Doodlekit - Latest Blog Entries

Copyright Law: Keeping You and Your Website Out of Legal Trouble

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:26:00 -0500

If you are just starting your website, you are pretty safe with respect to Copyright law. Most of your traffic will come from personal and local sources. You won’t be in the public eye for a while. When you are still small, and you are acting in good faith, if you are caught violating Copyright law there is a very good chance you’ll receive a letter from the owner. It will state what he thinks you are using without his permission. He’ll likely ask you to change or remove the images, photos, or text he claims are his, or he’ll offer to sell or license them to you. However, anything can happen. Not everyone is so friendly, so you should still be cautious when using any text, images or sound you don’t own. Especially once you’ve developed some web presence and are generating revenue. Still, being sued for violating Copyright law is always a risk whether you are big or small. Ultimately, some of the risks of going to court could be having your website shut down or having a judgment entered against you. You could end up owing your opponent for all the damages he is able to prove he sustained, plus his attorney’s fees and costs, and any of your profits. In some cases, your opponent may also seek statutory damages, which means that he can still sue even if he didn’t sustain any actual damages and you didn’t make any profit. In such case, if the court finds you willfully violated his Copyright, you could be on the hook for as much as $150,000 per violation. You cannot always defend yourself by claiming the images, text or sounds you used were not marked with a Copyright notice. A person has a legal Copyright to any text, sound or image he creates as soon as it is created. You cannot modify any text, sound or image and claim the right to use it. The modified work still belongs to the original creator and is known as a derivative work. Finally, you may end up in criminal trouble should you be prosecuted for your Copyright infringement, though it must at least be proven you willfully committed the act for commercial advantage or private financial gain.

For more information on Copyright Law, I recommend starting with a publication from the United States Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf and its website: http://www.copyright.gov.

So, now that we know how much trouble we can get into, here are some general guidelines, which for now will exclude the fair use and public domain exceptions. Also keep in mind I’m taking a very conservative risk management position. Due to the brevity of this article I’m skipping many exceptions that might work in your favor.

Images: Only use photographs, video, graphics or images (“images”) you have created, own or have a license to use on your website. If you personally create them, you own them and can use them as you wish. Because you are the creator, you own the Copyright. If an employee or someone you hire creates images for you, you generally own them because they are works for hire. However, to be completely safe, always have them sign an agreement that specifically gives you complete Copyright ownership to the images they create for you, or at minimum a license to use the subject material as needed. If you prefer to use a company which provides stock images to satisfy your needs, be sure to obtain adequate written assurances you are indemnified and held harmless for using the purchased images. This way, you may be protected should your actions be found to violate Copyright law. Finally, if you find images you’d like to use, you can always contact the owner and ask her if you can use them. Consent through email with an exact description of how her images will be used, along with a citation stating it is her work is pretty failsafe and can serve as a great networking opportunity. Caveat, be sure she is the owner and not just claiming to be the owner, so do your homework. Finally, there is the issue of preserving your images so you can prove when they were created. You own a Copyright to an image as soon as you create it, but what if someone else creates an identical image, all on his own, sometime subsequently? Technically, you are the Copyright owner, but you need to be able to prove it by showing you created it first. A certain way to do this is to pay a third party to hold your images in escrow, along with a notarized affidavit as to the date it was created, or to file the image with the United States Copyright Office. However, in most cases, if you have an alternate way to reliably back up and date your web content, this should suffice. I leave such matters of date stamping electronic data to future articles by the Doodlebit gurus.

Text: With respect to text, I refer you to all I’ve said about images above. The same rules apply to text as to images. Granted there is a fair use exception I won’t get into in this article, but generally, if you are going to quote someone or use their text in any way, first seek their written permission in the same fashion I previously recommended. If you get no response, then I suggest taking a crash course in the Fair Use Doctrine. With a little reading you’ll be comfortable with exactly how much you can specifically quote and still be safe. As a rule of thumb you are probably ok if you stick to a few sentences and give a specific reference to the original writer, or Copyright owner. Finally, I realize anything you write is taken from other sources. You read it or heard it somewhere, so how do you make your text unique so it does not violate Copyright law? Here my guidance is to do your best to remember what we learned in high school about plagiarism. Study the subject, put it in your own words, and give credit where credit is due. Give your citations and references. Link your readers to the sources you’ve used.

Music: Generally, what applies to images and text applies to music. However, I would caveat that music is a very, very serious matter in Copyright law at this time. My recommendation is to avoid putting music on your website, in any shape or form, unless you have created it, have a license to it, or have bought it. The music industry is on the rampage in the court system today because Internet piracy has taken so much of its worldwide market in recent years. In fact, I wouldn’t even link to websites which appear to be offering music without having first obtained the appropriate Copyright ownership or license to it. Remember what happened to Napster users. Even high school kids ended up in court. Finally, I would include movies and television programs in this category. Stay away from using or linking to video footage of movies or television programs unless you are certain you have the right to use it. You don’t want Lady Gaga or MGM serving you with a $20,000,000 lawsuit claiming you caused them so much lost revenue.

The information contained herein is not legal advice and is subject to the following: DISCLAIMER.

About the Author: Pat Dickson is an 18 year attorney with JD, MBA, MSIM designations. He focuses in representing high tech and construction companies. He serves as counsel for Doodlebit, LLC. Visit his blog here: Pat Dickson - Your In House Attorney.

Keywords, Search Engine Optimization, Tags and other stuff Google Cares about that You Should Too!

