• If your community has “shop local” programs, consider participating in those.
• Megastores have the advantage of volume, so don’t try to compete on price. Instead, add value in other areas — quality, for instance, or customer service.
• Big stores have the disadvantage of needing to stock a little of everything, but specializing in nothing. As a boutique shop, you can cater to a niche. This brings fewer buyers, but more of them are qualified (ready to buy).
• Expand your reach with a website. A website presence instantly gives you a global audience. Nowadays, many consumers start the buying process with a web search. You can always start simple, then expand into e-commerce as your grow. Modern e-commerce software also comes with features like user reviews and personalized recommendations.
• Looking to cut down costs? There are plenty of services, technology devices, and software that promise to automate operations or make business tasks easier.

What are some techniques you use to stay competitive? How do you position yourself in your market? We’d love to hear your ideas.

Luckily, these new platforms — your website, services like YouTube, and social media like Facebook — also let you publish your message and let your customers find you on their own terms. This so-called “inbound marketing” lets you engage customers and “pull” them toward a purchase, rather than you “pushing” your product or service on them.

The book Content Rules by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman covers this “soft sell” technique in 3 parts. It is a helpful guide for any marketer, whether your organization is consumer/retail, business-to-business (B2B), non-profit, a church or other membership, or a government.

Part 1 takes up the bulk of the book and discusses content strategy – guidelines on creating and managing the information you provide:

• Deciding on the types of content you will create
• Finding the right tone of voice to use
• Reusing content across channels
• Creating a publishing schedule
• Ideas for topics
• Making your content easy to find and share
• Engaging in a conversation with customers
• How to measure success

Part 2 contains advice for specific types of content: blogs, webinars, ebooks and white papers, case studies, FAQs, video, podcasts, and photos.

The book runs out of steam a bit in Part 2. For example, the podcasting chapter is just 4 pages. But these chapters still have good tips if you’re just getting started, and you can find more detailed resources elsewhere. (The book also directs you to additional resources.)

Part 3 wraps it all up with examples from a variety of companies (large and small, B2C and B2B, and various industries). It discusses their content strategies and includes key takeaways.

By the last chapter, you can’t help but feel motivated. For those new to inbound marketing, or entrepreneurs, it’s a great introduction to this side of marketing. For the rest of us, it’s a good refresher and great source of ideas. It’s an easy read, and at less than $25, it’s a valuable addition to your library.

• What kind of car? What condition is it in?
• What do I have to do?
• Who is this person? Is it a con?
• What strings are attached?

These are all important questions, but the risk is pretty low to just say “Sure, I’ll take it.”

Now assume that you have to give your current car to the other person as a trade. What would you do?

This situation seems silly, but it happens every day in the technology industry. Business owners make critical choices about their tech infrastructure with little consideration of the changes or risks.

A Cautionary Story

As an example, let me tell you about a former client.

They hosted their website with us, and we would occasionally make changes on an on-demand basis. Their cost was our standard monthly hosting fee.

Then they found (or were contacted by) a company that serves their industry. This company offers some vertical integration and promised to host their website for free if they switched.

Sounds great, right? Our client gets hosting for free, plus all the industry-specific features they want.

It’s not quite the bargain upon closer inspection:

• The new provider wouldn’t (or couldn’t) transfer the existing products from the website, so the client had to pay us to migrate the data to the new provider.
• With this new service, the client has to pay for each product they add — which happens multiple times per month. With their old site, it cost them nothing to add products. Any new feature would have had a one-time cost for us to build it.
• The client’s products are hosted on a separate site from the client’s website. This means they get none of the search traffic — it goes to the provider. Right now they have about 267 pages indexed by Google — once the search engine updates its index, this will fall to around 9.
• The new provider has complete control over the client’s website and products. Any changes must go through them; it’s a closed, locked system.

Now, I don’t want to say the client made a bad decision. I don’t know the whole story. They had their reasons; for all I know, it is a perfect solution for them.

But, we see this all the time: a big company offers a low price, but there are hidden intangible trade-offs, or getting anything more than the bare necessities costs extra.

Hidden (and Not-So Hidden) Costs

Here’s some advice for any newly-minted business owners: There is no such thing as a free lunch. As Josh Kaufman explains in his book The Personal MBA:

It’s easy to understand the appeal of getting things free, but the cliche is true — “free” lunches are always paid for by someone or something else. If the piper is not paid, the source of the “free” value disappears.

The business triangle.

This is a basic rule or capitalism. If someone offers you a service that costs much less than competitors, they are getting the difference out of you somewhere else:

• The product or service is of poor quality.
• Customer support is unskilled or slow-moving.
• There is aggressive upselling to more expensive add-ons or extended warranties.
• They sell your info to advertisers.
• They place their own ads within your content.

Big companies use all of these — how often have you heard someone complain about outsourced tech support, cheap Chinese parts, or a high-pressure salesman?

Moving to cheaper labor has its problems too. Freelancers tend to disappear in the middle of projects and have poor expertise. In-house employees usually have their hands full with more important stuff.

In the end, it’s all about risk. By all means, choose the cheaper solution — and make cuts to your tech budget — if you have to. (I won’t pretend the economy doesn’t stink right now.) But understand that your business will assume increased risk, and be prepared to cope with the consequences.

Content First!

One of the recurring themes this year at “An Event Apart” was the idea that content should form the basis of your website strategy. This isn’t really a new concept at ArrowQuick. We try to stress to our customers that it really doesn’t matter how “cool” your site is, if the content is poor people won’t come or stay.

Barriers to Great Content

So, it seems like a simple task and we often pay lip service to it. But few projects every really meet the goal of putting content first. Here are some barriers that cause us to leave content in the dust:

• Focusing on design/appearance first. Many times clients come into a project thinking the way to capture customers is by having a beautiful layout with intricate backgrounds and lots of pictures. Not true. Have you visited Google recently? Pretty simple, isn’t it?
• Focusing on features. We get really excited about our ideas for features our websites will have. Whether it is a weather widget, or a picture slideshow, we want stuff that wows our audience. However, these features often take away from the real information the visitor is looking for.
• Internal turf wars. Each department thinks their content is most important. In larger organizations especially, this becomes an issue. It’s good to agree upon a content strategy before the design process ever begins.

