Krug’s landmark book on usability tells us to “Don’t Make Me Think!” Because he won’t - and neither will the rest of your viewers!

For those of you familiar with Tom Peters, one thing he speaks of is “elegant systems”. I am a big believer of elegant systems. You know your system is elegant when it is logical and intuitive what to do next. Remove the guesswork and hoops and just let people get where they need to go. Doing this with website design is never easy. Doing this on a budget is even harder.

If you are looking for a fresh look for your website and want to make sure it works well one thing you may consider is web templates. Finding a provider that offers a wide selection can be difficult but DreamTemplates is now offering 300 free templates to pick from. They are elegant. Easy and provocative on the eyes. Professional and clear in intention. In other words, DreamTemplates offers exactly what you should be looking for.

I have to admit I was skeptical of DreamTemplate at first. I’ve seen many template companies come and go over the years but their clear focus on usable design really caught my interest. They have such a wide selection it would be difficult to not find exactly what you are looking for. And the template download includes the source PhotoShop files so making modifications is fast and easy.

If you upgrade to paid membership you can use as many of the more than 1,000 templates they have on file as you like. You also get access to hundreds Microsoft Word and PowerPoint templates. And access to BrochureReady, IconObjects and ThemeLayout for access to thousands more templates. ThemLayout offers skins for WordPress, Joomla and oSCommerce so the value is clearly present for anyone who thinks their business will grow – and that’s exactly the point, right?

Remember to look past the flash when designing your website. Cluttered design does not make purchasing easier or conversions increase. It distracts the viewer and sometimes overwhelms them into quitting and moving on. Make sure your design is clear and easy to follow. And then you will have an elegant system of your own – and the conversions to match.

While the Republicans are in favor of creating a business-safe environment their fear of government controls is clearly clouding their judgment on this issue.

“When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment.” -Sen John McCain

Mr. McCain, I agree 100%. You should absolutely get a profit for your work. You should not be able to screw companies over on a case-by-case basis when you are a utility.

While the telcos merge to become the all-new-all-different… AT&T… uh… wait… it’s not new, it’s not different and this company was already broken apart once for anticompetitive practices. Why would anyone expect them to behave differently?

Ok, people can change and businesses are made of people so maybe AT&T can change. Though my experience with them just a couple years ago says different. AT&T bought out Comcast, the local cable TV supplier and the customer service was horrible. Rates were increased. And soon AT&T sold the Sacramento area back to Comcast. There were investigations launched to determine what the hell went on there because the whole thing stunk and a lot of consumers got screwed.

So, maybe they’ve changed in the last couple of years and really have our best interests at heart.

Why would they be lobbying for anything other than net neutrality then?

Net neutrality means everyone who competes online gets the same pricing based on fair market conditions. These conditions and price ranges are set by the government which is unfortunate though I don’t see a better alternative.

Removing net neutrality creates a hostile business environment and severely damages smaller businesses ability to compete. Removing net neutrality also creates an opportunity to reduce the freedom of speech that is enjoyed online.

This is why the Republicans are Wrong and why Net Neutrality is the Most Important Issue in this Presidential Election

If a competitor to the local telco starts building traction all the telco has to do is increase their rates to limit the competitor or completely wipe them out. Telcos are into many different services including the familiar long-standing telephone service.

Telcos offer Internet Service Provider (ISP) services. The ISP market is competitive and eliminating net neutrality would destroy that increasing internet access costs for general consumers and businesses.

Consider other services (I found all of these on AT&T’s website): Email, DNS, Digital TV (think: SureWest), VoIP Phone (think: Vonage), Managed IT Services/Networking, Website Hosting, Hosting and Application Services, VPN Services, IP Blocks, Specialized Software Engineering, and Integrated Solutions.

As more jobs are being outsourced away from the United States, giving telcos dictator-like power over what companies survive online seems pretty stupid to me.

Now consider a website that speaks against telcos (like this one is doing right now). To eliminate this “threat” a telco can just increase costs of bandwidth for that one site.

