Being an avid lover of Google Analytics allows me the ability to stay on top of the latest changes to the web analytics platform.  They recently added the ability to add annotations to the web analytics data that you collect about your website which is now available on all Google Analytics accounts.  This is really a very useful improvement to Google Analytics and for anyone developing a website over a period of time it’s pretty valuable.

So what’s the big deal with Annotations?

Annotations give you a way to mark a specific day on your Google Analytics account to track and manage changes you are making to a website.  In the past I’ve found myself saying “How do I know that this change I am making to my website is a good change or a bad change?” and that answer largely went unanswered until now.

Now you can add annotations to days when you’ve made changes to your website and know exactly what day a change was made when you look at your web analytics.  It’s very useful if you are from the school of thought in web development that when you change your website it does have an effect on your visitors.

How to add Annotations in your Google Analytics Account

So now that you understand how annotations can be used to help you and your website let’s talk about actually how you can set them up and use them in your Google Analytics account.  First of all, you’ll need a Google Analytics account.  Click here to get an account if you don’t already have one and once you’ve got one simply take these steps…

• Login to your Google Analytics account
• Click on your website’s website profile
• Click the down tab located in the main dashboard visits area
• Click the “+ Create new Annotation” link
• Enter the date of the annotation, add an annotation a.k.a. “a note”, select whether you want the annotation “Shared” or “Private” (You would select “Shared” if you had were sharing the annotation among other people who have access to the Google Analytics account and website profile you are setting annotations on specifically)
• Lastly, click “Save” and you are now done creating an annotation

Now that you’ve got it the annotation created you can view it by selecting the day you created the annotation on or a range of days that contain the annotation.  When it’s all said and done the ability to add annotations in Google Analytics can help you identify changes that you made to your website and the outcome of those changes giving you greater insight into what your website is doing and how it’s doing it.

Luc Arnold

When I originally reviewed OneStepCheckout, a Magento Commerce add-on that gives you the power to optimize your ecommerce website’s checkout process I covered the core product.  Recently they added some new features for registration options in OneStepCheckout that definitely improve how your customers can login when they purchase from you.

Registration Modes

In this update Magento website owners can use different modes to allow their customers to register when they checkout using OneStepCheckout including:

• Registration Required – Much like it sounds when you select this option your customers will need to register during the checkout process
• Registration Disabled – This gives any customer the option to checkout of your ecommerce website without needing to register
• Allow guests and logged in users – This mode offers your customers the option to check out as a guest meaning that you don’t need to create an account and previous customers to use their account to log in and purchase from you again
• Enable registration on success page – This mode gives your customers the option to create an account after they’ve checked out and are on the thank you page of your website
• Auto-generate account for new emails – This mode will create accounts for each new email address your customer enters during checkout which

In case you didn’t get a chance to read my original product review click here to read it! To read about more details that these new registration modes offer click here to see the article that the team at OneStepCheckout wrote about this on their blog.

After talking to Blair Williams and interviewing him the other week I was able to get my hands on a copy of Pretty Links Pro, a WordPress Plug-in that allows you to manage your links.  It’s the total link management package.

I’ve been using the free version of Pretty Links for a while and even the free version of Pretty Link is great and it boasts a lot of features making it the total link management package.  Originally I implemented the software to help put an end to affiliate link hijacking but I’ve found other uses for it recently allowing me to track links I post on my twitter account and other social media networking that I do currently.

Now for those of you those are new to the concept and practice of Link Management and aren’t sure exactly what it means it’s the management of links both inbound (coming to your website) and outbound (leaving your website).  Depending on how you choose to use Pretty Link it can be a very “eye-opening” experience.  When I created a pretty link and published it in a tweet on my twitter account I was surprised to see how many hits it received in only a few days.

Getting back to Pretty Link, first off, I am going to walk you through using the Pretty Link plug-in for the first time focusing specifically on how to create a pretty link and how to create a group for your pretty links.  With that, let’s get started!

Creating a Pretty Link

When you install Pretty Link it is available through the main dashboard and also through the “Settings” section in your WordPress website.  Once you get into the plug-in you can create a Pretty Link with a destination URL, which is a URL that you going to have people go to when they click on your Pretty Link, a title and description so that you can identify it in WordPress and your pretty link including a custom “slug” that you can add to the end of your pretty link.

There are additional options under the “Link Options [+]” section that allow you to choose a group that the pretty link belongs to, the ability to track the pretty link, the type of redirection you want to use (you have the option of 307, 301, Pixel, Cloaked and Pretty Bar) and SEO options for the links that you create.  When you’ve gone through all of this the last step is to simply click the “Create” button and you’ve got yourself a very pretty link.

Creating a Group for your Pretty Links

Creating a group using the Pretty Link plug-in allows you to categorize and group Pretty Links that you create for your website.  It’s useful if you are creating a great number of links in Pretty Link for different purposes and allows you to segment link management for your website.

Now that you know the basics of using Pretty Link let me take you through some of the benefits of upgrading to Pretty Link Pro for those of you that are interested in seeing what else this WordPress plug-in can offer you and your website.

Advantages of buying Pretty Link Pro

• Replacing URLS – This is a feature that is not currently available in the basic Pretty Link plug-in so you will need Pretty Link Pro for this functionality.  This particular functionality allows you to replace URLs with your pretty link and it’s very useful if you’ve got a large existing website and you are looking to update links quickly for specific affiliates or other link management activities.  Feel free to check out Blair’s video of how Pretty Link Pro accomplishes this by clicking here.
• Split Test your Links – Another great feature of setting up Pretty Link Pro is the ability to run split tests on your website also known as A/B tests.  Using the functionality built into Pretty Link Pro you can setup what are called “Target URL Rotations” for a link to test and see which page performs better.
• Rotate your target URLs – This feature much like it sounds allows you to “rotate” target URLs for ad rotations, A/B split tests and partnerships.
• Set up Conversion Reports – Conventionally conversion tracking is used when a sale is made online but conversions also relate to clicks, hits or a sign up for a mailing list.  Pretty Link Pro allows you to do this with your links and it really does give you intelligence over your website’s link management.

I could literally talk in greater depth about each feature but if you are looking for a great link management plug-in then this is one to definitely check out because it boasts and delivers so much functionality.

Disadvantages of buying Pretty Link Pro

This plug-in offers so much functionality that you may never use all of it.  The real disadvantage for people using this plug-in is that it caters to those people looking for ultimate link management and if you are a newbie then you may not understand everything this plug-in offers.

Reasons to buy this Plug-in

If you are looking to get a very comprehensive link management plug-in than you really need to check out Pretty Link and Pretty Link Pro.  I love the fact that you are able to import and export data to and from Pretty Link Pro, create custom reports and get access to advanced link management options when you purchase Pretty Link Pro.  Here are a few reasons that this plug-in is worth the money for those of you considering it.

• Help put an end to losing affiliate commissions
• Track links you post on social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Track specific links on your website to test their success
• Setup split testing to see which landing page performs better and allows you to earn more profits

Those are 4 really great reasons why you won’t be disappointed when you buy this plug-in.  It’s worth the investment to have this plug-in working for you on your website.

How much does it cost?

If you are looking for a WordPress plug-in that is going to give you the capabilities of link management like this one does the money, $97, which gives you unlimited updates and support on the plug-in is completely worth the money you are going to spend.  After all, it’s the links on your website that are going to make your business, site or blog more successful over time so how can you not invest in this?

Click here to read a little more about Blair Williams’, Pretty Link Pro WordPress Plug-in, click here!

You may have had a chance to read my last posting about “Why canonical links are the greatest thing to happen to SEO lately!” where I talk about what canonical links are exactly, what they look like in your website’s source code, common terms used when talking about canonical links and what problem canonical links solve for the search engine optimization of your website.