Benefits of a Content Strategy

Of course, if you do carefully create a content strategy, you can experience some great benefits. Here are a few benefits.

• Better focus of the entire project. If this is a new site or a redesign, you will find that the project will actually go smoother and quicker if you focus on the content. In our experience at ArrowQuick, one of the biggest hurdles to getting a website done in a timely fashion is poor content strategies. We must often wait for the client to gather the content.
• Satisfied visitors. Now, this is the big payoff. If you create a content strategy that is well thought out, you will give your visitors what they are looking for. With careful analysis of the results, you can continue to tweak the content, making it even better (see next benefit).
• Better response to changes. If you have a good content strategy, you will be able to better respond to needs for different content. Pruning poor content or unneeded content from the site will be easier to implement. This helps ensure the integrity of the content.

Mobile Devices are Important

Whether it is in the form of a tablet, iPod, or smart phone, mobile device use is on the rise. It is important that website owners acknowledge this and take the appropriate actions to make sure their site is ready for visitors on mobile devices.

Many websites have been created only for visitors using web browsers. As a result, visitors coming to your site with a mobile device might be getting shortchanged.

So, you might be asking yourself, “Does this mean a complete redesign of my site?” The answer is “Not necessarily.” There are a few simple things you can do to make sure your mobile users are being serviced.

• Test your site. Visit your website using a few mobile devices. If you don’t have a device, don’t worry. There are a number of mobile emulators you can use to view your site.
• Think about responsive design. With some simple updates to your site, you can make your site layout based on the device browsing your site. This is called responsive design. (See the next section.)
• Create a separate mobile site. This isn’t always the best solution, but it is a viable solution. Many sites offer a site dedicated to mobile devices. For example, espn.com uses m.espn.com for their mobile site.

Respond to Your Users

Does your website respond like a racecar? Maybe it should. Responsive web design is currently a buzzword in the web development industry. It really is a pretty simple concept. The idea of responsive web design is simply to create websites that respond to users’ environments. Specifically, the size of their screens and the functionality of the devices they are using. If you design your site with the idea that it will be flexible for your users, they are ensured a better experience when visiting your site.

An Example of Responsive Web Development

There is an example site for what responsive web design might look like. The Baker Street Inquirer has been designed using responsive web design techniques. Go ahead, click on the link. You might not notice much. However, once you start to resize your window you will notice how all the content and images resize to fit the window. What does this mean? If someone visits the site using a small-screen smart phone or a tablet, they will have an experience similar to those using a full-size computer screen. No more leaving mobile users with a bad taste in their mouths when they can’t read your excellent content.

Here are a few more examples if you are interested:

• dustinsenos.com
• clearairchallenge.com
• sweethatclub.org

Getting your website up to speed with responsive web design doesn’t necessarily mean a complete redesign, but requires a bit more than just a few small changes.

Now What

So, that is an update of what I picked up at the conference. The good news is that ArrowQuick is equipped to help you in these areas if you need it. We try to incorporate all of these ideas into our development. If you want more information or want to visit about these concepts, please contact us.

The History in a Flash

Flash first made its appearance on the web development scene in 1996. Up to that point, the only way to get animation on your website was through animated GIF files. You could also add video, but the only way view the video was by downloading the file and viewing it on your computer using a video player such as Windows Media Player or QuickTime Player. Flash provided an opportunity for websites to be much more dynamic and animated.

Flash began to really show promise as sites began to explore the possibility of providing the user with a dynamic user experience. Visually enhanced mouse-overs, the dreaded intro video, and fully animated content began to appear. As web developers, we spent hours in the mid to late 90s surfing the web for websites that were developed using Flash. We were amazed at the leap forward Flash provided. Sites were dynamic and appealed both visually and audibly. 

The downside to Flash was that you had to have the proprietary plug-in to view the site. While the plug-in was simple to get, it still served as an intermediate to the content. This extra layer added issues that may have degraded the user experience.

By the early 2000s, Flash was prominently being used for transmitting video content to the user’s browser. While it still needed a plug-in to work, most browsers had it built-in. It became the ubiquitous tool for viewing videos. YouTube helped push this by using Flash as its mode for transmitting video to users.

The Current State of Flash

While Flash still has a strong presence in web development, we have seen alternatives appear. Most notably is HTML5. HTML5 is set to be the new standard for marking up web content. Many of its new features bring dynamic enhancements. Canvas is the element that will allow for dynamic content. With the Canvas element, HTML5 presents a viable alternative to Flash. One advantage is that it isn’t proprietary. It will also have broad support in modern browsers. This means that almost all mobile devices and computers will be able to have animated websites and video delivery without using plug-in software. This removes a layer of complexity. A quick Google search of HTML5 sites using Canvas will turn up sites that show you the ability of the Canvas element. (This assumes, of course, that you are using a modern browser.) It is amazing what it can do.

So, Is Flash Dead?

Not so fast, my friend. While Flash is gaining some competition, it has still proven to be a good method for presentation of animation in a website. Flash developers at Adobe have worked actively on the software for over 15 years now in hopes of making it work better and more efficient for us. (Flash has always been known to be a CPU hog.) Don’t forget, HTML5 is in the very early stages of adoption and usage. It will be some time before we see HTML5 replacing Flash by any significant amount.

But What About Apple iPads?

Apple has always been a bit of a maverick when it comes to not supporting technology it deems obsolete. In some cases, they were correct. Remember when they stopped putting 3.5″ floppy drives in computers? Sacrilege! It wasn’t long before the rest of the computer world realized that the 3.5″ was dead and followed suit.

