So where does this light go, and why as Christians are we so private about a faith that is meant to be very, very public?

I have restored a personal commitment to shine a little brighter every day. My faith in God is everything to me; it’s the most important thing in life. Without Christ, I am nothing. But how many people actually know this about me? This realization hit me like a ton of bricks.

Isaiah 60:1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.

Society seems to have shunned the notion that religion is a public affair. Prayer has faded from the public sector, and athletes who profess their love for Jesus Christ are torn apart by the media.

Tim Tebow ring a bell, anyone? He can’t throw a football according to the media, and he’s a terrible player – but he just keeps winning, doesn’t he? Clearly there is something at the core of these scathing reviews.

John 15:19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

As Christians, we are challenged to show our passion to the world – to let our light shine brightly. But with this passion comes the need to also bring compassion and love. Our good intentions often go misunderstood – and I believe this is because Christians often misunderstand that which Christ would have us do. After all, Christ’s greatest commandment to us is to:

Matthew 22:37-38 ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

To bring this full circle, where does Christianity fit into business? I daresay it exists everywhere – ethics, conflict resolution, problem solving, management and fellowship. Christianity needs to stop being an adjective – something that defines you on Sunday morning…if you decide to get out of bed to venture to church.

Christianity is a way of life – a verb. It’s living out loud and showing the compassion, love and commitment that Jesus showed to the lost, poor, lonely and weary. And it’s no stretch to say we all fall into that category at least once a week.

In one of those pondering dazes, I’ve realized that it’s not really irony at all. It’s in these moments that we can let go of all perceptions of who we are supposed to be and what is expected of us; we can finally let our individuality shine through with no false facade. And that’s why your best ideas come when you relax and let your inner talent shine true.

All too often, we get caught up in what others think and how others say we should run a business. I think this is why the word “corporate” has such a negative connotation; stereotypically, it’s dripping with the essence of no individuality. If we let others dictate who we are, we’ll never come to know our own true potential.

High school is over – don’t let insecurity drive you back into that funk.

I thrive on running against the grain. It’s just who I am. I tend to think outside the box – I believe this is the lifeblood of any entrepreneur. It makes us tick. Makes us bold. And makes us strike out on our own accord, ignoring the failure rate of so many businesses before us.

Social platforms have created a “shrinking” of geographic distance, putting incredible resources at your fingertips. Brilliant minds and communities of collaboration exist to make everyone better. But, this also comes with a tendency to fall in line with what everyone else is doing. After all, if the experts are doing it, how can it be wrong?

I believe a corporate mentality can begin to exist as we fall in step with trailblazers in the community and fail to follow our own instincts as entrepreneurs. As wonderful as each trailblazer’s mind is, they are meant to be unique. Not simply to be emulated. They are meant to offer suggestions and arouse ideas, not serve as a blueprint for your own situation.

The avid salmon in the stream must keep swimming upstream. If not, we as entrepreneurs fail as a species.

Your challenges are unique to you, but common in the business community

I used to step back and filter my blogs, filter my thoughts and believe that I was somehow “not accurate” in my challenges and successes. This simply isn’t true. As I’ve worked at Rackspace, I’ve come to gain confidence in my instincts and talents as a marketer…and most importantly, my unique voice. If we all sang in unison, it would sound nice. But just imagine how much more beautiful would be the sound of voices coming together, slightly off step with one another…each ringing out loud and true to their own journey.

So to everyone whose voice feels stifled, take a deep breath. Shed that skin of insecurity, and be strong in your own talents. Business can be tough, but it only beats you down when you aren’t being true to you.

High school is over, no one is judging you. In fact, they probably have a lot to learn from you.

So think outside the box and dare to do something bold. If you wholly commit yourself to this endeavor, you’ll be in line with the greatest thinkers, inventors, entrepreneurs and philosophers of all time.

In a way, Fanatical Support has ruined me. I guess I always appreciated receiving solid customer service, but I’ve now reached a point where I don’t put up with poor service. It amazes me how little some people care about the way they treat customers. And, more amazing, is what we’ve come to put up with as a society. We almost expect to receive bad service!