In this posting I am going to provide some solutions that you can implement on your website to take advantage of canonical links for your website’s SEO efforts.  I’ve only decided to focus on Magento Commerce (an ecommerce platform) and WordPress (my CMS platform of choice) and I will be talking about 3 plug-ins in particular that when implemented will integrate the canonical linking structure to your website and web pages within your site.

The “All in one SEO Pack” for WordPress by Michael Torbert

Now I’ve used the All in One SEO Pack for a while now myself and the thing I really love about it is how easy it is to use.  You don’t need to be an SEO expert to understand what’s going on and all you need to do is click a checkbox and the canonical link structure will be added to your website.  Just have a look and see how easy it is to turn on the canonical link setting with the “All in one SEO Pack” WordPress plug-in by clicking here!

The “Canonical URLs for Magneto” Extension by Joost De Valk and Joachim Houtman

For those of you using Magento to run your ecommerce operations there is a simple extension that you can add to your Magento commerce installation.  When installed it adds the canonical link structure to your website’s header section allowing search engines to tell the unique links for the highly similar ones.  Click here to check out this Magento Extension

The “Canonical URLs for WordPress” Plug-in by Joost De Valk

It’s worth a mention as Joost De Valk of Yoast.com wrote this plug-in for WordPress users to take advantage of the canonical linking structure on WordPress sites specifically.  The plug-in itself is pretty straight forward and you can grab it here!

If you use any platform software like WordPress, Magento Commerce or one of the countless others check first to make sure the core platform architecture doesn’t already support canonical links and if it currently doesn’t i’d suggest you check out their plug-ins, extensions and add-ons to see if there is a solution to help you with this.  Happy “canonical-ing”!

Luc Arnold

Many professionals today are using the web in new and interesting ways to promote themselves, their businesses and build a “network” for their businesses.  I ran across AgentPress which is a premium WordPress theme designed with the Real Estate professional in mind.

AgentPress was developed by the team at StudioPress whom I’ve had a chance to review in the past with some of their other Premium WordPress Themes.  AgentPress is not only a Premium WordPress Theme but also offers people who purchase the theme the chance to have it professionally installed and optimized for SEO with the latest and greatest WordPress plug-ins including the “All-in-one SEO Pack”.  I had a chance to look at the “inner-workings” of this website theme in action and review the pros and cons of the AgentPress WordPress theme.

What I love about the AgentPress Theme

Someone did their homework – It seems like someone did their homework about the Real Estate profession in general and applied it to this theme.  That’s the truly great thing about the AgentPress WordPress Theme.  From the page layout for multiple agent real estate firms to the “Featured Properties” content areas that are available on the main page.

Professional Image – Being professional calls for a website that can deliver a professional image and this WordPress Theme definitely does that from the header of the website down to the footer.  I like the fact that you can add your personal biography of people working at your organization with this theme.

The “Property Search” Widget – Now this is a cool feature that this theme offers.  When visitors come to your website after you’ve installed and are using AgentPress your visitors will be able to “Search by Price”, “Search by Type”, “Search by Location” and “Search by Bedrooms”.  From there you can set up listings for properties for sale that are in a certain price range, real estate based on its location which the search pulls by going through your website.  It’s some very useful functionality that could be applied to other sales professionals from automotive sales, specialty equipment or machinery just to name a few examples.

Not your “average” contact form – The contact form is also customized to grab specific information that someone looking for a real estate agent would give such as “Budget for purchasing a home”, “Reason for contacting” as well as the standard contact information.

Things that I don’t like about the AgentPress Theme

When I was reviewing this WordPress theme I had trouble finding flaws with it.  It’s a solid, standup theme and the only thing I can say is that it’s specifically gearing towards real estate agents so it may not fit your specific needs without some serious customization for your own business’ needs.  Naturally if you are going to buy a website theme like this some you are going to end up customizing it for your needs but if you are looking at this theme as the “be all” and “end all” for you this is something that could affect you putting together a great website.

3 Reasons why you should run out and buy the AgentPress Theme

Here is a short list of 3 reasons that you should buy this theme…

1. The “property search” widget is awesome and very useful
2. The functionality is very well aligned with the goals of the website theme
3. The ability to customize the theme for your needs

How much does it cost?

There are 3 pricing points that depending on what you are looking for offer 3 different options for the AgentPress Theme cover a wide range of solutions to fit your needs.  I’ve broken them down for you to understand what you are actually paying for depending on the option that you choose.

The AgentPress Theme costs $99.95 will get you the WordPress Theme, access to the support forums should you need any help with customizing your theme or any problems you are running into and the ability to enhance your website’s layout fast and intuitively.

The AgentPress Basic Package costs $199.95 and gives you some more options including WordPress installation (they will install it for you!), basic WordPress plug-ins (Akismet, Feedburner feedsmith and WP Database manager) as well as theme demo account.

The AgentPress Premium Package costs $299.95 and is the best option for your money if you are not up for installing WordPress and the theme yourself.  It also includes premium WordPress plug-ins including the ones from the basic package and the All-in-one SEO Pack (which I recently reviewed here) and Google XML Sitemap Generator.  If you aren’t a “techie” than this is the package for you!

You may have noticed a lot of changes to the SpicyWebDesigners.com site recently.  It’s no surprise to anyone that technology advances rapidly and I felt that it was worth taking the time to simplify the website for the readers and subscribers with the newer WordPress CMS platform architecture.  I backed up the mySQL database that is becoming larger and larger with each passing month as I add new content to the website and performed an update from WordPress 2.6.X to WordPress 2.8.6 because I hadn’t updated it in a while.  There are a few reasons I decided to upgrade the website including…

1. The WordPress architecture was preventing me from using newer plug-in, themes and features
2. With almost 300 articles to date I needed to backup my database and get it to the most stable release of WordPress up and running
3. The WordPress theme I was using before was looking tired, it had started to break in the newer versions of web browsers and was taking more time to update and fix to the point where it wasn’t feasible to use it anymore.

I hope that you enjoy the changes to the website and I welcome any feedback as well.  This brings me to the topic of this article.  Recently someone asked me “I was just wondering, that amazing page corner button on your top right corner that opens to a Squeeze Theme, what is it and how can I get it?”

I’ve been focused on monetizing my site lately since about March of 2009 using affiliate marketing techniques.  I decided this was the best way to continue to run the site as it currently is because it costs money to host, renew the domain name, my time to produce articles and content and the occasional email marketing expense as well.

Affiliate marketing affords me the ability to generate some income without the headaches of selling, physically storing and then shipping products out to customers.  The “page peel” also known as a “peel” you see in the upper right hand corner of this site is one of the options or tools that I have when promoting the Squeeze Theme from Unique Blog Designs which I recently wrote a review about.  It’s a smart idea to intrigue readers on your website and get them to click on something other than a banner advertisement.

The “Pre-Peel”

With “Ad Blindness” on the rise in the world of internet marketing it takes something kind of different and unique to pique the interests of your audience.  The “Page Peel” is one of these tools than can help you raise a little interest over a product you are promoting.  Most page peels are comprised of a Javascript that performs the actual “peel” action, the images associated to the pre-peel and post-peel and lastly but most importantly the affiliate tracking link that is needed to make sure that when your page peel makes a sale you are credited for it.

The “Post Peel”

If you are involved in affiliate marketing or you use this method of marketing to market your product on the internet then developing a page peel for your latest promotion can help you increase conversions and sales of your company’s products.  Affiliate marketers out there just remember that not all affiliate marketing programs have this tool currently at their disposal and having said that you could always take the product you are promoting and create a page peel for it.  You just need to know a little coding to get it operational.  Whatever way you “peel” it, page peels can add a new take on traditional website monetization methods and can in turn drive more profits to your website.

If you are online today then chances are you are already using what are affectionate known as “squeeze pages” and you may not even know it.  If you market your business using a website then you’ve probably got a way of collecting email addresses, names, contact information and things of this nature.

The term “squeeze page” actually refers to the action that a visitor to your website makes by giving you their name and contact information (usually an email address and/or phone numbers).  This is also referred to as a “name squeeze page”.