However, I think Apple gets it wrong here. Flash isn’t necessarily dead. It is simply becoming narrowed in its usage. There are obvious uses for it. For Apple to declare it dead this early in the game cuts off iPad users at the need. There will be a number of sites rendered useless due to this decision.

When Do I Use Flash on My Site?

That is the question that must be answered. The answer is: “It depends.” Flash should be used with a purpose. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Who is my target audience? If you are aiming for iPad users, Flash is a bad decision. If you are using Flash to transmit video content and don’t care if iPad viewers can’t view it, then by all means use Flash.
• Am I using it for a purpose or simply a “wow” factor? Don’t use Flash to achieve a “wow” experience. Instead, spend some time on your content. Provide the user with content that provides the “wow” factor.

If you approach your website development by designing for a purpose, any use of Flash will be a informed choice.

Four billion addresses might seem like plenty (especially in 1981, when it was created), but in recent years the world has been fast approaching this limit. Of course, the Internet and the World Wide Web has exploded in popularity since they were introduced. The last decade has seen many more cellphones, video game consoles, and other devices connected to the Internet, each requiring its own address. And population-heavy countries such as China and India will surpass Western countries in computer use in the near future. At the current rate, the world needs more than 170 million new addresses every year.

Unlike the “millenium bug”, which turned out to be mostly nothing, this problem affects everyone who has a computer or other device connected to the Internet. Because the Internet is the same everywhere, it’s a worldwide issue.

Enter IPv6

Fortunately, there is a solution. The newest version of IP, version 6 (IPv6), allows for 340 undecillion addresses — that’s “34″ followed by 37 zeroes, or more than 5 trillion trillion addresses per person. In addition to giving us plenty of addresses, it also gives everybody more “room” for easier and more efficient network routing.

Even though IPv6 has been around since 1998, network administrators have not felt much pressure to use it. IPv6 is incompatible with the current version of the Internet Protocol (IPv4) without transition mechanisms, so money and time must be budgeted for auditing and implementation. And even though the final 5 blocks of IPv4 addresses were allocated in February of this year, only about 14% of addresses are actively used. Network address translation (NAT) has also been used for over a decade so that multiple computers can share a single address on private networks, but it’s a poor solution. Today, 99% of the Internet is IPv4-only.

World IPv6 Day

Organizations and technology professionals have been feeling the inevitable pressure, so work has slowly been progressing on making software and hardware IPv6 compatible. To raise awareness, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and other major companies will switch on IPv6 for 24 hours during World IPv6 Day. They hope to motivate others to implement IPv6, and to test it on a large scale. The sites will have IPv4 and IPv6 running side-by-side, so most users won’t see any difference. However, there may be some hiccups for users on misconfigured networks, so this gives everyone an opportunity to shake out any problems with their network setups. It will also give the companies metrics on how far IPv6 has been deployed, since it is typically preferred over IPv4 when both are enabled.

Current State of Technology

Most modern software is IPv6-ready or can be upgraded. As far as operating systems go, OS X Panther (10.3) and Windows Vista/7 have built-in IPv6 support. (Windows 2000 and Windows XP also have some IPv6 support.) Most hardware is also ready or unaffected. However, older software and hardware may not be upgradeable and may have to be replaced.

Is your network and internet service provider (ISP) IPv6-ready? You can use tools such as test-ipv6.com to find out. Within the next few years we will be seeing more and more computers and servers that are IPv6 only. If you are not using IPv6, you won’t be able to connect to them at all.

Start Now

It’s prudent to schedule an audit and testing of IPv6 in the near future. If an IPv6 connection fails, a device will usually fall back to IPv4. So a problem may go unnoticed until IPv4 is finally disabled somewhere (possibly outside your control) and the network stops working.

The IPv6-related specifications and all its implementations are still being ironed out in real-world use, but an IPv6-ready workplace is certainly possible. Using up the allocated but inactive IPv4 addresses will still take some years. And NAT could still be used to extend the IPv4′s lifetime. But an IPv6 future is inevitable. If your computers and networks are not IPv6-ready, you might end up with broken or slow connections. Invest in an IPv6 infrastructure now, before you end up paying for extra IT support and lost productivity in the future.

One of our clients, let’s call them “Acme”, contacted us about a slow computer they were dealing with. This particular computer was a netbook, a smaller laptop typically designed to be used for basic web surfing and email. The person using it happened to be the CEO of Acme. He is someone I would qualify as a power user. He was pushing the abilities of the netbook to its limit. I wasn’t surprised it was running slow. After working on the netbook and trying some optimization techniques, I wasn’t seeing a lot of improvement. I suggested it was time to move to a full-blown notebook. One that could handle the performance needs of this user. The user liked the idea and a new notebook computer was ordered.

The computer arrived and we began the process of moving the user’s data from the netbook to the notebook. This process seemed to take much longer than expected — 14 hours for about 40 GB of data. The alarms began to sound. In our experience, this typically means hard drive failure. We began scanning the drive using SpinRite, and sure enough there were many, many bad sectors.

Recovery Begins

After several attempts at recovery using our software tools, I was able to recover about 2 GB of data. However, it represented less than 10% of the whole. No worries — I knew a backup plan was in place…or so I thought.

The client had been using Karen’s Replicator as a backup solution. Karen’s Replicator basically duplicates the user’s hard drive to a mapped network drive. Seems like a great idea, as long as it is doing what you expected. In this case, it wasn’t. The last good backup from Karen’s Replicator was three months prior. This particular user is mobile and out of the office often. As a result, much of his data is stored locally on his hard drive. So, between the old backup and what we were able to recover from the damaged hard drive, we achieved less than satisfactory results.

We worked with the client to determine the importance of the data. The client was prepared to pursue an aggressive data recovery approach, regardless of the price.

Call in the Experts

When our superpowers are tapped and we are unable to help, we have to call in heroes with powers we don’t have. Enter DriveSavers, a data recovery company we partner with. Fortunately, we don’t have to use them often. If you are unfamiliar with DriveSavers, I would recommend a visit to their website. They have some amazing stories of recoveries — even a drive that sat at the bottom of the Amazon river!