My husband and I recently built a home. As first-time home buyers, there are a lot of things to manage – particularly new sod that was laid down the first week of August, in 100+ degree temperature during the worst drought we’ve experienced in decades. Not good timing. Needless to say, my yard is disgusting, and it’s finally cool enough to begin composting. I called ABC Home and Commercial Services to schedule an estimate. My mom suggested I also call her yard maintenance company because they are, “very nice.” So, I obliged. But they never called back.

My mother suggested I call again and that’s when I stopped her, “Absololutely not. I don’t have time to chase down people – I’m trying to give them business. If they don’t want it, fine. I don’t want their inattentive service.” And, that’s the way it should be. There are plenty of businesses out there, why settle for someone providing less than fanatical service?

I am very happy with my decision. ABC Home and Commercial Services came out, and their landscape manager was incredibly friendly. We sat and chatted for a while – he has an Agriculture degree, is very personable, hard-working and thoughtful. He was up-front about their services, recommended I call anytime I needed anything because if the treatments weren’t taking, they would add additional services at no charge. Now, that’s fanatical!

So why do we put up with sub-par service? Why don’t we demand more from businesses? In a world of bad customer service, I challenge you to shine above the competition. Win those customers, covert them to loyal patrons, and beat out the competition through powerful advocates who promote you through word-of-mouth.

It sure seems like a no-brainer, right? So what’s holding you back?

So where have I been, and what have I been doing?

Almost a year ago I began contract work with the online marketing team at Rackspace Hosting. Shortly after that (February 2011), I was officially brought onto the team – an opportunity that was both unexpected and a blessing.

To say that I have learned a lot would not give justice to the tremendous team I joined. In a year, I have grown leaps and bounds as a marketer, strategizer (clearly I am not above making up words, though), and team member. Most importantly, it’s been wonderful to receive affirmation for my ideas and instincts as a marketer.

I have continued to run Ashford Davis – scaling back my client roster to a select few, and taking on occasional consulting and web design/development projects. I think the main reason my blogging activity dropped off was because I still am not sure how to transition my company…and more importantly, my company’s website.

Moving toward a new year, it’s time to begin sharing and collaborating more with the online community. I anticipate rolling back the website to a blog-focused format, with portfolio work as a sub-item. I’m exciting about the opportunity to flex my writing muscles again, and to more aggressively put my thoughts onto paper – an exercise that can be extremely rewarding (albeit challenging).

So to anyone out there, feel free to put my feet to the fire. Breaking bad habits can be tough.

Functionality, ease-of-use and affordability are all factors contributing to the growing popularity of websites powered by Content Management Systems (CMS). The growth of social media and the need to share information quickly has also added to their attractiveness—CMS platforms with social plugin capabilities have become a must-have. Today’s robust community behind open source CMS projects has made building a website possible for those with limited technical know-how.

The published price tag of popular CMS platforms is extremely appealing – free downloads are available for popular platforms like Joomla, Drupal and WordPress. Business owners, however, should consider the hidden costs when deciding what CMS best suits their goals.

Maintenance, Backups & Optimization

A previous article in this series discussed performance optimization for CMS platforms. The required level of technical competency for this process varies for each individual platform. Drupal, for instance, would likely require someone on staff to manage the optimization process. Like optimization, an ongoing backup management plan and maintenance are highly recommended. If a system administrator is not on staff to handle these tasks, the project can be outsourced to a contractor or company who specializes in database maintenance. It’s worth investing in ongoing maintenance because should disaster strike, your recovery process will be much more smooth.

Training Staff

One of the advantages to a CMS is the ability for non-technical users to readily update content and write blog articles. Although the WordPress control panel is much more straightforward than Joomla or Drupal, training will still be necessary. Simple HTML tags and the process for uploading images, embedding video and creating links will all need to be taught to staff whose responsibility includes maintaining the website. Clearly, any time invested in training is time away for the day-to-day business operations. And, if no one in the office is an expert, the cost of classes or a consultant can add up quickly.

