Klixo Blogs
Welcome to the Klixo Blog pages, a wealth of tips, tricks and insight into web development, web marketing and general internet related issues. We all blog once a week so be sure to check back on a regular basis, or sign up to our newsletter. You can also subscribe to our RSS Feed.
Have a comment to make? Each blog has a comment form so that you can contribute to our discussions. (Comments are moderated).
Latest Blogs
- Seasons Greetings
- Google Calendars - a free and easy calendar solution for your website
- "Human-Computer Interaction"
- Dynamic drop shadows...
- TiVo in New Zealand?
- Online forms
- The end of the week, time to update the Blog.
- Keeping your website up to date...
- Merry Christmas and a happy new year...
- Google Street View released in New Zealand
- Google Maps New Zealand - Street View
- They're Watching You...
- Klixo Web Services Framework
- Extend Your Website with Widgets
- HD Videos are now available on the YouTube
- Aliens freeloading off our wireless? Internet Now Avaliable in Space.
- Form2Mail2Story
- Increase Productivity with Google Desktop
- ACDC - THE WORLD'S FIRST MUSIC VIDEO IN AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET!
- A little goes a long way...
- XSLT - Universal Web Template Language in Waiting
- TED.com - Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers
- Converting websites - Dramatic unnoticeable differences
- How to sell your House on TradeMe
- Summer is around the corner... USB Gadgets to help!
- Klixo2 CMS Development Starts
- Google WTK
- Richard Parfitt - I want to be number one on Google!
- Klixo's Online Knowledge Base - Support Articles for the masses
- Will you start to use Google Chrome? I won't!
- Store your Telecom Mobile Photos online
- Handy tools for the Web Developer
- Klixo2 Content Management System
- Quantum Theory for Google PageRank
- Google Maps Australia - Street View
- Google Maps InfoWindow Not Centering
- SEO for Marketers - Part #1
- How to stay healthy in the office?
- Cuil Search Engine
- Using CSS to display menu images instead of Javascript
- Environmentally Friendly Data Centres
- How to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool
- Cool Viral Marketing Campaign - The Dark Knight
- I have accidentally responded to a Phishing (Scam) email. What should I do?
- A strategy for better search engine rankings
Seasons greetings from Klixo
Seasons greetings to all of our clients, suppliers and friends. We would like to thank you for your support throughout 2009, this year has been a challenging but rewarding year for us, with the decision to move to a new system for our new websites and also this has been the first year without our founder Daniel Larsen on the team.
Daniel is still on the board of directors and has been travelling the world and spending time with his fiancee Sophia - Congratulations!
We are looking forward to 2010 as we have begun building websites with our new system and so far the results have been excellent! The new services provide a greater range of features allowing us to build more powerful websites for those that need it.
Klixo will be closed for the Christmas Season after Thursday the 24th of December 2009 and we will re-open on Monday the 11th of January 2010.
Klixo Support are on call during the holidays. Phone 07 3072660 and leave a message if you have an urgent issue that is affecting your website and we will get in touch with you as soon as possible.
We have had an extremely busy year and the team is looking forward to a few well deserved days off! From all of the team, have a fantastic Christmas and New Year and we will see you in 2010.
Kind regards
- The Klixo Team
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 21 Dec 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, developing a fully functioning calendar system has always been deemed as a lot of work, and in most cases this kind of development is out of the budget for the client. We have recently discovered Google Calendars and have been adding them to some of our clients websites as a cheap and easy method of doing this for them. All you need is a Gmail account for your website (if you do not already have one - and also you can forward the email address to your current email address) and from there you can easily set up a public calendar, which you can then embed anywhere on your website.
We have been playing around with Google Calendars and are currently implementing quite a complex version on a site we are developing. Some of the limitations we have found so far are minor but could (most likely will) be modified in future.
- Scaling the calendars down in size causes the calendar events to become unreadable
- Modifying the CSS (i.e. the colours) of the calendars is currently not possible - except the main background colour of the calendar
- Links to more information are not customizable
Overall the Google Calendars are a great solution for small clubs that hold events, or any company for that matter. Once your calendar is made public anyone can subscribe to your calendar which will add it to their personal Google Calendar - so they will also receive event reminders in their inbox. You can also add any other public calendar to your websites calendar - so for example you can add New Zealand public holidays. Another great feature is that you can set up re-occurring events, then go through the calendar and delete the instances of that event that wont happen - for example an event that occurs on a public holiday.
So if you're interested in adding a calendar to your website let us know and we can run you through it. Have you got any cool Google Calendar tricks and tips, or public calendars I can subscribe to? Let us know! This is a cool tool we will be using a bit in the future. Currently the only event on my calendar is "Eat a sandwich day" which occurred this week. Yum.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 11 Sep 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, Blogging has taken a back seat over the last two weeks as our priorities have been elsewhere in terms of working. I haven't had a go at using transparent divs to generate a drop shadow effect as mentioned in my previous post (Dynamic drop shadows) but this is still in the back of my mind.
Catch phrase of the week "Human-Computer Interaction" this is something I have been thinking about for while in terms of how people use the internet and browse websites and now I have a phrase to explain it, or at least a good website to find out information to back up some of my thoughts. The website HCI Bibliography : Human-Computer Interaction Resources is full of interesting articles, guidelines and resources (as the title suggests) for designing and building websites to work better inline with human behavior in terms of use with the internet.
For an example the names of pages in a page menu, this is something I came across recently when one of our clients renamed their "About Us" page to "Who we are". I found it very difficult to adjust to the new name and also to find that page in the menu when I first went to the site looking for it. People are used to the basics or "Old words" like "About Us" and in most cases will find the information they want when the page is named as it always has been. This is explained better in the article "Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes" (Number 10) by Jakob Nielsen on his Alertbox. In saying this though I believe renaming pages something unconventional isn't such a big deal and over time there will be more and more of this, as web users are constantly getting smarter at seeking out the information they require. There are a lot of other good points made in the article written by apparently - "the king of usability" Jakob Nielsen.
What are some things in terms of usability that bug you on the internet?
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 15 May 2009 | read 3 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, I found a great article on how to do dynamic drop shadows recently over at A List Apart and I have used this on a website (that is not live just yet), I will add a link once it is. (Update: site is live - Images on the right have dynamic drop shadows - probably wont be that noticeable until they use a portrait image however). This is a great method however there is one down point - when using images that are fully transparent (Alpha Transparency) for the corner images they overlay the main background image causing the corners to appear darker - I haven't found a solution for this yet, and I resorted to non-transparent images for the corners. It is a great solution for images or divs on single color backgrounds.
Article link: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/onionskin/
I am going to have a play around with this and try some methods using transparent divs with background colors - in order to create a method without images. The corners probably wont look as good but it will be cooler.
Also check out Klixo on Twitter we are still coming up with ideas as to what to use this for but we have a few. Bye for now...
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 24 Apr 2009 | read 2 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, I was supposed to have written this blog entry last week as now this is slightly old news. But "FreeView On Steroids" aka TiVo is coming to New Zealand. TiVo in New Zealand will finally give Sky some competition, and since analogue TV broadcasts will be stitched off some time after 2011 now is the time to prepare for the all-digital TV age.
But what exactly is TiVo... Well apart from the basics (What I have Learnt from TV) I'm not entirely sure, so I have had a look around on the internet to see if I can answer some of my questions.
Apparently the TiVo device will technically work as a FreeView satellite receiver in New Zealand, so you will be able to receive all of the Free to air channels such as TV One, TV2, TV3, C4, Maori Television, TVNZ6, TVNZ7, TVNZ Sport Extra, Parliament TV, tvCentral, Chinese TV 8, Radio New Zealand National, Radio New Zealand Concert, BASE FM and all new Freeview HD channels. Except with TiVo you will be able to record and store your favourite TV shows, automatically by series, time and it even offers the option of automatically recording shows or movies with your favourite actor or director involved.
In other countries the option to skip advertisements on your recorded programs is available, however in New Zealand this feature will be removed and only an extremely fast "fast forward" will be available, which I believe they have done as they are expecting advertisers to foot a lot of the costs involved with getting started here in New Zealand.
Another function of TiVo is the ability to watch movies on demand via a broadband connection, which sounds awesome but broadband plans in New Zealand aren't that great. Can you imagine streaming a movie watching your 2gig limit disappear. I'm not entirely sure how the broadband side of TiVo works (Might look into this a bit more) but from what I have read so far they do not supply it.
Apparently they are going to be quite expensive to buy initially, but this was the same with FreeView and the cost should come down, personally I have FreeView and I think with TiVo coming this will push more channels onto FreeView so hopefully us FreeViewers will benefit from this! I will keep an eye on this and maybe update in the future...
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 03 Apr 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, it is not uncommon these days for pretty much every website to have an online form. Online forms are great way for visitors of your website to get in touch with you easily and conveniently. Other benefits of online forms are:
- You can measure how effective the content of your website is,
- If people are sending you a form asking you questions about something that isn't already explained on your website you can update the content to cover it
- If people are making enquiries, you can tell that people are paying attention to your website and you have caught their attention
- You can use the form as a goal to see how people are using your website
- This is mainly for bookings or product enquiries, but by installing Google Analytics and creating a goal or two, you can easily analyze your visitors and use that data to better steer them in the direction of purchasing or enquiring, which they will do through your online form - then you can track how many people are getting to your goals.
