5 Reasons Not To Start Your Internet Business
Posted by admin in web design on October 11th, 2009
These may seem obvious, but I have seen them all!
1. Your concept is not unique. Too many would-be entrepeneurs see a successful online business and think “If they can do it why can’t I?” Well, there are probably a lot of reasons, not the least of which is their headstart in the market. Are you prepared to outspend an established business in marketing?
2. Your concept has limited appeal. Such a small number of people would be interested in your product or service, that cost of marketing to those people would put your project in the red.
3. Your target audience doesn’t have money. Marketing to a segment of the population that is frugal or has limited spending power means little or no money for you.
4. Your product or service is available elsewhere for free. Even if it’s a little better, free will always win.
5. Your concept is so unique that people won’t know to search for it. In this case you’ll need to build demand and educate the world about your product or service. Certainly possible if you have a significant budget set aside to do so.
Internet Explorer 8 Problems
Posted by admin in web design on September 29th, 2009
Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 8 was released a few months ago, and since then my automatic updates have been bugging me to install it. In fact I did intall it on one of my machines when it first came out. I do web design and development, and in order to do cross-browser testing I have a number of machines with a wide variety of browsers and versions of those browsers installed. With the possible exception of Netscape 7 for the Mac, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a buggy browser. Here are some of the problems I’ve had:
1. Frequent crashes
2. Many popular websites not functioning or displaying correctly (there is a compatability mode, so maybe I should have had that enabled all of the time).
3. Inconsistent cookie handling.
4. Frequently incomplete downloads. More often than not, when downloading files to my computer using Internet Explorer 8, the downloaded file would be incomplete and unusable.
On the positive side, IE8 does appear to comply with css standards better than any other microsoft browser to date. I will ONLY be using Internet Explorer 8 for cross-browser testing. It’s not ready for the big time. Add it to the list of microsoft problem products like Windows Vista and XBOX 360. Only a monopoly can get away with putting out such junk on a huge scale.
Enabling SEF Urls in Drupal 6
I have never really understood why web applications, like Drupal, that have the capability of producing search engine friendly (SEF) URLs don’t have them enabled by default. Who doesn’t like SEF Urls?
To Enable SEF URLs in Drupal 6, follow these steps:
- enable mod rewrite - this can be done through .htaccess or httpd.conf
- from admin: enable site building>modules>paths
- enable site configuration>clean urls
- create aliases site building > url aliases > add aliases
You have to add aliases manually using this process. Perhaps Drupal has, or will have a module that is more automatic in the future. We can only hope (but not hold our breaths)!
CSS Problem - Background-Position in IE7
Posted by admin in css, internet explorer, web design, web development on August 21st, 2009
I ran aross this problem with the way Internet Explore 7 (IE7) handles the background-position css property, and thought I’d post it just in case I could save someone some time. I was working on a layout, and it looked great in IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3 & Google Chrome 2. When viewed in IE7, however, the background-position of one of the elements was off.
After a bit of experimentation, as is a normal part of cross-browser testing with Microsoft Internet Exploder, I narrowed down the problem to the fact that I had overflow hidden for this particular element. All other browsers used the declared dimensions of the element to position the background. The problem is that there was some overflow, and all browsers but IE7 properly ignored it. IE7 used the dimensions including the overflow to determine the background-position.
In this situation I was able to size the element in such a way to eliminate the possibility of overflow, and then was able to remove the overflow:hidden declaration.
The Cocktail Monkeys - Pleasanton Downtown Free Concert in the Park
Posted by admin in Pleasanton, free concerts on August 7th, 2009
The Cocktail Monkeys rocked downtown Pleasanton tonight with their hard-edged brand of danceable rock. Best show so far this year!
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| From The Cocktail Monkeys |
I am personally accused by the spokeswoman for the Pleasanton Downtown Association of placing tarps, rocks and nails on the lawn.