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:48:00 -0500

The very first thing I would do if you called me on the phone to ask me to assist you with marketing is Google your business name and check your page rank. If your business is very common or your name is not particularly unique I would give you the benefit of the doubt and perhaps add your city name or your metro area name to my search to help you out.

For example my husband’s business is called “Jeff of All Trades”. He has a handyman services and he uses DoodleKit so for purposes of this exercise he is pretty similar to other small businesses. So if I Google “Jeff of All Trades” here is the screen shot of results:

When my husband started his business we knew the URL www.jeffofalltrades.com was taken so we added our metro city “Kansas City” to the end and made his URL www.jeffofalltradeskc.com which has given us a bit of a handicap and we knew it going in. Even with that clutter my husband’s business occupies both the 3 and 4 spots in results on Google without the “KC” in the search criteria. This is what you want! You want to be in the first 5 spots of any Google search that is in your “keywords” so that you are on only on the first page of Google but no scrolling is required to find you!

How do you know what your keywords are?

Keywords are words that potential customers would search for when looking for your site. If you have had a Doodlekit site for a while you can see what your past search terms have been in your admin section. For my site SavvyB2Bmarketing.com you can see the common search terms for the last week on the Doodlekit, Admin, Statistics, Search Terms below.

You want to make sure you pepper these common search terms through your website both in the copy, tags on blog posts, picture tags, etc. The worst thing you can do is just leave your tags on your blog posts blank. You write a blog provide valuable content so that the post itself will help your website get found among the clutter. If you are a handyman in Kansas City like my husband every blog post he writes should have “Kansas City Handyman” as tags on the post. Let me show you why next.

On generic terms like “handyman Kansas City” the results on Google are not as encouraging as typing just a business name like “Jeff of All Trades”. Take a look at the screen shot below:

There are lots of people buying Google Ads for the words “handyman Kansas City” plus Google uses the “places” information from online Yellow Page type listings which favors those with a physical office location / store front. As you can see looking at the ads they are actually for services like Handyman Connection and Service Magic which a referral services that professionals can join to steer business their way. If you are just getting started and find this issue in your area or with your key words you might want to consider whether joining such an organization or buying a Google Ad word spot yourself might be a good idea. Each company / location situation is unique so do your homework first and see what your situation is before you spend money you don’t need to.

Thankfully my husband’s business gets most of his clients from referral and not from Google search. We find most people who use Google to search him out are actually past clients who have misplaced his business card or phone number and just need to get back in touch. Again every business if different and depending on whether you are just starting out or have an establish customer base will determine how much potential business you can win or lose from Google search placement.

Finally I want to say a word about links and content freshness. I am by no means an expert of Google’s search algorithms. I know what strategies work on the content creation and placement side to help your site be found by Google but the actual science of how it works is beyond my grasp. So I am going to link to a couple of blog posts by other writers who can help you out at tackling those issues.

From The Daily SEO Blog - Freshness Factor: 10 Illustrations on How Fresh Content Can Influence Rankings
From Hubspot’s Blog – How Internal Linking helps your SEO
From WebCentralMarketBlog - The Wrong Way to Build External Links for SEO

As a general rule links for your website and blog post should be just like referrals you would give to someone who shows up in your store or calls on the phone that you would refer a prospect to. For example my husband is frequently asked for the names of plumbers, electricians, general contractors who he knows and trusts. Since these are all associated businesses to his but not direct competitors he is always willing to give out the name of a trusted colleague. By the same token those are the businesses he should have on his blog role and listed in his resources section to build SEO.

Next month we will cover Landing Pages as a way to give key visitors a unique experience and thus improve their conversion!

About the Author: Heather Rubesch is currently the Director of Content for DemandCon, the only industry conference focused on accelerating the entire sales and marketing funnel. Her penchant for collaboration drew her 3 years ago to co-found the Savvy B2B Marketing blog with five of the most talented content marketers in the universe!

Blogging Best Practices

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:43:00 -0600

Last month I introduced you to the benefits of blogging and recapped the features of the Doodlekit blogging platform that is included with every Doodlekit site! This month we take blogging one step further with some practical how to’s for getting you starting.

But what do I write?

When I talk with clients about blogging the question I get most often is “what do I write?” If you have been in business or in your industry longer than 1 year then you know more about your area of expertise than 99% of the general population. I suggest you start a list of the following things:

For a few weeks write down every question a customer asks you. Separate list into questions from new customers verses existing customers.
Does your business change seasonally? Do you offer different services in December than in June? If so make a list my month or season
Is there legislation, regulation or licensing that affects your business / industry? If so write down those rules
Is there anything innovative going on? New materials, new process, new equipment that older customers might not be up to speed on?
Is your industry in the news? Set up some Google Alerts based on key words. A super quick blog post when you have no time is simply to post to journalistic news stories that are of interest to your customer base.
Do you have some happy customers who are willing to do a case study or provide a testimonial?

My guess is that based on the above list you have anywhere from 12-50 possible topics. If you have 50 then you have one per week for the rest of the year. Skip directly to the section below on Editorial Calendar.

If you only have 12 topics then you have enough material for one post every two weeks for half of the year. Still a good start but I want you to keep making the lists above every month. Keep recording customer questions. Keep your eye out for innovation, legislation, etc that you can add to your editorial calendar. Consistency is key with blogging and you need at least one post per week, 4 per month, 50 per year to really have a blog presence.