Hiring Designers/Programmers for Added Functionality

Websites like Template Monster and Theme Forest offer sleek, professional templates for individuals looking for out-of-the-box solutions. Since the CMS platforms are open source, the code can be edited and customized. The sky is the limit, but your proposed budget may not include the cost of graphic designers and programmers to take a generic template to a fully customized website that accurately represents your brand.

After reviewing the hidden costs, it’s worth preparing a budget that includes the line items outlined above. What is the skill set of your internal staff and what type of training will be necessary to maintain the website? Should you outsource customization to an agency that specializes in CMS templates? Who can best manage security and ongoing maintenance? Launching a website that is not well strategized, looks generic or doesn’t include the proper SEO for CMS will end up costing you more in the long run than it would to get it right the first time.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing field that continues to gain momentum as more and more businesses recognize the importance of developing a strong online presence. Visibility on the Internet through means of on-site optimization techniques is as equally important as a website that is user-friendly and easy to navigate on the front-end.

Achieving top page status in search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! is no easy task. On- and off-page optimization campaigns are integral components to any Internet marketing campaign. If your website is built within a Content Management System (CMS) it’s important to make sure you take appropriate measures to optimize your pages to be effectively crawled and indexed by search engines.

Some of the major page components that must be optimized from the default settings in CMS platforms include:

1) Search Engine Friendly URLs: Keywords are important. So are normal characters (as opposed to dynamic characters, including “?” in a random URL string). Kick the default to the curb and implement something that doesn’t include a string of system-generated numbers. Search engines also consider the length of each URL – typically those that are longer than 100 characters could be dropped from the search engine’s index.

2) Description and Title Tags: Default modes do not include custom meta descriptions and page titles cannot be updated. Why are these important? Accurately describing the page content and giving the page a search-friendly keyword- rich title is a major step to on-page optimization. If your website has 30 pages, all with the same title and description, how does this help you differentiate your content for search purposes? Clearly, it doesn’t. To make matters worse, the existence of duplicate titles may lead to a duplicate content penalty, which could result in de-indexation of the pages.

3) XML sitemaps: CMS and e-commerce websites quickly become robust when dynamic query strings are generated for individual users’ shopping carts and orders. Sitemaps help to give order to the complexity, and assist engines with indexing your website. Within an XML sitemap, search engines can rapidly crawl your pages. A sitemap also helps to set precedents for preferred URLs. Backlinks to your website may vary (i.e., http://www.yourdomain.com yourdomain.com yourdomain.com/index.html or http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html) adding to the confusion. The map will also help to communicate with Google which pages should be indexed when duplicate content arises for URLs differing only by a query string. Also in an effort to avoid duplicate content, the CMS platform should have the capability to add a “rel canonical” tag in order to allow the spider to look for the original content. Without the “rel canonical” tags, the spiders can spend a significant amount of time looking at dynamic versions of pages, expensing the spider crawl credit. The key is to help the search spiders complete the crawl in shortest possible time, increasing the chances of proper indexation and a greater future crawl frequency.

4) 301 Redirect Capabilities: Broken pages due to content restructure can be costly from an SEO standpoint. CMS platforms that offer the functionality to re-direct pages to those with newer content, or properly direct pages that have expired, will ensure you don’t lose link juice or rankings in the search engines.

5) Alt Tags for Images: Providing tags for images offers search engines another way to index content. Images that are linked also offer a rich way to provide anchor text through the alt tag.

SEO Plugins for the Major CMS Platforms

Fortunately, CMS platform developers understand the importance of properly optimized websites. Various plugins and modules exist on the three platforms to assist with implementing the elements outlined above, as well as other worthwhile on-page SEO tactics. The following are just a few methods for beginning the process of optimizing your CMS website.

WordPress

• Settings -> Permalinks: This CMS comes ready with URL, metatags, categories and tags built into the structure. It’s the user’s responsibility, though, to update the default settings – especially for the permalinks to generate search-friendly URLs.
• SEO Ultimate: This plugin does it all – title tag rewriter, meta description editor, meta keywords editor, robot tags editor, canonicalizer and so much more.
• Simple 301 Redirect: A simple solution for managing your redirected or expired pages within your CMS admin panel.