- People who are using computers that don't have an email client (e.g. Outloook) don't get annoyed by clicking on old school "mailto" links which open these programs - they can quickly send an email to you without having to leave your website to login to their email account to send it.
Now everything I have said so far is pretty much common knowledge these days, and most people already have an online form, so here are some tips for people who already have online forms on their website:
- Don't have email addresses for you or anyone in your company in the content of your website, replace any email addresses with links to your contact form. If you have separate divisions of your company such as sales, general enquiries or locations - set up the links with parameters that can tell the form who/where to send it to, or just have the person who receives the emails forward them to the right person.
- Put the form in a prominent position on the "Contact Us" page so it is displayed as soon as the visitor gets to the page, try to avoid large amounts of content on these pages as if the visitor has come to the page they are already ready to contact you.
- If you do have a lot of content on a form page create an anchor link to the form in the top of the content, this way visitors can skip it if they wish. A good example of this is on the Extreme Boats website. Their boat information page also has a quote form at the bottom, there is a link at the top of the content to send them straight there.
- If you have a lot of staff changes within your company - or if you believe the person who receives the forms will change often set the email address that the form is sent to as an alias - for example enquiries@example.co.nz. This will mean that every time the receiver changes, the form doesn't have to be modified in any way - only the email alias will need to be moved to the new persons email account.
- Drive visitors to your form(s) - a nice looking "Contact us now" button can be a great way to do this, you can put these on every page or just in key areas, this will prompt people to enquire after reading the information you have given them. Analyzing your traffic with Google analytics is also a good way to measure this and perfect it.
So have a think about your website and how effective your online form is (or how effective one could be) for you. Also let me know your stories if you have any, about how small changes have made a huge difference to the amount of enquiries you receive.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 20 Mar 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, thanks to my great Blog "Keeping your website up to date..." I now have to update this Blog in order to be consistent, which is fine but this week has been particularly busy. And it is now 5.10pm on Friday (Which if you haven't noticed I "always" update this Blog on the Friday). So unfortunately the content of this update is a bit last minute (hence the rambling). I will try and find something better to Blog about next week I promise... Perhaps I will write about the catch phrase of the week here "Call to action", thanks to Mick G (smart marketing and web strategy). Or perhaps Creating a new email account in Mozilla Thunderbird, which I spent a mourning the week figuring out/supporting a customer, the knowledge base article was deceivingly simple! We got there in the end. Or perhaps I will just ramble on about nothing once again... Perhaps.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 20 Feb 2009 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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As we all know keeping the content fresh and up to date on your website is important in order to keep visitors coming back and to continue adding valuable content to your site. As you probably also know this blog has unfortunately been a little neglected during this year. This was mainly due to how busy we have been (seemingly more so on Friday afternoons) and of course we have been on holiday. Any way the drought is over and the weekly blog updates will be beginning again!
Note however the klixo.co.nz website itself hasn't been neglected as we have been adding more Clients to our "Our Clients" Page and we have also set up a handy "Tools" page for you all to use due to the popular response to my previous blog post "Handy Tools for the web developer" (0 comments)!
For more information about keeping your website up to date see here: "Benefits of Content Management for your Website and your Business" and here: "A strategy for better search engine rankings for New Zealand small business websites".
See you next week!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 13 Feb 2009 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Merry Christmas every body. Time to pull out the ol' Christmas Tree again, thank you to all the blog readers and thank you for your comments - We will begin blogging again in the New Year so there's something for you to look forward to when your back from your holidays.
You can track Santa's movements here, or read about how Santa exploits the space-time continuum which of course makes it quite hard to track his movements! I was going to put up a link for you to send your wish list to Santa as well... but I will refrain from that as you would enter your email address and end up with Spam for Christmas - my advice is to do it using snail mail.
Wishing you all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Be safe and have fun.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 19 Dec 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Google Street view released in New Zealand
The release of Google Street View marks a new milestone for web applications. The web-app, which allows a Google Maps user to view virtual street scapes as if they were actually walking down the street, is probably the most complicated software application attempted on the net to date, performing feats that were previously only available in very high-end GIS software packages.
Street view combines Adobe Flash and the Google Maps API to display the panoramic views and works very well on my 3 year old laptop with a broadband connection.
The commercial benefits of Street View are already being demonstrated by Trade Me Property, where you can look up and down the street of a listed property as well as at pictures of the house itself.
If you have a Street View that you would like to display on your website, give us a call. As you can see below, showing a street view on your website is as easy as pasting into the Klixo Story Editor.
View Larger Map
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 05 Dec 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, if you didn't know already Google has released the Street View of New Zealand - Pick your sight you'd like to see in New Zealand and drag your little yellow man there... That is exactly how I started my blog post three months and twenty five days ago for the release of the Australia Google Maps Street View. I said then that I couldn't wait till they do New Zealand and now they have. Now this is still a fascinating time waster (can't think of any practical reasons for using this yet), but I have already seen most of New Zealand anyway so it really isn't that great after all of the anticipation. How ever there are some fun things to do:
- Look up all of the houses you have lived in in the past (this could take days for some.) See below for where Klixo Started.
- Find your Favourite view (Send me your favourite view of your town in the comments, I would like that). Like this view from the Ohope Lookout
- Try and find your self - I'm nowhere to be seen (they haven't done all the streets in Whakatane yet - next time!). A blogger on Stuff.co.nz has found himself
- Or Hunt for people doing funny things. See StreetViewFun.com for some examples
Let me know if you find anything else (or practical things) to do with this. Bye for now.
View Larger Map
Update: See Daniels blog for practical uses!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 05 Dec 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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They're Watching You...
What do you think can be determined about you from browsing the web? That you have an interest in poker and live in New Zealand perhaps? This can be ascertained by a single click of the mouse. And the latest software that analyses your online behaviour can apparently determine a huge amount about you. A recent article in New Scientist suggests that the company Acxiom have lifestyle information on 200 million US citizens. If you're on a site that's geared up for it, they can track everything you do in a browser, how long you spend on a page and what you buy using JavaScript. Then you have companies like Phorm who use 'deep packet inspection' technologies that essentially allow them to see everything you look at and to analyse it as they wish. Wikipedia defines deep packet inspection as 'enabling advanced security functions as well as internet data mining, eavesdropping, and censorship'.
There are two sides to this - firstly why is my privacy being invaded? Personally, I don't have a problem with it but I'm sure there are plenty reasons that I haven't considered as to why this should be illegal. The American's are totally against it but in the UK Phorm is running their software on British Telecom's internet infrastructure. The biggest reason that I should be worried about this is that both companies have gone out of their way to remove any trace of them working together presumably in an attempt to keep the British public in the dark. If there's nothing sinister, then why cover it up?
The other side of the coin is that this is good for the businesses and their customers, us. I hate advertising - the BBC's ad-free television and radio is as far as I'm concerned the best in the world significantly because they have no advertising. But you're not going to get away without advertising any more - Google have seen to that and made AdWords an extremely profitable business for themselves and their customers by targetting adverts to the search terms we send to their search engine. It's good for us to - if I'm looking for a drum kit then it's great to see 10 adverts from companies that have gone out of their way (and to a cost to them) letting me know they have something appropriate to look at. If it's not appropriate then the company will just end up out of pocket because they won't make any money out of it which keeps the adverts highly targetted. Google have taken this further by allowing websites to display AdWords that can be similarly targetted, usually based on whatever the website is about.
So this is the next step in that process; target ads specifically to you, wherever you go on the web. Have you seen Minority Report? Targetted advertising based on knowing your identity, what you buy, your likes and dislikes, your lifestyle and so on. And this is the kind of information that is becoming increasingly known by the likes of Phorm, Google and BT. So don't be surprised when in a couple of years time you're browsing a website when an advert pops up saying 'I know you ordered your wife Pip some flowers for her birthday on Friday, but remember last year? She told all her friends about that pear tree you bought her and she wants to put a plum tree next to it - click here to get it delivered to home Friday'. Expect it sooner in the UK.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 05 Dec 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Klixo Web Services Framework
The past couple of weeks I've been developing the Klixo Web Services Framework (KWSF). This is a project that fits somewhere in between our current Klixo content management system (KCMS) and our next version. We've been working away at providing web services to KCMS for a few months now with the ultimate aim of allowing all of the current ability of the KCMS interface to be effected using web services (plus a few more too).
So what does the KWSF do? At this stage it is very simple but a very useful tool in developing an alternative front-end to the KCMS. The basic concept is quite simple; if you're using the KWSF you're creating/reading/updating and deleting new data. On the web this is a <form>. So, what you want to do is take that form data and either create, read, update or delete data from the database. The first thing the system does is convert the from post/get data into an appropriate XML document as specified by the web service. If you use the Klixo naming conventions this is a single call to the KWSF but of course you can manipulate any of the elements of the XML request as required (as long as they are consistent with the web service you wish to call). Then you need to make the call to the appropriate webservice with the request you've just generated; again a single call.
Of course, you can make as many calls as you like and the KWSF simple accumulates the responses in a single document. When you've finished you can access the document and extract information or manipulate it as required. But most of the time you'll be wanting to simply convert all that XML you've acquired into an (X)HTML document which again is a single call. This is just the beginning but it's already proving very useful and significantly reducing development time - we're starting to use it on our own KCMS front-end and it makes life easy.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 28 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Extend your website with Widgets
We are so busy at Klixo all of the time that we rarely have time to talk about some of the great projects that we work on on a regular basis. One thing that we are getting really good at is extending the functionality of websites with great add-ins, APIs and widgets like Google Maps, Vianet and YouTube.