Effective squeeze pages can help you build your lead generation efforts; targeted and highly profitable emails list and gather detailed information about your visitors.  Really there a lot of different reasons and ways to use a squeeze page in your website that can benefit and add value to the business you are running online.  Now that we’ve covered exactly what a squeeze page is the next thing that is important to discuss is what takes a good squeeze page and makes it great because the proof is in the results and squeeze pages are NOT exempt from this.

What makes a good squeeze page a great squeeze page?

• Easy and uncluttered to navigate – You need to be clear about what you want people to do when they come to your website and having a solid user experience in place can only help the success of your squeeze page for converting visitors.  If you put in too much information you may only end up confusing your visitors which can lead to fewer conversions for your email marketing list.  Leaving an easy to navigate squeeze page that is not cluttered up with lots of information helps people to focus on what the true purpose of your squeeze page is offering and allows them to not feel overwhelmed with too much information like what you normally see is a standard sales page; you know!?… Those pesky and sometimes long-winded web pages used to sell the latest and greatest in information products that you could scroll threw for days and never reach the bottom of the page.
• Design that gets some real attention – Getting attention is a big factor in the overall success of a squeeze page but how do get your visitor’s attention?  Focusing on writing a strong headline to “hook” your website visitors can only help you squeeze their names so make sure that the headline is savvy and speaks to your audience.  If your product or service is beneficial to your visitors then they will be back for more.
• Testing your squeeze page – When I say “testing” I mean running a series of tests to check and see if different content, fonts, colors, brand messages or pretty much anything associated with the appearance and functionality of the squeeze page increases or decreases the success of the page in the number of conversions related to the number of visitors.  The only way to really know what is happening is to test and measure what is happening on your web pages.  This leads me to my third and final point…
• Measure your squeeze pages – I personally spend time measuring the success of articles on SpicyWebDesigners.com and checking where and how people are accessing the content on the site.  With a squeeze page you are able to measure the content, signups and any user events (example. “Playing a video”) using a web analytics platform.  Doing this allows you to make informed decisions off of what is happening on your website.  It’s much better than making decisions in the dark and less costly as well.

You may remember a few weeks ago when I reviewed the “Squeeze Theme” by Unique Blog Designs which is a premium WordPress theme that allows people to use their WordPress website to squeeze more names and information from visitors using a very simple and intuitive interface.  It’s definitely worth a look at if you haven’t read the review or checked out this WordPress Theme

The team behind Unique Blog Designs also put together a guide to Squeeze pages called “Squeeze Pages 101” which is very detailed covering everything from the importance of building an email list, why squeeze page based sites perform better and lots of other important information about using squeeze pages in your online business and on your website.

A squeeze page, when used correctly, can allow you to convert more people into your email list building efforts and gives you the added ability to market back to people who visited your website, gave you there contact information and their permission to contact them and left.  After all, if they were interested enough to sign up in the first place they will also probably be interested to hear from you again and in time you can turn them into paying customers.

Luc Arnold

When my wife and I recently purchased a TV stand for our new house we did what most couples first do.  We took a trip to the local department store (Sears, in our case) and walked around, tested out and looked at furniture.  After we got our TV credenza home and I had spent the better part of an evening putting it together I realized that some of the parts were missing from the box.  Talk about frustrating!

Naturally, it bothered me because I wanted to finish putting it together that evening.  I later went back to Sears, who told me that contacting the manufacturer would save me time and would take 3 days if I contacted the manufacturer, Sauder, directly compared to 3 weeks if I went through Sears.  I was being given me the “run-around” because Sears wasn’t willing to support a product that they sold to me.  That was the bad part of the customer service experience that I received now let me get to the exceptional customer service experience that I received in the most unlikely of places… online!

I typed in “Sauder.com” and hit enter. After navigating to the “Repair Part Ordering” page I entered the model number of the piece of furniture and my postal code and clicked “Next”.

They then asked for the parts that I needed to replace, the quantity and the reason for replacing them which lastly took me to a page to fill out my order information including address, name and the rest of my details.

Now by this point in the process I was thinking that it would take a while before what I’ve done online would translate over to their “bricks and mortar” business that Sauder has in place.  I was wrong.  Maybe that’s just me being skeptical but I always assume the worst with online business processes like this simply because they don’t always work and when they do most times it’s not that optimal.  So was I surprised when I received an email that they received an email saying that it was being shipped out and literally two days later a package showed up at my front door from Sauder.com including the missing parts that I needed to complete my TV credenza.

I want to add that I never talked to a physical, real live person at Sauder but it didn’t matter because they gave me the best customer experience I’ve received in the next little while.

This should be a lesson to all business owners and entrepreneurs out their wondering what makes a good business, great.  Let me break down what made my customer experience a success using Sauder.com and why I would buy from this company again…

• They delivered what they promised – Online businesses and online business channels of companies take note.  Customers that come to your website expect to be served, they expect to find the information that they are looking for and they also expect to find a way to contact you should they need it so as a business you need to make this a simple process.  All too often, companies get caught up with the latest and hottest looking website only to realize that their customers hate it and don’t use it.  Talk about a waste of money, resources and of course lost profits!
• They support what they make – Sauder.com didn’t make me jump through unnecessary hoops or buy an extended warranty to anything like that.  This is how it should be when you go online and you are dealing with a company.  It added to my experience as a customer and not my frustrations.  If your company makes or sells something you need to support it.  I wouldn’t go back to Sears because even though they sold me a TV credenza, when I had problems with it they pointed me to the manufacturer and turned their back on me.  In other word, they didn’t support my problems when I had them and didn’t provide any service past selling me the product.  In the future I will deal directly with Sauder because they know how to treat me as a customer; they value me and my business.  They even sent a letter with the replacement parts apologizing for any inconveniences and that I thought was a great touch.
• They had the business systems in place to support my request – Again, another fundamental that companies don’t always get right.  In order for my request to get from the website where I placed it to the person who picked the order and shipped it took a great deal of business systems working together in unison, people trained to understand their role and the systems and the parts needed for the shipment.  Sure, it needed more than this but I am just making the point that they (Sauder.com) have optimized their online business process to work more efficiently and effectively with their physical business.  It’s not an easy task but they made it look flawless.

I know that I normally don’t take an approach to talking about business but I think that it is worth talking about how the web and various web technologies can help standard brick and mortar businesses become more efficient and help businesses deliver more effectively on their goals and it turn keep their customers whether direct or indirect happy and coming back for more!

My experience dealing with Sauder was great, especially in terms of the customer experience that I had online (I didn’t talk to a physical person at Sauder) and my experience dealing with Sears left me feeling that they didn’t care about me past the sale of the product (This was a “face to face” customer service experience where I was pretty much “shown the door” even though I wasn’t threatening; just the average consumer looking for some help with a product I bought).

I had both extremes of customer service but I am sure that I am not the only person that this has ever happened to and unfortunately I am sure I also won’t be the last.  Feel like sharing your experience as a customer that involved the use of a company’s online tools?  Tell us what you liked or didn’t like about the experience, I am sure we could all learn something about business and successful or unsuccessful online business systems and website.  How did it leave you feeling at it was all said and done? And, what would you do different next time or improve?

Luc Arnold

“Have you had any good or bad customer experiences online?  Tell me more…”

If you’re in the process of moving your WordPress website or blog to a new domain name then this article was written for you!

Whether you run an online web presence for your business or you just enjoy designing and deploying websites you may need to move a website from time to time, from one domain name to another domain name.  It can be full of headaches, late nights and steep learning curves that can leave you pulling out your hair, wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into.  Trust me, at times I’ve been there myself in the past.