Editorial Calendar

This is a fancy way of saying “the schedule of what you are putting in the blog when”. If more than one person in your business is going to be a contributor to your blog then it is important to keep the schedule somewhere that all parties can edit it. One of my fellow bloggers on the SavvyB2Bmarketing.com blog created a great editorial calendar template a few years ago and it is free to download.

If you are truly the only one who is going to contribute to your blog then a formal editorial calendar might be overkill but take a look at the template above just so you have an idea in your mind of what you need to be tracking. Then when you are done looking use your calendar program (Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal, etc) to set up a reoccurring event every week to keep yourself honest. Use the notes field of that reoccurring event to track prospective ideas for future blogs.

Have Fun

Writing a blog is not like writing your high school term paper. I should be fun. If you are in a business or industry that you care at all about then let that passion come through. The important thing is to be conversational and authentic. Your blog is your chance to introduce your business and all its benefits to prospective customers. If you aren’t a natural writer then hire an editor or proofreader to help you get started but make sure the tone and collaboration are still true to who you and your business are.

Stay tuned for next month’s installment where we touch on tagging and SEO optimization. For now just focus on getting one blog post a week out there and we will worry about tweaking those with tags and key words after they are written!

FREE PLAN Website Changes

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:49:00 -0600

Why are you making changes to the FREE PLAN websites again?

Because of SPAM. We have done everything we could think of to keep our free plans open to the web. Unfortantely, spammers and their spam robots are abusing our free plan to produce thousands of spam website daily. The time and resources to fitler out these sites has been extensive and has now reached a point were we can no longer afford to support them the way they are.

Why are there now TWO types of free plans you can sign up for?

Effective immediately there will be two options to choose from when selecting a free plan:

1.) Use A Credit Card To VALIDATE Who You Are.

No charges will ever be applied to your card. We don't even store your credit card information. We only use it once to validate that your are a real person and (hopefully) not a spammer. The good news is that if you sign up this way, your website will be fully visible on the web and the old 'splash page' will be gone. This is the best way to enjoy our free website builder.

2.) Make A Private Website That Requires Logging In To View.

Only you will be able to see the website. You will need to login to view it (see image above). This will allow you to test out our free website builder and actually even build a full website. If you like it, you can choose to upgrade and make it public.

What if I already have a free website with Doodlekit?

If you already have a free website with us, you will be grandfathered in. No changes will apply except that the old Ad Splash Page will go away.

Will this finally stop spammers from creating spam websites?

No. But it will bring spam back to a more managable level. We will continue to monitor all our websites no matter which plan is used.

Save The Internet: Stop SOPA / PIPA

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:02:00 -0600

Doodlekit FREE PLAN websites will be down in protest for a 12 hour blackout on:

Wednesday, January 18th, from 8am–8pm EST

Doodlekit has joined an internet blackout protest with many other major internet companies to bring attention to the fact that Congress is trying to pass two well-intentioned (but deeply flawed) bills, the PROTECT-IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

As written, they would betray more than a decade of US policy and advocacy of Internet freedom by establishing a censorship system using the same domain blacklisting technologies pioneered by China and Iran.

These laws would hold Internet Service Provider and Public Social Media websites (like Doodlekit, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, etc.) liable for all content posted by their users. This in effect would force us to remove all our FREE PLAN websites as we could get sued or shut down for content our users post that the government feels is a violation of these acts.

"Censorship begets censorship, and inherently defies oversight. SOPA is the wrong solution to any problem we might believe it would solve."
- Neil Stevens

Click Here for more information. Please Contact Your Congressman to help block these bills.

Small Business Social Media New Year’s Resolutions

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:39:00 -0600

Last month I covered evaluating your marketing efforts. Hopefully you all saw the post and took a few moments to do an assessment and run Hubspots free Marketing Grader application on both your website and that of at least one competitor.

So now what? You either can pat yourself on the back that you are doing a pretty good job or you can sulk about the fact that you are not or you can take action! I am a take action kind of girl and I like helping people so let’s do it together shall we! Let’s make some resolutions together this year to do one thing every month to improve your marketing. I will be here to help you along the way. Every month I will give you one specific actionable idea that you can do using your Doodlekit website to increase your Marketing Grader score. At the end of the year I would love to profile one or two Doodlekit customers who have increased their scores on my blog SavvyB2Bmarketing.com and will give your business website even greater exposure. You can start at any point during the year but just like most New Year’s Resolutions results do not come overnight. It is only through steady consistent progress that you will see long term results!

So let’s get started!

This month’s challenge is to start or improve your blog! Studies have shown that websites with a blog have 55% more visitors and just having a blog improves your Marketing Grader score. Every Doodlekit site (even the ones made with the free website builder) comes with a blog. So if you haven’t checked out or enabled your blog in the past let’s start by some of the great features that the Doodlekit blog page offers you.

Intuitive entry screen with word-like editing features
Ability to enter photos, upload documents as links and position widgets within the post
Utility to schedule blog posts to go live on a certain date or time
Comment functionality so you can “dialogue” with your readers
Tags so you can aggregate your posts by topic
Spam filter so you can speak to real customers and not robots looking for cheap links

Why Blog?

I gave you one really compelling reason to blog in the intro of this piece. Websites that have a blog get 55% more traffic than those that don’t. This isn’t a magical statistic. It is purely that blogs that are well written have a lot of keywords that are likely to be in search phrases that people type into search engines. Search engines like Google see a concentration of those keywords or tags (categories you create to group your blog posts) and they rank this higher in their organic search.