This is mostly due to having an awesome content management system, based on the worldwide standard XML language, which can be extended to work with any other system in the world that also supports XML.
Add Google Maps to your Site
Google Maps is a wonderful application that allows you to put your business or any other point of interest on the map. You can add a Google Map to your website easily by using the Story Editor in Klixo; have a look at one of our favourite sites Orange Motor Co for a good example of this.
Google Maps can be integrated to great effect when you start adding geographical information to your stories in Klixo. That's a bit of a mouthful but all it really involves is adding Longitude and Latitude information. See how "geocoding" has enabled some really great local mapping on Whakatane.info.
Vianet Accommodation Availability Calendars
We have been working with Vianet for a couple of years now and I really like their straight-forward approach to the accommodation availability and booking problem. Signing up with Vianet is free, and once you have done so you can easily add a fully featured booking and availability calendar to your website, once again by pasting some code into the Klixo Story Editor.
For more advanced uses of Vianet's system, have a look at this page on New Zealand Tramping Tracks, a great example of Vianet & Google Maps working together.
Whakatane's official information centre, Whakatane.com have also made it really easy for visitors to locate and book accommodation online using Google Maps and Vianet. Have a look at this Ohope accommodation guide as an example.
Whakatane.info have also added value to their business listings by combining Google Maps & Vianet, as demonstrated beautifully by the Pacific Coast Motor Lodge listing.
Finally, my personal favourite would have to be the official Opotiki Information Centre website, OpotikiNZ.com which combines great content, driving directions and availability calendars for the full visitor experience - see the Opotiki to Waihau Bay travel guide to see what I mean! In my opinion this is rich content at its best.
Add YouTube Video to your site
Finally a quick nod to YouTube who have made it so easy for websites to add video to their site and share it with the world. See how a Whakatane tourism business have used YouTube to demonstrate their dolphin swimming trips and get new customers on the Whales & Dolphin Watch Website. The beauty of this is that your video also shows up in searches on the YouTube website.
So if you are interested in extending your website with some great new functionality talk to Klixo, we are the Google Maps, Vianet and YouTube integration experts!
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 28 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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From last Monday, the YouTube starts to provide HD videos (1280x720) on their website. However, not everyone like it...
(Try to understand the following part? Use Google Translate)
国外媒体今天撰文称，YouTube周一推出了宽屏高清播放服务。这意味着用户将以1280x720的分辨率播放视频，而此前，最高分辨率仅为480x360。不过，这一做法遭到了不少用户的批评。
对于这种变化，YouTube用户不是欢呼雀跃，而是怨声载道，一位名为“Shane 1163”的用户称：“我很讨厌现在这个样子，最好能给我们一个‘取消’选项。”
而用户“Marcor5000”称：“两边的黑条让人分心，但比这两道黑条更令人厌恶的是，这好比是在4:3的电视上观看16:9的节目。YouTube应该让我们选择播放比例。”
YouTube反驳
在YouTube博客网站上，有57名用户对此发表了意见，大部分都持批评态度。对此，YouTube在一份声明中称：“推出新的宽屏播放器旨在保持页面整洁，提供更强大的观看体验，而且新播放器能很好地支持4:3的视频文件。”
但很多用户认为，YouTube此举是出于商业目的。用户“Shane 1163”认为：“YouTube希望自己变得更专业，从而赢得更多的好莱坞合同。”最近，YouTube与米高梅、狮门影业和CBS签署了视频合作协议，为YouTube提供全长高清电影服务铺平了道路。
当然，并非所有用户都持反对态度，用户“Nataliana1234”称：“此次升级太完美了，我已经迫不及待了。”
此前，YouTube也曾对网站技术规范进行过升级。从今年3月开始，用户就可以以2倍于原始分辨率的质量观看部分视频。此外，除了Flash 格式，YouTube还采用了苹果的h.264格式编码，这意味着YouTube视频同时支持iPhone、iPod Touch和Apple TV等设备。
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posted by Kenny D Zhang, 28 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, Google Inc and NASA have recently developed an internet connection that will make it possible deep space internet to be available millions of kilometers into space! The internet has always reached shuttles in orbit and has allowed Astronauts to update their MySpace profiles and buy items of trademe... Not really, but it has been used for sending data and communications within orbit of our planet. Now it is possible for internet connections to be used for satellites and rovers in the outer reaches of space. Using a new method to get around the implications and barriers such as solar flares, the harsh radiation in space, or the obstacle created when a spacecraft swings behind a planet the internet connection uses a "store-and-forward method" to store the data and send it when the signal is available. Having deep space internet available will allow several missions in space - orbiters and spacecraft on the Moon or Mars for example - to communicate with each other and work as a team, instead of NASA having to schedule contacts with their spacecraft and pass messages between the vehicles. This new method should also bring many new uses here on Earth as most new space technology does. I can imagine the Google Analytics report now - Visitor Location: North America 10%, New Zealand 40%, Mars 5%, Argentina 25%, Germany 5%, The Moon 25%!
References:
- 'Interplanetary Internet' possible, thanks to NASA, Google' - Canada.com
- Pushing the Internet Into Space - Wired.com
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 21 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Form2Mail2Story
What happens when a customer wants to contact you via your website? Many websites have a simple link using mailto:contact@website.com as the href. will utilise a form that posts the fields of the form to the appropriate recipient. At Klixo, we use a system called Form2Mail which posts an email but also stores all the data in our database. Furthermore, this system is backed by an anti-spam system that uses the fantastic Re-Captcha system to prevent form spam.
The Form2Mail system is pretty useful in many respects. The first benefit is that, should the email get 'lost', our customers always have a record of the request.
What happens if you want to send sensitive information? Well, because Klixo's content management system is based upon XML technologies (I hope we extend its use and develop an XRX-based system over the next year) we simply change the XSL file to inform the recipient that sensitive information has been submitted to their site together with a secure link at which to read that information on our website. Very handy!
Form2Mail2Story takes the whole thing a little further. The same process occurs but we modify the XSL such that when they view the Form2Mail at our website an extra button allows them to convert the mail into a story. In Klixo, a story is a small bit of content that can be added anywhere on the website. To add a bit of content on your website you simply create a story and put it where it's needed (we have a variety of means to do this).
How is this useful you may ask? Well, we've just started developing a new website for the Koanga Institute. They want a FAQ page that their customers can add questions to should they not find the answer. We are implementing Form2Mail2Story on the FAQ page.
Say the customer looks at the list of FAQs (all stories on the FAQ page) and doesn't find what they're looking for. Lower down the page a form allows them to pose their own question. They receive an email with the question. They decide whether or not it warrants a response that should go on the website. If it doesn't they simply reply to the email. If it does, they click the link to turn the question into a FAQ. The Klixo story editor opens up with all the pertinent information and they simply write the answer to the question and press the save button. The page is automatically republished (our content management system publishes static pages where appropriate to improve speed of delivery (which boosts search engine rankings) and reliance upon the database) and the FAQ is updated. Simple, easy, efficient. Love it.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 14 Nov 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Increase Productivity with Google Desktop
Recently the Klixo team downloaded Xobni, a great email analytics tool that gives you interesting stats on your email usage. The Xobni buzz has been and gone now, but the feature that endured for me was the search function. You can literally search every email you have ever sent or received in seconds, and that is very valuable to workplace productivity.
Many people file every email they receive in a collection of folders, categorised in a way that make sense to them. This is a natural, very human way of sorting large amounts of information (in this case, emails) but is not great for productivity. It is actually a more productive if you just file all of your emails in one of three folders (the trusted trio) and rely on a good search engine to find emails when you need to.
So after using Xobni for a while I was interested in finding a lightweight tool that could search all of my email, but without the bloat of the other cool features which were nice to have once in a while, but that I could live without. I also have a pretty old and slow laptop, and I don't have much RAM. Xobni often consumed more than 32MB which is a lot to spare on my poor old HP/Compaq nx6120.
So I installed and tested the latest version of Google Desktop, which is a "desktop" search engine; it searches the files and emails on your own PC. When Google Desktop first came out it was a bit of a dog in my opinion because it used so much resources (RAM & CPU) that I couldn't run it without it slowing down my PC. I was pleasantly surprised now (a few years later) to download version 5.8, which is a much slimmer offering, and I read that the developers at Google have put great effort into this version to keep it lightweight.
One trick to reducing RAM is to not activate the "Sidebar with gadgets" that allows you to run Google Gadgets in a sidebar (like Vista). It is an awesome feature, but resource hungry.
On my laptop GoogleDesktop.exe usually runs at about 8MB, which I can handle, and only consumes more RAM when it is doing something really important, like indexing or sorting results.
As well as indexing all important emails, Google Desktop also indexes most other documents on your PC, but not code files (by default) so you will have to install a plug-in for that. Once installed, you just tap the CTRL key twice at any time to popup a search box. Once you get in to the habit you will find your self double-tapping CTRL to open files, instead of using Windows Explorer, it is that quick.
Just a word of warning for first time installers, indexing your email and files can take many hours (mine indexed over two nights) so you may have a long wait until you can start reaping the benefits.
So in summary, if you use your PC for work, get a good desktop search engine so that you don't have to spend time trawling through email folders and windows explorer. There are some tricks to getting it working smoothly, so I have listed my suggestions below.
If you have any more tips, comment this!
