Charlotte Website Development

How I Killed the Conversation on My Blog

CWD — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:10:22 +0000

Know a great way to end a conversation? Make it really difficult for people to talk. Know how to kill the conversation on your website? Shut off comments!

I am Such an Idiot!

I had comments turned off since spam on this site was ramped up over the summer. The problem with becoming a more popular website is that you are a greater hacking target, too.

What I Did

WordPress gives you tons of options to control commentors. Since I was getting tons of spam in comments even through my Askimet spam filter I decided to turn everything to lock down. I was essentially forcing people to create a user account to comment. Stupid!

The Cardinal Rule of Websites

Make it as easy as possible for users to perform the action you want them to perform!

I violated that by making people register. People had to first decide they wanted to comment, then 2) try to comment where they were told they had to log in first, 3)If they tried to log in, they couldn’t. 4)In very small text at the bottom of the login page it showed where they could create an account. 5) After they created an account, they had to wait for me to approve them before they could 6) come back to the site and 7) comment.

Thats 7 freaking steps to leave a quick note!

Why This is Especially Stupid Now!

I’m running a logo design contest! I just released a ton of popular content that is burning up my servers! I’ve been missing out on great reader interaction and commenting. I’ve probably pissed off a bunch of readers that will never return. So stupid!

If you’d like to comment on how stupid I’ve been, please feel free below. It’s easy now. But don’t spam me. Trust me on that one!
Related Reading:

What to Do if Your WordPress Site Gets Hacked

CWD — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:10:59 +0000

The first step is not to panic. It happens to everyone. It just happened to me. Here’s what happened, how I realized it, and what I did about it.

A lot of webmasters won’t talk about their sites getting hacked. Mine never have before but I am certain that it happens to everyone. What’s the sense in not admitting it? Entire websites exist to make hacking easier for those losers. The good guys should fight back and share what they know, too.

It started with a Google Search

You can check to see what Google has stored for you by going to Google.com and typing site:www.YourSite.com In my instance, I typed site:www.CharlotteWebDevelopment.com

This is a useful tool for webmasters because it lets you see how many of your pages show up in their index, what the title is on each of those pages, and what the description says. If you don’t know why that is so very important, let me know and I’ll post a follow up article.

The Problem

Since I have around 500 articles and pages on this site, and most of them are indexed, my results have a lot of data. I noticed right away that some of my search results had different descriptions than what I provided. To be specific, they all had a bunch of spammy crap listed.

This is a HUGE problem if you rely on those search result listings to bring your website traffic!

What I Did

I immediately went to check my pages. If that spam was showing up in the Google search results, it should be on the meta description fields on my posts. It turns out that none of my affected pages had anything at all in the meta description fields. Save that tidbit for later.

I then went back to the Google search results and checked the Cache pages that they had. It turned out that those spam affected pages were last cached by Google a month ago. Again, if you are not sure how to check your Google Cache, let me know, and I’ll write that up, too.

Warning, Geek-talk Looking at the source code of the affected pages I realized that the spam was not embedded in my description tags – I didn’t have them loaded then, either. All of the spam was encased in div tags with in-line css to make a linked list of spam links visually show up off page but appear high enough in the html hierarchy so that it was the next visable text. As such, Google used it as the description on each page.

How I Confirmed the Issue

That kind of spam had to be an automated attack. I Googled the terms in the spam. There are millions of hits out there. All WordPress sites. I googled the terms of the spam and the words ‘wordpress.’ That led to a bunch of Wordpress sites where the owners hadn’t done some basic security and the code showed their WordPress Install version. My hope was that while my site was no longer infected, I could figure out what WordPress base was at fault, and tell everyone I knew on that base that it was time to upgrade.

Sadly, there was no luck. I tried to search for similar items on WordPress themes and plugins but I couldn’t find any common thread except for one.

Each page on each site that had been hacked didn’t have a meta description entered! That was the same as mine. Obviously if your page has a meta description, Google will show that text instead of the spammy text. That spam will still be there on your site, but the benefit to the spammers goes down exponentially.

What I Did to Fight the Hack

Like I said, my site was no longer infected. The only way I even knew that it ever was infected is due to Google’s caching ability. Still, if the site was hacked due to my flaw of not having meta descriptions listed for each post and page, then I would have to enter one for every single last one. All 500. I just finished before writing this article. That was a lot of fun. Luckily, my WordPress install is configured to let me do that quickly. If yours is not, let me know and I’ll write up something for that, too.