Because most of the websites today run on at least one database it means that you need to not only keep the website CMS (Content Management System) software you are using up to date including plug-ins and add-ons but that you also need to perform regular database backups depending on how often you make changes and revisions to your website.  Now, I am not covering how to backup and restore a database in this article specifically but I am going to show you some tools to help you move your mySQL database from one domain name to another and the problems that are presented when you move a mySQL database.  For the sake of this article I am going to be talking about WordPress in this article; however the same concepts should apply regardless of the platform you are using to manage your website.

Recently, I myself found out that how valuable it is to restore a database to a different domain name.  This can be a tricky process and before you attempt it make sure that you’ve got a current backup saved in a good place.  Here are some problems that commonly occur when you move a mySQL database from one domain name to another domain name…

• You didn’t verify the backup of your database before restoring it to the new domain name. This may sound a little redundant but by verifying your back ups means that you don’t need to panic should anything go wrong.  If you are looking for a good plug-in that you can use with your WordPress website or blog I would suggest a plug-in by the name of “WordPress Database Backup” to help you run backups of your website.

• Your mySQL database contains the old domain name when you restore the database under the new domain and it redirects you back to the original domain name with you login. This sort of thing happens because there is a conflict when you login that an application like WordPress looks and sees the old domain and then performs a redirect back to the original domain name and never allows you to fully login.  In order to fix this problem you need to simply edit the “wp-config” file (if you are using WordPress) and add the following lines of code (see below) and upload it to the new domain’s web hosting.

define(’WP_HOME’,'http://example.com’);
define(’WP_SITEURL’,'http://example.com’);

• You’ve moved your mySQL database over to the new domain name and you are able to login but when you try to navigate the WordPress website or blog on the new domain name, the links point to the old domain name and you are unable to display the web page. Again there is a simple fix for this problem.  The first thing that you need to do is to install a plug-in called”Search & Replace” that is available for WordPress on your website on the new domain name.  From there the only thing that you need to do is type of the old domain name including the HTTP (similar to http://www.example.com) and the new domain name (similar to http://www.new-example.com) and it will update your database searching and replacing the original domain name with the new domain name.  A few notes about this though, make sure that you save a backup copy first and verify its contents before doing this.  The last thing you want to do is make a mistake and have no course of action to fix it.

Depending on the problem that you have with your website when you move it over to a new or different domain name I am sure that one of these solutions will help you.  Databases whether they are mySQL, Microsoft or something else can be tricky and pose a range of problems.  Some areas that will always save you a lot of hassle when you are working with databases are…

Creating a contingency plan – When I say “contingency plan” what I mean is creating a plan that allows you to roll back should you have any problems  and need to move back to when things worked correctly on your website.  This involves having a backup, any notes about customizations that you’ve done and where you’ve stored this information.

Always verifying your backups – After you’ve backed up your database just have a look at it to make sure that all your information is in there.  Sometimes if you don’t you may find out later that you only have a partial database so avoid the headaches and verify the backup the first time!

Doing these two things will ensure that even if you make a mistake in doing it yourself you will have a copy of the database that is current and complete.  When it comes to running your website, databases don’t need to be scary, complex or require extensive training and with the right plans in place you can run your website for years to come even after countless upgrades, revisions and integrations without major problems.

Normally when I think of Ecommerce websites I don’t think of WordPress.  WordPress, after all, is primarily a content management system, so when I saw that Templatic had released “Store”, their Premium Ecommerce WordPress Theme yesterday I was interested in checking it out.  Now is this theme going to run a mid-sized to large ecommerce operation for a company? Probably not!  But if you are a company with a few dozen products in various product lines this is a definite possibility for your ecommerce operations.  Let’s take a more in depth look at it…

Major Selling Points of the “Store” Ecommerce WordPress theme

• Different Modes to sell – This theme offers currently 3 different modes that you can run an ecommerce website using WordPress including selling digital goods, using a standard shopping cart and catalog mode.  Let me explain each of these different modes in more detail.

Digital Goods – If you run a business selling “digital goods” like eBooks/PDFs, scripts, licenses, memberships, etc. this theme can not only help you sell your digital goodies but also control the style of the product pages and the buying experience your customer’s will see when they buy from you.

Shopping Cart – Much like this one sounds, you can give your customers the option to use a shopping cart to checkout of your ecommerce website so that they can enter shipping information, change product attributes like Style, Size or Color and complete a purchase of goods with your store.

Catalog Mode – This allows you the option to display the products on your website and require interested customers to contact you instead of accepting payments online.  This mode does NOT allow your customers to purchase things from your store and if your business pricing is subject to change or requires further feedback to quote interested customers you can use the Catalog mode to get them interested and generate leads.  This mode is not for every business owner out there but it’s really nice to see this option being including in this theme.  It’s not something that I expected to see in this ecommerce theme.

• Get your Coupons! – This theme allows you to create coupons with coupon codes to offer discounts when someone enters the coupon code during the checkout.  It’s a great feature to have if you are promoting your business.
• Bulk CSV Uploads – If you are looking to add multiple products at a time this theme will actually allow you to do this using a CSV (.csv) file.  Simply create a CSV file and upload it to WordPress and the Store ecommerce WordPress theme will do the rest.
• Solid Web Browser Compatibility – I tested this theme in Google Chrome, FireFox 3.x and Internet Explorer 6.x and I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I couldn’t find any bugs with this theme.
• You can still blog! – Another good thing to point out is that you can run a blog for your company.  Since WordPress is the premier blogging platform out there it only makes sense that Templatic kept the functionality and definitely adds something to the fact that you are getting an ecommerce site with blogging capabilities because most ecommerce platforms don’t have this functionality available and most blogging software doesn’t allow you to run an ecommerce website with this many features.

Click here for a full list of features that Templatic’s Store Premium Ecommerce WordPress Theme gives you!

Major “Minuses” of the “Store” Ecommerce WordPress theme

• It wasn’t built for scalability – Don’t get me wrong.  This is a strong ecommerce theme that you can use on WordPress but it isn’t going to give all the features of an enterprise level ecommerce platform and if you are a larger scale ecommerce operation then it may not be fully scalable to meet your needs.
• CRM not included – Many ecommerce packages out there have the ability to store customer data but only a few actually have “full blown” CRM system.  A CRM system for those of you who don’t know what it is stands for “Customer Relationship Management” and allows you to manage your customers and market, view activities of specific customers and other data related to your customer base.  The store theme had limited capabilities to store customer data and if you are looking for an ecommerce solution that doubles as a CRM this may not be what you had in mind without a heavy amount of customization and cost on your part.
• Shipping Limitations – While you have the option to set shipping options with the Store WordPress Theme if you currently have shipping integrations with say FedEx, UPS or another shipping service it won’t be easy to integrate this into the theme without customizing the theme further.  Personally, this is something that you see in more “enterprise” ecommerce solutions so I am not surprised that it isn’t included in this theme but it would still be nice to see.

Our Product Rating

Cost:

9.5

Support and Documentation:

9.0

Usability:

7.5

Web Browser Compatibility:

8.5

Overall:

8.6

SpicyWebDesigners.com rates products on a scale from 0 to 10 with 0 being the worst and 10 being the best.  A typical product review includes looking at Cost, Support and Documentation, Usability, Web Browser Compatibility (using Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer).

Why should you buy this theme?

This is a great ecommerce WordPress theme when you look at the functionality.  Click here for a full list of features that the Store ecommerce WordPress Theme has.  I really like the fact that you can sell digital goods, use the shopping cart for physical goods and develop a catalog for customers to contact you directly.  This meets the needs of a lot of business owners looking for an affordable, “Do-It-Yourself” entry level solution and because it doesn’t require lots of money and offers terrific functionality it makes a highly adaptable theme for your online or physical business.

How much is it?

The Single Use License will cost you $65 and gets you the Store Ecommerce WordPress Theme.  You can only use this theme on one website but you’ve got access to the member access area to help you customize your theme and you also have access to detailed theme tutorials.  This is something I’ve always liked about Templatic’s WordPress Themes (formerly PremiumThemes.net); they support you past the initial sale and show you how and where you can customize it.