Setup hints
- Don't run the Sidebar with gadgets (set "Display Mode" to None)
- If you are a developer, install Larry's Any Text File Indexer plugin so that your code files are indexed
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 07 Nov 2008 | read 2 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, I am in no way an ACDC fan at all - in fact I'm quite the opposite, but... this is neat - they have converted one of their videos off their new album Black Ice (I had to look that up) into text character images for example ---%--<@ thats a rose. Any way you can download it from their website or watch it on YouTube. This is not really work related but it is titled "ACDC ROCK THE OFFICE" and it is kind of nerdy... And it is a brilliant form of Viral marketing that will appeal to a younger generation. See the original video and compare it (I haven't watched the original) That is all... Wait!
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"S$S" "S$S" "S$S" ' """""""" "S$S"
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 31 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora. Do you have a website? Is there something you have been meaning to change or do to it that you just haven't got the time to do? Or do you have a great idea for the site but your not sure how to go about turning it into a reality? If you answered yes to those questions then I believe you need to do something about it! Its amazing what a little attention to your website can achieve! Simple things like changing the welcome message on the home page or the extreme full revamp of your website can do wonders for your traffic and your online presence.
Here are some suggestions of small changes you can make to your website that can generate more traffic:
- Update the content frequently - A good idea if you are a specialist in your field is to set up a "Blog" or "News" page that you can add articles to, this way people that are interested in your field will keep coming back to your website. This is also a good way to promote products or services your business offers and provide information about them. A good example of this is the Pascoe Barton Ltd. who update their articles section weekly with sound financial advice. Also review the content on your website monthly or weekly to make sure that is up to date and does a good job of promoting your business and your products.
- Email Newsletters - Setting up an email newsletter for your website can be used to promote any special offers you may have or to send out information to your clients, it will also let your users know that your website does contain valuable information and that it is updated frequently and worth checking out again.
- Competitions - Think of a good idea for a competition and promote it on your website and in any other advertising material. Make sure you collect relevant information off your entrants that you can use to further mould your website to meet their needs. You can also use an email newsletter to announce the winners, this will bring users back to your website everytime you draw the competition.
- Include your domain name in all of your promotional material - More and more people use the internet these days as a method for getting more information about a company and their products. If they like your advertisement or offer they can follow this up by going to your website and making an enquiry.
A little investment of time and in some cases money on your website in the right places will go a long way. If your interested in any of the suggestions above, or if you have some ideas of your own (Billboard on the moon perhaps?*) please do get in touch with us to discuss them further, we can let you know what is involved and the best way to go about getting it done.
*Klixo Limited do not offer billboards on the moon as a product at this stage.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 24 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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XSLT – Universal Web Template Language in Waiting
Earlier this year Anup Shah of OneNought.com wrote a brilliant blog titled “Why Use XSLT in Server Side Web Frameworks For Output Generation?” This is a great question and in this week’s blog I would like to add to the comments that Anup has made on this subject.
It’s time for framework developers to start taking the problem of HTML templates seriously. I don’t believe that back-end developers place enough importance or time and effort on HTML templates. In some frameworks they appear to be an afterthought, and are often just mash-ups of the developer’s language of choice and HTML.
A good HTML template language should be an open standard
I cannot think of any other template language that is a W3C standard apart from XSLT. What I love most about open standards is that they bring developers together. HTML is an open standard, and for reasons that I go into further below, any HTML template language should be as well.
A good HTML template language should be platform / language / framework agnostic
Platforms, languages and frameworks require an emotional investment by their users. “We love platform X because it is so easy to use” and so on. The aim of an HTML (web) developer is to write code oblivious of platforms, languages and frameworks. Back-end programmers must choose platforms and frameworks based on what is going to be the best solution for the problem at hand. But HTML developers should be able to tag along with that decision without having to re-skill or even consider the choice at all.
A good HTML template language should be portable
“What happens if your company goes under?”
“What happens if for one reason or another we decide we don’t want to use your company anymore?”
“What happens if our business outgrows Framework X and we need to use Framework Y?”
IT managers ask these sorts of questions all the time. If your framework uses a proprietary template language it means that when the client decides to upgrade their site, they are going to have to throw away work that they have paid for. This is not acceptable to most IT managers once they are made aware of these consequences.
A good HTML template language should work just like HTML
Notice that I have not said “should be easy to use”. Many programmers complain that XSLT is difficult to use. That may be true, but simple XSLT it is no more difficult to use than XHTML, and web developers have mastered that language and enjoy it. Furthermore, XHTML and XSLT both come from the same parent: XML. A simple XSLT template is semantically the same the XHTML it produces which makes it easy for web developers to learn.
XHTML and XSLT often have to be coded by hand to be optimised for the web and to acheive web standards compliance. Attempts at WYSIWYG editors have been a disaster and I cannot see a solution to this any time soon. Personally I enjoy coding HTML and XSLT by hand and find that method faster and more productive than using a WYSIWYG editor and cleaning up the code that it produces.
A good HTML template language should be extensible
I mean truly extensible. This term is thrown around a lot by CMS frameworks, but most proprietary template languages will run out of options for extensibility sooner or later. What I dislike about proprietary, non-standard template languages is that it is like a developer woke up one morning and thought, “you know what? I think I’ll write a template language.”
What I love about XML/XSLT is that for decades now, the best brains in the world have collaborated, designed, debated, and approved a truly brilliant standard. It is extensible and therefore extremely versatile.
We use XSLT for emails (plaintext and html), generating CSVs, JavaScript and PDFs. I have used XSLT to transform XML into a proprietary label printer language for printing shoebox labels in a warehouse. And the beauty of XSLT is that it is intelligent enough to choose its own output type based on parameters passed to it, i.e. you can support multiple output types in the same template. This functionality is built-in to XSLT.
Summary
We have been using XSLT as the template language for the Klixo CMS for almost 5 years now and find it to be powerful, extensible and versatile. I train developers in XSLT without any problems; they have all grown to love it. Like most languages you can start with a very simple implementation that will get you by for most jobs, before digging deeper to explore the real power of the language.
We are currently working on an upgrade to our CMS software that will change the underlying data model quite drastically. Upgrading customers to the new model is not a problem because we can translate from the old schema to new using, you guessed it, XSLT. This means we don’t have to force our customers down a costly upgrade path to take advantage of new technology.
While we do provide template development in-house, our clients have the option of outsourcing template development to a third party because we are using an open-standard. This is a unique selling point for our software that wins us sales over our competitors, not because we have a proprietary system that is perceived to be better than others, but ironically because we are embracing open standards that our competitors do not.
In a way it would be easier and better in the long run if our competitors were using XSLT, because it would give our customers more options and make it less expensive for them to switch providers, based on the need of their organization at the time. At the end of the day, what is best for our customers is best for us!
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 18 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, I discovered a website that I believe is worth sharing - TED: Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers. This website is a database of all of the talks from the annual TED conference, which basically brings together the worlds greatest thinkers and doers and encourages them to give the talk of their lives in around 18 minutes. As TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design your more than likely to find an eye opening or inspiring talk on any topic your interested in.
The sites navigation takes a little bit of getting used to but you will find it easier to find what you are looking for the more you use it. The talks can be viewed by watching the streaming video, or you can download them in a range of formats (mp3, mp4 for example), the videos are the best format to watch as with the audio you miss out on all of the diagrams and images referenced by the speaker. One feature of the sites navigation that I particularly like is the "Order Talks By" in the menu, you can order the talks by most discussed, most jaw-dropping, most persuasive, most courageous, most ingenious, most fascinating, most inspiring, most beautiful and most funniest depending on your mood.
This site is defiantly worth looking at (if you have broadband that is), find a theme your interested in and go from there. One of my favorites is Malcolm Gladwell's "What we can learn from spaghetti sauce" which looks at the nature of choice and happiness and marketing to meet these needs.
So now that you know, let me know your favorite videos from this site. Enjoy.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 17 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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I recently converted a website for a client from the all to common - "my friends aunties son built my website" over to a Klixo template based website. The overall goal was to keep the look of the site the same as it was already quite professional but not consistent and improve the loading times and the SEO for the site. After completing the project the client said to me "It looks exactly the same?..." Which on the surface and to the untrained eye it did, but in no way was the new version of the site anything like the old site. For example:
- The overall loading time (56k) had been brought down from 41.99 seconds to 8.51 seconds (according to WebsiteOptimisation.com)
- The menus had been converted from images with rollovers to text based CSS menus
- All of the images on the website had been optimized for the web
- The text had been formatted consistently - using heading tags in order e.g. Heading 1 > Paragraph > Heading 2 > Paragraph
- Alt tags had been added to all of the images on the website, logos header images and all of the images in the content
- The design features were made consistent throughout the website e.g. background images on all pages instead of some.
- Title tags had been added to all of the menu links - describing the page the link is going to.
- Keyword and Description META tags had been added to the Head and filled with content
- All of the HTML markup is now compliant with W3C standards - tested using http://validator.w3.org/
- All of the tables used for formatting had been removed and in place a mixture of divs and CSS was used. This helps bring the size of the HTML file down dramatically.
- Klixo's custom PHP image resizer had been installed on the site for thumbnails - making it easier for the client to update and add content.
- We installed the Klixo Website Manager in order for the client to be able to update and edit their website easily.
