The Tuesday Push is a co-ordinated effort to put a spotlight on new or existing apps or services here in Ireland every second Tuesday. If you have an original or particularly interesting app or service you can submit your details here to be ‘pushed’ in an upcoming Tuesday Push.

This week, RevaHealth.com is the focus.

RevaHealth.com is a healthcare search engine. They gather the information you want about health clinics in the UK and Ireland and further afield.

The site looks good and its easy to use. There are plenty of starting points on the homepage of the site to find what you are looking for. Thankfully I have no burning health issues to warrant a serious search on the site.

Instead when I used the search function it found a massage therapists that’s very close to where I live, I never knew about it. Could be useful in the future.

I wonder in what way the Search results are ordered. They’re not sorted alphabetically and they’re not sorted by distance from where you searched either.

On a page of search results you can view a map of Ireland with all the search results showing as pins on the map. I found it very annoying that the pinpoint on the map couldn’t be clicked on to open the information page. Thats the only complaint I have though. I was reading through some of the other blog posts about RH which talk about the number of Google ads on the site. This doesn’t bother me too much, I imagine they are paying off and that they’re there for good reason.

The RevaHealth blog is new to me too. I was half expecting some blog posts about RSI or make-up tips but its two most recent posts ‘How the Long Tail works for us‘ and ‘Starting an Online Business? How to Avoid the Google Sandbox‘ have nothing to do with Health or Cosmetics. I’m not complaining though, they are practical and helpful posts with SEO advise that any site owner could learn from. As well as a blog, RevaHealth are very active on Twitter too.

Other blog posts about RevaHealth

Dave Concannon wrote a very interesting Tuesday Push about RH, focusing on their niche in the market place and their business model. Have a read here on his blog.

Anthony Galvin also wrote a great post about RevaHealth pointing out some interface woes and suggestions.

Quickly enough I realised that I’d run into a bit of work having to import the various tables and update the post ID’s and so on. I Googled ‘merge wordpress blogs’ and it pointed me to Merging two wordpress blogs . After a quick read I found out about the built in export option in Wordpress which I had never used before.

I went in to the old blog, went to Settings -> Export and it exported the posts, comments, authors etc into a nice neat XML file. Back in this blog I was able to import this XML file without a bother at all.

Its a very handy feature, it saved me messing with the tables directly so I thought I’d post it up here so it might be of use to someone else.

The old eWrite blog is now gone and I put the following htaccess file in its place.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*ewritecork\.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.gordonmurray.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This directs any traffic from the ewrite blog to this blog, including any link to a specific blog post.

The Tuesday Push is a co-ordinated effort to put a spotlight on new or existing apps or services here in Ireland every second Tuesday. If you have an original or particularlay interesting app or service you can submit your details here to be ‘pushed’ in an upcoming Tuesday Push.

Loopthing allows every business to come online and network with one another, as well as providing customers with detailed information on their products or services. Looking through the site a couple of things jumped out at me so I’ll dive right in.

I know from another blog that I author and monitor the referrals to the site from Google, there are plenty of people searching Google in Ireland for terms such as ‘graphic designers in ireland’, ‘designers in ireland’, a site like LoopThing could really clean for searches such as these and direct users to their Categories page.

I also think the site could use Google Maps more. Loopthing already uses Google Maps to show you where a particular business is located. For example you can see where Loopthing are located in Cork. It would be great to show a Google map of all the businesses in a category such as the Graphic Designers or Architects in Cork for example.

An RSS feed of the businesses listed in particular categories would be excellent too. Im mad about RSS feeds and I don’t see any on the site anywhere. Since Loopthing is new enough perhaps its on the agenda in the near future.

I’ve been reading Robin Blandfords Tuesday Push about Loopthing too. Robin points out that Loopthing need to find their niche. I think thats true, Loopthing offers a lot for a business from the basic business info to Friends & Fans to Business hours.

I’d drop the whole area of Friends and Fans, maybe have a Facebook or Linkedin presence for that kind of thing. What I do think is absolutely fantastic about this site is the business hours section. If that was kept up to date and if many more businesses signed up to Loopthing I’d stop using Golden pages entirely.

I can remember many a day during Easter or Christmas or some holiday that someone was wondering if such-and-such a business was open that day. If each business could receive an automatic email a couple of days before a holiday to ask if the business is open during a bank holiday the site would gain a great reputation for up to date information. That would leave Golden Pages in the dust in my opinion.