I placed a call to our DriveSavers representative. She quickly started the process. The short story is that we mailed our client’s drive overnight, along with a drive to put the recovered data on. We gave our client’s contact information to the DriveSavers representative and she contacted the client directly with information about the recovery process. There are three different levels of recovery plans that DriveSavers offers. An economy rate can be selected in situations where you are willing for it to take longer 5-7 days for a smaller bill. If you need the data fast you can pay a premium to have the data returned to you in 24 hours. The standard package is 1-2 days. Our client chose the standard package.

The process is fairly painless, and DriveSavers does an excellent job of keeping you in the loop throughout the entire process. The end result was that in about 5 days from our mailing of the drives, our client received over 90% of his data back. This included the majority of his most important data.

Overall the process cost well over $3,000; a painful lesson, to be sure. But in comparison to the downtime and frustration of complete data re-creation, it was worth it.

We are currently working on setting up a reliable backup plan for our client and all the computers within Acme.

Lesson Learned

While it’s nice to know that data can be recovered from even the most-damaged hard drives, it is a lesson we would prefer not to learn the hard (expensive) way. Here are some things you can do that can help avoid this problem.

• Backup your hard drive. Simple, right?
• Be diligent in verifying that backups are happening. Many of the good backup software will email you a notice of backups being completed. Some will even send you reminders that backups haven’t been completed. Integration with Twitter and other social media is available as well.
• Backup your backups. Sometimes, if the data is critical, it doesn’t hurt to have redundant backups. Make one of them off-site.
• Don’t save your crucial documents on your local hard drive. Instead, use your server to store your important documents. Often times these servers have backups and data-loss mechanisms already in place.
• Make hard copies of your most crucial files. You can alwaysThese can always be scanned and OCR software used to turn them back into editable documents.

This is why you need to have money set aside in your operational budget for IT. If you spend money on maintaining your computers and servers, then it’s less likely they will have a major failure. It’s like insurance — spend a few dollars this month to avoid having to pay a lot of money later on.

No Maintenance Leads to Broken Tech

Here’s an example: This month we’ve been upgrading our hosting servers to the latest software. For the companies who have been keeping their websites somewhat up-to-date, the change has been transparent. But some people haven’t updated their sites in years. Predictably, their sites broke after the upgrade. (We haven’t exactly been on the cutting edge of technology; the changes involve upgrading to software that came out in 2005.)

Computer technology is one of the fastest-moving industries in the world. The wishful thinking that “it will always work” is dangerous when your business relies on it working. Waiting until something breaks will result in bigger costs to get it fixed and a bigger disruption to your business.

Would you drive your car for years without oil changes or basic maintenance? You might get lucky and nothing will ever go wrong. But it’s more likely that everything is slowly wearing out. Don’t be surprised if one day the engine falls out when you’re driving.

What To Do

There are at least 3 areas that you should be investing in:

• Your IT department or agents should be keeping your workplace computers updated.
• Your hosting provider is responsible for keeping your servers up-to-date and running.
• Your webmaster should be updating your website and its software.

If you are not paying for regular maintenance in any of these — or at least having a regular evaluation — then it’s only a matter of time before it will stop working.

(Need some outside help? You can contact ArrowQuick for a free estimate. We offer discounts for monthly retainers.)

Here are the changes that will be visible to you, as a customer:

• We will no longer have office space at our current location (201 High Ave E, Oskaloosa).
• Our new mailing address will be 118 1st Ave E, Box 125, Oskaloosa, IA 52577.
• Invoices will be emailed to customers, rather than sent through snail mail.

That’s basically it. All other contact methods will stay the same, and there won’t be any change in services. We will continuing serving the community and our customers as we always have.

Why?

It’s been great in our current space, but we’ve reached the point where having an office with walk-in hours is no longer necessary.

• We work exclusively with businesses, so no retail space is needed.
• Almost all IT work is done on-site or through a remote connection. Web and hosting services require no tangible exchange at all.
• A very small amount of our customers have ever been to our office, and most of those use it for convenience rather than necessity.
• Our core team is now small enough that we don’t need big office space.
• In this economy, it doesn’t make sense to pay for office space that we’re not using to maximum efficiency.

We will still have a group workspace, but it won’t be accessible to walk-in traffic. Not to worry — we will continue to offer pick-up service, and if it’s really necessary, we can arrange a drop-off. There are also nearby meeting spaces available for client meetings.

Benefits

Not being tied to a physical location provides some advantages.

It’s especially easy for a technology-based company like ArrowQuick, but any company can virtualize their infrastructure. In this age of the ubiquitous internet, communication can take place anywhere. Email can be accessed from any smartphone or laptop. Instant messaging and social media tools are widely available. Virtual PBXes provide a sophisticated phone system without the hardware. Even good-ol’ snail mail has become virtual with services like Earth Class Mail.

With a virtual infrastructure, a team can be completely separated geographically, yet still communicate and work together. This lets us do things like work from home, but it also lets us recruit team members from any part of the world. As a service company, we can also expand to other regions with little effort.

And, if done right, it’s actually cheaper.

It also fits with our core brand. We want to prove to our customers that we are technology superheroes. We believe a virtual infrastructure will provide our team and customers with more flexibility, and that it will help us focus on providing the expert solutions and excellent service that we are known for.

Image from technopus.com

Here is a typical senario. You have recently hired a new staff person at your business. You would like to get that person added to your website so that your visitors can meet them. You email your request for the addition to the person that manages your website. A few weeks later you take a look at the site because you haven’t heard back from your website manager. You notice the change still isn’t up. You email your website manager a second request. Weeks later you finally get an email that the update has been made. Sound familiar? Fortunately, there is an easy way for you to manage your content without having to rely on someone else.

Enter Content Management Systems

Content Management Systems (CMS) are web based applications that allow you to update your content from a web browser easily. Let’s break it down.