After explaining some of this to the client they seemed satisfied that we had actually done some work for them, and off they went with a website that will definitely help their business in the future. But completely unwise about the amount of work that was actually done to get it to that level.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 10 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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How to sell your House on TradeMe
This week's blog comes from special guest blogger, and Klixo copywriter, Kaye Blaker. Kaye successfully marketed and sold her house on TradeMe.co.nz with no agents fees or a big marketing budget. Here is her advice:- Take as many good photos as Trade Me will allow. Include every room and your favourite bits of the garden and the view if there is one.
- Make sure your house looks gorgeous ie bed made with matching stuff, flowers in strategic places, benches uncluttered. Remember this is their first 'walk - through'
- Describe it like you LOVE it and don't want to leave.
- Write a good description and follow up with a bullet point summary of best features.
- Include what is in the vicinity - parks, schools, shops, etc.
- Think about the small things that are important to you when looking for a house and assume other buyers want that too, eg bus stops outside the gate.
- Answer every enquiry asap and treat them all like you really want them to be the buyers.
Set in a quiet scenic valley, with tui and wood pigeons nesting outside the back door, this charming property is the perfect place for someone who would rather live in the country but needs to be close to the city for work.
This is a tidy, comfortable cottage with one bedroom and an office. The large area of lock-up storage under the house gives plenty of potential for development into a workshop or studio. Currently owned by an artist, it has several quirky features that make it a truly unique home.
The hillside section has wonderful views, looking out over a reserve and surrounding hills, and is terraced for easy access. All the hard work has been done. Now all you have to do is enjoy it, although there is plenty of scope for you to put your own stamp on the gorgeous garden.
Best Features:
All day sun
Light and airy open plan kitchen/living area
Natural wood features
Over 100 native trees and shrubs
Fruit trees – plums, apple, peach
Big organic garden with veges ready to eat
Compost heaps ready to use
Chook run
3 minute easy drive to the CBD with no busy roads to cross
Within walking distance of city and local shops
Bus stops near the gate every hour
Park, school, 3 preschools within walking distance
Garden shed 2m x 2m
Heaps of storage space
OSP for 2 vehicles, concrete driveway
Washing machine and fridge included if required
This is an up-and coming- area that has left behind its noisy past. Now it is a lovely quiet area, attracting first homebuyers and families. A change of circumstances sees us having to move on but we have loved living here. Be quick to view – properties like this are snapped up.
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 06 Oct 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora. That's right summer is just around the corner, and we all know what that means... Its going to be HOT! Yes toasty hot summer days are awesome, however sitting at a desk in an office doesn't have the same cooling effect as lazing in a pool, in a lake or splashing around at the beach. So I have done a bit of research for todays blog on some of the cool/geeky USB devices that are available to help get you through the upcoming hot days! So here is a rundown of some of my favorites, also if you would like to use this as my Christmas wish list that's fine by me.
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- The USB Beverage Cup cooler and Warmer - Keep you favorite beverage warm (for winter) or cold all the time with this USB Beverage Cup Cooler and Warmer! This would be perfect for keeping my 1.5 litre water bottle of Kiwi Blue cool.
- The ever stylish USB Coke fridge - this ones an old favourite
- Of course there had to be a USB Fan - there are so many to choose from but the Plant Fan here is my favourite looking one!
- The USB Seat Cooler - This is seriously something I want! It takes in air from the surrounding area via an intake valve and provides a constant stream of air to cool your backside
- This is by far the best one - an Air Conditioned shirt! If you have a USB Seat Cooler your going to need an USB powered Air conditioned shirt! These look awesome and would be perfect for work in the summer. You can also get Ties with fans in them to match!
And last but not least I thought I'd add the USB Apple Air Purifier - This high-performance badboy immediately & silently draws the polluted air in then disperses the negative ions evenly back into the air... Perfect for cleaning up those smells that accompany hot feat and sweaty summer workers!
Most of these are available on www.usbgeek.com. Thats all for now, have a look around and let me know if you find any other awesome gadgets for the summer!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 26 Sep 2008 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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Klixo2 CMS Development Starts
I wrote about the redevelopment of the Klixo content management system a few weeks ago, and we've already made a start. It isn't quite K2 (Klixo Content Management System V2) as the web services are still using the current Klixo database. The database shall be redesigned to more easily incorporate many of the features we want to add and simultaneously make the developments we've already added to Klixo1 more generic. However, these web services have been written in .NET using Visual Studio and C# with a good framework already developed for the database and generic web services that we shall use in K2.
Currently, the Klixo CMS has a single interface which our clients access to change or update their website. The new API provides services that can be consumed by our clients' applications. For some of our customers, the standard Klixo interface won't be optimal for data input. For example, one of our customers, Tramping Tracks provides a website that has comprehensive information on walks throughout New Zealand. Because of the extensive information they provide for each page we determined it would be significantly faster to write a custom interface for them. As a consequence, the Klixo API arose.
This API adds another string to Klixo's bow because it allows for as much customisation as required. Of course the current system is dynamic, responding appropriately as the website demands, but in highly complex content entry such as this, there are significant gains to be made. A further benefit to our customers is that they can outsource the interface development if they so desire. Another benefit is that with a custom interface the content may be updated automatically. Imagine a company (such as I was talking to the other day) that sells books and gets many more books each week. If the book data can be extracted in any way, this API and a custom interface would allow all their books to be automatically updated on their website.
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posted by Klixo Support, 19 Sep 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Google Web Toolkit (GWT) in the Klixo CMS
I've been looking into the Google Web Toolkit for use on the Klixo website as well as our customers' websites recently to determine if it will benefit us. There are many problems with implementing cross-browser support at all levels - HTML, CSS and JavaScript are the main components of a web page that are browser dependant and this is of course a major discussion topic for web developers. This particular post is concerned with the JavaScript (or ECMAScript) aspects, particularly of the Klixo CMS front-end. The Klixo content management system is based on XML retrieval and XSL transforms to publish web pages and in that respect is (quite astonishingly to me) still, pretty unique.
We have used the fabulous open-source code available on SourceForge.net called Sarissa for several years and it has proven very useful. The developers state that 'Sarissa is an ECMAScript library acting as a cross-browser wrapper for native XML APIs'. It's been around for many years and is the essence of AJAX. This has enabled us to provide an enhanced editor for our customers' as you would expect of any application that really needs AJAX. But from my initial dips into the GWT I have found that they have completely surpassed this and built an all-encompassing development platform for *all* cross-browser JavaScript.
Because it's a Google app and we know they'll stay around and support it, I think we'll embrace it. The next time someone produces a major browser release that changes things (have there been any this year? er....IE8, Fx3, Chrome) we'll simply recompile our code to support the new browsers without all the effort of looking into exactly what has changed. Thank you very much Google.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 19 Sep 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, as you may already know my name is Richard Parfitt - why am I telling you now? Well it has recently come to my attention that when "Richard Parfitt" is searched for on Google.com - when not searching "pages from New Zealand" (I have already dominated that area) - I am ranking around the third result mark for this blog! Which is awesome, but it's not first... Which is something I have always wanted to achieve haha. So yeah basically this blog is a blatant attempt at making me NUMBER 1 in Google. I have already out ranked my relative "Rick Parfitt" the singer and the rhythm guitarist from the English rock band Status Quo. Now all I have to do is beat this new guy on the scene, some "artist" of music Richard Parfitt, his link is only to his Amazon.co.uk listing for his album "Highlights in Slow Motion" which I would be interested in listening to - once I have beaten him!
So if you know of any ways that will help me please leave a comment, some things I would like to know are:
- Is including links to your competition a bad thing?
- Will that help them more than me?
- Will having the sentence "This blog is a blatant attempt at making me NUMBER 1 in Google." affect my ranking?
- Have I missed any SEO tricks that could help?
If you can answer any or all of those questions, please leave a comment. Oh and please include the name Richard Parfitt or Richard Parfitt related keywords in your comments!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 12 Sep 2008 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, today I am going to be blogging about our online knowledge base, if you are a client of ours you will probably already be aware of this area of the Klixo Website - if not you should be!
We have an extensive online knowledge base for our clients that covers everything from "Problems with logging in?" to "I have accidentally responded to a Phishing (Scam) email. What should I do? ". So if you are a user of our take a look around these pages - you may just find what you have been wanting to do on your site for ages, but just didn't know where to start - or get some great ideas for new content on your website, like "How to embed a YouTube Video in your Story".
Here are some of the most commonly used articles and ones I recommend to all Klixo users as good reading:
- How to upload Images & other files
It's good practice to upload well optimized images to your website as it helps with loading times and the appearance of you site to. Plus you can make you stories way more awesome with interesting images! - How to link to a PDF
This is quite a common thing users want to do as PDFs are becoming more popular method of displaying large flyers etc. - How to read your web statistics
This is handy for understanding the complexity of the beast called Web Statistics!
So there you have it - take a look around and if you can't find what you are looking for let us know and we will add it, as we are constantly updating this area of Klixo. If you get stuck with any of the articles don't forget the "How to get help" article! Bye for now.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 05 Sep 2008 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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Chrome!!! A new browser, new design, new technology!!! It's from Google!!! Sounds cool aye? But I won't use it in this stage. Why? Ok, let's have a look of this new toy!
(Try to understand the following part? Use Google Translate)
先说个它的让人哭笑不得的bug：
在Google浏览器地址栏输入冒号+百分号！结果...它崩溃了
言归正传...