Why My Site Didn’t Remain Hacked

I don’t know exactly. I do follow these best practices:

Keep WordPress up-to-date.
Use as few plugins as possible.
Use a trusted theme.
Lock down folders with aggressive permissions.
Don’t accept comments from everyone. Most are spammers.
Regularly perform site maintenance.
Regularly check Google to see what it thinks of you.
Make good use of security plugins.

Now that I updated all of my meta descriptions, all that is left is to try to force a Google Cache refresh so my search engine result listings get the spam knocked out of them. The update of the metas should put a new timestamp on each of them and I did ping the usual services on each update. My site is configured to resubmit my sitemap to Google on each blog post, so this will help. All that I can think to do is keep watch over my results and monitor the usual channels to see if I can help anyone else out.

I’ll keep you posted.

Any questions? Let us know in the comments below or use the contact page. Any suggestions? Please do the same.

Has your site ever been hacked? What did you do?Related Reading:

Why Social Media is Not a Waste

CWD — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:32:26 +0000

A friend of mine runs a really niche blog. He’s an electrical engineer and he uses his blog to discuss all of these random projects that he has going on. One of them recently caught on. Here’s the note that he sent to me.

I thought you might be interested in some numbers of the reaction I got to the post on www.hackaday.com. I got two orders of magnitude more traffic! I typically get 10-20 page views a day. Sunday I got 1200 visitors followed by 380 visitors so far on Monday.
I have a killer project to post in a few days. I’m thinking Wednesday, I’ll be ready. I’m hoping to get on Digg.

The photo above is a screen shot of the change in visitors – just from one article!

Imagine what that will do for his sit, his engineering reputation, his business!

What would a traffic spike like that do for your business?

Related Reading:

New Header Image Needed!

CWD — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:20:50 +0000

Here’s a chance for all the graphic artists out there to show their stuff!

I am looking for someone to design a new header and logo for my Charlotte Web Development site.

Design Elements

The Header is that entire 900 px (est) top bar on the site. The header (in my mind) has a few design areas.

The left side where the logo should go. New design. This would replace where I currently have the words ‘Charlotte Web Development.com’
The background of the header image. The logo sits atop here. The current background is that black / gray-lined area. Too 90s! It’s gotta go!
The right side is my css float for RSS / newsletter sign up. I need to keep that, though I am up for suggestions. For now, let’s just say that the background image should be able to handle that element floated on top of it.

Over-All Specs:

New logo on the left, keep my css floating sign up on the right. Image should be behind the sign up / rss area.
Color choice, # of colors, tone, shading, grading, etc is up to you. I’ll adapt the rest of the site’s color scheme to the best logo.
Logo / header should evoke the staples of Charlotte, NC AND Web design. This is difficult, I know. Charlotte is known for the skyline, the huge lakes (Lake Wylie, Lake Norman), Nascar, etc.
Preference for the company name Charlotte Web Development to be legible in the logo. Long, cumbersome name, I know.
There are 2 deliverables; 1) The new header with everything on it. 2) The logo itself for use on everything from letter heads to thumbnails, social media sites, etc.
Image size in terms of memory is a consideration here. I need the memory footprint of the image to be a small as possible for faster site loads. PNG? Gif? whatever makes it small and keeps the resolution that you like.
Please find some small way to put my phone number and email address on the header image. I currently have this in orange on the lower right hand side. It looks terrible.

Concepts.

I am not dictating design here. I have no idea how to combine all of the elements that are out there but I get the feeling that they probably should not all be out there. One avenue I had thought of was a silhouette of the skyline in the center with a blue lake at the base with a car zipping around. How you can put my company name in there AND some sort of computing / internet icon is beyond me. Feel free to go with that or your own way entirely. You can probably come up with something much cooler than I can.

Things I Like.

When I design websites I always ask clients for example sites of what they like. Again, these are not to dictate design, just trying to provide as much up-front information as I can.

Cabo Fish Taco Logo
Dilworth Neighborhood Grille Logo
HowToMakeMyBlog.com Header (I like the disheveled web 2.0 icons).
Tailored Web (I like his phone and email icons in his header.)

How I Will Choose a Design.

My preferences will count for 50% of the winning design. The other 50% will be based off of what my network thinks of it. After narrowing down the top few designs, I will promote you (include your contact details), your company, and your concept to my network (Chamber of Commerce, my mailing lists, my website subscribers, friends, relatives, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, and LinkedIn associates. The local newspaper, too, if they’ll let me.) The idea will be to get the top few images in front of as many people as possible to get feedback AND exposure.

Compensation

I am open. Submit a bid. This is not one of those cheesy ‘do this for me and maybe I’ll get you some more work’ sort of deals. Along the way, you will get exposure. You may consider that part of your compensation. You might not. I believe in paying people for their work. Hey! I like to get paid, too! However, if you like this kind of work, please remember that I have clients that will need custom logos / headers, too. If you have availability for bulk pricing deals so I can subcontract this work to you, please let me know.