The Multiple Use License costs $99 and with this you get access to all the things mentioned in the single use license except you get the PSD files (Photoshop Documents) and you can deploy it an unlimited number of times.

And if you really like the themes that Templatic has, paying the fee of $279 (regularly $399) for unlimited access to Templatic’s Theme Club is well worth the money.  It gives you access to all the themes Templatic offers plus any new themes coming out.  It’s their best deal by far.

There are many ways to track or not track information on your website.  Recently I wrote about tracking mobile visitors that come to your website and how you could go about doing this.  There are just so many ways to track what people are doing, how they are doing it and when they do it when you are working with web analytics in your daily online business operations.  The possibilities are endless when it comes to web analytics.

When you are talking about web analytics you are talking about collecting data about your website “accurately”.  This brings me to the topic of excluding website traffic like the website traffic that you generate when updating your website and testing it.  Naturally this does present a problem because most people visit their own website when they make changes to it or if they are updating it.  By default, web analytics platforms will track website traffic regardless of who you are and you have to tell the web analytics software to exclude your traffic from the web analytics reports.

There are a few standard ways to exclude traffic from your web analytics platform.  You can exclude traffic by an IP Address or a range of IP addresses or by creating a custom cookie that can block your traffic.  I personally prefer using the custom cookie when I am working with the Google Analytics platform because I am only trying to exclude my specific traffic but if I ran a company with more than one employee I would be sure to use to exclude traffic based on an IP address or a range of IP addresses.  When I get into showing you how you can exclude traffic from your web analytics platform I am using Google Analytics as an example but depending on the web analytics platform there should be a way to exclude traffic using either of these methods.  So let’s get started with the Cookie Content Method and then move on to the IP Address Method.

Excluding Traffic from Google Analytics – The Cookie Content Method

Like I said, this is personally the way that I choose to exclude traffic from my web analytics reports.  It’s simple and straight forward.

1. Create a new web page and upload it to your website containing this code…

<body onLoad=”javascript:pageTracker._setVar(’my_cookie_content_value’);”>

2. Than simply visit the web page containing the above mentioned code which will create a cookie with Google Analytics (Your web analytics platform may differ so refer to the documentation from your web analytics platform vendor)

3. Create a filter in your Google Analytics account to remove the data associated to users with this cookie.  Make sure the filter that you create includes the following…

Filter Type: Custom filter > Exclude
Filter Field: User Defined
Filter Pattern: my_cookie_content_value
Case Sensitive: No

It should look like this…

Excluding Traffic from Google Analytics – The IP Address Method

This method requires you to understand how to use regular expressions

1. Click “Filter Manager” from the “Analytics Settings” page in your Google Analytics account

2. Enter a “Filter Name”

3. Select the “Filter Type” equal to “Exclude all traffic from an IP Address”

4. Enter the “IP Address” field enter the IP address you want to exclude in your web analytics reports.  If you are entering an IP address 178.155.2.1 you would need to enter it similar to 178\.155\.2\.1 and if you wanted to exclude a range of IP address like 176.168.1.1-25 and 10.0.0.1-14 it would look like this ^176\.168\.1\.([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$|^10\.0\.0\.([1-9]|1[0-4])$. Now this method isn’t for everyone and given your situation it may or may not work for you.

So as you can the IP Address method for excluding traffic requires you to have knowledge of regular expressions because of how you have to enter the IP Addresses into Google Analytics.  I am not sure whether other web analytics platforms are different or if they too require you to use regular expressions as well when excluding by IP Address.  No matter how you choose to do this or whatever web analytics platform you currently use there is a solution out there that can and will work for you when you exclude your traffic from web analytics reports.

Happy “Accurate” Web Reporting!

Luc Arnold

Well its Christmas time and I don’t know about you but I’ve been busy visiting family, spending time with my wife (it’s our first Christmas in the new house) and also taking some time to relax over the holidays.  I enjoy reading and always find myself reading business books, technical manuals and those sorts of books.  I love digging into some new concept or principal whether it’s to do with web design or personal finance.

One of the gifts that I received for Christmas was Steve Krug’s book “Don’t Make Me Think”  It’s a quick little read, at around 200 pages that offers up some valuable thoughts for web design professionals from project managers to beginner web designers and everyone in between involved in the process of designing websites and it discusses the core concepts of web usability.

The book itself contains the interesting perspective that most web design professionals give users of their websites too much credit as to how they use the web and websites in general.  If you run your own website or you design websites for a living then you may have heard of the term “web usability” which is best defined by saying that…

“Web usability is the approach of making websites easy to use for end users.”

That is the plain and simple definition of web usability and the key to great web usability is that a website is “easy to use”.  This does not mean that it is easy to use for a web designer or web development professional but that it’s easy to use for the average visitor to your website who may not have the same technical abilities as the people who built it.  At the end of the day, most people don’t build websites in their spare time and can get lost easily if your website is not accommodating to the average website visitor.

The book “Don’t Make Me Think” contains hundreds of bite-sized chunks of valuable information about web usability but the true value of this information is in its application.  One such area that the book focuses on are the core elements that improve web usability specifically through how people use standard websites and their associated web pages.  The 5 key elements that help website visitors use a website more effectively are the “Site ID” also known as the Logo, the “Utilities” of a website, Sections and Subsections of a website, a way to search the website and Page Names.  So let’s explore each of these elements a little more in depth.

1. “Site ID” aka “Logo” – When users are on a website they usually identify where they are by being able to see the site name, branding and associated logo of the specific website they are surfing.  The Site ID allows them to make this distinction and allows them to trust in the website they are viewing.  The Site ID can and should be clickable allowing them to click and go to the Home page at any point in their journey on a website.
2. “Utilities” – Just like it sounds the utilities of a website are more about information or ways of getting to information that help you (the website visitor) when surfing a specific website.  Some examples of utilities are a sitemap, FAQs, Forums and an “About” page just to name a few.  As a general rule you should only include a few utilities because the more utilities you add to a website the busier it becomes and the more confusion it caused amongst your website’s visitors.
3. “Sections” and “Subsections” – The sections of a website are the main places you want people to go and are also referred to as the “primary navigation” of a website.  On an ecommerce website this would include sections like products, downloads, books and specials just to name a few.  These sections lead you to subsections of the website and if you have a section like Products some associated subsections would include Audio / Video, Computers, Gaming and other various related subsections.
4. A way to search the website – Not everyone that visits your website is interested in clicking and clicking some more to get where they are going.  Using search on a website allows you the freedom (if done correctly) to search and find things fast.  If the search is accurate then your visitors will be happy that they got what they are looking for in the first place and if it isn’t accurate then they will get frustrated and most likely leave.  The other thing that Steve Krug’s book states and something that I think most people forget is to name your search “Search” and not “Quick Search”, “Fast Search” or some other take on that because it confuses people and makes them think more then they need to.
5. Page Names – This particular element of a web page is important to website visitors like the ones visiting yours right now because it tells someone that clicks on a link that they’ve reached the correct page.  If your link is called “Store Hours” then the proceeding web page that is brought up should being called “Store Hours”.  Whenever you go into a store and look down the aisles what do you normally see?  Big signs that tell you what you are going to find in the aisle.  They are clear and you can see them from a mile away.  Page names should act in a similar way; easy to view and on a certain level easy to understand.  Put aside the styling and the color palettes for a while and draw attention to the page that the viewer is currently on because it builds trust and communicates clearly that they’ve found the correct page and no further thought is required.

Starting with these 5 key elements you can improve a website’s usability and its profits.  It’s all about clear and unified communication when maintaining, optimizing and designing websites that people actually want to use.  Without this your visitors can get lost, become frustrated and confused or simply give up and leave which raises that ever present “bounce rate” and stops people from coming back.  So give it a try and keep those “fans in the stands” so to speak.

Luc Arnold

I think that everyone that runs a website should know about web analytics and if you are reading this for the first time then perhaps this article will help shed some light on basic web analytics metrics like bounce rate, pages per visit and what visits, bounce rates and pages per visit are exactly.