主要几点：
系统资源占用大。这个跟我的网页浏览习惯有关，看新闻或者论坛的时候，我喜欢一次性打开十几个或者几十个标签，然后慢慢看。Chrome就不行了，一个标签一个进程，几十个标签就占用狂多的系统资源。这个功能号称是能解决一个tab崩溃不影响别的tab，可是，我的Chrome崩溃的时候，还是整体全部崩溃。
而它被吹捧的优点无非就是简洁清爽的界面，这个一点技术含量都没有。还有就是所谓的快，那得看跟什么比，跟IE比快有什么本事，跟没有插件的FF或者 Opera比，一点都不快甚至还慢，这个已经被他们自己的测试证明了，而且现在大部分网页的速度瓶颈并不在浏览器上，而是在网络端口上。
你说他出来能撬走哪个浏览器的用户群吧？FFX的用户用惯了那些插件，Opera的用户习惯了那些贴心的功能，绝大部分IE用户估计都不知道Chrome这个东西，就算知道，听说他不能上网络银行这些只支持IE浏览器的网站，也不会转投，还不如用强大外壳IE内核的Maxthon。
拿什么拯救你，我的Google Chrome？算了，还是继续用我的FireFox 3 和 Maxthon 2.0 吧！
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posted by Kenny D Zhang, 05 Sep 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Store your Telecom Mobile Photos online
Do you have a Telecom Mobile that has a camera? If so you may be able to upload your photos online! The first thing you will need to do is check your mobile phone to see if it has an upload option for your images, if it does you should be able to do this! Then you will need to create a Telecom User Login - once you've done this you will be able to access your online gallery here. You will be able to view all your uploaded photos in the gallery! I know a few people who have the same phone as me and they don't use this feature - it's FREE and its a great way to keep your phones memory free for more photos and also you can download your photos and back them up on your computer!
Let me know how you get on with this and if you have any questions.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 29 Aug 2008 | read 2 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, during my working day I come across a range of little jobs that can be annoying/time consuming to do and over time we (by we I mean my co-workers mostly) find handy websites that can do these for us much more efficiently in this article I'm going to share some of these with you. These tools are mainly for webs developers but I will include some here that can be used by your average web user. I will also include some sites that are just plain old handy tools when working with clients during support.
Developer Tools:
- Web Page Analyzer (WebSiteOptimization.com) - Optimize the loading times for your website using this tool, the results will tell you what you need to optimize in terms of objects on the page and their size. If you can get all greens then Congratulations!
- FavIcon Generator (Dynamic Drive) - Creating FavIcons used to be such a pain! Thanks to this handy site it is now a breeze!
- Lorem Ipsum - Lorem what now? Lorem Ipsum is basically text you can use to place on a page as test content which looks nicer than "this is test content testing test test test content this is test content testing test test test content this is test content testing test test test content this is test content testing test test test content". This site will generate nicer looking test content for you.
- Klixo Geocoder - Need to pick out a Longitude and Latitude for your location to use on a Google map? This handy tool by Klixo will help! Just type in your address then drag the Icon to your exact location.
- Convert em,px,pt and % in css (Worldtechies) - I had been looking for a tool to do this for a long time, we get some CSS designs that come to us using px or points and it can be a challenge getting these right using ems or %. This is the closest tool I have found for converting these but like it says "...it’s a good starting point." and in some cases doesn't apply.
Support / Other Tools:
- TinyURL.com - This site is one of my favourites, if you need to send a real long URL to someone via email visit this site first and create a TinyURL - this will stop your URL from being broken onto another line and will also stop the receiver from wondering why you have sent them a broken link...
- Secure Password Generator (PC Tools) - Generate secure passwords easily, just insert your parameters you would like to use for your secure passwords then click generate passwords
- IP Chicken - need to know a users IP address? Get them to visit this website and the will be able to tell you
- Java Test - This is a tool that was developed by us and is used to determine if a user has Javascript enabled in their browser or not.
I may add to this article as I find/become aware of more handy tools (can you do that with a blog?) and of course if you use or know of a handy tool that you think we might like / NEED post a comment and let us know!
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 22 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Klixo2 Content Management System
My business partner Daniel Larsen developed our current content management system many years ago and it has proven to be highly successful. Over the years more and more useful features have been added and we can do pretty much everything we want with the system. However, there comes a time in every software's development cycle when it is rewritten and this is what Daniel and I have decided upon as our next project. As we all know, programming languages, application development tools, management tools and so on are always changing; each of these areas is modified, improved, superceded and replaced by every company out there. The web arena covers a plethora of languages, for us this has to now encompassed html (and xhtml), javascript, php, asp (and asp.net), xml, xsl and visual basic. Probably a couple I've missed too.
So why do we want to do this? Firstly, for the reasons stated above - tools and languages are superceded. The latest are easier and quicker to develop with, have improved capabilites, are more powerful and are faster. Secondly, with years of experience in content managment, search engine optimisation and website reporting and with the latest tools from other companies in these areas we can improve our effectiveness yet further. This doesn't mean that your website will look and better, run any faster or have better stats; it just means it's easier for us to make this happen for you.
What will this mean for our customers? Well, they will still be getting the same high standards of support they always have (we won the Triple-A award for exceptional customer service). They will still get our core team of experienced developers maintaining their sites. They will still get a simple to use content management system at their disposal 24/7. But here's a sneak preview of just a couple of the features we shall be implementing:
- Search engine optimisation built into the system - you won't be able to avoid it
- Complete automated management of all the files on your server
- Managed access to different areas of the content management system
Not enough? Well I'll probably write a few more things about the system as the design phase gets underway - and you probably don't know all the features we currently support anyway...
- Automated subscription system
- Email publications
- Form2mail so you never lose a customer's request from your website
- RSS feeds - both incoming and outgoing
- Did I mention fully automated shops with stock levels?
- Automated page updates for new or expiring news
If you're really interested in our system start browsing from our home page or flick us a message, you won't be disappointed.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 22 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Quantum Theory for Google PageRank
Physicists in Italy led by Nicola Perra have now determined that 'the Google PageRank can be expressed in terms of a wave function obeying a Schroedinger-like equation.' Isn't that great? Well you might think so if your business, job or hobby involves search engine optimisation because the ultimate result of this is that once a pagerank has been determined, recalculating it based on changes to links coming in to your pages and site will be significantly faster. What this infers is that Google will be able to update your site's page rankings more quickly than it currently does.
Schröedinger's equation is central to quantum physics and describes how the quantum state of a system changes over time. Very simply, you put your particles into the equation and you can see what's going to happen to the particles over time. Perra's team swapped particles with pages and their interactions with incoming and outgoing page links. They then derive the pagerank. Because the equation is all about how it changes over time the equation can be tweaked by adding or removing linked pages to get the new pagerank. Well that's how I understand it anyway.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 18 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, if you didn't know already Google has released the Street View of Australia - Pick your sight you'd like to see in Australia and drag your little yellow man there - any streets that are outlined in blue have the capability of being roamed almost virtually. This is of course hours of fun if you have the time and the broadband to spare! Privacy issues aside its quite a lot of fun seeing how much you can actually spot - from seeing right into peoples lounges to gazing at sandy and busy beach vistas.
The whole country is basically done! I can't wait till they do New Zealand!
Have fun.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 15 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Google Maps InfoWindow Not Centering
We were recently investigating a request from EatOut (one of our clients who's website lists restaurants around New Zealand) who wished to allow users of the website to get directions to the restaurant. Given that we were using Google Maps to provide the location this was a fairly straightforward job given the API, knowledge base and documentation available on the web. Having completed the development and testing and EatOut had reviewed the work we were ready to put the site live. Then we noticed a bug whereby the map centres on the pin whereas the API states (or at least used to) that it centres on the InfoWindow (and indeed did during development testing).
After much research I couldn't find another Google Map with InfoWindows on the web which worked correctly. It transpires that it is a Google bug that was presumably introduced after v2.119 was released. The solution is therefore actually simple and I simply needed to change the page to use version 2.118 as follows:
http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2.118&key=<mykey>
The issue now is, are Google going to fix it or have they simply changed the way it works? I would not have questioned this but note that on the Google Maps API page which has an InfoWindow they actually offset the centre of the map such that the InfoWindow is fully visible. Maybe they've just changed this page while they fix the bug.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 08 Aug 2008 | read 1 comment | comment | link |
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SEO for Marketers - Part #1
Search Engine optimisation (SEO) and marketing go hand in hand and I am getting more and more requests from people in Marketing roles for advice on SEO. The skills required to optimise a website for Search Engines are all marketing related skills. Despite popular belief, very few technical skills are required, and there are certainly no "secrets" to how Google ranks pages, the formula that Google uses is obvious and published on its own help pages (I have written about this before).
SEO in the real world
OK, we are going to write some web page copy about a footwear product called "Ugg Boot", a sheepskin boot famous in New Zealand and Australia for being incredibly comfortable and unfashionable at the same time. Recently the Ugg Boot has experienced a revival as "must have" teen brands like Billabong and Roxy have added trendy Ugg Boot products to their range.
So this presents an opportunity because as demand for ugg boots increases, customers are looking for opportunities to purchase the boots below retail price. My imaginary client is a sheepskin tannery who has manufactured high quality Ugg Boots for years and wants to feature this product on their website to generate enquiries that they will forward to the customer's nearest retailer.
I have been asked to write the copy for a web page promoting Ugg Boots. This is the process I take.
SEO As You Write
The real problem with SEO is that it is time consuming, especially if your are performing the work retrospectively. If you want to save time optimising your copy, do it as you write it.
- If you are marketing a service, the process is the same just a bit more difficult. For the purpose of this article I will use the term "product" for both services & products.