How to Submit a Design.

You can comment on this post, contact me via email, my contact us page, social media, phone, etc. Just get an image to me somehow. Watermarks to protect your work are perfectly acceptable!

Other Information

The call for this logo went out to my network first thing on a Monday morning. I updated my LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook statuses. I wrote this post. I posted a question on LinkedIn answers. If you are interested in getting this kind of information first, please subscribe to my free RSS feed or newsletter, visit my blog, connect with me on those social media networks or anything else.

I’ll keep this contest running until I get what I am looking for. Of course, I don’t know what I am looking for so the quicker designers can get me a concept, the quicker I will likely think ‘ooh! That’s the one.’

Thanks for your help! Feedback is very much appreciated!Related Reading:

How I Built A Killer Website

CWD — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:59:45 +0000

One of the most common questions that I get is ‘What should I put on my site?’ The short answer is ‘Anything that will help your audience with their questions.’

The longer answer is to help your audience with their needs in a way that leads them to buy from you, become your client, refer you to their friends, and keep them coming back for more. That’s what I’ve done with over 300 articles and counting now. I rank well in search engines for a wide variety of keywords and phrases. This helps my website design business tremendously.

Answers: Great Website Building Opportunity

Each time a prospect or existing client asks you a question you get a chance to educate them. Chances are that you answer hundreds if not thousands of questions every week. And the chances are pretty good that you are answering the same ones again and again and again.

Some questions come to you over the phone, some are over email. All of them are useful in building your site. After all, everyone coming to your site is going there to find information. Why not give it to them? A website is like a 24 hour-a-day salesman on your behalf. Give that salesman the firepower necessary to make the sale. Answer your common questions on your website.

Pretty soon your customers will become self-provisioning. They’ll be able to find their answers on your site. You’ll now enjoy the position of an expert. They’ll be ready to buy from you. Your competitor down the street without this knowledge base is out of luck. You win the sale.

How I Answer Questions on My Website

Blog Articles

My first option is to write a blog post answering a question like the one you’re reading. This allows me to take the time to fully explore an issue under a discreet topic. I use WordPress and I’ve configured an option to allow me to post by sending my website an email – pretty convenient, eh ? Once the articles are written, people can comment follow up questions which spawn further posts! A commenter very often become customers as well. It’s a great cycle!

The good thing about this approach is that each blog article is syndicated across the web where other people who are looking for those same answers are linked back to me.

FAQs

I have written before on the effectiveness of a FAQ page on your site and stand by it. This is an especially useful resource if your questions often come in the one-sentence variety.

Hmmm… What 1 sentence answers would you like to see on mine?Related Reading:

How Long Should A Website Article Be?

CWD — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:52:52 +0000

As long as you can keep people’s attention for.

No longer. Related Reading:

Ranking my Favorite Web Hosts

CWD — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:20:24 +0000

Who are the best and worst hosts you have ever used. Where did they go
wrong, where did they go right? I’m working on a review piece and here are
my candidates:

Web Hosting Companies I’ve Used.

(in only alphabetical order)

Blue Host
Go Daddy
HomeSite
MidPhase
Network Solutions
SquareSpace
Yahoo

What other Web Hosts Have You Used?

There have been other hosting marvels and attrocities that I’ve forgotten.
What do you use and why? Related Reading:

6 Elements of Highly Successful Web Articles

CWD — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:35:51 +0000

Use these 6 Habits of Highly Successful Web Articles to generate an amazing amount of traffic to your website.

You have a website and you want traffic. Since you know that content is king on the internet you craft great content, regularly building your website via blogs and articles. After amassing a respectable following you started to notice that some posts are superstars attracting out-sized numbers of visitors even long after they are published. What is it about those posts that gets them noticed? What is it that creates this buzz? I interviewed several successful website owners and writers and found striking similarities you can use to bring amazing traffic to your website.

1. Topics

I covered this earlier with the article 6 Topics for Guaranteed Traffic. They say there are 3 things you never talk about with friends; sex, politics, and religion. And yes, all 3 are on our list. But others like tutorials and holidays attract well, too. Bonus points if you can combine one or more categories!

Tutorials
Holidays
Politics
Sensationalism / Celebrity
Legality
Religion

2. Useful

People surf the web because they are looking to find the answer to a specific problem, issue, or curiosity. They may want to learn how to change the oil in their car or just find a way to pass the time for 10 minutes. Solve that problem for them and you can build an audience.