If you are just beginning to understand what web analytics can do for your business then there’s a good chance that you are looking to understand what you are seeing when you open up your web analytics platform and are starting to analyze the data in order to apply it to your business.

There are a few things that are “universal” in web analytics and website traffic in general.  As long as there are websites there will be visitors, visits and unique visits and because there are people visiting websites they will always spend time on a website, look at pages in a website and leave a website.  These web metrics are universal and even though, how a web analytics platform chooses to view this elements the concepts remain similar but not the same.  So what web analytics come standard in web analytics platforms?  Well, just have a look at the following web metrics…

• Visits – This referrers to the number of times that some visits for website in a given timeframe.  From here the number of visits can tell you where the website traffic came from for certain posts, pages and content on your website.
• Pageviews – This website metric will tell you the number times that a web page is viewed.  This metric can pose some issues because users refreshing web pages over and over again and also robots that “crawl” your website have been known to inflate these numbers as well.
• Pages per visit – This metric shows you the number of web pages that are viewed during a visit on average over a given time period on your website.
• Bounce Rate – This is the rate at which people come to your website and leave after looking at only one page.  A sudden spike in a bounce rate can allow you to test your website’s usability to lower this number and keep your visitors coming back for more.
• Average Time on Site – This average tells you the average amount of time people spend surfing your website.  This tells you how long on average they will spend reading articles on your website.

I use these metrics on a daily basis when I analyze website traffic for SpicyWebDesigners.com.  The data from bounce rates to the number of visits that I am receiving help me to make decisions about how to change the usability, navigation and gain insights into why a particular article on my website was successful.  Naturally once you’ve mastered the core web analytics terminology you can start learning more advanced topics and applying them to your website analysis.

Pretty much any web analytics platform that you pick up today is going to have these metrics available.  The essence of web analytics is related to visitors and the pages that they visit on your website.  Without those two things you cannot begin to track meaningful website metrics to base your decision making on and because the study of web analytics is growing, advancing and changing rapidly it’s great to know that some things stay the same.

Luc Arnold

Teaching the basics of web analytics

After writing one of my last articles “5 elements that can improve your website’s usability” I thought that it was time to let you in on some of the best plug-ins to help you accomplish better web usability in your own website.  A lot of web usability uses common sense and some things that may even seem dumb to the average web designer out there are considered by web usability experts as standards like labeling the search on your website “Search”.  In this article I am going to focus on breadcrumbs and the use of breadcrumbs in your website to help you enhance the usability of the website and also point you to some plug-ins that you can use to achieve this.  Jakob Nielsen, a web usability expert and author of UseIT.com defines breadcrumbs as…

“…a single line of text to show a page’s location in the site hierarchy…”

Source: UseIT.com; Jakob Nielsen

Now that we know what a breadcrumb is let’s explore them in a little more depth.

Breadcrumbs Explored

Many times (more than I’d like to count) you’ll see breadcrumbs on ecommerce websites, community based portals or other large sites but this doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t have this functionality on your own website.  Breadcrumbs, most notably the ones from the story of Hansel and Gretel and they act in the same manner allowing people to find their way back when they navigate back easily and they look like this…

When you think about improving your website’s usability regardless of whether you run it on WordPress, something custom or some other platform it’s important as web developers and web designers to understand that you don’t have the same knowledge of the web that your visitors do for the most part and it’s your job to make navigating the website easier to use.

Breadcrumbs are considered as secondary navigation on your website because they work similar to sitemaps in that they provide a site hierarchy breakdown and usually they only take up minimal space on the website.  They show users where they are currently in the grand scheme of things on your website and allow single-click access to higher levels of the website to help people go back without the use of the web browser’s back button.

So you may be sold on using breadcrumbs now but they aren’t included in your website’s current features.  No need to panic!  If you happen to be running WordPress, Magento, Durpal or some other pre-built website content management or ecommerce system here are some plug-ins that can help you get this functionality working on your website.

Adding Breadcrumbs in WordPress

Yoast Breadcrumbs – This great little plug-in allows you to all a breadcrumb trail to your website and gives you plenty of ways to tweak it.  It was designed by Joost De Valk to give people control in adding breadcrumbs to your website and also provides the ability to edit them in a wide range of ways with good SEO practices in mind.  Click here to read more about it and download it as well.

Breadcrumbs NavXT – This is a great plug-in for people looking for the ability to control their breadcrumbs specific to the Pages & Posts, Categories, Tags, Date Archives, Current and Miscellaneous web pages in your website.  In comparison to the Yoast Breadcrumbs plug-in if you are looking to be able to control your breadcrumbs specific to what is being accessed this will definitely help you out.  Click here to read more about this plug-in

Adding Breadcrumbs in Magento Commerce – Breadcrumbs are included in this ecommerce system by default under their “Catalog Browsing” features. Click here to read more about this

Adding Breadcrumbs in Joomla! – If your site runs on Joomla! They have some instructions on how you can go about adding breadcrumbs.  Click here for more information.

Adding Breadcrumbs in Drupal – If you run Drupal 7.x or later the ability to add breadcrumbs is included but if you run another version of Drupal before 7.x there are modules that Drupal specifies and that you can download to give your website this functionality.  Click here to get more information about this.

Adding Breadcrumbs in ExpressionEngine – If you run ExpressionEngine there is a simple piece of code that you can add to your website that allows you to display breadcrumb hierarchy.  Click here for this information.

As you can see the major CMS platforms and ecommerce systems have ways that are pretty easy to add this functionality to their web platform.  Even if you are developing your own custom solution adding a breadcrumb hierarchy will help your visitors get around your website quickly and keep them happy!

Luc Arnold

Remember “Follow the Breadcrumbs!”

Anyone who goes online today uses job boards to find work, to find employees and to advertise job postings to interested candidates.  The web has become a part of how we search for work from freelance to full time and it only continues to grow.  Templatic recently released a WordPress Theme for those of you looking for a Theme that doubles as a Job Board called Job Board.

Templatic (formerly PremiumThemes.net) in recent months has started to produce WordPress Themes that by nature are website themes but with specific functionality built into them and even recently when they released their, Store WordPress Theme, their first ecommerce WordPress Theme it became clear that they are looking to target niche users such as people looking to start a job board whether it’s for their own recruiting business, something open to the public online job seekers or private as a part of an internal company job board.

So, getting back to the product review, this theme offers a good deal of functionality specific to running a job board including a general job posting list layout, category specific job posting lists, job search functionality, RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds to syndicate your job postings and a whole host of other features packed into the Job Board WordPress Theme.

So what makes this WordPress theme a great WordPress theme and why should you spend the money on this theme?  Well, for that you’ll just have to continue reading…

What makes the Job Board WordPress Theme great!

• Accept PayPal payments – If you are running job boards on the web than you want the option of accepting payments when people post a job on your job board and with the Job Board WordPress Theme now you can!
• Set job postings to automatically expiry – When you purchase this WordPress theme you can set postings to automatically expiry and save them as a draft of delete them.  This is a pretty useful function of this particular theme because if you are charging people and companies for job postings then having a way to remove them automatically will save you time allowing you to work on more important things.
• Displays recent listings on the dashboard – This is a useful function for the administrator of the website which shows the admin the recent listings that were added to the job board and the dates that they were added to the job board.

What makes the Job Board WordPress Theme NOT so great!

• It’s specifically designed to work as a job board – Because this WordPress theme is built to function as a job board you may be disappointed if you are buying it for any other reason than this.  If you are looking to do anything else with it that I would suggest searching for a theme that has what you need in terms of functionality.

Outside of that there isn’t anything else that I can say about this WordPress theme that’s really negative.  The speed and performance of the job board theme is very solid and browser compatible.