You will need: A Google Adwords Account, basic knowledge of how to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, a printer, a highlighter and a pen.
Step 1. Find the real root keyword for your product
Sum up your product in one short key phrase (1 or two words). Here are some examples:
- Ugg Boots = "Ugg Boots"
- Shopping Mall = "Retail Property"
- Seafood Wholesaler = "Seafood"
- Whakatane Backpackers = "Whakatane Accommodation"
Next, test your key phrase in the Keyword Tool. What this shows you is the keyword phrases that people are actually searching for (as opposed to what you think they are searching for). "Whakatane Backpackers" is a great example. A quick check in the Keyword tool reveals that there are exactly 0 searches for the term "Whakatane Backpackers" every month, wheras 880 searches every month for "Whakatane Accommodation". So the root keyword phrase for this product is "Whakatane Accommodation".
Using this tool allows you to evaluate keywords based on pure facts, as opposed to the emotion of gut feelings or instinct. As boring as pure data analysis may be to marketing creative types like you, it really is the secret to getting results on search engines, which are clinical, emotionless robots making decisions based purely on cold hard data.
Re-run the Keyword tool now on your root key phrase.
Step 2. Get the results into a Spreadsheet
OK, you should now have a list of key phrases, ordered by Average Monthly Searches (Descending) for your chosen country. Google will divide the results up into multiple sections. Now export each section as CSV (for Excel), and combine in to one Excel spreadsheet.
Next, sort all of the keyword phrases by average monthly searches descending. Now you will have a long list of potential key phrase candidates. Save a copy of this spreadsheet as a master.
- Here is what mine looks like. (XLS, 35KB)
Step 3. Ruthlessly narrow the list down to 20 keywords.
Starting with the first key phrase, work your way through the top key phrases evaluating for relevancy to your task at hand. If not relevant, delete that row and move on to the next one. This often means deleting really popular "broad" matches, which can be painful, so be ruthless!
Example. In my list, the first keyword phrase is "shoes", which while popular, is way too broad for my product and is saturated by competitors as well. So I have deleted it. I have also deleted "boot", "boots" and "footwear".
Delete any keyword phrases that you don't actually sell. As tempting as it is to try and attract anyone looking for anything remotely related to Ugg Boots to your website, it is a waste of time as customers will just leave your site in disgust after they have discovered that you don't actually sell what you are talking about on your website, and never come back. So, as much I would love my client to satisfy the glaring hole in the market for "crochet uggs" (12,100 searches in New Zealand per month and no advertisers!), my client does not make or sell them, so it is off the list.
Next, combine the phrases that obviously should be together. For example, in my list, women's uggs (#1) is really the same term as womens uggs (#20), so I will combine them at number one.
OK, now we have a list of 20 relevant keywords to use for the task at hand, writing search engine optimised copy for Ugg Boots. Print the list and get your highlighter ready.
- Here is what mine looks like now. (XLS, 33KB)
Next week, in part 2 of this Blog we start writing!
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 08 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Do you usually spend more than 4 hours per day on your computer? If yes, you should really take care of yourself. The following methods can significantly reduce the risk of getting illness from radialisation.
(Try to understand the following part? Use Google Translate)
****几招有效防电脑辐射****
第一招：在电脑旁放上几盆仙人掌，它可以有效地吸收辐射。
第二招：还对于生活紧张而忙碌的人群来说，抵御电脑辐射最简单的办法就是在每天上午喝2至3杯的绿茶，吃一个橘子。茶叶中含有丰富的维生素Ａ原，它被人体吸收后，能迅速转化为维生素Ａ。维生素Ａ不但能合成视紫红质，还能使眼睛在暗光下看东西更清楚，因此，绿茶不但能消除电脑辐射的危害，还能保护和提高视力。如果不习惯喝绿茶，菊花茶同样也能起着抵抗电脑辐射和调节身体功能的作用,螺旋藻、沙棘油也具有抗辐射的作用.
第三招：上网前先做好护肤隔离，如使用珍珠膜，可以有效防止污染环境的侵害和辐射;其次电脑使用后，脸上会吸附不少电磁辐射的颗粒，要及时用清水洗脸，这样将使所受辐射减轻70％以上！
第四招：操作电脑时最好在显示屏上安一块电脑专用滤色板以减轻辐射的危害，室内不要放置闲杂金属物品，以免形成电磁波的再次发射。使用电脑时，要调整好屏幕的亮度，一般来说，屏幕亮度越大，电磁辐射越强，反之越小。不过，也不能调得太暗，以免因亮度太小而影响效果，且易造成眼睛疲劳。
第五招：应尽可能购买新款的电脑，一般不要使用旧电脑，旧电脑的辐射一般较厉害，在同距离、同类机型的条件下，一般是新电脑的1－2倍。
第六招：电脑摆放位置很重要。尽量别让屏幕的背面朝着有人的地方，因为电脑辐射最强的是背面，其次为左右两侧，屏幕的正面反而辐射最弱。以能看清楚字为准，至少也要50厘米到75厘米的距离，这样可以减少电磁辐射的伤害。
第七招：注意室内通风：科学研究证实，电脑的荧屏能产生一种叫溴化二苯并呋喃的致癌物质。所以，放置电脑的房间最好能安装换气扇，倘若没有，上网时尤其要注意通风。
第八招：注意酌情多吃一些胡萝卜、豆芽、西红柿、瘦肉、动物肝等富含维生素A、C和蛋白质的食物，经常喝些绿茶等等。
第九招：经常在电脑前工作的人常会觉得眼睛干涩疼痛，所以，在电脑桌上放几支香蕉很有必要，香蕉中的钾可帮助人体排出多余的盐分，让身体达到钾钠平衡，缓解眼睛的不适症状。此外，香蕉中含有大量的β胡萝卜素，当人体缺乏这种物质时，眼睛就会变得疼痛、干涩、眼珠无光、失水少神，多吃香蕉不仅可减轻这些症状，还可在一定程度上缓解眼睛疲劳，避免眼睛过早衰老.
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posted by Kenny D Zhang, 01 Aug 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Even though Cuil doesn't know that it is, (at least not on its primary search results for 'cuil.com' of a few days after their launch (which incidentally has the most incomprehendable presentation of any search I've ever done on google (the results of which I won't copy here in case of litigation (but I'm sure you can find it on google in the archives)))), I have experienced some excellent results on searches.
The first few search results were appalling and the pages they linked to were covered in ads and I almost gave up any thoughts of home right there. But I'd read an article in the New Scientist and I expected more journalistic integrity so I persevered. The following day I tried again.
I was investigating a google maps API bug that didn't centre an infowindow, (javascript mods between versions caused this pop-up window which should be centred in the map to be too high and mostly chopped off at the top (we rigorously test our code and discovered the issue after deployment testing)) and this cool search engine showed me semantic alternatives for my search terms. This led me straight to the solution (still half an hour of unbilled time to implement the solution start to finish) of changing the javascript to include the last version that presented info windows correctly, v2.118.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 31 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, a while ago now when I was revamping one of our clients websites I pulled off a trick that I thought was pretty neat! This trick was showing images for each menu object when the page link was hovered over by using CSS - whereas usually I would have had to have used Javascript to display the image, I can sometimes get away with putting the image in a background image of the menu objects A tag and showing it on the on the hover which is a nicer option. But in this case I couldn't.
It is fairly basic CSS really but I still thought it was neat. So here's what I did:
By embedding the image in the A tag you can then control that image object in the same manner as you would a link using CSS i.e. link, visited, hover and active. So there for you can on the links hover display the image. So I have made the A link the parent object of the image so when the A links status changes from link to hover I can also change the Images status from display: none to display: inline - You can use inline or block here - I have used inline here so the image sits next to the link. Now I have gotten my image showing up on the hover I can then position the image where I would like it. You can use position: relative - or position: absolute for this and by using the top and left classes you can position the image. I have put in the height and width in the Images class to define the images space when its loading. When using a relatively positioned image you can use the margin-bottom to cancel out the space that the image is relative to, by putting in the height as a negative this will happen. See the example below for how this works.
<!-- EXAMPLE -->
<!-- HTML EXAMPLE -->
<a href="http://klixo.co.nz/blogs/richard.html" title="Richard's Blog">
Hover over this
<img src="/pics/rpblog_css_example.gif" alt="Menu Hover Example" class="menu"/>
</a>
<!-- CSS EXAMPLE-->
a:link.menu img, a:link.menu img
{
display: none;
}
a:hover.menu img, a:active.menu img
{
display: inline;
}
img.menu
{
border: none;
position: relative;
top: 25px;
left: 20px;
height: 25px
width: 40px;
margin-bottom: -25px;
}
This is my first time trying to Blog something technical and hopefully I will improve, feel free to submit your comments on "correct terms" for objects etc etc!... bye for now.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 25 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Environmentally Friendly Data Centres
Klixo being a web service company and me being a bit eco-minded, I figured why not start my blog with something about web hosting? I've read quite a bit in New Scientist over the past year about how data centres are able to improve their energy efficiency through a whole raft of technologies and software.
A report from UK-based Global Action Plan, puts carbon dioxide emissions from information and communications technology at 2 per cent of global emissions, on the same level as that of the aviation industry, so it's something that I am really concerned about. One particular article from New Scientist talked about many companies that are tackling this problem. It stated that IBM are investing $1 billion USD into a project called 'Big Green' which aims to double their computing capacity without increasing power consumption.