C Is For Content

The idea behind a CMS is for you to control the content. Let’s face it. Without excellent content your site is useless. The saying “content is king” rings true. You can have the flashiest, most beautiful website ever, but if your content is weak or meaningless you will lose visitors quickly. Before you worry about the look of your site and whether you want to use a CMS or not, decide what content you want to provide and how to organize it.

In terms of CMSes, there are differences in functionality, but they will still display your content to the user. You can spend thousands of dollars on a CMS or use a free one, but it can’t write your content for you. You’re going to have to get your hands dirty.

M Is For Management

The management of your content is where the software takes over. This is the heart of a CMS. What do I mean by “management”? By logging into a secured location on your site, you are able to add articles via a web browser and a form you fill out. Often you can choose to post the content immediately, show it at a later date, and unpublish at a given date. You can edit, add, and remove content quickly using the management interface of a CMS.

Most good CMSes also have a good menu management system that allows you to organize your content in logical ways. Your menu system is an important part of your site. Users want to be able to get to your good content easily.

Many CMSes have a built-in search tool. This is great for allowing users to search your content quickly and find information that is important to them.

But what does the site look like? This is the question people ask often. All CMSes have templating capabilities. There are free templates and professional templates to choose from. If you use a fairly mature CMS, you can find many design options. Or if you are not satisfied with existing options, you can have companies like ArrowQuick help you apply a customized look to your CMS.

S Is For System

Now, if we go back to our physical science class in high school or junior high, we learned that a system was a group of independent but interrelated elements comprising a unified whole. In other words, it groups things together that work for a common goal.

I this case, we are talking about the content (we call this the front-end) and the management (we call this the back-end). By pulling those together into a single, unified system, you have a great method for building and managing a website without having to be an HTML expert or graphic designer.

The Extras

Most CMSes have the option of adding components, plugins, and modifications. These might include polls, quizzes, form processing, and many others. Often, you can choose to install components and use them when they are needed. Many of the newer components that are popular help you integrate your site with social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

So What Are My Options?

There are many CMS options out there. Some of the more popular free ones are (we prefer to work with Joomla! and WordPress here at AQ):

• Joomla!
• Drupal
• WordPress

Of course, if you want a cadillac CMS system you can pay for a CMS as well. Some of the more popular paid CMS are:

• Expression Engine
• DotNetNuke
• Interspire

Of course, there are many more. If you want to search a fairly complete listing of CMSes available, a good place to visit is cmsmatrix.org. There you can search and filter based on your specific need. Be sure to check with your web host to know what platform your server has. This way you can be sure your chosen CMS will work.

ArrowQuick would be happy to help you decide on a CMS and implement it, if you are interested. Contact us and let us know.

How It Works

Prior to virtualization, computing resources were presented on separate physical computer machines. Initially resources were single tasked, but moved to multitasking on a single physical computer. These shared resources were placed on a computer that became known as a server. The hardware used for these physical servers were usually redundant and capable of more than the resource load placed on them.

Virtualization is the providing of access to a single piece of physical hardware for multiple guest operating systems. The guest operating systems think they have sole access to all physical resources, when in fact they are sharing one set of physical resources. This is done by a host operating system known as a hypervisor. Modern hypervisors allow a single hardware server to run versions of Linux and Windows together.

The trends pushing virtualization forward include underutilized hardware, where statistics show that the load on server processors is less than 10 percent in the majority of cases. Another issue is space, power consumption and temperature control for groups of servers in a cluster or data center. Virtualizing 5 physical servers onto 1 physical box can save 70-80% of the space, 60-70% of the power and 50% on cooling costs. These number vary depending on the new servers used for virtualization and their size and power requirements.

Types of Virtualization

Virtualization takes on several forms and may already be used in some form by your organization. Three types of client virtualization exist in application packaging, application streaming and hardware emulation. Application packaging prevents an application from modifying the underlying operating system. This is also known as sandboxing, and isolates the application for added security. Application streaming stores the application on servers so the updating process is more uniform. Hardware emulation is a form of virtualization that presents a software representation of underlying hardware that an operating system recognizes.

We now turn to server virtualization, which is where the IT focus is these days. The three types of server virtualization are operating system virtualization, hardware emulation, and paravirtualization. Operating system virtualization is often called by the name “containers”. In the containers approach, virtualization software is installed on top of a base operating system. An example of this approach is a product called Parallels, which runs on top of Mac OS X and allows Linux and Windows operating systems to be installed as container files.

In hardware emulation, a virtualization software layer called a hypervisor sits on the physical server (often referred to as “bare metal”). This hypervisor presents an emulated hardware environment for guest operating systems to run on. The guest operating systems are called virtual machines and interact with the hypervisor to talk to the physical hardware. Since the guest operating system and the virtual machine are stored in files that together form a system image, they can be easily moved from one physical machine to another quickly. VMWare is the most popular example of hardware emulation.

Lastly, paravirtualization is an approach that uses virtualization software to multiplex and coordinate the guest operating systems. Paravirtualization does not create an entire virtual machine to host the guest operating system; the guest operating system is enabled to interact directly with the hypervisor. Paravirtualization also uses a capability called shared memory to achieve better performance. Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Citrix’s Xen are examples of this type of virtualization.

Using Virtualization

In the last 4 years, hardware CPU manufacturers Intel and AMD have added optimizations to their chips, called Intel VT and AMD-V respectively, that enables much better performance for VMWare and Hyper-V software hypervisors. Selecting hardware that allows for large amounts of memory also dictates the use of 64-bit processors in conjunction with virtualization optimization. While dual CPU systems are a good start, the newest multi-core 64-bit processors combined with 4 or more CPU slots and 32+ memory slots make virtualization an even better technology choice.

We want to look at the potential pitfalls that must be addressed in virtualization. The first one is power consumption. In around 50% of cases, power consumption goes up because larger servers with heavier power requirement replace old servers. Planned correctly, power can be reduced, but often not by as much as might be thought. The next pitfall is that of efficiencies. If a standalone server application is underutilized, that same virtualized application will also be underutilized. Planning might dictate the decommissioning of an application instead of virtualization. Lastly, virtualization does not automatically mean management will become easier or even allow the reduction of personnel. The management efforts will be simply refocused and new skills will need to be learned by managers to apply the skills to the virtualized environment.