I’m in the process of setting up a new business and I’ll be adding its details to Loopthing as soon as Im set up.

Check out Robin Blandfords Tuesday Push about Loopthing

A Tuesday Push for Loopthing by RevaHealth

If you buy something and you’re living somewhere within a reasonable distance in Cork I’ll even deliver it to your door!

- DeLonghi Espresso/Cappuccino Maker

- (Sold) Night vision monocular

- IKEA Ice Cube Lamp

- (Sold)  22″ Flat screen LLyama E2202WSV Monitor

- (Sold) Logitech Cordless Desktop Wave Laser

(Sold) - Logitech Laser mouse

-Ford F350 Radio Control car

-Robosapien

If you’re interested in anything can you reply on the adverts.ie page please.

I might have more stuff to sell in the near future.

A part of the information that’s available is the search terms that are directing visitors to your site from Google.

I have a script running on the ewritecork.com site and blog that sends me an email every time someone searches for something on Google that leads them to the ewrite site.

After watching these emails come in for a few weeks seeing people search for terms like google analytics referral problems, igo people, bank took my car and getting directed to some of the blog posts I’ve written it got me thinking a lot about these users and what they were searching for. Did my blog posts answer their questions? did they find what they were looking for?

In my own mind I often compare a website to a small shop on a busy street. If I had a shop front on a street and people came in I’d like to talk with them, see if I can help with anything. On a website people come and go, who knows if they find your site or content useful.

In the case of referrals where you can record what a user searched for on Google its even more thought provoking. If a customer came into your shop with a banner above their head saying Searching for XXX and YYY I’d be even more inclined to talk with them and at the very least direct them to where they’d find the answer if I can.

For example, I keep seeing visitors to this blog searching for blackknight speed test and where can i buy 3v card in cork on Google. I’d like to tell them that the Blacknight speed test is here and that there is a list of shops where you can buy the 3V cards here. In the case of those particular searches, I include this information in the posts.

But what happens if a user is directed to your site, searching for something particular and you can provide the answer? Your site may talk about the topic but not provide their particular answer. I’d like to be able to tell them. I wondered how I could do this, a live chat? A contact form?

Yesterday I added a little something new to my blog to experiment. If a user searches Google for something and if they end up being directed to my blog I capture the information, specifically the search term. A little unobtrusive “Can I help you” footer appears on the blog saying:

Can I help? You’re searching for ‘XXXXXX’? If you leave a message with contact details I’ll email you back.

To try it out, search Google for “ewrite cork blog” and look to the bottom of the screen when you land on this blog.

A user can enter a question, leave an email address or phone number or some method for me to contact them. I’ll receive the question by email and the user can continue browsing the site or get directed back to Google. If I know the answer or where they might like to look, I’ll email them back.

If the user wasn’t directed from Google, or if the search term isn’t picked up the footer isn’t displayed. If the user navigates around the site the footer disappears.

So far today there were 10 referrals to this blog from Google. So far no one has used this how can I help you facility but I know the items they are searching for have answers in the posts they’re seeing. I’m going to leave this up for a week or so and see if anyone uses it.

I’ll also tweak the can I help you message and how it looks, I’m sure there are nicer ways to put it and ways to make it look much better than it currently looks.

Would anyone like to try this out on their own site or have you ever tried anything similar to interact with the visitors to your site?

As part of manging my time a little better by not reacting to emails and phone calls until certain times of the day, I’ve been able to dedicate some time to working on our own software and services.

What I’d like to work on more than anything else is developing our eWrite content management system and our other products and services. Its something I haven’t been able to concentrate on too much since I’ve been looking after our customers priorities first.

One of the main things thats been on my mind is to create short tutorial videos to show users how to perform basic actions in our CMS, such as creating new pages, linking pages, embedding images etc.

These videos are mainly to show new customers how to use the system and also to remind existing users how to perform common actions because many users don’t take the time to read the manual.

Using a great free service called ScreenToaster. I’ve been able to make a few screen capture videos to show users how to perform some actions.

ScreenToaster is a great service and very easy to use, I highly recommend it. Its free price tag is a great alternative to SnagIT or Camtasia. It allows me to capture a full screen, a segment and save the clips or embed them elsewhere. It also includes the ability to add subtitles which is my next item to explore.