Joomla

• Global Configuration -> SEO Tab: The administration panel in Joomla addresses global SEO settings for the website. This is the first step for allowing meta titles, tags and search-friendly URLs. More steps will need to be taken, though, to optimize those tags and titles.
• Smart SEO: This Joomla plugin provides the ability to edit meta tags and titles for each individual page and component.
• SEO Canonicalisation Plugin: Rather than update a server-side .htaccess file to specify redirects, opt for this plugin. Acting like a 301 redirect, this removes the problem of search engine’s indexing duplicate content due to varying backlinks (i.e., http://www.yourdomain.com yourdomain.com your domain.com/index.html or http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html).

Drupal

• Administer > Site Configuration > Clean URLs: This functionality is built within the Drupal admin panel. You’ll want to enable clean URLs as the first step to making your website search-friendly.
• Meta Tags/Nodewords: A wonderful plugin for managing meta tags for your page – including titles, keywords, descriptions, canonical URLs and more.
• Pathauto: This enables automatic generation of URL paths, replacing the default (i.e., /category/this-is-my-title.html in place of /node/789). The user can set a specific pattern for this process, organizing content in a clear, concise manner.

Each platform offers many more worthwhile plugins and tutorials for best optimizing a website. This has merely been an introduction to the topic of SEO within a CMS platform. The important take away is to recognize that SEO measures can be taken, but the default settings will not effectively index your pages within search engines. Careful planning and implementation can go a long way to help your website gain broader, targeted Internet visibility.

In the age of “on demand” access, nothing is more frustrating than a slow page load time. Your customers agree. In fact, 57% of online consumers will abandon a site after waiting three seconds for a page to load (source: Joshua Bixby). This may seem impatient, but the reality is poor performance directly translates into lost sales.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are widely used for web development. While these platforms offer dynamic functionality, the systems are robust and clunky, and often reduce page speed to a turtle’s pace. Fortunately, there are solutions for optimizing the performance of your CMS website.

The following are a handful of optimization solutions, for three of the most popular CMS platforms.

WordPress

This platform has users of all technical levels. The following are simple solutions that nearly anyone can perform to increase the speed of a WordPress website.

• Remove unused plugins. During development, multiple plugins may have been installed and subsequently shelved. Uninstalling and deleting those plugins will help to remove unnecessary scripts. On that note, keeping plugins to a minimum (3-4 maximum) will also reduce the number of scripts and database queries, helping to increase the speed at which your pages load.
• Combine multiple CSS files. Clearly, requiring your system to access one file (rather than multiple) will increase speed.
• Minimize jscript calls in the header. Headers in WordPress are inherently cluttered. Cleaning the scripts in the header might seem overwhelming at first, but the WordPress community has offered great solutions for those who are less technically savvy. HeadCleaner or WPMinify are both great plugins that can drastically increase your page load time.

Joomla

Many Joomla users are more advanced than those using WordPress. Accordingly, the following performance optimization solutions are more technical in nature.

• Compress jscript and CSS files. Gzip compression will reduce large files to more manageable sizes. Dependent upon how much data is being compressed, this form of compression may require too much CPU usage. You’ll need to consider your server capabilities and CPU requirements when testing this solution.
• Cache queries. CMS platforms are constantly pulling queries from your stored database (navigation structure, menus, content, posts, etc.) Consider using Query Cache or a similar plugin that uses memory based caching to free up resources and speed the load time.
• Joomla Caching System. If you’d rather not use a plugin, located within “Global Configuration > System” of the admin area is an internal caching system. This is turned off by default, but is worth enabling and configuring.

Drupal

Both Drupal and Joomla are much more robust CMS platforms. While this increases the flexibility for development, the correlation is a larger, bulkier system (yes, this does often mean a decrease in performance). The following plugins offered by the Drupal community are great steps to achieving optimization, but installation will require advanced technical knowledge.

• Boost. This plugin will give a major “boost” to your speed by applying cache and Gzip compression to html, xml, ajax, css and javascript files.
• DB Maintenance Module. Optimization of your database helps to defragment and speed up the rate at which queries are accessed and processed.