Our Product Rating

Cost:

9.5

Support and Documentation:

8.0

Usability:

7.0

Web Browser Compatibility:

8.0

Overall:

8.1

SpicyWebDesigners.com rates products on a scale from 0 to 10 with 0 being the worst and 10 being the best. A typical product review includes looking at Cost, Support and Documentation, Usability, Web Browser Compatibility (using Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer).

Why is buying this theme a good idea?

The Job Board Theme is really a strong WordPress theme and if you are looking for the ability to create and run a job board then this theme will deliver what you need it to do.  It allows you to accept payment for jobs that people want to post using PayPal, allows you to set up expiry settings on job postings and has a lot of other functionality built into it to help you build your own job board successfully

How much does it cost?

The single use license for this theme will cost you $65 and gets you the Job Board WordPress Theme from Templatic.  It includes the standard features like access to documentation and the single use license is only available to be used on 1 website.  If you are looking to use this theme on multiple website then checkout their multiple license for $99 which gives you everything the single use license does and more including access to the PSD (Photoshop Document) files.

If you are a fan of Templatic then consider paying for access to their theme club for $279 (regularly a $399 value) for an unlimited access membership to all the WordPress Themes that they produce over the next year.

Blair Williams from Salt Lake City, Utah in the United States has gone by many titles including “Software Engineer”, “Internet Marketer” and “New Media Consultant” and he is the guy behind Pretty Link and Pretty Link Pro, a WordPress plug-in that allows you to “Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website.”

He began to work in internet marketing in 2007 when he made the jump from his technical background into running an internet business.  Before he was a software engineer, internet marketer or a new media consultant, Blair, graduated from Southern Utah University where he received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and ever since then he has been diving into code, consulting and engineering solutions in one way or another.

His latest project “Mingle” is a social networking plug-in that you can use on a WordPress website.  Blair was able to recently take some time out of his busy schedule to talk to us about his career, how he works and markets what he does.

Luc asks: Blair, I see that you have a wide array of talents including being a Software Engineer, an Internet Marketer and a New Media Consultant.  How do you feel that your skills complement one another?

Blair says: I feel like Internet Marketers (and consultants) are much more effective when they well versed in the technology of the web — and that Software Engineers are better when they understand Internet Marketing. I feel like these skill sets have really played off of each other for me — I really didn’t start doing much Internet Marketing until 2007 but because of my technical background, diving into the world of SEO, PPC, and Internet Business made a lot of sense and I think was much easier to grasp than it would be had I not already been a Software Engineer. At times though, the Software Engineer in me has been somewhat of a liability  (I always have this tendency to dive into the code instead of hiring it out) but now that I’m marketing software that I create, I feel like I’ve finally achieved some balance — I don’t feel guilty for writing code anymore, that’s for sure …

Luc asks: I personally found out about you after downloading your Pretty Link WordPress Plug-in like most people who know you online.  What other projects are you working on currently?

Blair says: Well, the main project I’m working on is another plug-in called Mingle. Mingle is a social networking plug-in for a standard WordPress installation with a standard theme … I’ve been doing some other work for clients as well but Mingle has really been keeping me busy lately.
Luc asks: How much do you make online monthly currently (if you don’t mind me asking) and why did you make the choice to generate a living online?

Blair says: It’s always scary to launch a new product because you never know how much revenue to expect from it. Pretty Link Pro was no exception to that rule — but it has been performing nicely … Pretty Link Pro was built from the ground up from user generated ideas — I’ve found these kinds of products give users more value and perform better. While I’m still not making enough from PLP for me to retire to the Caribbean — it has been a really nice stream of consistent income.

There is no better way to make a living in the modern world than working online. Especially within the last few years the Internet has given a new class of Internet Entrepreneurs the opportunity to work on their own terms. These entrepreneurs can work from home or from wherever they want, they can automate a ton of their business tasks easily and can make a decent living from it … It’s my passion to not only do this for myself but to make it easier for other Internet Entrepreneurs to make a living online.

Luc asks: Blair, do you currently work from home exclusively?

Blair says: I still do quite a bit of client work and one of them has been kind enough to loan me some space — I do most of my work there — but I do work from home a 1 to 2 days a week.

Luc asks: Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur or do the titles of “software engineer”, “internet marketer” and “new media consultant” frame what you do and where your interests lay better?

Blair says: All of the above — it’s really hard to classify a title. I write and market software to people that hopefully provides value to them and makes their lives easier … it’s the same model that thousands of 1-3 person programming shops are now employing to create iPhone, Twitter, Facebook and, like me, WordPress apps. These platforms have made it much easier for developer software out to wide audiences — its exiting to me that this trend is only showing signs of growing.

If you are interested in downloading Blair Williams “Pretty Link” WordPress Plug-in click here and if you are interested in grabbing his Mingle plug-in click here.

With the dawn of database driven websites and website platforms like WordPress, Drupal, ExpressionEngine and countless others it’s clear that lots of people want to run websites that use database technology to generate web pages.  Originally before this trend in web development you would simply host HTML pages on your web hosting server and preserve the URL structure and it would look similar to this…

http://www.mysite.com/category/page.html

Everything was great, then as dynamically driven websites (a.k.a. websites that use databases to grab content and display that content in a generated web page) became more popular there was a problem.  The problem was that the URL structure became and looked dynamically generated as well leaving it looking like this…

http://www.mysite.com/?p=881

This left things looking messy, confusing and not very pretty to look at.  That’s why they call it an “Ugly Permalink”.  So what was the solution to this problem? Pretty Permalinks, of course! But what are permalinks exactly?

Permalinks come from the concept of “Permanence” meaning that people want to link to something that is “permanent” so that they can source it, refer to it or link to it without thinking that it is going to change.

A permalink looks like this…

http://www.mysite.com/my-about-page

So what CMS website platforms support using permalinks?  Here is a list that should help you choose a website platform that uses the permalink structure.

• WordPress
• Drupal
• ExpressionEngine
• Moveable Type
• TypePad
• Blogger

Using Permalinks in WordPress

WordPress has done a great job for a while of allowing people to use Permalinks in their blog and website posts and pages and I believe the reason is because they’ve made it easy to use for everyone.  If you currently use WordPress for one of your websites and you’ve never tried to customize your permalinks or you don’t know the first place about where to begin then hold on tight.  The first thing you need to do is log into your WordPress website and follow these steps…

• Look for the “Settings” section and then look for the “permalinks” section and click on it.

• Next, you’ll see something similar to the screenshot below that allows you to customize your permalinks in WordPress

Depending on how you want to custom your permalink structure you should be able to find a solution that allows you to display URLs the way that you want to show them.  If you are interested in all the supported permalink attributes click here to get a list of them that WordPress currently supports then click here.

For those of you that don’t currently use WordPress on your website here are some links to other documentation for different platforms like Drupal, ExpressionEngine and others.

• Permalinks in Drupal
• Creating permalinks in posts using Blogger
• Using the permalink variable in ExpressionEngine
• Publishing Settings in Moveable Type
• Using Permalinks in WordPress

Benefits of Permalinks

Some of the benefits of customizing permalinks include that it can help you in a number of ways like optimizing your URLs for search engines and specific keywords, having a pretty link that people can link to and read, removing the “chronological” structure from your site and allowing you customize the URL as you see fit!  It gives you a great amount of choice as to what your readers see, how they see the content and experience your website.

What are post slugs?

No they aren’t the kind of slugs that you find in the garden on your Tomatoes and the term “slug” does really give you a good impression of what it actually does.  Simply put, a “Slug” is a one or two word description of a post that is used in the permalinks when you post an entry in WordPress.

How to edit Permalinks in WordPress at the Page or Post level

If you are creating a page or a post in WordPress then you might have noticed once you’ve entered the Page Title or Post Title the Permalink is filled in automatically with the contents of the title you’ve entered.

At the Post level the permalink will include the structure you’ve chosen under Settings > Permalinks mentioned above but at the Page level the only thing included is the contents of the page title.  Have a look at what I am talking about…

Page Level Permalink Example

Post Level Permalink Example

Are Hackable Permalinks bad?