The reasons for moving the IT environment from many single purpose servers to virtualization require planning in order to achieve savings in various areas. The use of virtualization, when planned correctly, can allow for space and power savings, add redundancy and uptime for end users, but will require management and skill changes in the IT personnel tasked with its implementation.

Screenshot provided by Andrew Mason.

The traditional computing environment contains four elements: CPU, primary storage (random access memory), secondary storage (magnetic and optical media), and input/output devices. Some can argue that the four elements are input, output, processing and storage; I have taken a little license to point out secondary storage. The storage element is where this article concentrates.

The Case for SANs

As a review, direct access storage (DAS) is a physical device that is connected directly, either internally (hard drive) or externally (USB drive) that can be used to store data. In a single computer environment, say for home or personal use, the DAS method makes practical sense. When multiple computers are in use in a small business or home office, DAS still makes sense. The use of cloud storage like DropBox, MobileMe, SkyDrive and Amazon S3 are examples of storage area networks (SANs) by personal and business users.

However, when a business has a need for sharing storage resources on their local network (LAN), the situation and needs may dictate more than DAS and filesharing. A business with a single server may still just use DAS on the server to do file sharing. But when multiple servers are set up and consolidating data, or making servers redundant becomes a goal in a business, than virtualizing storage into a SAN is key.

The other reason for virtualizing storage is the march forward of virtual machines (VMs), where physical servers that were once separate are consolidated into one physical box to use computing resources more efficiently. The virtual machines reside on DAS or SAN devices called nodes. The benefit of using SANs is that if a physical machine that runs the VMs stops functioning, another physical machine can be brought online and connect immediately to the SANs where the VMs are located. Also, multiple physical server machines can be used to balance the load of VMs running on the corporate network. Examples of this are search engines and news applications, such as Google and Digg, respectively.

Building a SAN

Multiple SAN nodes can be used on a business network for redundancy in larger corporate networks. Storage area networks can have nodes and physical virtual machine servers shared via Fibre Channel or iSCSI. Fibre Channel uses relatively expensive fiber optic transceivers, cables, and switches. iSCSI is an inexpensive implementation of Ethernet protocols that uses relatively inexpensive network equipment. This SAN is placed on its own LAN segment or virtual LAN where traffic does not compete with normal network traffic.

SAN nodes are physical machines that can be PCs with many DAS bays and hardware RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) using SAN software products. Two free packages for setting up a SAN node are FreeNAS and OpenFiler. The more technically inclined might use a Linux distribution and set up iSCSI targets. The RAID arrays are usually left unformatted as simple block storage; that way, the specific server or virtual servers can use the SAN node storage natively. An example is VMWare, the popular virtual machine server. When VMWare connects to a iSCSI SAN node, it will format and prepare the block volume for use by VMWare virtual machines.

There are also SAN node appliances, which are more expensive, but may provide a level of redundancy and uptime required for mission critical corporate systems. EMC, Intel, Dell and Hewlett Packard all sell SAN node appliances. Drobo also sells high-end SAN nodes in the corporate market. Even Apple sold a SAN called the XRAID which utilized Fibre Channel. XRAID has been replaced by third party products using the less expensive iSCSI protocols like those sold by Promise Technologies.

What’s Next

In future articles, we will look at virtualization and the use of storage area networks. I try to prepare an article on building an SAN node using OpenFiler. We will look primarily at iSCSI with reference to some Fibre Channel use as well. For now, look at your business needs and examine the potential benefits for SANs and virtualization.

Server photo provided by VIA Gallery.

If you’ve delved into the guts of your website, you may have used Javascript code before. Those little bits of 3rd-party code like Google ads, Google Analytics and other trackers, interaction and animation libraries, live chat agents, and other marketing tools are embedded on your site using Javascript.

First, take an inventory of what you’re including. For example, Apple’s website loads 12 separate Javascript files on the homepage alone — 3 standard libraries, 2 for tracking and metrics, and 7 for specific site functionality. At the very least, those 7 files could be combined into one single file. AllMusic.com is even worse, with 3 standard libraries, 1 file for site functionality, 4 for tracking, and 4 for ads. Each of these files requires another roundtrip between the visitor’s computer and the web server. Be judicious in what you include on your site — there’s a trade-off between features and speed.

Let’s assume you need all these files, and they’ve been combined into the fewest number of files possible. The way Javascript code is traditionally added to a page means that it is synchronous or blocking — that is, none of the content on your webpage is displayed until all Javascript code is loaded. Now, if the visitor has a fast connection, the delay will less than a second. But if your site has a lot of Javascript code, or the visitor is on a slower connection, this can take much longer, and by that time the visitor will have left. By making the Javascript asynchronous or deferred, the code will load in the background or after the content is displayed.

By making these simple changes, your website will feel much more responsive to visitors. And none of the underlying functionality needs to change.

SSL

I touched on the secure sockets layer (SSL) briefly in my article Starting an E-commerce Website. SSL encrypts traffic between the visitor and the web server, so that credit card numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information is protected from prying eyes. You may have noticed the “http:” prefix in your browser’s address bar changing to “https:” when you go to a secure webpage. More likely, you have noticed a padlock icon, which also indicates if a webpage is encrypted or not.

In order to use SSL on your site, you need to buy an SSL certificate from a certificate authority (or a reseller like ArrowQuick) and install it on the web server. Certificate authorities are companies that sell digital certificates. They are trusted by the browser makers because they verify your identity and ownership of your website, thereby establishing a “chain of trust” from you to your website visitors.

Certificates are tied to a specific host name, or set of host names, such as “example.com”. If you just have one site, then you could buy a certificate that includes, for example, both “example.com” and “www.example.com”. If you have another site, then you would need to buy another certificate to secure that domain. (If you buy a multi-domain certificate, then you could add multiple sites to a single certificate.)