“If you want a constant stream of traffic to a post, create something that is useful and solves a real problem.”

Paul Davis, Lead Software Development Engineer at RealNetworks

“For example, a post on updating RubyGems on MacOS…I titled it with the specific error (”Updating Rails on Leopard – Gem::RemoteFetcher::FetchError“) I was getting and provided some solutions for working around it.”

Benjamin Borowski, Interactive Designer and Developer

3. Be Unique

There are millions of websites out there. Most of them look exactly the same despite each of us being so vastly different from one another. Inject your personality into your site. Be unique! Be different! Fine your niche and write it only the way you can.

In my Hebrew blog the most popular posts are the ones that get linked on other major music Hebrew blogs, and ones that make big, bold, mega journalistic like statements. One of the biggest ones was entitled “The Best Band in the World”. I wrote it in a way that’s bold, sharp, and without compromise. With the help of links on some other major blogs, people really seemed to dig it.
-Ido Schacham Product Manager at Testuff

4. Use Great Titles

Titles attract. Titles convert. In today’s world of information overflow people scan items looking for what they need. Take advantage of this fact and incorporate some thought and strategy into your titles.

If you aren’t bold or audacious, you won’t get the audience’s attention. Try something like “The Best Band in the World.”

Alternately, try something a bit more search-specific. Think to yourself, ‘What would people type when they wanted the information in this article when they did a search on Google for it?’

5. Discussion Oriented

Open-ended questions are the best way to engage your audience whether you are on a first date, an interview, or writing a web article.

In my company blog one of my most popular posts was about testing videos. The post is open ended since it was meant to start a discussion whether testers record testing videos and why. I published messages on several QA forums and linked to it, that brought people in and it all turned into a fantastic discussion.

-Ido Schacham Product Manager at Testuff

‘What do you think?’ – kind of questions also tend to attract a lot of attention. People love to share their opinion.

6. Publicized

Of course the key to any successful web article or blog post is how well publicized it is. Think of that old phrase “If a tree falls in the woods and no one was around to hear it…” Writing for the web is very similar. If no one links to your article, and no one sees it, does it matter how good it is?

No. It doesn’t.

Try to mention your post on applicable forums as solutions to people’s issues. Links from other websites and blogs as I have done in this article can provide a TON of traffic. If all else fails, I’ve even heard of people creating a viral contest to bring attention to a single article and thus a site, product, and service.

Conclusion

In the end, there are many things that successful articles and blog posts have in common. These six seem to be fairly common. What have I left out? Tell the world below.Related Reading:

30 Second Small Business Picasa Review

CWD — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:26:43 +0000

Ever wondered what Picasa is, if it’s worth your time or how it can help your small business?

I did.

Here’s what I found out.

What is Picasa?

Picasa is a photo sharing service owned by Google. In short, you can post images for free to their website and share them with your friends.

How Does Picasa Work?

You can use their web interface or do I like I did and download their free desktop software.

After you log into either interface you can create an album with a specific label, upload your photos, tag/label/map them, and then send a URL out to your friends so they can see and comment on them.

How Easy is it?

Totally painless. Novice users comfortable with a web browser should be able to easily use Picasa. I was able to download 300+ vacation photos from my iPhone to Picasa and upload them to the site in a matter of minutes.

Why Use Picasa?

Because you want to share pictures. For your business, remember, all press is good press, so share those photos!

5 Ways Photos on Picasa Can Help Your Business

Product / service photos!

Seeing is believing.

Chamber of Commerce events.

Especially if you are in B2B sales!

Charity

Let no good deed go unpublished.

Clients

Celebrate your successful clients.

Prospects

Prospects want to be able to see themselves using your service.

How do you use Picasa for your business?Related Reading:

One-Sentence Web Design Answers

CWD — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:56:59 +0000

Have you ever wanted a quick answer to your website design questions? You
go to Google or some other search
engine, type in your query, and you get presented with a list of forum
discussions, in-depth articles that may or may not address what you’re
looking after.

Doesn’t that frustrate you?

Me, too.

One Sentence Web Design Answers

I’ll be making a FAQ page filled with 1 sentence answers for the most
common questions that I have been asked.

The floor’s open. Post your question to the comments below or Contact Us.
Whenever I answer a question I’ll put it on the FAQ and contact you back so
you know it’s there.

Some questions will require longer discussions, examples, videos, diagrams,
or step-by-step instructions. That’s cool. I’ll make a bigger post
for anything more complex that people have an interest in. Again, just let
me know. I’m here’s to help!

Let the commenting begin!

(See attached file: one sentence web design answers.png) Related Reading: