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search-engine-optimization-seo

admin — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:10:59 +0000

search-engine-optimization-seo

Looking to be #1 in Google?

Clickable Image Areas

admin — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 18:26:55 +0000

How to make clickable areas in an image.

A.k.a. “Image map”, also searched for as “multiple URLs within 1 image” or define an area to be clickable in an image.

This technique is used to make multiple clickable areas within a single image.

Example: http://swiftcms.com/hosting
Image Map Tool: http://www.image-maps.com

Questions? Ask away and we’ll update this page.

Pricing Trap

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:46:41 +0000

Here’s the Pricing Trap:

NOTE: I get a bit plucky here, this should be taken as a grain of salt. There’s truth in it, but it’s a bit editorial… based on reality, but maybe a bit stronger than some can take it. Can you handle the truth?

People who aren’t marketers don’t know how to evaluate websites, don’t really know how to shop for a website. Entrepreneurs who have not owned a successful website that produces revenue want to spend as little as possible, viewing it as a necessary evil or a brochure they need to have. So they shop purely on price.
Because they shop on price, they get someone who can make a website, but isn’t terribly good at all the non-technical tasks (copywriting for example, marketing, search engine optimization, A/B split testing, landing pages… the list goes on). Good people don’t need to work super cheap, because they’re busy. Find the cheapest web designers, and you’ll find, exactly precisely, the people who cannot charge more because they cannot differentiate themselves on quality. They will in turn, make you a website which will leave you competing only on price, because it’s the only arrow they have in their quiver.
Said client then gets what they think is a website. It is, technically, a website that _looks_ like a website, smells like a website, and comes up in a browser like a website. But it’s not a marketing asset, in fact, it’s more like a marketing “bucket with holes in it”, leaking out their tiny hard-earned traffic. So, they think they bought a website. But low and behold, the market yawns, the search engines bury them on page 17 of the results, they get no traffic, make no sales, and finally reinforce their belief that a website won’t make them any money.
Go back to step 1. Next time they start a business they again want to shop on price, which, since they’re sort of failing online, is likely to occur sooner than later. Sorry if this stings, BUT if it does, ask yourself, are you confident your website reflects your company as you see it or want it to be?
1. If yes, then I’m wrong, delusional, and you can safely dismiss my “propaganda” as simply an attempt to overcharge you, which you successfully dodged. Great! You’ve kept your money safely in your wallet. But you still have your current results.
2. If no, then congratulations on prioritizing your company and your income over your pride. This doesn’t mean you have to choose us. Maybe you think I’m a jerk for pointing out the truth and you don’t want to work with us… that’s ok. I tell the truth, and call it as I see it, admit when I’m wrong, and believe talented and ethical people deserve success, however, you could cure cancer but if you don’t market the solution, the world won’t find you. It’s not enough to have a good product or good service. Anyway, take a real assessment of your brand / company, and note what’s missing – then find someone (hopefully us, but no matter what, take action, even if not with us) to execute.
3. If you’re maybe / not sure, then ask an expert. Ask someone whose results you want to clone. Ask us, I’ll tell you the truth – about 25% of my incoming sales call I un-sell, to my own detriment, because the client has the wrong solution in mind or a mistaken premise. I’d rather earn a client’s respect for years than make a one-time sale of ice to an eskimo.

As I mentioned, take this as a grain of salt.

That said, it is truth. Having built over 100 websites for clients, and with over 1,000 clients of our various other dot-com products, I’ve noticed some patterns.

Google.com is technically “just a website”.

What separates Google.com from the hundreds of nobody-remembers search engines started back in 1993? Quality in their case, quality of results, which meant quality of code, which means they didn’t take the cheap and easy road, they did what’s right by the clients.

Now they have a market cap over 240 Billion.

This article is in response to “web design prices” and “web designer prices“.

Fonts

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:19:54 +0000

How to Change the Fonts on SwiftCMS Websites

Note: This applies specifically only to SwiftCMS driven websites, not wordpress in general. Most wordpress themes require hand-editing of CSS style sheets, often requiring FTP, and are a bit more tech-skills-demanding than you’ll know how to do, if you’re reading this article. So, if you have a wordpress site not running SwiftCMS, why not upgrade today – and we’ll change it for you, for free. See http://SwiftCMS.com for details & special offers.

For SwiftCMS Members, this is very easy – you just need to know where to look.

Note there are actually *3* separate locations, because they all control different parts. This help file will walk you through all 3.

