Posted by: Joshua Archer
on Jun 02, 2010
Well, you remember the service I told you about that helps you write better SEO copy and has an integrated plug in for Joomla (and for Wordpress, FYI)? Well, they're having a special promo that only lasts to the end of the month, and if you don't take it, you'll be sorry. The professional account usually costs $97/mo, but you can get it for $27/mo if you sign up now.
- Log into their site here: Scribe SEO LLC
- Create an account
- Sign up for a professional account with this promo code: PROMO27
300 reviews a month, $27 - that's dirt cheap for advice and proofing on SEO content creation.
Posted by: Joshua Archer
on Jun 02, 2010
Andrew Eddie interviews Andrea Tarr about a new Administrator template in Joomla 1.6
Having worked in public education for over six years, I'm extremely sensitive to issues of accessibility, and it's awesome that Andrea Tarr has spent the time and energy to create a back-end that is screen-reader compliant and allows for institutions that take Governmental funding to use Joomla and be 508 compliant and required by state and federal law.
Posted by: Joshua Archer
on May 13, 2010
I've always been impressed with the work that Joomlashack does, and so I am pleased to give them kudos for integrating Scribe into Joomla in a comprehensive and easy-to-use component. Frankly, I had never even heard of Scribe until I heard about this little release, but because I like to investigate new components, I gave it a whirl, and I have to tell you, it's pretty nifty. Scribe, in a nutshell, is an online service that will analyze your content for SEO correctness, keyword density, and gives you all sorts of advice on how to improve your SEO standing, and all the while improving your copy for relevance to your readers as well as the search engines.
The only downside is that the Scribe service costs money, and charges by number of monthly reports, which means it can add up to be an expense for smaller sites whose contents change rapidly. However, it's a small fee to pay for the relative benefits it could provide, especially if you do your best to create good SEO copy to begin with, and follow the directions provided by the reports for improvement concisely. It could save you hundreds of dollars in copywriting costs that you might pay out to a professional SEO copywriter, as long as you're willing to put in the time.
So do I advise this component? I think it's a good one, and I'd advise signing up for Scribe's free trial, and hook it up to your Joomla instance. They give you 10 free reports a month, and that's enough to give a good evaluation. I did just this and I like what I see.
Posted by: Joshua Archer
on May 12, 2010
I've been sitting on my hands, waiting for our hosting setup to be configured with the latest and greatest update of Joomla - 1.5.16 came out several weeks ago, followed quickly with a 1.5.17 update, and while I can easily do manual upgrades, it's much better to do it through the cPanel, managed through Fanastico de Lux. Sometimes, however, it pays to wait:
http://blog.joomlatools.eu/2010/05/advising-to-not-upgrade-to-joomla.html
It appears there are some issues with the most recent updates that can cause plug-ins to automatically disable themselves - this can come as a surprise to clients that think they're just getting a simple security patch. AWS will wait until 1.5.18, and see if the dust settles.
Posted by: Joshua Archer
on May 11, 2010
The latest news on the Joomla front is that Microsoft has signed the contributor license for Joomla, allowing its employees to contribute to the code base of this Open Source, widely-used and PHP-based content management system.
Now, I try not to be a blind devotee of the open source movement, and I'm not anti-corporate, but there's something about this that gives me the heeby-geebies. On one hand, Microsoft programmers are some of the best in the world (seriously, no jokes about Windows), and for the mothership to allow for open source contribution on the company dime, this is a new page in the Redmond book. On the other hand, perhaps they are trying to insinuate themselves into the second largest PHP program in the world just so they can try to steer the ship from within.
We've seen corporate involvement with open source projects before (such as Oracle and IBM with Linux), and there are pros and cons to the arrangement. But, at the end of the day, programmers have to get paid, and to have some paid resources dedicated to making the Joomla stack run more smoothly is never a bad thing, overall.
Posted by: Julia Dvorin
on May 03, 2010
A few days ago I attended the North Bay SocialBiz 2010 Media Conference in Petaluma, CA. For a conference in its first year, I thought it did a great job attracting quality speakers and was pretty smoothly run. I really enjoyed the keynote speakers, and met some great people. I also ran two roundtables (“Smart Monkeys Use Tools: A Review of the Best Time-Saving and User-Friendly Tools to Manage Social Media” and “Online Social Networking for Business: Where and How to Create Authentic, Trusting Relationships Through Blogging, Facebook and LinkedIn") and did a presentation especially aimed at non-profits called "Harnessing Social Media for A Cause: How Non-Profits and Other Mission-Driven Organizations Can Practice Effective Relationship Marketing Online". Let me tell you, by the end of that very full day I was quite hoarse from talk-talk-talking for hours straight!