I am going to give you a few less scientific but just as significant reasons to blog. Small businesses need a way to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to show they go the extra mile for their customers. If you are in a retail business you need to give people a reason to shop locally rather than on-line. You need to convey that you provide an extra level of customer service that is unmatched. You have a chance to build a rapport with potential customers before they ever set foot in your door. You can convey your passion, expertise, unique value proposition and personality through your blog. You can in a word make yourself memorable! When your business is memorable you take yourself out of the commodity market and into the value add market!

In most purchase processes 70% of the activity occurs before they find you! That means they are aware of your product, service and their need for it. Buyers find when they are searching for a solution and evaluating potential vendors. I don’t care if you are selling mufflers, personal training services or pet supplies you have an opportunity through a blog to communicate your unique value to your prospects.

A Small Business Blog Case Study

A little over a year ago my family bought a new home. 2 days before our inspection window was over we got the results of the radon test. The results in the basement were border line so not significantly egregious. So we had a choice to make whether we wanted to ask for money in the final contract to have the issue mitigated or not. The seller was not obligated to mitigate the radon because the level came in within the state acceptable level. However the basement was going to be in our new home our children’s playroom so I needed to learn as much as I could quickly about the possible about why radon mitigation was recommended.

I found a local vendor, Jim, from a Google search that had blogged extensively about radon exposure and the benefits of mitigation. He went into extensive detail about different mitigation systems, their cost and the pros and cons of different materials. I was in a matter of a few hours completely brought up to speed on everything I could possibly know. I called my real estate agent and told him we did want to add a stipulation to the contract that the seller mitigate the radon in the basement.

The seller’s counterproposal offered to have the radon mitigated with the cheapest materials / technique possible by a vendor of their choosing. Because I was educated not only on the dangers of radon but also the materials and techniques by the blog I read I knew quickly their proposed technique was not the best option for the type of basement we had. It was obvious to me that they were trying to limit their cost exposure. So instead I asked for the cost of their fix off the purchase price and hired Jim, who had written the blog, because I was confident that he would provide the best long term solution for the safety of my children.

The moral of the story is that Jim would not have gotten the business without his blog. He was able to establish credibility with me to the point that I was willing to spend more money in order to use his services. Additionally my real estate agent and the sellers agent were introduced to Jim because I quoted his blog in my rejection of the sellers counter proposal and they both agreed that he was an impressive choice they would refer to future clients.

I knew a considerable amount about Jim, his work ethic and his approach from reading what he wrote that I would not have known simply picking someone out of the yellow pages or from a Google local listing.

Next month’s installment will cover blogging best practices. I will demystify keywords, search engine optimization and editorial calendars. In the mean time explore the Doodlekit blog features and write your first post. I think “Why I chose this career field” or “Why I opened this business” is a really good place to start!

Happy blogging!

Small Business Year End Marketing Review

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:50:00 -0600

We have reached that crazy time of the year when everyone is trying to close out their year, looking at their P&L statements and stuffing receipts in envelopes to deliver to their accountants. When I work with clients to set goals for their marketing content and social media efforts we usually talk about those goals on a per project or per effort basis but I always suggest that they do a yearly review as well. I believe it is important to look at the dollars you spent on all forms of marketing (advertising, sponsorships, graphics development, social media, website updates, etc) and ask yourself a few simple questions about each line item.

Did I get what I expected for my investment of time / money?
Do I know the measurable results of that spend?
Would I do that effort / project again?
What lessons did I learn?

Unless you have a specific background in marketing some of these questions might be hard to answer but I promise there is value in just reviewing them even if just mentally. When doing the review make sure you give consideration to even the “free” marketing efforts like your Facebook fan page and your Blog. While those might not be specific line items that cost you money but if you are doing them properly they are definitely costing you time which as a small business owner is one of your most valuable resources.

Once you have done a basic review of everything you have done in the past year to promote your business take a look at the competition. Look around at your competitor landscape.

What are your competitors spending time on? Are they buying Google Ad words space for key words where you are relying on organic search? Do you know the difference? If not check out this article.

Is your competitor publishing blog content weekly and yours hasn’t been updated since March 2009? Blogging can be a great way to drive organic search links to your site. A 2010 Hubspot Report indicated that B2C companies that blog have 88% more leads than those who don’t.

Once you have finished looking at your efforts and few competitors’ efforts do one last review. Use the Marketing Grader application. It is free and allows you to run it again your website as well as your competitors. Please wait until you have done your own “gut check” review first. Going straight to the automated tool is cheating! How much different is your score than your competitors?

If you are more than 10 points higher – Congratulations! Go ahead and review the recommendations and see what areas of improvement you can capitalize on.
If you are more than 10 points lower – Don’t despair! Everything pointed out here can be fixed and most of it does not require an extensive marketing budget. If you are willing to email me (heather@idea2paper.com) your URL and your competitor URL I will review and you might be featured as a “marketing makeover” for a future post!
If you came out within 10 points of your competitor – you have a very exciting opportunity to differentiate yourself. Take advantage of many of the tools that are already a part of the Doodlekit platform like the blog to move yourself out in front and boost your organic search placement!

Stay tuned next month when I cover Small Business Social Media New Year’s Resolutions! How a little effort can go a long way to getting increasing your brand awareness!

About the Author: Heather Rubesch is currently the Director of Content for DemandCon, the only industry conference focused on accelerating the entire sales and marketing funnel. Her penchant for collaboration drew her 3 years ago to co-found the Savvy B2B Marketing blog with five of the most talented content marketers in the universe!