1. General Fonts, site-wide, and the site-wide default.

Login to your control panel, and go to SwiftCMS >> General Settings >> “General Colors and Settings”. Remember to click save after you select another font. NOTE (SwiftCMS 2.0 only; will be revised in 3.0): Anything below “Bank Gothic” is a non-standard font, and requires the “Ultimate Google Fonts” plugin to be active and have the font available for on-the-fly download (see step 2 below). If you choose anything above “Bank Gothic”, i.e. Verdana, Arial, Times New Roman, etc. – these fonts are standard web-fonts to all browsers and no plugin is required.

Here’s where to look:

How to change Swift CMS (+Wordpress) fonts

1B. Using Non-Standard Fonts:

NOTE: This will be deprecated (obsolete and not required) in SwiftCMS 3.0 (i.e. if you select a non-standard font, we will do what’s needed under the hood automatically for you, but until then, this step is required if you want to use Non-Standard fonts for SwiftCMS 2.o and below).

Frequently, just to add some flavor to websites, one wants to vary from the non-standard fonts included in all browsers. That’s ok, but it requires 1 more easy small step, which is making sure the font is available for download, in case the browser doesn’t already have it installed. To do this, just go to Plugins >> Ultimate Google Fonts (hit control-F to find it), click “activate”. Next, go to Settings >> Ultimate Google Fonts, and find the font(s) you want to enable. At first, when choosing, I personally will enable a handful and test them out to see what I like, however, once you’ve selected, remember to go back and un-click the ones you are not using; having extra unused web-fonts will slow down your site-load-speed, which can negatively affect your SEO. It’s not a big deal to add 1-2 fonts, but adding 20 fonts if you’re using 2 clutters up bandwidth and makes your site “bigger” than it needs to be (in kilobytes and thus download speed).

2. Headlines (H1 – H6)

You know what headlines are, but you may not know there are technically speaking 6 styles or sizes of headlines. Also, these affect your SEO, so it’s a great idea to weave in a few keyphrase-dense headlines into your website.

This is H2 text

and here’s some H4 Text

Anyway, using headlines is part of “best practices” both for readability and for Google friendliness. Style these headlines by going to SwiftCMS >> General Settings >> H1-H6 COLORS AND SIZES, like so. NOTE: If you don’t select anything, your site-wide-default will be used, as defined in step 1. If you use a non-standard font, be sure it is enabled (Step 1B above; SwiftCMS 2.0 and below).

3. Menu Fonts

This follows the same model as above – just go to SwiftCMS >> Main Menu >> Menu Style & Position.

That’s it! These 3 options control 100% of the fonts on any SwiftCMS website.

For those who are ultra tech savvy, you can get crafty and add direct CSS into SwiftCMS >> SwiftCMS >> Additional CSS, but this is only for people who know how to write CSS code (i.e. web designers and our staff).

Think we missed something? As always, let us know and we’ll update this page.

Next Gen Gallery

admin — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:42:23 +0000

NextGen gallery is a plugin that SwiftCMS officially supports. Note this is not to be confused with our own proprietary gallery, which will be deprecated (phased out) in SwiftCMS 3.0, as we add more features to instead support more widely supported systems including this one.

So, over time, we recommend all galleries are converted from SwiftCMS’ own gallery and converted to this method, the NextGEN gallery.

How to use:

Enable the plugin by logging into your site’s control panel, going to “Plugins”, finding (Control-F) “Next” then clicking activate.
Rename the photos to be something SEO-Friendly for your website. For example, ideally, “barbados-wedding-planner.jpg”, not “1234.jpg”. This is optional, but recommended. There’s no wrong answer so don’t over think this, it’s just a bit of extra juice to help google & bing know what your site is about.

How to Order Images:

Questions? Missing some information? Let us know and we’ll update this page.

Tables

admin — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 17:33:07 +0000

[JULY 18, 2012 Update: New Plugin Added (Better! More Powerful!)]

There are several possible ways to add tables to your website. Here’s the most powerful, and if it doesn’t work well for you , move to the method below. It will work, but being more powerful, also allows more options, which may require some custom CSS.

