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.

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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 …

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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 …

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21 Oct

Slice Internet marketing down to size!

After being in web development now for over 4 years on and off, had I known what this nifty application tells me now I could be blogging to you from my private yacht.

Market Samurai figures out ways to surprise me that even Frank’s red hot sauce commercials couldn’t! It enlightens on the dao of real Internet marketing.It also showed the 3 golden rules. Rules, so important that if you break just even 1: YOU WILL FAIL.

No one could of prepared me for the beating I was going to give myself having learned of all the time I’ve wasted in the past with search engine optimization madness, and it is madness lets face it. The modules easily and quickly breakdown all the aspects I’m going to need to really optimize SEO for websites.

Offering 8 modules (7 + 1 coming soon) the Noble Samurai team (creators of this awesome program)  have bestowed upon you access to:

keyword researchrank followingSEO competitionmonetizationfind contentpublish contentpromotionadwords (coming soon!)

If you’re into SEO or web development, this program is a must have! Even …

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24 Jun

Linux IS NOT Microsoft Windows!Problem #1: Linux isn’t exactly the same as Windows.

You’d be amazed how many people make this complaint. They come to Linux, expecting to find essentially a free, open-source version of Windows. Quite often, this is what they’ve been told to expect by over-zealous Linux users. However, it’s a paradoxical hope.

The specific reasons why people try Linux vary wildly, but the overall reason boils down to one thing: They hope Linux will be better than Windows. Common yardsticks for measuring success are cost, choice, performance, and security. There are many others. But every Windows user who tries Linux, does so because they hope it will be better than what they’ve got.

Therein lies the problem.

It is logically impossible for any thing to be better than any other thing whilst remaining completely identical to it. A perfect copy may be equal, but it can never surpass. So when you gave Linux a try in hopes that it would be better, you were inescapably hoping that it would be different. Too many people ignore this fact, …

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