Ad Update To FREE Website Plans

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:13:00 -0600

Why is there a splash page ad on my FREE Doodlekit website?

One word: SPAM. Without diving too much into the intricacies and complexities of how search engines/SEO works, I'll explain how these new ads effect FREE websites and how they help prevent spam.

The #1 way to get your website to show up high on search engines for certain keywords is to generate 'keyword links' to your website from other websites. That being said, spammers like to create as many websites as they can and fill them with spam links to their website(s) so that they can increase traffic.

So how does the splash page ad stop the spammers?

The best way to stop spammers is not only to block them (which we do), but also to remove the incentive they have to begin with. Thus enters in the new splash page ads for FREE websites. Instead of Google and other search engines finding the spam sites these guys generate through us, they will now instead find the splash page ad. The search engine robots that index websites and all their content will not be able to get past the splash page, therefore spammers get no benefit out of creating junk websites.

Why do you have ads on the splash page then?

Why not? We have to put something on it. The revenue it will generate will be fairly insignificant, but it helps fight the good fight against spam.

Will everyone that visits my FREE Doodlekit website see the splash page ad?

Yes - but only once (for the most part). Depending on their browser settings, a cookie will be created during their the first visit and after that they will not see the splash page ad again (until the cookie is gone or removed).

I hope this helps explain this latest updates. Feel free to post any questions you may have about the new ads here.

New Doodlekit Layouts - Update

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:20:00 -0500

My apologies that this communication is a little late because things have been so hectic for us the last few months. As many of you know from our last update, we were estimating 3 - 6 months left of development until the new release (including new layouts) was complete. We couldn’t commit to a hard date because of the uncertainly associated with some decisions we made earlier, most notably our decision to move to a new and improved location.

About two years ago my family and I decided a move to Seattle would benefit us both personally and professionally. Actually making the move was easier said than done. With the current worldwide economic and housing crisis, we knew it would probably take us longer than we’d like to sell our home. We spent a few months fixing it up, and then a year and a half trying to sell it. Once we finally sold it, all new development I was doing for Doodlekit went on hold as we prepared for our big move. We were expecting no more than a month’s delay before I could get back to coding again.

Well, that didn’t happen. It actually took us over 3 months thanks in large part to our terrible moving company. Without warning us that any such delay was even possible, a few days before they were supposed to leave, we were notified by our movers that they were having problems finding a driver to Seattle. Of course we had our house already sold and our airline tickets already booked, so we had no choice but to just go to Seattle – with or without our belongings.

Without going into too much detail, we finally got our life back together about 2 months later. Our stuff (including my entire office) sat in a trailer in storage for many weeks. Needless to say we were a little upset. My family and I had to live in an empty home using air mattresses and paper plates to get by. While I had one laptop to do support work (which crashed ironically, but that’s a different story), any new Doodlekit development was impossible until our belongings arrived and I could dig out my office. For more details feel free to read my North American Van Lines Review on my personal blog.

The good news is we’re back on track and working hard on the new release. I’ll be working diligently to push out the new layouts as soon as possible. I apologize for the delay and the setback, but feel our new location is a step in the right direction for us all. As far as the new release, things are looking to be pushed out the first part of next year in January or February. I'm still very excited about this rolling out and can't wait to show off all our hard work - you're going to love it!

New Doodlekit Layouts - Update!

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:15:00 -0500

Yes, we are still working hard on the new Layouts & Tools! Things are coming together nicely - it's just a lot of work! The tools to actually create the new layouts are the most time consuming, not the layouts themselves. This is pretty much a whole new rewrite of our current templating system. It is huge... very huge! The new layouts and the tools used to create them will be incredibly flexible, dynamic and fun to use.

So, what are all the new features in the layout tools? I can't even begin to explain... there are so many! New header image options, background options, menu design options, wider pages, more page layout options, fonts, etc. The new Doodlekit will propel us way beyond other website builders - you will be amazed at how powerful and flexible it will be.

Below are two screenshots I took of a test site I use for development. This site was created using the tools we have working so far - anyone will be able to make a site like this.

This first screenshot shows a website with a two sidebar layout and vertical menus:

This next screen shot shows the same website with a different page layout, changed with just a few clicks. This new page layout has horizontal menus and only one sidebar:

Pretty neat, eh? Not only are the Templates and Layouts going to be super cool, but so is the actual 'Template Manger' itself we are creating. The Template Manager will store hundreds (and eventually even thousands) of pre-designed layouts that anyone can pick and use on their site with just a few clicks. These templates, when selected, will create a local copy of themselves in your template library. That copy can then be tweaked and modified by you to make your own custom template! You will be able to store as many local copies of templates as you want, any of which you can deploy with just a click of a button.

There is so much more about all of this to tell, but I need to get back to working on this stuff! I just wanted to give everyone an update and let you know we are moving along and that things are looking good - really good!

Of course, the biggest question is 'When will you be done with it?'.

I'm thinking about 3 - 6 months.

There is a lot of extra stuff outside of the layouts and the admin tools we have to do as well in order to get this all set up. One of the biggest is backwards compatibility with our current system, not to mention help files and creating a template library to start out with. Lots to do :).

I hope this helps to ease everyone's anxiety. You will be AMAZED at what you will be able to create with the new Doodlekit!