Consider education and how it is flourishing online. Now consider politics. If a politician wants to eliminate websites dedicated to an issue he opposes, he can make a deal with the telcos to surge-price those websites.

This is giving away too much power to people that have a demonstrated lack of character or regard for anyone beyond themselves. Even in the current environment telcos charge outrageous prices for simple services - just ask anyone that works in a data center. Connecting one carrier to another comes with a price tag of $800 per month for 3 feet of cable. Local loop charges are even more extreme.

Like I said at the start, I agree telcos should be able to make a profit. That’s good business and good for the economy. Being able to control the flow of communication within the US with price-gouging should be beyond the power of telcos.

Republicans should remember why they hate taxes

Taxes increase costs and damage a business’ ability to compete effectively. Giving telcos the power to price-gouge is effectively letting an independent business with no controls the ability to “tax” at will.

Why the War is Not as Important as Net Neutrality

There are two reasons the war in Iraq is not as important as net neutrality:

1. The war is temporary. It may drag on longer than you like but eventually it will be complete, or as complete as we decide to make it and we’ll move on. Net neutrality is an issue that will directly affect every American and every generation of American from here on out.

2. None of the politicians really know what to do about Iraq but they can all do something about net neutrality.

I am a long-standing Republican and I will absolutely vote for the candidate that stands for net neutrality - even if they are a Democrat. I hope, pray and suggest that anyone who reads this does so also.

Anyway, last year I posted reasons why I banned Google from this site. Which is all good except…
Continue Blocking Google is too much work »

With the new server also comes another great treat: blazing fast page loads. The Refuge was bogging down a bit over the previous couple weeks so the move was well-timed.

If you are a member and haven’t been around for a while, now is a great time to check in. If you are not a member - shame on you! Go register right now (it’s free).

• Unique Visits increased an average of 6,096 monthly over 2007
• Repeat Visits increased an average of 8,357 monthly over 2007
• Page Views increased an average of 14,235 monthly over 2007

I’m particularly proud of the Page View increase because I was consciously working on that. Page views increased by about 8,000 more per month when the redesign finally hit. If you think your choice of website designer doesn’t matter you may want to consider that.

And I’m grateful for the jump in return visits. That shows people were interested in what I had to say enough to come back for more. It seems once I get people to the site I can keep their attention. With all the work that goes into writing, editing, etc. I think that is fantastic.

So thank you.

2007 saw some interesting personal challenges as an accounting error nearly wiped me out. I was charging 95% of my cost on new projects. That was making it difficult to figure out why I was working so hard without seeing any return. My big lesson for the year was how important proper bookkeeping is. I hope you take that to heart.

Last year I also got mad at Google. A lot. As they grow in size, money and influence they bear watching. Consider what the merger with Double-Click could mean when the same company has access to your surfing habits and personal data. Consider what it means when that same company is the worlds biggest, most-used search engine and supplier of online ads… by a lot. Consider what it means when their words and actions no longer match. Or when their purpose changes from mission from “organizing the world’s information” to dictating how you create and share your information (and how to charge for it).

Remember when Microsoft was the bad guy? My how things changed in 2007.

Last year was also the year of social bookmarking. Out of theory and into practice this site went popular on several SB sites causing big spikes in traffic with lingering growth.

Thanks for your votes.

Finally, I did quite a bit of SEO experimenting, merging sites, restructuring sites and even banning search engines just to see what would happen! The answer to the banning search engine question will have to wait for another post and may surprise you.

Thank you all for a great 2007. I wish you huge success in 2008.

With Google and Yahoo! results were as expected. Within a few days the site was ranking for the fairly unique business name.

Microsoft’s Live search engine on the other hand was lagging. In fact, the cache date hasn’t updated in months.

I got a recommendation to try adding an XML sitemap and ping it through the Live Search Webmaster Tools. Which I did and we’ll see if that helps but judging by Microsoft’s support forum, I see little help coming…

One poster claims the new Webmaster Tools themselves are the problem though a representative from Microsoft denied it. The poster says once he deleted the identification code Webmaster Central requires to verify site ownership, his indexing went from nothing to a few hundred pages per day. That’s quite a jump. And it could be coincidence.