Site Seals

Almost all SSL certificates come with a site seal. By including a bit of code on your website, you can show visitors a badge that confirms that the site is encrypted. Visitors can usually click on it to get details about the certificate.

An example of an SSL seal.

These seals don’t actually secure anything themselves; they only provide a reassurance to visitors that the site is encrypted. However, if you’re in a business where security is very important (banks, e-commerce, high-risk transactions), then this could make a big difference in convincing customers to do business with you.

There are also a number of companies that offer active verification services, from website security scanning to customer privacy to business verification. If you pass their tests, you can place their seal on your website. Again, the idea is that customers will view it as a seal of approval from a trusted authority. The quality between companies can vary wildly, so be sure to do your research on effectiveness and reputation.

An example of a privacy verification seal.

One of the most well-known trust authorities is the Better Business Bureau.

Infrastructure

An SSL certificate only encrypts traffic between your customer and the web server; a security hole on the server or in the workplace could still leave your customers open to attack.

There are some basic steps you should take:

• Make sure the software running your website is up-to-date.
• Be sure that you are using hard-to-guess passwords.
• Always encrypt sensitive information stored in files or databases on your server.
• Restrict access to only the employees that need the information.
• The computers at your business location should also be protected with anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.

Is Your Website Secure?

In this article I’ve just touched on how to begin securing your website; computer security is an industry in itself, and should be an ongoing practice of your business. We recommend you hire professionals to perform regular audits and fix any problems — might I recommend some experts that I know of?

This is what sits right outside our front door at the office.

This 5' drift took me and my family about 2 hours to get out of the way.

High winds created snow drifts everywhere.

Please excuse us if there a delay in our response to any phone messages! It can be difficult to get to the office.

One solution is to set the paging file to a fixed size so that it will not become fragmented. In newer versions of Windows Vista and 7, go to Control Panel –> System –> Advanced System Settings –> Performance Settings –> Advanced. Click the Virtual Memory Change button. Select “no paging file” for all disks. Reboot the computer and then run your defragging program.

Once defragging is completed, go back to the Virtual Memory control panel and insert values for the initial and maximum size, keeping within the amount of physical memory in your computer system. Reboot the computer and the resulting paging file will be a single big un-fragmented file that should stay as such.  A wonderful utility for defragging at boot time is the free PageDefrag found at Microsoft TechNet.

The next special circumstance is the hiberfil.sys file, which cannot be defragged on a running system. This file can be deleted at the command line using this command: powercfg –h off. Then reboot the system and the file will be automatically deleted. You can then re-enable hibernate support under Control Panel –> Power Options. Upon the next reboot, the hiberfil.sys file is automatically recreated.

The System Volume Information series of files is part of the System Restore facility, Shadow Copy service or Windows backup. While Windows XP allows those files to be defragmented, Vista and Windows 7 will not defrag these files. There is a process for the cleanup of these special files. Simply run Disk Cleanup and use the More Options tab. To turn off System Restore, follow this procedure.

1. In Vista or Windows 7, go to Control Panel and click System.
2. Select “System Protection”.
3. If a disk has a checkmark then remove the checkmark.

The last special file consideration is that of the Windows journal files. These files show up in this path: C:\$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J:$DATA and can comprise a large fragmented file. The file is invisible to most applications and can’t be defragged by the operating system prior to Windows 7.  The journal file is a database of all changes made to files on a NTFS volume and is used by programs to quickly determine all the modifications made to a set of files. Using Windows’ indexing service, file replication service, remote installation service or remote storage services enables the journal.

The solution for defragging the journal file is to simply delete it, and Windows will rebuild the file. Deleting the journal file is usually safe, though some consequences might occur with applications that do not detect journal deletion or use alternative methods of finding changed files. The following command from the command line will delete journal files. Type fsutil usn deletejournal /n C: and wait for it to finish.

A couple other special files include TOPS files that are used by Windows Transactional Resource Manager and NTFS system log files. TOPS files can be cleaned, but not deleted using the command: fsutil resource setautoreset true c:\ and  the NTFS logfile can have its size changed, but it cannot be deleted, moved or defragmented.

In many computing systems, there is little reason to concern ourselves with these special files, but for critical systems and servers, when space becomes and issue on crowded hard drive volumes, these special files do become important to manage. The rule of thumb about keeping 30% of your disk space free has fallen on many deaf ears in the IT community. The special files on hard drives can make up 10%+ of the total disk space, and so I believe its important to be mindful of handling these files with expertise and seriousness.

Knowing and applying these techniques and processes can make a server or computer system run much better and prevent data loss.

Older servers, when new, often contained state-of-the-art components. The hardware specifications for servers are much better than PCs workstations, and this equates to a longer life of service. Server hardware is meant to run 24×7 and has reliability factors, which make them last years beyond basic PCs.

Take a 2003 server and its hardware as an example. These servers have Intel Xeon processors with hyper-threading for excellent performance. Although they do not contain multiple cores, many servers have space for two processors. Combined with hyper-threading, two processors and a modern 32-bit Windows or Linux server operating system, and you have a solid-performing server in 2010.

There are websites and businesses dedicated to providing parts and components for older servers. The prices for these components are very reasonable and in some cases downright inexpensive. Power supplies that would cost $250 and more for new servers will cost less than $80 for old servers. Memory, processors and SCSI hard drives are all available to outfit old servers and make them usable today.

While old servers may have limitations in terms of processing power, they still have disk I/O (hard drive input/output) performance that is very good by today’s standards. If the data set for your business is less than a couple hundred gigabytes for the next 3 years, it is likely a repurposed server can fulfill your needs.

Optical drives can be upgraded to SATA components alongside the addition of PCI cards to add modern interface options like SATA and USB 2 ports. Many PCI cards have their own BIOS to handle the interface to older computers and chipsets. Hewlett-Packard and IBM still sell SCSI optical DVD drives to interface with older server SCSI connectors too.