I’ve begun compiling the videos together in an eWrite tutorials section. Heres the first video, how to make a new page in eWrite Lite in less than 30 seconds. Let me know what you think.

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At the moment Im using Google Analytics, StatCounter, Blacknight Logs and my own PHP script to log the visitors to my site which I’ll compare at some stage to see if they all match up in numbers of visitors.

Over the weekend I ran a smaller experiment. I wanted to see if the  number of referrals from Google Searches match in both Google Analytics and my own PHP script.

The short answer is that they don’t match up. I’m guessing its down to the time zone. My PHP script measures a full day as midnight  to midnight GMT.  Google Analytics probably uses a different time zone which might explain the different numbers.

According to Google Analytics there were 26 referrals to this blog over the weekend, Saturday the 7th and Sunday the 8th.

According to my own script which I call “Whats Google Up to” there were 35 referrals to my site over the same period.

According to Google Analytics, the terms that people searched for and ended up on this blog were :

“jobless and proud (X 2), 11850 bloggs, 7th grade invention ideas, campbell scott, campbell scott ireland igo people, can’t access facebook ads manager, cat 5 speed test, cvv2 email address, mobile number, facebook advertising dollars, facebook billing, great week comments, help for jobless, i can’t see traffic from facebook ad google analytic, igo people, jawbone connecting and disconnecting, list of graphic designers, microsoft project connection with springloops, microsoft silverlight course, mini-notebook development, nitrosell, what is igo, what’s the maximum amount of money i can put on a 3v card?, where are all the comps, windows 7 2.43gb, wireless router speed test”

According to my script, the terms that people searched for were:

“Microsoft project connection with springloops, using subversion with springloops, windows 7 beta 3rd monitor, wireless router speed test , cat 5 speed test, house phone , facebook billing, where are all the comps, netgear router running at 1 mbs connection when laptop connected, Jobless and Proud, netgear router running at 1 mbs connection when laptop connected, cvv2 email address, mobile number, help for jobless, wordpress blogs, can\’t access facebook ads manager, campbell scott , jobless and proud, mini-notebook development , Facebook advertising dollars , campbell scott ireland igo people, hosting presence provider service web, nitrosell, WHAT IS igo, computers internet blog, Microsoft SilverLight Course, what\’s the maximum amount of money i can put on a 3v card?, igo people, irish facebook, i cant see traffic from facebook ad google analytic, developing content management system web pages, jawbone connecting and disconnecting , ist of graphic designers , 7th grade invention ideas, windows 7 2.43gb, 11850 bloggs“

The 9 that appear on my own list that do not appear on Google Analytics are:

• using subversion with springloops (Saturday 7th March, 2009 at 1:04:56) (www.google.com)
• windows 7 beta 3rd monitor (Saturday 7th March, 2009 at 1:27:14) (www.google.com)
• house phone (Saturday 7th March, 2009 at 5:21:14) (www.google.com) (Google Mobile)
• netgear router running at 1 mbs connection when laptop connected (Saturday 7th March, 2009 at 13:05:33) (www.google.co.uk)
• wordpress blogs (Saturday 7th March, 2009 at 16:16:52) (www.google.com)
• hosting presence provider service web (Sunday 8th March, 2009 at 0:08:29) (www.google.com)
• computers internet blog (Sunday 8th March, 2009 at 5:05:20) (www.google.com)
• irish facebook (Sunday 8th March, 2009 at 16:41:01) (www.google.ie)
• developing content management system web pages (Sunday 8th March, 2009 at 19:46:23) (www.google.co.uk)

My script recorded only 1 image search referral in that period, Google Analytics tells me there were 3. Thats for another day, I never considered image search referrals in my script so there is room for improvement.

I assumed that the 9 search terms that my script recorded happened during a period of time that Google Analytics may have considered another day. It doesn’t appear so. These search terms were searched for on Saturday 1am to Saturday 4pm approx and also Sunday midnight to 8pm.

Using Google analytics I looked for these keywords on the days before and after the 7th and 8th. They don’t show up.

So I have 9 referrals to my site over the weekend that Google Analytics doesn’t show. My script shows me exactly what was searched for using which Google TLD. Google Analytics doesn’t show me which Google TLD Was used though.

An interesting note too is that my script can show the punctuation or type-case used such as full capitals  typed in when searching, Google Analytics doesn’t (in case thats any use to anyone).