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| From The Cocktail Monkeys |
The Cocktail Monkeys Rock The Park
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| From The Cocktail Monkeys |
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| From The Cocktail Monkeys |
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| From The Cocktail Monkeys |
Lead Singer of The Cocktail Monkeys
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| From The Cocktail Monkeys |
Bass Player for the Cocktail Monkeys
Joomla 1.5 Page Title
Posted by admin in joomla, joomla extensions, search engine optimization, seo, web design on August 6th, 2009
Page titles in Joomla 1.5 are not particularly configurable. I prefer to use an SEO extension, which gives me total control of my page titles and metatags, but I understand the reluctance to rely on a non-commercial extension. Will it be around for Joomla 1.6? Who knows?
The problem with Joomla 1.0.X page titles was that they insisted on putting the site name in the page title. Joomla 1.5 cured that disease, but some people would still like to have their site name in their page title consistently across the site. For that, the perfectly simple solution is the Title Manager extension for Joomla 1.5 (native).
Download, install and activate this plugin, and you will have your Joomla site name, or another text string of your choosing in all page titles. You can even configure whether or not the page title goes before or after the original page title, as well as the seperator character. Here’s a peek at the configuration screen:
Google Adwords Glitch
Posted by admin in adwords conversion, web design on August 5th, 2009
This is an intesting glitch in Adwords I just experienced when testing an ad I have running. The search for “Bay Area Web Design” results in a mix of swimming pool ads, then appropriate ads for web design. I wonder how often this glitch occurs, and how many bad clicks are charged because of it?
New Gmail Undo Feature
Want to set up a 5 second delay in sending your Gmail messages? 5 seconds is not a lot of time, but it’s better than nothing, especially if you’ve ever hit send and immediately thought of a revision or had a twinge of regret (or good judgement).
The Gmail undo feature is in testing now, so you’ll need to log in to Gmail, and go to “Settings” and then the “Labs” tab. There you’ll see a long list of features you can try out. It’s so long that you’ll want to ctrl f “Undo” to find the Undo feature. Enable the feature. I had to log out of Gmail and back on to get it to work.
Now when you send an email, you’ll see an “Undo” link at the top, where it notifies you that the email has been sent. Click on that link fast, because it will disappear in 5 seconds!
Google Analytics Bug - Search Engine Called “Search”
Posted by admin in web design on July 19th, 2009
I manage clients’ search engine promotion on a regular basis, and every once in a while see some natural clicks in Google Analytics from a search engine called “Search.” I had assumed that “Search” was “Search.com.” Since the traffic from “Search” was very minimal, there was never a need to dig any deeper into the subject.
This month was different. In analyzing the data for one of my clients, I saw a spike in hits from “Search” for one of their important keyphrases. A check “Search.com” showed no position that warranted the traffic for that keyword. A little bit of research revealed that other webmasters were seeing the same thing and asking the same question. What is the “Search” search engine in Google Analytics. Some evidence pointed to http://search.ovguide.com, which is a video search engine that has been gaining popularity.
Sure enough, a search using my client’s keyphrase put them right at the top of the search, however ONLY with a sponsored “Adwords” result. So it looks like Analytics was counting Adwords clicks as natural clicks. Mystery solved, however confirmation is still required from Google. I bumped an existing thread on the Google Analytics forum on the subject. The thread was started a month and a half ago, but still no reply.
Kintiskton LLC
Posted by admin in web design on July 8th, 2009
I received a big traffic spike a couple of days ago, and my logs say 94 unique visits came directly from a network named Kintiskton LLC. Obviously it is some kind of spider. Upon further research, it appears to be a company looking for trademark infringement. Unfortunately their excessive crawling is a nuisance for those of us who use our traffic data. Another blogger posted this suggestion - block the IP addresses of the Kintiskton spider using your .htaccess file like so:
Deny from 65.208.151.112/29
Sounds like a plan. I’ll see if it works to keep these pests away.
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