It seems the slowdown in crawl rates started in October so my suggestion is if you were using the Webmaster Tools before November, try deleting the identifying XML file. If you weren’t, try what I’m doing and sign up to see if that gives MS a kick in the pants.

Either way, if you are experiencing crawl delays, drop by the official MS Webmaster Forums and drop a complaint. Squeaky wheels get greased.

One man… you go high enough you always come to one man… who? - Mel Gibson as Porter in Payback

I know it’s really hard for some people to grasp that Google is an evil, lying, manipulative company (with fantastic PR). So I drew a picture.

How many times have you heard Google representatives say that Search and Adwords are kept separate? This just can’t be because these people run the whole thing. From Search to Maps to Blogger to Adsense and so much more. At some point, all these “divisions” become one company with a single leader pointing the way.

For those of you unfamiliar with leadership principles, the way a chain of command works is communication runs up and commands go down. The employees don’t see the grand design or understand it. They just do their jobs by following orders and reporting progress.

But someone at Google knows both sides of the company very well and pulls the strings to make them do what he wants. Would Google put an evil mastermind in it’s top management team? Continue Google is evil. Here’s the picture. »

While many blogs are covering this announcement - hit tip to Donna for breaking the story - most are viewing this announcement as a positive step… or at least being diplomatic about accusing Microsoft of any wrongdoing.

Screw that.

Microsoft knew what their program was doing and was, at best, slow to respond. This “better to ask forgiveness” philosophy is what led Microsoft’s browser and operating system departments into anti-trust lawsuits. And now it seems the culture of those departments has spilled over to search. Continue Microsoft: Better to ask forgiveness than permission philosophy makes its way to Live »

Of course, the search engine officials are telling us SEOs to keep things clean and to follow the rules. And really, we want to follow the rules and keep our little white hat unstained. Honest guv’, we do. At least we want everyone else to follow those rules and be good. However, we are living in the fast lane and we can’t be arsed to write 150 pages of greatness, and then wait for people and search engines to pick up on those in an all-natural way. Nah, we really need a good dollop of grey on our hats to get ahead. And I don’t mean pigeon poo.

First grown-up step on the SEO ladder is often to visit forums and read, or even sign up. That’s great. SEO forums come in all shapes and sizes and shades of hat, ranging from angelic white like Doug’s forum to infra-black like Earl’s. Then again: you’re not that extreme. You just want your pages to rank decently. The following list will take 10 of the most common whitehat SEO myths and will add to those a grain of salt (or more) in order to turn them into real-life SEO tips.

1. Content is king.
Hahahaha. Move on to the next one please. Ok, for the record: nowadays you cannot rank any page without links. However, you can rank any page with targetted links. Just add your favourite keyword on the page once to dodge the google bombing filter eh.

2. Pagerank is dead.
It is not. On Google, you need pagerank to get anywhere. The other search engines use similar algorithms. Common denominator is links. Nice, proper <A HREF=”…”> links. Doesn’t matter what the anchor text is (at this point), just get the backlink. However, don’t believe all you see on the Google toolbar. The pagerank indicator does not necessarily correspond with the actual and correct pagerank of the page you’re viewing. In fact I have uninstalled the toolbar a long time ago, effectively freeing up space that belonged to the webpages I was viewing in the first place. Liberating, I tell you.

3. Rewrite your pages to have .html extensions.
In the days of yore, some search engine bots would ease off crawling dynamic pages like .php and .asp. If only to prevent server overloads crashing the site in question. These days, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Furthermore, what’s the use of getting your pages crawled every day when in fact they haven’t changed for months? Just leave the .php extensions on, and even the query strings if you feel like it. Spend your time more wisely.

4. Don’t link out to a “bad neighbourhood”.
Oh please. As long as you’re not linking back and forth within the very worst of link spamming networks, then the odd dodgy link won’t hurt your webpage or website one bit. (Sorry, no real-life example here.)