I use the ‘Field‘ account which entitles a user to 12GB storage, 100 projects and 20 servers. Far more than I need for our eWrite applications. One thing I did need was more servers to allow me to deply our apps to many clients servers.

I contacted Springloops to ask if I could have more Servers. After asking nicely a couple of times they gave me 50 servers for absolutely nothing!

Recently our account was up for renewal so I began the process of paying for another few months of service. The cost for the Field account is 48 USD + 22% VAT, brining up the cost to 58.56 USD. When paying with Paypal another 22% was applied bringing it up to 71.45 USD. Total cost per month 56 Euro. The first couple of times I paid this and forgot about it but this time I wondered why I was paying 22% VAT twice.

56 Euro each month isn’t going to break the bank, especially for a very reliable service that works very well and I continue to enjoy using but I wanted to know more. I emailed Springloops to enquire about the 22% VAT being applied a second time. They told me to ask Paypal. Paypal told me to ask Springloops. After a short game of email tennis with no answers I considered my options.  I know about alternate SVN options such as Beanstalk and GitHub. I began using each one in the evening for other hobby projects to get a feel for their services. Beanstalk is remarkable similar in its ease of use. GitHub still confuses me but I’ll still play around with it.

After few days I emailed Springloops again asking what were my options. During all of this they deferred my payment which was now overdue for a few days until the matter was resolved. I said more than once that I very much enjoyed using their service and that I did not want to change but this double VAT payment was getting annoying.

Springloops responded and saved the day once again.  They have told me that my next payment will have just 1 VAT payment, the way it should be. Beanstalk SVN and Github are probably great but I’ll be stick with Springloops. Thanks guys!

One a side note, I see a lot of referrals to this blog from Google for terms such as ’svn springloops’ or ‘Using springloops with tortoise SVN’ . To any developer who might read this post from future referrals, I highly recommend you try out Springloops. They have a free account to allow you to get started.

This kind of info is easily available via logs or Google Analytics but I find its too easily forgotten when buried in there. I wanted to see these referrals come in as they were happening. Its especially fun to see some odd search terms people have searched for and ended up on my blog.

I built up a site around this script for a few reasons. Mainly, I have a good few ideas for this script. I’m developing it more and more to provide current information to myself as Google interacts in any way with a site of mine, such as when traffic is referred or when the robots.txt file is viewed.

Another reason for putting this site online is to allow other site owners or developers to get the script and use it on their own site. I’ve hosted this script using a free Beanstalk SVN account. I currently use Springloops for SVN for other projects and I was curious about Beanstalk so this gave me the opportunity to try it out.

Putting the site together was pretty quick. I used a free template from FreeCSStemplates, using the free Beanstalk account to version control the script and using SimplePie to aggregate the RSS updates to the repository on the site. The only cost was paying for the .com, which I bought through Blacknight for a whopping €6.25.

For anyone interested in playing around with this script, you can download it from the site or access its open SVN repository too. If you have any feedback or comments on it I’m all ears.

This week has been an interesting one with about a dozen reasons to be down in the dumps. Remarkably though Im very pleased at a great week.

In my personal finances I’m substantially less well off than I was at the beginning of the week, one of those weeks where everything that costs money seems to converge against you like Car Insurance, NCT, paying for work out of your own pocket and so on and on.

Business wise we have lots of invoices going out this week. A customer who we were chasing for payment came through. Marie Boran wrote about eWrite out of nowhere yesterday on the Independents Blog Digest which brightened things up no end as I was re-doing someone elses work in another office.

Last night I managed to finally solve a problem that has been plaguing a client of ours and thus plaguing me for a few months. I let them know, not a peep of thanks from anyone.

My car passed its NCT earlier today. No reason why it wouldn’t but still cool to get the all clear. Last time I had to do multiple re-tests in different centers which ended up like a NCT tour of Munster.

I got a tonne of other things done too after sticking with a strict daily work schedule, I’ll be sticking with this next week too as I try to learn how to deal with people that don’t seem to get anything done unless I talk to them.

One of the things I got done was updating the blog to version 2.7.1 and adding a new theme, what do you think?

I’ve decided too on a lofty goal. To be able to label eWrite as the best content management system in Ireland with confidence and assurances. Im currently researching and learning what other CMS’s are developed in Ireland with the aim to learn from them and meet with the people behind them if at all possible.  Now, to learn what makes a great content management system?