Scheduled Maintenance Friday, May 19th

Thu, 19 May 2011 07:59:00 -0500

We'll be doing some server upgrades this Friday, May 19th starting at 7pm Eastern time. There could be up to 15 minutes of downtime, but we'll try to keep it to a minimum. These upgrades will speed up the entire Doodlekit system and make everyone's sites respond faster.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Website Statistics Changes

Mon, 09 May 2011 10:08:00 -0500

Some of you may have noticed a drop in visitors to your site last week. This was due to a server upgrade that changed how visitors are tracked, resulting in not-so-accurate results. While working on a fix we decided to re-evaluate how we're tracking statistics. Let me explain.

In our last statistics revamp we decided to do Session tracking. This means that a "Visit" is limited to a specific amount of time a users browses your site. If they come back later in the day, that would account for a second visit. This is different from how other statistics software like Google Analytics work in that they only count one user per day as a visit. Sounds complicated right?

The gist of all of this is that starting tonight we're changing our algorithm to be more like other statistics engines. We'll also be excluding any traffic caused by Administrator accounts on your site. This will result in a decrease in your website visits and hits from today forward. This does not mean your site is getting less traffic, only that the statistic usage data more accurately reflects actual website usage.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about these changes.

The New Doodlekit Editor

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 13:40:00 -0600

Perhaps the single most important part of a website builder is its page editor. Ben and I know this, and for that reason we have invested a lot of time and effort trying to do this right. After our initial push of the new editor, there was a lot of feed back from our user community. We accumulated a list of things that needed fixing and then went at it updating our code. In the processes, we realized we would need more than a few changes - we needed a whole new architecture for the editor.

In the fast changing world of web development, more and more tools become available each day. We needed an editor that could accommodate changes easily. An editor that allows us to plugin our own custom widgets when we want and how we want. This new editor does just that.

Below is an album explaining the more advanced features of the editor. Click on it to get a tour of how things work. Hope everyone likes the new changes!

Coming Soon: Spell Checker, Center Align Images, Horizontal Line/Rule Button, and more...

New Editor Upgrade

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 21:31:00 -0600

Attention IE9 Beta Users! IE9 just posted a new IE9 release candidate for their browser. The old beta version of IE9 has lots of bugs and may not work properly with the new editor.

Tonight Ben and I pushed out a new upgrade to the editor. After gathering issues from our users over the last several months, we went in and did a major overhaul to fix some things. One of the big changes is the table editor.

I think everyone will find this new release much easier to use. Let us know if you find any bugs - you can post them here in the comments. A more detail blog post explaining how the new editor works will be released soon

Naturally Planning Your Website

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:22:00 -0600

Every website starts with an idea. It could be a business, a class, a wedding, something you want to promote or just something you want to tell the world. While we can make creating your website crazy easy, sometimes its the part that leads up to it that's difficult. I'm talking about planning.

Getting Things Done

If you haven't read Getting Things Done by David Allen, then do your life a favor and pick up a copy. This bestseller goes through techniques for managing all the stuff we have to do every day. The main gist of the GTD philosophy is that if you record and organize everything you need to do, it will clear your mind and allow you to focus on the next action. We're not going to talk about the GTD method, rather something from the book that caught my interest

The Natural Planning Model

In the book David talks about The Natural Planning Model, or the way our brains plan for things when we don't even realize it. This applies to the most simple things such as brushing your teeth or going to the movies all under the hood. Here are the 5 Steps.

Purpose and Principles (The Why)
Outcome/Vision (The What)
Brainstorm (The How)
Organization
The Next Action

Let's break these down and apply them to a simple scenario, going to the movies. The purpose of going to the movies is clear; to have a good time, maybe learn something, get out of the house, etc. You use your principles to narrow your choice; what's interesting, what's offensive, when's a good time?

Once you've decided to go you envision about what it will be like. Is the movie going to be funny? Will there be loud people there? Maybe I'll run into somebody I know.

At this point you start to brainstorm how you're actually going to get to the movie. Should we invite the Huffmans? Are we going to sneak in some snacks? We should by tickets online ahead of time. Need to get gas on the way.

Eventually you have to organize all of these thoughts into a formal plan and ultimately it all comes down to the next action. What's the first thing you have to do to get this process started and get to the show?

When we're not thinking about it we typically use this model, however when people sit down to "Plan" something bigger it doesn't always go this way.

From the Book...

"Mrs. Williams, my fourth-grade teacher, had to teach us about organizing our thinking (it was in her lesson plan). We were going to learn to write reports. But in order to write a well-organized, successful report, what did we have to write first? That's right -- an outline!"

Sometimes you jump into the middle of the process before you go through the necessary steps.

The Point Please?

The point of all of this is that in order to have a successful website, sometimes you need to make sure you put in the proper planning. Go through these steps and you'll have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish as well as the steps you need to take to make it happen.

Lets go through the steps again, applying them to a website.

Step 1 - Purpose and Principles (The Why) - What's the purpose of your site? Are you promoting a business? Trying to start a community? Just showing off? What principles will you incorporate? Only quality content? Are you dedicated to updating it frequently?

The Why is very important. Defining the purpose gives you a barometer for success, aligns people around you to a common goal, and expands your options. Clearly define your purpose and always keep it in mind as you go forward.

Step 2 - Outcome/Vision (The What) - As David says "Envision Wild Success". Picture what it would be like to have the things you're striving for. What does your website look like? Who are your visitors? This helps you see what the end goal is.

Step 3 - Brainstorm (The How) - This is where you open up your brain and dump everything out. Everything. Use a technique like Mind Mapping to start the flow of ideas. How do you want to organize your site? Are you going to blog? How can you use Social Media to promote your site? Have you thought about Branding? How are you going to get on Google? Do you have a domain name?