5. Avoid shared servers and go for dedicated IPs.
Again, unless you host your entire blackhat crosslinking network on there, a shared server is not going to do you any harm. Keep in mind that the majority of websites are on shared servers. The search engines have grown accustomed to them. Better yet: why not browse your server’s IP for domains and pick a couple of nice and clean websites made by others and link to them?

6. Don’t buy links. And if you sell links, use rel=”nofollow”.
This rule needs to be adjusted. Ok, bought links are frowned upon, officially. However, if enough care is taken to avoid leaving the usual “footprint” of bought links, then buy away if you have the money to spare.

7. Keep your “keyword density” around 5%.
Duh. Even Randfish knows this is not true. Some landing pages for flash sites have a keyword density of 50 - 100% and still rank tops. There is no such thing as a fixed, ideal keyword density.

8. DMOZ is dead.
Ok it may not be as powerful as it used to be, but if you have 15 minutes to spare, come up with a nice title and description and submit your website. Who knows eh? Don’t go overboard though: most dmoz editors have day jobs and some take months to update their categories. Don’t bug them. Umm ok bug them a little but not too often.

9. Don’t use CSS like “visibility:hidden” or “display:none”.
True, spammy hidden text is icky. What’s more, it isn’t even that effective. But don’t believe the myth that just using css like that will get your pages penalised. There are many legitimate uses for hidden content on web pages, dynamic menus being one of them. Just make sure it will never come to a “manual review”.

10. Use valid code.
Nice to aim for. Not necessary for good rankings. Keep in mind that half of mankind has an IQ of less than 100 and is truly puzzled by all but the simplest html code. People just do their best at writing html, but can’t be expected to be perfect. Search engine spiders have adapted to that, and they are very lenient. If your pages are already indexed and ranking nicely, validating your code won’t improve things. On a side note: if you are using <TABLE>s and are happy with how your pages look and behave, then don’t be tempted to rewrite them to clean css. Really, the bots can’t be arsed about tables or css.

Ok that’s enough for now, let’s stop before this turns into a multipage rant. Top 10s read better than top 30s anyway. Just stay tuned for more :)

Google has become morally bankrupt. Or at least, fallen victim to it’s own ego.

Google has taken to stripping even more sites of their PR scores? Why? Nobody knows though there is a lot of speculation these sites are involved with “pay per post”.

Pay per post comes from sites like reviewme.com where people looking for publicity are lined up with bloggers in their industry. The blogger writes a post giving their impressions of the product or service. Obviously a link to the reviewed product happens in the post.

According to Google engineer Matt Cutts this is not ok:

- Yet another “pay-for-blogging” (PFB) business launched, this time by Text Link Brokers. It should be clear from Google’s stance on paid text links, but if you are blogging and being paid by services like Pay Per Post, ReviewMe, or SponsoredReviews, links in those paid-for posts should be made in a way that doesn’t affect search engines. The rel=”nofollow” attribute is one way, but there are numerous other ways to do paid links that won’t affect search engines, e.g. doing an internal redirect through a url that is forbidden from crawling by robots.txt.

Google has crossed the line from organizing information to telling us how to present it.

According to Google, the only ad platform that is “not evil” is this one… and maybe this one. Though I can’t imagine why.

It is ok to have information on your website. It is not ok to make money from that information unless you run it through Google first (and they get their cut).

I can’t believe more people aren’t upset about this! Who do you want to control information? Who do you want to decide how the internet should work? Who do you want to decide how you may or may not earn an income? Do you want to be an indentured servant of Google?

Chances are you already are and just don’t know it yet.

Starting today Google is banned from 14th Colony.

Who knows, maybe I’ll calm down in a day or two and decide I’ve been hasty. Or maybe I’ll decide I should have done this a long time ago.

Right now, I just hope just 3 other people think real hard about this and make a similar move. I know my small protest won’t effect change. But if a few people join me, maybe a few people will join them too.

Will you be one of the 3?