At a certain point, your website may become so large that no amount of optimization can successfully handle the concurrent requests. In these instances, offloading may become the best means of optimization. By delivering resource heavy content (photos, video) via multiple servers, such as a Content Delivery Network like Akamai, will make your pages load more quickly from the user’s perspective.

Good luck, and enjoy the improved performance of your website.

A new infographic by Intuit looks at the cost of starting a new business in the United States as compared to other countries around the world. It notes that inflation and currency exchange rates play a large role in the costs of doing businesses in various countries.

Our first presentation of the series was Social Media Marketing, and was presented by San Antonio’s own Jennifer Navarrete. The series was very well received, and we are now moving forward with new topics each quarter.

Next month, and just in time for tax preparation, is Taxes for Young Professionals presented by Landon Ross, a CPA with Padgett, Statemann & Co., L.L.P. If you’re looking for tips on commonly-overlooked write-offs or changes in tax law for 2010, this is the seminar for you!

Date: Wednesday, January 16
Time: 7:30 to 9:00 a.m.
Location: Egg & I (Thousand Oaks & 281)
RSVP Online

Look forward to seeing you there!

Content Management Systems (CMS) are popular for their functionality and their growing developer support communities. While the system is technically free, there may be unforeseen security costs associated with running a website and database within an open source system.

Security continues to be a growing concern for everyone. As identity theft proliferates, it’s important for websites to employ the safest security measures when storing and processing data. According to Javelin Strategy & Research, 11.1 million adults were victims of identity theft in 2009, for a total fraud amount of $54 billion. With security at the forefront of your mind, remember that an open source system is just that…open to everyone!

Given the latest figures for identity theft, how are the various CMS platforms equipped to ensure you and your customers are not the latest victims?

Security: Patches and Version Updates

Popular CMS platforms go to great measures to ensure security. The three most popular platforms – WordPress, Joomla and Drupal – all make efforts to educate users about the importance of secure data. Additionally, each is vigilant about issuing new patches when potential security threats arise. The responsibility, however, ultimately falls on the user to maintain those patches and new releases.

WordPress is arguably the user-friendliest for novice developers. Upon releasing new versions of patches, WordPress places a notification on the dashboard of the admin panel. Users cannot login without seeing the notification. Additionally, installation of these new releases is as simple as a point-and-click.

The popularity of WordPress, though, does pose its own security issue. Just as viruses are most common for PCs, the volume of users and installs make WordPress a larger target of hackers. WordPress does a great job locating and addressing these potential threats in a timely manner, but developers who are building a robust, data-heavy website may want to opt for a different website that not only is the object of less attacks, but also offers a more complex environment in which to develop custom codes and scripts (our cross-comparison chart offers more insight).

Both Joomla and Drupal are more advanced in functionality – they were developed with web developers in mind, rather than the general consumer looking for blog functionality. Like WordPress, these two platforms take security extremely seriously, and release patches and upgrades when security issues come to light. Unlike WordPress, however, installation of these patches does require technical know-how. A point-and-click installation feature is not available. In other words, using either of these platforms would require a knowledgeable programmer to be on hand at least part-time for ongoing maintenance.

Weak Links in the Network: Security Beyond the CMS

We would be negligent to not mention that security all ties back to your hosting provider, too. Vulnerabilities can arise if your server is not secure or encrypted properly. Shared servers pose an additional risk if someone else on your server is compromised. Just as it’s important to have an open source platform that’s serious about security, a proactive hosting provider is equally critical. Additionally, if you opt to outsource payment processing, your third party vendor needs to also maintain a high level of due diligence with regard to security.

Overall, CMS platforms offer a great framework in which to build websites that are relatively easy to update and maintain. Just like any other website, though, security is an issue that must not be overlooked. It’s advisable to assign a web programmer to maintain the system’s security, or to budget for the assistance of a contractor or service on an ongoing basis.

In the coming weeks we will explore additional CMS cross-comparison topics, including performance optimization and search engine optimization (SEO).