22 Jul
Sprout-vs-Hoot-mini

Dashboard Wars: HootSuite vs Sprout Social

What are Social Media Dashboards?

Social media is inescapable, even if you don’t want to use them websites in 2012 want you to connect via: everything. In the landscape of web 2.0 websites having social media connections aren’t even a second thought just expected. Clever social media icons pepper footers and top bars of websites everywhere; and the expectation is you have the accounts to connect to and use them. Before 2008, having multiple accounts, or many pages started to make managing your social persona quite the time consuming task. Thankfully we have two answers to help manage everything social, glean awesome insights into your online influence and all from an easy to manage, central “dashboard”.

*Note: This post might contain some affiliate links. Don’t be scared! That just means if you like what you see and purchase something, you’ll help me out too, and it’s really appreciated.

Read More →
23 Feb
BitCasa-vs-Dropbox

Storage Wars: Dropbox vs. Bitcasa

Why Cloud File Storage?

Online cloud storage isn’t anything new. In fact, users storing their personal files online has been around for many years; over and above emailing attachments to yourself. Although many contend to host your plethora of digital “stuff” on a secure cloud, few have maintained their promises of: storage size, transfer speed, file security and platform-availability.

Read More →
09 Jun

“ Quick tips to optimize Google Adwords copy on a per term basis. ”

Al Romano

Google Adwords: SEM Tips & Tricks

Everyone wants to have a successful online marketing campaign so it’s no surprise that Google, and search engines in general can play a big part of your sucess or failure. To be successful in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) you need to have a strong grasp of what your potential customers are trying to achieve. Advertisements that are relevant to the customers search queries will bring higher click-through rates (CTRs), better quality scores on Google and lowers costs per click (CPC); all leading to more sales and wider margins in the end. Your customer’s buying process, and it’s understanding, are critical to a successful SEM plan of attack (P.O.A). This is different than a normal marketing techniques on other mediums like radio, television and print which although still focus (hopefully) on your customers buying process and understanding it’s more of a best guess by professionals. With the internet you are starting with direct input from the customer themselves which should sound like a marketing team’s dream.

When a customer goes to search their are indicators from what they are searching. The …

Read More →
24 May

Don’t worry, theirs a library for that!

Every now and again, actually more like quite often than not, developers rely on what has now become an essential part of the developer toolkit: libraries. They enable developers to have more freedom to code, and focus on proper coding which 8/10 times will just work, –and this is a good thing!

But, I have thought about all of this library usage and am curious if we as developers are starting to rely too heavily on its usage in our coding practice. I’m not saying to stop using libraries all together, that would be madness, but at the very least before you decide to include one in your coding project make sure you’re familiar with it, what it does, how it benefits the project and the language it uses.

Less Confusion during debugging

I know one thing all developers loath is when something you thought was reliable breaks down, like a new plug-in for your CMS or a core library function; either way both require you to do something about it to rectify the situation.

A good library provides a …

Read More →
18 May

Extending your CMS

Extending the CMS

The majority of content management systems have increasing extendability, meaning you can enhance the original functionality already native to the system even further to match your online solution. This is usually achieved through the use of three concepts: plugins, modules and API’s. What they mean and do slightly vary from system to system but overall:

Plug-ins

Can be used to add all kinds of functionality to a CMS, from post to twitter plugins, to content creation kits the possibilities are endless to the amount of them you can download and install into your CMS’s.

Modules

Usually extend the core functionality of the CMS to help achieve a specific goal but not required for all projects. For Example, site-wide searching, forums or e-commerce functionality could be separated into individual modules which could be installed as required. Usually CMS providers use this approach and offer first-party modules that integrate perfectly into the system. Third-party modules are also an option as well usually.

API’s (Application Programming Interfaces)

Enable you to access the data of a service you require to create …

Read More →
18 May

The CMS Uber Guide: Hosted

Lots of hosted CMS options, let’s break it down

A Hosted CMS is totally owned and operated by the provider of that CMS. This is benefitial in numerious ways depending on your point of view. You don’t have to worry about setups, maintenance and updates to the system: everything is done for you. A hosted CMS also scales upwards very well, being able to handle most traffic spikes, and all for a single, little, or no cost. The downside can be limited flexablity in how you’re able to deploy/customize the CMS and not all are free.

Squarespace

This CMS is quite well designed and has a great user interface. It’s easy to get started, simple to use and updates almost automatically. The custom templates are easy to put your own content into and their are tonnes of extra options to add functionality to your site like photo galleries, forms, maps, forums all by inserting them into defined blocks. If you know CSS you can fully customize themes or make your own using the provided controls for editing. The only …

Read More →
18 May
Umbraco

The CMS Uber Guide: Licensed

How do you pick the right CMS for the job?

When I first started web design I thought that using a content management system was a type of cheating. I didn’t believe in the quality of the systems out their that offered everything you need in a box. It was also a bit concerning, just starting in this field, that I could be replaced by an out-of-the-box solution. Even worse, what if I used the system only to have something break on me and not work as planned?

It was this type of mindset that started me to lean towards making your CMS from the ground up for each project that required it. Although satisfying when complete, way to many countless hours, sleepless nights and energy drinks were wasted crafting these systems. The icing on the cake happened when clients wanted custom modifications and rather than enhance the functionality, they just broke the system even more making them a maintenance disaster.

Thankfully I’ve learned much since then and over the last couple of years have grown to become very familiar …

Read More →
← Older Entries