In any case, I promised the attendees of both my “Smart Monkeys Use Tools” roundtable and those who came to the “Harnessing Social Media for a Cause” presentation that I’d post my admittedly incomplete and idiosyncratic list of social media tools so that they didn’t have to take notes. It also occurs to me that even those who weren't present might find this useful!
So without further ado, here is the text of my “Smart Monkeys Use Tools” presentation, and hey, if you have any others to add to the list that you like or have always wanted to try, feel free to leave them in the comments!
Posted by: Angela Pallatto
on Apr 29, 2010
Earlier this week on our twitter account, I mentioned a pet peeve of mine -external links that don't open in a new tab/window. That got me to thinking about my other web design peccadilloes. One thing that infuriates me is a spam comment.
I use Jom Comment on my blog and I have it set up so that I get an email message every time someone comments on an article I write. Seeing that someone has commented can be kind of exciting... until I discover that the comment is nothing but spam. I didn't create my blog to let other people sell loans, fake Rolexes, college essays or porn. Mainly because I don't write about these things anyway and because I don't think my audience is interested either.
I've taken some steps to fix this and it's worked for me. Some people, like Blogging Pro disagree with this, but you can reduce the number of spam on Jom Comment significantly by doing the following:
Posted by: Angela Pallatto
on Apr 22, 2010
I'm sure many of you noticed on your Facebook accounts that they have this new "Like" feature that turns all of the favorite things you've listed in your profile into links to Facebook Pages.
I went ahead and let Facebook do that to all of my favorite things (the Absolutely Fabulous tv show, the band Morcheeba and Knitting). Now all of a sudden I'm getting nifty updates about these various obsessions/past times on my Facebook home page. I'm now informed that Morcheeba is going back on tour, or that I can purchase the entire ginormous box set of Abfab. I know all of this without having to do searches for these interests I have. Facebook has reminded me of these interests. I certainly haven't thought of buying an Abfab box set without the ping from the Abfab Facebook page.
Among the hubbub around privacy and having to adapt to yet another Facebook change I haven't seen many web designers or marketers proclaim the obvious: it's time to add a new button to their clients' websites.
Posted by: Julia Dvorin
on Apr 16, 2010
It’s Foursquare Day! (4 squared=16, and today is 4/16, get it?) Even though in my boring suburban mama lifestyle I won’t be heading out to the City to get my Swarm badge, it seemed like a fitting day to talk about Foursquare and muse about ways to creatively use it.
I have to admit that Foursquare is my latest social media obsession (late to the party though I may be compared to some). What is Foursquare? Well, in colorful metaphoric terms you could describe it as “what hatched after the Twitter bird, Yelp and an Eagle Scout got drunk together over a Monopoly game and decided to make an app”: lots of updates about where you are and what you’re doing combined tips/reviews and a competition to collect the most cute badges and become the “mayor” of your little world.
In a somewhat less colorful description, it’s a “lo-so” network (“lo-so” = “LOcation-based SOcial network”)--other ones include Gowalla, Loopt and BriteKite). In a “lo-so” network, you have “friends” like on Facebook, but it asks “where are you” rather than “what are you doing” or “what’s on your mind”. Foursquare allows you to “check in” to a venue (which can be a school, a grocery store, a bar, a doctor’s office…wherever) and leave “tips” about that venue for others to view when they check in there. You get points and earn different sorts of badges for checking in to places, which you can then compare against your friends if you’re the competitive type. You can view your friends’ check-ins, and you can publish your check-ins to Facebook and/or Twitter (or not, as you please). It’s totally user-controlled--don’t want people to know you’re at your therapist’s office or your girlfriend’s house? Don’t check in there (or hide your location if you simply must get more points.) Someone who checks in the most at any given venue is the “mayor”--and sometimes gets special treatment at that venue.
Posted by: Angela Pallatto
on Mar 25, 2010
I just want to take a moment and thank Yelp for deciding to give users access to filtered reviews on business profiles. We had 3 reviews removed by the filter. They were from 3 of our clients who have been happy with our services. None of these reviews disparage other companies and they represent truly happy customers who have used our services. Perhaps it's because they each gave us glowing reviews that made the filter suspicious.
As such, we'd like to encourage you to visit our Yelp page and see what people have to say about working with us. Or you can read our testimonials.
It's great that Yelp came to their senses. Having a filter without any transparency told users that Yelp doesn't trust their users to know the difference between a real and fake review. Their explanation of the filter mentions how previous review sites were unsuccessful because they were often hijacked or full of fake reviews. I think those sites didn't succeed because users made up their own minds not to trust the reviews.
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