requests - with over 6,000 friends. It was awesome and I loved it, even though it was some hard work.
Amazing content will bring in thousands more views than force feeding your stale content to the wrong demographic any day.
Fast forward to today, visit Myspace and you’ll quickly see every profile is for some website or company. Now, instead of reading advertisements and text ads that match my emails I send to my mom, I also have friend requests from the same advertisers I fled from Gmail. But what these billion dollar budgets can’t extrapolate is that demographic that uses Myspace and Facebook aren’t participating.
The last time I went to Myspace I thought I mistyped ADVERT STORE in my url box. In this month’s issue of Forbes, it touches on this issues relating to getting views from social media, and how it isn’t that easy. People aren’t clicking on the adverts, reading the text links, or viewing websites from Fannie Mae’s personal Myspace Profile Extravaganza. Sure, Myspace sells the fact they have the world’s population, but are they clicking on your advertisement you had to refinance your home loan to pay for?
Just because you have a profile for your company doesn’t mean Myspace will be your largest source of views. You first need to research your demographic, and if they are on Myspace then you just might get a few views - but I wouldn’t plan on it. Amazing content will bring in thousands more views than force feeding your stale content to the wrong demographic any day. Today’s Myspace has become a dump for thousands of company’s obese budgets, and while Facebook is far behind the sentiment is still visible. Simply ask any 22 year old what they think of the year 2000 Myspace, and 2008 Myspace. Exactly.
Wait, State Farm Wonderful Amazing Profile is befriending me, and I can’t turn this down!!!!!!
Google Can Now Read Flash
In the past, and previous articles, I’ve written how Google couldn’t read flash - and how websites with flash would become useless to SEO practices. Learn how Google has turned that upside down, now being able to read flash. This is brand new so I don’t know much about how effective it is, but maybe you do? Read it from the source at The Google Blog about indexing flash files. Also read an interesting interview about what web developers should be learning now because of this. And you thought you could take it easy this weekend?
Backing Up Your Website is This Easy
I remember when I was in college and I was writing a 30 page essay for one of my graduate level English classes. Page after page of work, weeks and weeks spent, and one day the library computer I was working on (Windows based of course) crashed, leaving me back to the start of my process. It didn’t help that I was almost finished prior to the dead computer, and it was due in four hours. We can talk about how I got myself out of that mess at an upcoming cocktail party if you wish, but right now let’s talk about how backing up your Wordpress or Joomla website hasn’t been easier.
Download WP-DB-Backup
For Wordpress, visit this link to download Wordpress Database Backup. Go through the normal steps of uploading this and activating it within your blog’s settings. Once installed, it will give you the option of either downloading an up to the minute backup of the database your blog is using. This is where it gets even better: You can set it up farther down the page to email or place a backup on a specific part of your server - either once a day, weekly, monthly or annually.
For my Web Development Firm MIB Solutions, LLC, and The Blogosaurus weekly I receive in my mailbox current backed up version of each website. This is handy if something happens to my database, at least all of my content has recently been backed up. For users with content being published daily, it would be wise to have it sent to your email daily.
Started looking for an option of this kind for Joomla. Anyone with some ideas?
N.B. This only backs up your database (blog’s content). Be wise and also backup your entire blog on your server whenever you make changes to your blog’s template.
Uploading Media Within Joomla
When you are using Wordpress and want to put an image, movie, or any kind of media on your website, you will most likely have to bring out the FTP client and upload everything onto your web server. Luckily, Joomla takes this needless action away, giving the client the ability to upload any kind of media within Joomla’s Control Panel.
This is a great feature for anyone wanting to put content on their website, but doesn’t want to worry with complicated measures to do so. Within Joomla, click on Media Manager. This section of your Control Panel will give you an option to create folders to place certain content in. Once you are in your desired folder, you simply click on “Upload” and search on your computer for the file in question you want to upload onto your website. All content is saved on your web server within your Joomla file, making it easy to find either within your CP or on your web server via FTP. By clicking on the image of the file you’ve uploaded in Media Manager, it gives you the html link that you can copy and paste within your blog post. Too bad Wordpress doesn’t let you do this.