When you brainstorm, no idea is a bad idea, you just want to get everything down on paper. Once you start getting the initial ideas out of your head, new ideas will pop in.

Step 4 - Organize - Once you've completely flushed your brain of ideas you need to start organizing these thoughts into actionable components. What are the actions? Start a website, take pictures, write blog posts, design the website, start a Facebook page, etc.

Step 5 - The Next Step - Well, the next step is to Create a Website.

We all get excited when we get an idea and want to get our hands dirty right away, but doing the proper planning and using the proper techniques can not only save you time but make your website much more successful.

Doodlekit Evolution - A Trip Down Memory Lane

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 10:08:00 -0600

A few days ago I decided to clean up the files on my laptop. Over the years they have built up and I have never really taken the time to organize them. As I was going through them, I started reminiscing about Doodlekit's early years. I found lots of old images I had not seen in a long time. It was neat to see how Doodlekit has progressed since its inception in 2006. I thought I would share some of the images I came across.

This first set of images is of Doodlekit's homepage. They are in chronological order. All of these were 'tweaked' over time, but these are the base designs of the homepage over the last 5 years:

Doodlekit's homepage now:

Our first release of Doodlekit in 2006 was very low profile. We had very few customers and very few people knew about us. That was OK. The few customers we did have helped us redesign and redevelop Doodlekit to its second major implementation - the version that everything is built on today. Our initial layout/template system was very unflexible. It was very limiting from a design perspective. Most of you have never seen these old layouts as they were retired 6 months after Doodlekit's first release. They were replaced with the current layout system which was much more flexible (soon to be replaced yet again!). Below are some of the old layouts from Doodlekit's first release:

Not long after the second major release of Doodlekit, we got picked up by TechCrunch. They did a review on us which launched Doodlekit into the world spotlight. Doodlekit was on the map. For several days afterward, magazines and blogs everywhere did follow up stories on us. Throughout the years we have had additional stories ran on us. I did not screenshot all of these, but I did do a few. Below are some of the articles others have written up on us:

Ben and I have learned a lot. We will always be building and rebuilding new versions of Doodlekit to try and make it the best website builder on the market. Thanks to you, we have the feedback we need to do this. We are devoted to making this happen.

Thank you for a wonderful first 5 years!

New Image Management Tools

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 21:00:00 -0600

Our December release was full of new stuff, however one of the biggest changes was the introduction of new image management tools. Some of these more advanced features are deep in the system so I thought I'd spend some time going over them.

New Album Viewer & Album Inserter

Previously you had two main options for putting images on your website, the Album Page and uploading single images using the editor. Other than renaming the Album Page to the "Gallery" the existing features haven't changed much. However, we have introduced a powerfull new way to insert albums anywhere on your website.

In the new editor next to the "Insert Image" button you'll see "Insert Album". Clicking on that will give you a list of albums that you can click to insert into your page. In the editor you'll see a temporary placeholder image, but once you save you'll see a grid of small thumbnails like this:

or like this if you want larger thumbnails:

Not only can you change thumbnail sizes, but you an select how many thumbnails to show. You can even change the grid of thumbnails to a single icon like this:

Clicking on a thumbnail will bring up the new Album Viewer where you can click through all of the images in the album, see the description and even start a slideshow. The album viewer comes in two sizes: large and small. Those people who have larger monitor and/or higher resolution settings can change to the larger view if they wish. We think everyone will get a lot of great use out of this new tool, I know Heath and I had a lot of fun playing with it.

Image Library

Sometimes the Gallery page just isn't enough when it comes to managing your libraries, and some people don't use it at all. We created a new Image Library tool where you can manage all of your Images and Albums. To get there just click "Images" on the main menu in the Administration area.

Here you can upload, manage, delete and search for any image on your website independent of albums or pages.

Click on the "Albums" sub-menu to manage all of your albums. Now when you create a new album you can add images you've already uploaded as well as upload new images. We also added an advanced re-ordering system that will let easily move images to specific positions in your album.

Image Editing Tools

When you upload or edit an image you'll notice some new buttons under the image preview. These tools will let you Rotate, Crop or convert the image to Black & White. There's also a Thumb Cropper that will let you choose what you want the thumbnail to look like instead of the system just automatically centering it.

We're very excited about these new tools and hope they'll make managing images on your website more enjoyable.

Using Twitter for Me, Not for You

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 05:17:00 -0600

I don't consider myself to be a social media expert - social media is in its infancy and is being redefined every day - but I do work extensively with social media outlets, like Twitter and Facebook, on a daily basis. I use them for me, not for you (I'll explain later).

The Social Media Pressure Is On

You're nobody unless you're on Twitter or Facebook nowadays - especially businesses. But how do you get started? How do you get people interested and build up your followers?

First, let's clear up two myths about social media that so many fall for:
If I have a lot of followers or friends on Facebook and Twitter, then:

I am popular
I have a huge market of consumers to advertise to

All those users that fall for these ideas have one goal when social networking: build up their follower list. Lots of people like you or your product and therefore you've succeeded!

What a load of crap.

Now, don't get me wrong. Having a huge following can indeed be a good thing, but you have to have the right type of followers.