Steps to add a table to WordPress / SwiftCMS:

Enable the Plugin “WP-Table Reloaded”, by logging into your control panel (often http://YOURPHONE.SwiftWebDesigner.com/wp-admin or http://YOURSITENAME.SwiftCMS.com/wp-admin ), then going to “Plugins” on the sidebar. Hit Control-F to find “Table Reloaded”. Click “Activate”.
Next, go to Tools >> WP-Table Reloaded (http://YOURSITECONTROLPANEL/wp-admin/tools.php?page=wp-table-reloaded).
Next, you need to either upload a CSV OR create a new table.
1. IF you have a CSV ready, click “import”, find the file, and you should get the idea. If you have data in Microsoft Excel or some other spreadsheet data, you’ll need to export CSV, in “file” – google for help if needed on this.
2. If you’re not importing a spreadsheet, you can just “Add New Table” and start dropping data in.
Next, you need to create a post or page for the table to live in, or add it to your existing page. Go to Pages >> Add New (for evergreen content) or Posts >> Add New (for timely information, and categorized info like help files, press data, etc.). Drop in a short code, such as [table id=1 /] on to the page. If the text looks bold, or doesn’t work for some reason, switch from “Visual” (upper right of text-editing-window) to “HTML” and paste it there, so there’s no other code around it i.e. just [table id=1 /] not [table id=1 /]
Done! Hopefully…
Since tables can get wide, you may want to change the page-template, which in pages is on the right – “Page Attributes” >> “Template” >> change to “One Column, no Sidebar(s)” if needed.

Hopefully that works, if not, here’s another older method that also works. It’s almost as good, except the headers aren’t “sortable”, but if you don’t need that or care, the results might be perfect for your needs.

This video will show you how to create or edit tables within your http://SwiftWebDesigner.com website.

By the way, those steps are in order:

Open the CSV or excel Data
Save As or Export as HTML
Open the HTML in a browser, preferably Firefox or Chrome, as sometimes Internet Explorer has problems pasting data (it makes a mess of it).
Switch to “View Source”
Copy everything starting with (including the “<” symbol all the way through
(including the “>” symbol).
Create a new post or page within SwiftWebDesigner / WordPress
Paste the source. If it doesn’t look right, be sure you have tinyMCE or a similar editor enabled in the plugins. It is automatically installed in all SwiftWebDesigner websites, however, it is not enabled by default (on purpose, to keep things simple).
Switch to view mode, and you should see your data. Publish the page and you’re done.

Questions? Comment below and we will update this page.

This tool may also help – just copy the data from your CSV sheet, paste it here at Tableizer (http://tableizer.journalistopia.com/), then paste the resulting code into your post or page (in HTML mode).

Favicon

admin — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 06:17:36 +0000

Adding Favicon to SwiftCMS / WordPress

Editing your favicon is very easy, but you’ll need a few steps, because a favicon is a specific file format.

Prepare the image or select your image (often a logo or part of a logo, since it’s so small, but can be any small shape. It needs to be pretty simple – you only have 12 pixels by 12 pixels to work with, so nothing complex!).
Upload the image to http://www.favicon.cc/ (click “import image”…)
“Download Favicon” – Save the favicon (right-click, then “save as”) to your desktop
In SwiftCMS (your control panel of your website) (http://YOURPHONE.SwiftWebDesigner.com/wp-admin/ or might be http://YOURSITENAME.SwiftCMS.com/wp-admin ) go to SwiftCMS >> General >> General Colors and Settings >> Favicon and click “select”. Upload your image, and click “insert into post”.
Click “Save Settings” (any of the ones on the page, they all do the same thing)
Done!

Public Files Upload

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:34:29 +0000

How to Create a Public Large Files Upload Box

Note: This method works and is simple. We are working on more sophisticated options using both dropbox and Google Docs, but so far, this is the best and only method, which is creating a direct URL to a public-enabled Google Docs folder.

Login to Google Docs (Free; just go to docs.google.com and login using your gmail address; if you don’t have gmail you’ll need to set one up (free)).
Create a folder called “_Public_Incoming” just like that, with underscores.
Click Share – like this…
In the popup, copy (control-C) your unique URL – you’ll add that to your page and hyperlink it. Then click “Change” like so…
Click “Anyone with the Link” and be sure to allow anyone to edit. Don’t worry, they can ONLY see this folder that you’ve created (which, at the moment, probably contains nothing).
Last, add a link to your page and/or navigation as usual. You should probably prompt users/uploaders to click the + sign in the top left. If you want to add a link for “Deliverables Upload” for example, you’d go to Appearance >> Menus >> Custom Links, paste in the URL, then click “Add”, drag it to where you want in the menu, and click “Open in new window”, since it’s an external site (this will leave your site open in the background, generally best practices with all external links).
Test it.

Done!

Here’s ours – FYI – for demo purposes.

To Upload, Click the + in the top left.
http://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B22l866a07VDRFlKeUU2ZUJzcFk/edit?pli=1

We may in the future update this to create widgets and/or use 3rd party plugins for cloud storage systems like Google Docs, Amazon AS3, and Dropbox, but for the moment, this is simple, reliable, free, and it works. Other systems, as of this writing, have not yet proven reliable so use this – until we update this page.