Once you have an older server ready, there are some possible uses for your newly reconditioned hardware. Perhaps you would like to have a redundant server for some current server function. Maybe you are building a server setup for future virtualization on this older physical server hardware platform. Or you simply are extending the useful life of your capital investment for 1–3 more years. All of these are valid reasons for repurposing older server hardware.

Lastly, consider donating the older server hardware as a training platform for green IT staff who need experience with installation and setup of server operating systems. Learning how RAID configurations, server OS installs and setups work on Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard servers is valuable experience.

With this last article, I hope your business can make decisions about how best to proceed with server utilization to maintain a profitable edge and grow in 2011.

One thing we did was move our offices to a new building downtown, actually nearby where AQ started. We’re enjoying the new location, and some of you have visited and we’ve shown you around. Look for some more “behind the scenes” posts and videos in the future!

We’re really bad about highlighting our customers’ successes on this blog — we’ll try to do better in 2011! — but here are a few notable events:

• Mahaska Health Partnership revamped their website with an updated design to reflect their brand. We also helped them overhaul the content management system to make it easier for them to update the site. There are also some new features, so take a look. It’s a great resource for those in the local community.
• We also helped Mauer Supply build a web presence. Mauer Supply sells and repairs power washers, welding supplies, and other equipment. The site provides customers with details about the equipment they have for sale and leads them to the appropriate sales or service person.
• Kelderman Manufacturing launched a sweepstakes where the winner attended the 2010 SEMA show and met Rampage Jackson, MMA fighter and star of the new “A-Team” movie. We helped put together the sweepstakes page and form, and collect the entries when the contest was over.
• Lyle Insurance in Keota, Iowa, replaced its aging file server with a new Hewlett Packard ML350 G7. They also began using our backup solution to keep a copy of their important business data in our secure, off-site storage. We also upgraded their software, including Applied System TAM 10.6 and Symantec’s Endpoint 12 security protection.
• Pella Engraving added several new Raster Image Processing units in 2010, alongside newer iMacs with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Pella Engraving’s old PowerMac G5 server was replaced with a Mac Mini Server running Snow Leopard Server.
• Drost Equipment of Oskaloosa switched from an old Symantec Corporate Edition antivirus product to McAfee’s Total Protection. This security software is administered from a centralized web portal which integrates well with Drost Equipment’s Active Directory. Group policies and upgrades can be controlled from the web portal.

Early 2010 marked the launch of WibWabWeb, our service for helping small businesses establish a web presence quickly and cheaply. We’ve been working with a small group of customers privately, as a testbed. 2011 will see the service open up and improve even more.

Finally, in the last few months we’ve been fervently working on migrating our customers to new hosting servers under our direct management. We’re almost done, and we’re busy planning improvements to performance, security, and support. Watch our website dedicated to hosting for the latest updates.

Of course, we have plenty of things planned for 2011. If you have any big projects you’d like us to help with in the next year, let us know before our schedule is filled.

(Thanks to Perry for providing info about some of the projects, and to Nicki Dugan for the photo.)

The web has been quickly adopting new and exciting technologies. As I touched on in another article, this includes improved usability, easier ways for embedding multimedia, enhanced graphics and animation capabilities, geolocation, apps that work offline, and more. Most of the modern web browsers — Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera — support this new tech or plan on adding it soon. Microsoft is a little farther behind; they released a beta of Internet Explorer 9 this year, bringing it up to modern levels, but it’s still behind. This is a bit disappointing, since IE remains the most popular browser for surfing the web. Here’s hoping that Microsoft will continue to accelerate development so that businesses can really take advantage of these new technologies and improve the user experience and sophistication of their websites in 2011.

Speaking of Microsoft, 2010 saw widespread adoption of their newest operating system, Windows 7. Microsoft is slowly phasing out support for older systems like Windows XP and Windows 2000. This next year will see even more programs targeting Windows 7; if your business hasn’t upgraded yet, then 2011 is the prime time to budget some money for upgrades. (The “Pro” edition comes with a Win XP compatibility mode if you have programs that require older versions of Windows.)

It’s almost a cliché now, but social media such as Facebook and Twitter is going strong. These services have always been popular among younger audiences and the tech-savvy, but 2010 really saw these services being adopted by mainstream audiences. Facebook passed the 500-million-user mark this year, and people of all ages and skills have signed on. It’s easy to get started using these services, so it’s definitely worth looking into supplementing your marketing efforts with some of these tools.

It would be impossible to look back at 2010 without mentioning mobile use. The big news was Apple’s release of the iPad, which started a “tablet war” that will continue into 2011. The adoption of smart phones that Apple started with the iPhone also continued this year — many people bought Android phones, Apple released the iPhone 4, and Microsoft released Windows Phone 7. Apple’s and Google’s app stores became massively popular as users installed everything from mobile-specific apps like Foursquare to mobile versions of existing services like Facebook. Like social media, businesses have been leveraging these new channels for their marketing and customer interactions.

2010 also had a few  cybersecurity highlights. In a case that mirrors the Chinese cyberspy ring reported on in 2009, a computer worm dubbed “Stuxnet” was discovered that was specifically engineered for taking down Iranian nuclear power plants. Although attacks this sophisticated are still only within the realm of national governments, it suggests that corporate sabotage and espionage through cyberattacks is in our future, and underscores the need for standard computer security practices at your business.

There were also plenty of stories regarding digital privacy in the news. It seemed like Facebook continually ran into privacy issues all year, from making it difficult for users to hide their private information to sharing that information with advertisers. A Pennsylvania school district got into trouble for spying on students through their laptop webcams. And the Wall Street Journal just released a series of investigations on what information is being collected by mobile phone apps. All these stories show that privacy of information is a sensitive subject for many users, and can cost you money and customers if handled wrong.

Finally: Inception. Begin protecting yourself now, before the dream thieves come.

Those are the main trends that I noticed. What tech stories did you notice in 2010? What do you predict for 2011?