It's Easy to Get Lots of Followers & Friends

There appears to be an unwritten social networking rule that states that if I follow or friend you, then you should return the favor and do the same to me. I fear that this rule was probably started by spammers and egotistical, self-satisfied people trying to make themselves appear more popular. None the less, because of this unwritten rule, there are hundreds of online systems and tools that will allow you to 'mass' friend/follow thousands of users within a few hours in the hopes they will return the favor. Literally - within just a few days you could have thousands of friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook. These systems are even smart enough to check and make sure they stay 'friends' with you - if they don't, then they unfriend/unfollow them for you. This creates an environment where users follow too many people and have too many followers. Let me quote a tweet from Weird Al Yankovic here:

If you're following more than 1,000 people on Twitter, you're not really 'following' anybody at all.

He's right. If you're following more than 1,000 people you're just trying to get followers for one of the two reasons listed above. Period. You're not interested in what any of these people are saying at all, which probably means they aren't interested in what you have to say either. Your "friendship" is artificial. There is no way someone can possibly follow that many tweets.

Having Thousands of Followers Doesn't Mean They Are All Listening

The funny thing about all of this is that because these systems 'auto follow back' anyone that follows you, you have nothing but a huge electronic network of robots following each other and connecting millions of strangers together as 'friends'. They then proceed to spam the hell out of each other - but nobody is listening because it's virtually impossible to read and follow the tweets from 1000+ other people.

So what's the point?

We should all use Twitter and Facebook the way they were meant to be used. Not as popularity confirmation or a spamming tool. Use them to keep track of your friends, family, customers and people you are sincerely interested in. If more people did that, everything would fall in place.

How I use Twitter and Facebook for Myself

Currently, I follow 17 people. I follow them not so they'll follow me back (most of them don't) but because I really want to follow what they have to say. Crazy, right? Most of these people are major players in the Web Design/Development world. They have thousands of followers, but they themselves only follow a handful of people. That makes sense. Sure it would be great if one of these guys would follow me, but that's not why I am following them. They keep me informed and up-to-date. Since I started following these guys, I don't even use my RSS reader anymore. These guys tweet all the good articles, websites and blog post links they find. Now instead of me having to filter through hundreds of RSS feeds trying to find something interesting, these guys do it for me!

Amazing as well as that sometimes when I tweet back a question from a tweet, these guys will actually reply back to me! Mixed in with all the good info they provide are bits of their personal lives. These guys tweet about what they had for lunch, what their daughter said to them after school, and so on. In some crazy way, I feel like I know them on a personal level. Some day in the future, when I run into one of them at a conference, I feel like I have a better chance of making an impression when introducing myself.

How I use Twitter and Facebook for My Business

Lots of our Doodlekit customers follow us on Twitter and Facebook. There they ask questions and keep up to date with us about new releases and upcoming events. It's also a great backup resource should our system ever go down for any reason - these social networks provide us with a communication line outside our own system.

We also use these social networks to communicate free drawings and contests to reach out to new potential customers. Directly asking people to follow you if they are interested in your product or service will have a much higher conversion rate (versus just following strangers and expecting a follow back). We do drawings asking people to follow us who might be interested in winning a free website. This expands our following with quality followers who are actually or potentially interested in having their own website. While they may not win the drawing, they might see a tweet from us later about new features we just implemented or a special deal we're running on websites. Potential customers are always the types of people we want following us.

For Me, Not You

Every day I have people follow me on Twitter. Every day I have people unfollow me. Those are the spammers & bots fishing for new followers. Sorry, but I'm not going to follow you just because you follow me. Don't waste your time. I use Twitter for me, not for you.

* Thanks to Dave Shea for the idea behind this blog post.

New Doodlekit Update Pushed Out Today

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 05:42:00 -0600

The winds of change are coming to Doodlekit! Today you get a taste of some of the great new things to come. Last night we pushed out some new updates to prep for future upgrades. This post will give you a short overview of the new tools and features we have added:

New Image Library & Album Tools

All images are now stored in one giant image library in the backend Admin Tool
Images can now be rotated, cropped & converted to black & white.
Images now have a tool to generate custom cropped thumbs of themselves (since thumbs have to be a perfect square).
You can now create albums from the image library using the same image in multiple albums.
Albums can now be inserted into any page or blog post.
Image reordering in an album is now super easy and fast.
New album player/slideshow

New Editor

Doodlekit’s old editor was tied to a third party software vendor with limited updating capabilities. The new editor is much more flexible and open to modifications as needed.
The new editor does not require a plug-in to be installed on a browser in order to use it.

New Admin Tool

The new Admin Tool interface provides us a more dynamic workspace for setting up future tools and updates.
It looks better :).

New RSS Feed Addon

Use third party RSS feed trackers like Feed Burner to see feed statistics like views and clicks.

New Social Media Addon

Allows you to automatically post social network icons on your Blog post (Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.) that people can click on to automatically spread the word about your blog post.
Provides a new area for future Social Media interaction tools coming to Doodlekit.

New Page/Blog Version Control

The last 5 revisions of your pages and blog posts are available should you want to roll back any changes made to them.

New Blog Post Scheduling

You can set future dates on your blog posts and they will not be released till then.

As you can probably imagine, we are pretty busy making sure everything converted over properly and that everything is work as should be. If you find any bugs or have any issues with the new release, please contact us and let us know.

Thanks for your patience and support – we look forward to rolling out more tools for you soon!

New Features Coming this Weekend

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 08:49:00 -0600

This weekend we'll be pushing out some of the great new features Heath and I have been working on. There will be some downtime Friday Night at 10pm CST to midnight. We will also be running some data conversion over the weekend so there might be some slowness.

I'm very excited and can't wait to show everyone what we've been working on. And it wont stop there, we've got lots of great stuff lined up for 2011.

Check back for an announcement Monday morning for the details.