Dealer / Store Locator

admin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:15:48 +0000

Dealer / Store Locator: How to Install

Go to Plugins >> “Store Locator for WordPress” and click activate
In the admin panel, you should now see a “Store Locator” section. Fill this out with your store’s or dealer’s locations.

Additional documentation:

Plugin Help File: Store Locator WPress documentation

Questions? Contact us through /Support and we’ll update this page.

Malware Removal

admin — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:49:12 +0000

If you see a screen like this (in Chrome…)

Warning: Something's Not Right Here!

or like this (in Firefox)…

reported-attack-page malware removal

or similar in other browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.) then this post applies to you.

The bad news:

Your Site Was Hacked!

The good news: (1.) it was probably before you moved your site to SwiftCMS, so you just need to get Google to re-spider your new site, and (2.) we ‘ll help you fix this. (3.) It was most likely for “malware injection” of which the goal is to install a virus and/or profit-yielding-cookies (such as ebay-affiliate code for example), and not a personally-motivated and/or not likely there to obtain personally sensitive data of your customers.

Note that one of the benefits of SwiftCMS’s monthly support system is hacker insurance and security procedures. There are a lot of things we do behind the scenes to keep your new website safe, so it’s very very unlikely to happen in the first place, simply because there are millions more easier targets for the hackers. In addition, if this did happen, we’d probably know before you, and remove it, and last, if we do remove it, it’s at no additional cost to you – a form of insurance.

This is beyond budget hosting.

A typical budget host will send you a help file and tell you “go get ‘em tiger. Good luck”.

Did I mention if you have this warning Google’s also telling the world? Like this…

this site may harm your computer

Anyway, let’s get it fixed.

First, this post assumes the actual damage, the actual malicious code is already removed. If you’re reading this and your website is not on SwiftCMS + WordPress (i.e. hosted on SwiftWebDesigner.com servers), then today and now is the perfect time to upgrade – and you’ll get this fixed as a side benefit. Otherwise, go to http://www.stopbadware.org/home/badware and FTP in, find the injection, and remove it. Tip: The hackers are smart; they 1. encrypt the injection, so you can’t just search for the offending code, it’ll be hashed or disguised as serialized php, 2. it may not even be in the code, it might be in the sql database, 3. they tend to look for files labeled index.* in my experience i.e. index.php etc. 4. backup the site first, even with the malware in it, as you may need to wipe your entire website. 5. If you’re not fairly expert, and familiar with reading code, including php, this is not something you’re likely to succeed at. 6. change all your FTP passwords immediately, then use a superior method to connect such as SSH / SCP; some hackers use “FTP port sniffers” which transmit the FTP data to a malicious party, who then just walks in and adds it, and 7. the hackers are even smart enough to hide the intrusion from you, if your PC is infected, which prolongs the lifespan of their hack, since you don’t see it, therefore, you’ll need several computers to work on this, ideally one of them linux (more virus resistant; macs aren’t virus-proof any more since they switched to intel chips).

Or, call us, or your Swift Consultant, and get a new site – we can clone your old one + upgrade it faster than you might expect (and fix the problem).

So the info below is really just removal of the message / warning. Here’s how to get Google to re-spider your website (and thus see that it’s been cleared).

1. Login to https://www.google.com/webmasters and add your site by clicking in the top right. On the next screen click “Alternate Methods” upper left, then “Add Meta Tag To Your Site’s Homepage” as you see below: Copy the string of gibberish (control-C to copy or right-click).

2. In the control panel of your website, which is usually http://YOURPHONE.SwiftWebDesigner.com/wp-admin or http://YourPhone.SwiftCMS.com depending on your website, go to Settings >> Fast Verification, and drop this into the box that says “Google”

3. Return to Webmaster Central and click “verify”. This may take 2-3 tries at first, be patient and let it run.

Next, you might see this:

.. so click “more details”… then if you’re sure it’s gone (it will be if it’s on our platform), click “Request a Review”.

A human will review your site, ensure it’s gone, then remove all the notices.

Done!

For Swift Clients, doesn’t this give you a sense of relief? Why not take a moment and recommend us on Facebook or Twitter?

For not-yet-Swift-Clients, why not give us a call and upgrade your website today? We can help.

Note: For people who need malware removal but don’t want to change their code, the initial consultation _starts_ at $500 minimum, and doesn’t include a guarantee of removal. Once your site is hacked, the offending party can “create secret trap doors” for themselves to get back in – it’s much easier to keep them out than it is to get them out once hacked.