A note about “Hackable Permalinks”: “Hackable” Permalinks are permalinks that are easy to break down and allow the user to navigate to a different part of your website easily.

Hacking and being hacked has had a bad reputation associated with it in the computer and internet world but the truth is that Hackable Permalinks are some of the best kinds of permalinks available according to WordPress.  WordPress has this to say about Hackable Permalinks…

“The best Permalinks are “Hackable,” meaning a user might modify the link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog.”

Source: WordPress Codex

What are the best permalink structures available?

Having the best permalink structure to your links is up for debate because some people prefer to do some things one way or another and there is no standard out there that says “This is how you produce the best permalinks”.  Some of the experts out there have their own ways to produce the “best” permalinks but again this isn’t set in stone because largely what they (the experts) are writing about is what has worked for them.

• SmartBlogTips – Best Permalinks URL structure for your WordPress blog
• Zemalf.com – Quest for the Best Permalink Structure
• EnlightenedWebMastery.com – Best SEO WordPress Permalink Structure

Permalinks is a core topic if you are using a lot of website platform technologies like WordPress that are out there today because they control what types of links you generate and what types of links people can use to link back to your website.  Links are the bricks and mortar that hold the web together and paying attention to this means that you will build a stronger and more structurally sound website ready for search engines, referring sites and the people who visit your website.

Luc Arnold

Permalinks are cool and useful!

Sara Tusar Suhadolc is a web designer and developer living and working in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  She has been involved in designing and developing websites since she was 14.  Back then she was trying to figure out how everything works on the web and today her curiosity has only grown.

She graduated from the University of Maribor in Slovenia back in December 2008 after completing a degree in Interactive Graphic Communications.  Since graduating, she’s been working full-time for a design agency in Slovenia and in the future plans to possibly pursue freelance web design.

I had a chance to ask Sara some questions about her experiences in web design, her knowledge of front-end development and her educational experiences and this is what she had to say…

Luc asks: Sara, how did you first get into web design and why do you still enjoy designing for the web?

Sara says: I started checking source codes and playing around in Photoshop at the age of 14. I have always been interested in how stuff works and websites definitely intrigued me the most. Eleven years later, things haven’t changed much. I am still this curious kid who loves learning about design and creative use of technology on a daily basis. I think that when you acquire enough knowledge the real fun starts. I know that there’s just so much to discover, so many great websites to build so I’m already looking forward to it!

Luc asks: I see that you call yourself a “front-end developer” besides just being a web designer. What have you learned that really makes you a great front end developer?

Sara says: Well, I learned that just being a good front-end developer or just a good web designer isn’t enough. In order to become great you need to be a bit of both – a savvy front-end developer as well as a creative and resourceful web designer. We all know that the Internet is a very specific medium in terms of its possibilities and limitations. Knowing all of them well and having different solutions at hand is almost mandatory if you want your work to stand out.

Luc asks: Do you currently freelance on a full-time or part-time basis and are you selective about the projects you take on?

Sara says: The fact that I have a full time job at the moment keeps me from freelancing on a regular basis. That might change in the future if I manage to attract enough clients. I’m not particularly picky about what projects I take on as long as they represent enough of a challenge and let me express my creativity at the same time. I am at the moment busy designing a web site for this very exciting new start-up called Dog-walker Central, which will be ready for a release with the ability for the public to search profiles in the next 4-5 weeks. After that, we will continue to add features and hopefully the project will be fully up and running in June, so keep your eyes open

Luc asks: I also read on your portfolio site that you have a degree in Interactive Graphic Communications and i just wanted to ask where did you study? Have you graduated and if you have when did you graduate and also how has your education helped you in becoming a design professional?

Sara says: That is correct, I studied Interactive Graphic Communications at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (University of Maribor, Slovenia), graduated in 2008 and was even given the Best Graduate of the Year Award . Having the particular formal educational is of course an important element – it broadens one’s horizons, gives one basic knowledge, but isn’t enough in my experience. If you want to become a real player you have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of free time. You have to literally eat, breathe and dream web design.

Luc asks: You say that you do your best to push the limits when it comes to front-end development and design, how do you go about doing this on your projects?

Luc asks: Extensive knowledge of front-end development helps me in being a better web designer. So, when designing I know exactly how a certain part will be executed and can therefore push the limits of design to the maximum of what is technological possible. I am particularly good at bringing nice fonts to the screen by using methods such as Cufón, Font embedding (Font Squirrel, Typekit) and sIFR.

Australian web designer, David Jonsson comes to us from Byron Bay where he crafts websites with branding and amazing graphic designs.  He got his start in designing for the web when he was living and working in London, England and got hired by a web design agency called “Pod1” and learned a lot of his skills on the job.

David has been designing websites since 2005 and more recently, in the past 3 years, he has been freelancing full-time as a web designer.  David uses typography and his graphic design skills to rework designs for the web and end up looking amazing.

Talking to David, it’s easy to see why he is so passionate about web design, his freelance career and the fact that he has never missed a deadline.  Read on to see what David had to say…

Luc asks: David how did you originally start designing website and what got you interested in web design?

David says: It all started when I left Australia to live in London for 12 months. Luckily enough when I arrived and was looking for a job, my brother mentioned that he had a friend who worked at a design agency that was looking for somebody for a couple of days to do data entry.  Fortunately for me, I learned to touch type at school and got the job. What I didn’t realize though was that I was walking into an amazing web design agency called Pod1. They had some amazing designers who I got the opportunity to sit next to and watch them create some stunning websites from scratch.  I decided then and there that this is what I wanted to do. Thankfully Pod1 kept me around for a bit and my love for design and web design just grew from there. They were all extremely passionate about what they did and the designers would settle for nothing but their best – I think that’s the most important thing that they taught me, be proud of what you do and do it as well as you possibly can.

Luc asks: Do you think in the web design profession it’s possible to become uninspired and bored of your job?

David says: If you don’t love web design or design in general it would be very easy to become uninspired and bored of your job. I on the other hand absolutely love what I do and can’t imagine myself doing anything else, web design brings in a lot more challenges as it’s more of an ever changing monster than say print design – I think this is why I love it the most, it’s challenging and is always changing. That’s not to say I don’t have days where I feel bored, uninspired and overwhelmed, but those days are very few and far between.

Luc asks: I see that your portfolio consists of a lot of graphic design work and i wanted to ask do you code any of the projects that you work on and if so what languages do you primarily work in?

David says: I code a few of the projects that I work on, it is a skill that I’m constantly learning and improving. Primarily the languages I work in are xHTML and CSS. My CMS of choice is WordPress which I’m comfortable with but when it comes to the bigger, more technical websites and e-commerce jobs I work with a highly skilled development team based in Brisbane, Australia and their work is nothing but exceptional.

Luc asks: Do you currently freelance on a full-time or part-time basis and how do you juggle the work that you do with your life in general being that you are under deadlines at times?

David says: I’ve been freelancing full time for the past 3 years. The work vs. life balance is something you learn over time. Deadlines really shouldn’t be an issue if you’ve accounted for your time correctly and set milestones that are achievable. That’s not to say I’m not extremely stressed 24hrs before launching a new site or submitting logo designs to my clients but I’m proud to say that I’ve never missed a deadline.

Luc asks: When people who become your clients what is your usually process for gathering information about the project you are going to become involved in? Also, what part does the “Questionnaire” play for your clients and potential clients?

David says: I have certain questionnaires for my clients depending on the project.  The questionnaires take care of the essential information and it’s a great way for the client to really think about their project and gives me a breakdown of what they’re hoping to achieve. I like to meet with my clients, either face to face, over the phone or a video call on Skype, this takes care of a lot of questions that they might have and I can also give advice on certain things that they either don’t understand or are not too sure about.  It’s nice to have a personal touch, I think a lot of clients appreciate that and expect it when dealing with a freelancer directly.