But my favourite article was by IBM Switzerland. The idea is to add microfluidic pipes over the processors in the data centre which connect up to a heat exchanger. This is used to heat nearby homes. They reckon that 75% of the energy used in the data centre can be reclaimed and a medium-sized data centre consuming 1MW of energy could heat 70 homes.
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posted by Dan Wonacott, 25 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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How to use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool
The Keyword Tool is used to estimate the amount of searches for a given keyword in a month. It can also be used to recommend relevant Adwords keywords for your webpages. Follow the instructions below to login to Google Adwords and access this tool.
Create a Google Adwords Account
If you don't already have one, get a Google Adwords Account.
- Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/Login
- Click "Start now >>"
- Choose "Standard Edition" and click Continue
- Follow the instructions in the sign-up wizard
Google will take you through the process of creating a new Google AdWords advertising camapign - Don't worry, this camapign will not be activated or visible to the public unless you enter your payment details (which you don't have to do now).
Log in to Google Adwords
If you have a Google AdWords account, or have just created one, log in now.
Load the Keyword Tool
- Click on the "Campaign Management" tab
- Click Tools
- Click "Keyword Tool"
Running the Keyword Tool
If this is your first time using this tool, follow these guidelines:
Tailor results to New Zealand
If your target market is New Zealand, instruct Google to only show you search data for New Zealand.
- Where it says "Results are tailored to English, United States", click Edit
- Select "New Zealand" in the list of Countries
Enter a root Keyword
To begin with, choose the simplest, commonest, one or two word term that sums up your business, here are some examples:
- For a Podiatrist, enter "Podiatry"
- For a Helicopter Training course, enter "Helicopter Training"
- For a Wholesale Seafood company, enter "Seafood"
Analyse the Data
- Click "Get keyword ideas" and wait a few seconds for Google to generate a report
- When the results load, click on the "Approx Avg Search Volume" column. This will display the search terms in order, from most searched to least searched.
- The numbers in the Volume columns indicate approximately how many searches there were for the key phrases in the selected Country.
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 23 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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Kia Ora, as I was browsing the internet the other day trying to track down the official website for the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight" for some work related reason, I got to the IMDb listing for the movie and found the Official sites page and found there was a couple there. I had found the official site I was after but of course I was intrigued by the other links available as I am looking forward to seeing this movie! So the first link I clicked on was the "Concerned Citizens for a Better Gotham" not entirely knowing what i was going to find. What I did find was what appeared to be the official website for an organisation related to the movie that had been hacked by The Joker and his cronies! The page had been mashed into what looked like a young child let loose on the front page of the Beacon (local newspaper) - with jokes and rearranged sentences to make funny mad libs and smiling faces drawn on all the people. After checking a few of the other links I found the same thing. The pages are just single images mostly, some have links that go to other information about the movie, competitions and trailers etc, as it is all of course just a big advertising campaign, but none the less a very creative and entertaining one! Here are some of my favourites:
- gothampolice.com - Gotham Police website
- ccfabg.org - Concerned Citizens for a Better Gotham
- gpdmcu.com - Gotham Police Major Crimes Unit
- ibelieveinharveydent.com - I Believe in Harvey Dent
- rossisdelicatessen.com - Rossi's Delicatessen
- wearetheanswer.org - We Are The Answer - A Safer Gothem Farts with you...
The list goes on and on you can find them all on the www.whysoserious.com website which appears to be The Jokers home page by clicking on phone numbers in the address book there.
Enjoy!
R.
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posted by Richard Parfitt, 18 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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I have accidentally responded to a Phishing (Scam) email. What should I do?
Phishing or Scam emails come in many forms, but most are cleverly disguised to get you to part with a username and password. These scams are becoming so clever now that it is almost impossible for all but a highly trained professional to distinguish between a scam and the real thing. So if think you may have been sucked in by one of these scams, here is what you should do.
- Change the password of the system that the scammer was posing as immediately (See choosing random passwords below)
- If you use the same or similar password for any of your internet banking accounts:
- Change the password immediately
- Monitor your statements for unusual or unauthorised transactions
- Notify your Bank of any breach or unauthorised activity
- If you use the same or similar password for any other website or system, change the password immediately and report any unauthorised activity
- Make sure your email hosting account server has a good anti-spam system installed. Klixo's email accounts have an excellent Anti-spam system.
- Update your browser to the latest version and ensure that it includes an anti-phishing system. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 3 both have this functionality built in.
- Finally, review your personal password policy (more on this below)
How to avoid Phishing Scams in the first place
- Read these tips from Hubris.net
- Make sure your email hosting account server has a good anti-spam system installed. Klixo's email accounts have an excellent Anti-spam system.
- Update your browser to the latest version and ensure that it includes an anti-phishing system. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 3 both have this functionality built in.
Creating a Personal Password policy
Everyone should have a personal password policy that determines how you choose passwords and which passwords you use for which systems/websites. Here are some practical (but not fool-proof) tips:
- When you are setting or choosing a password, consider the risk involved in using the system. Ask yourself, if someone was able to break in using my username and password, what would the possible ramifications be? Risk can be measured by how much money you could potentially lose, or it can be measured in other ways, such as how embarrassing it could be for example. Some examples of risk evaluations could be:
- Internet Banking - High Risk
- Flickr Account - Low Risk
- My Space Account - Low Risk
- Laptop Login - High Risk
- Company Intranet - Medium or High Risk
- Some security experts recommend that you choose a different password for every website/system that you log in to, but this is not always practical. Another (riskier) alternative is to choose a password for each risk profile. For example a low risk password, a medium risk password, and a high risk password.
- Choose a random password, a mixture of letters, numbers and symbols that will never be found in a dictionary of any kind. Use a random password generator to get a more secure password.
More reading
- Phishing / Identity Theft - Hubris Communications
- Secure Passwords Keep You Safer - Schneier on Security
- Real World Passwords - Schneier on Security (warning, contains profanity)
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 09 Jul 2008 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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A strategy for better search engine rankings for New Zealand small business websites
By Daniel Larsen, Manager, Klixo Website Management.
Introduction
This article focuses on improving the search engine ranking for your website and is specifically written for New Zealand based small business websites. This article does not include specific strategies for increasing the number of visitors to your site, but in most cases a better search engine ranking will increase the overall visitor traffic to your site.
How websites are ranked
Most website owners will type their business name into Google and see how close their website comes to the top of the list as an indication of their search engine ranking. But unfortunately this is not accurate because your customers may not always search for your exact business name, in fact they may often search for the type of business you are in or a product that you provide. For example, visitors who come to “www.larryscarparts.co.nz” may not have searched for “Larry’s Car Parts”. They may have searched for “cheap oil filter”. The two search terms are not relative – Larry’s website will rank differently in each search.
Klixo uses the Google PageRank to measure how websites are ranked in the eyes of the world’s most important Search Engine, Google. The Google PageRank is measured on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being the lowest ranking and 10 being the highest. If you download and configure the Google Toolbar you can view the PageRank for your website as well as other websites.
If your website has a good Google PageRank, it will rank well in search results for relevant keywords every time. So any search engine optimisation strategy must make a better PageRank the priority. So here comes the obvious question…
What is the secret to getting a good Google PageRank?
The answer is… there is no secret. There are only two guaranteed ways to get a better PageRank and here they are, quoted straight from the Google Webmaster Guidelines:
- “Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content”
- “Have other relevant sites link to yours”
A useful, information-rich site
Content is king. If your website has lots of interesting and up-to-date content that is relevant to your business then your site is halfway to earning a good PageRank. The Klixo Website Manager allows you to log in and update your website anytime you like. This means you can update your site as soon as you have new information available.
Have other relevant sites link to yours
Now you must get other websites to link to yours, and this is crucial, you will not get a Google PageRank higher than 0 if no other website on the web will link to yours.
But a word of caution, it is not the quantity of websites that link to yours that Google considers, it is the quality. To impact on your PageRank any website that links to yours must be relevant to your business. A link from a website is particularly valuable if it has a higher PageRank than yours. So the best strategy is to seek out your suppliers, customers and peers and ask them to link to your site. You may offer to reciprocate with a link to their site.
For any new Klixo Website, the first link to the new site is from http://klixo.co.nz/ which is has a PageRank of 4 (at the time of writing this article), so that is a good start.
Web Business Directories are also excellent for providing quality, high ranking links to your website. Every new Klixo Website is automatically submitted to these free New Zealand web directories:
www.nzsearch.co.nz (PageRank = 6)
www.directorynz.co.nz (PageRank = 5)
I also highly recommend investing in a listing in these high profile NZ directories:
www.yellowpages.co.nz
If you have a business telephone line with Telecom then you will already have a listing on www.yellowpages.co.nz. You can enhance the listing with a link to your website for about $38 + GST per month. This is good value* as the Yellow Pages website has a Google PageRank of 7 (at the time of writing), so a link from www.yellowpages.co.nz to your website is good kudos in the eyes of Google and the other popular search engines.
I have been impressed with the work that Yellow Pages have put into their website over recent months, they have really cottoned on to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and have built keyword rich entry pages to attract even more visitors to their directory. Plus, just yesterday I noticed that every single listing has a zoom-able map with driving and walking directions to your business – very cool!
When you apply for the listing make sure you include some keywords in the description text for your listing. Have a look at Klixo’s listing for an example.
If you do not have a business line with Telecom you can still just call Yellow Pages to arrange the advertising. If you are a home-based business, make sure you register for the Home Business programme; it’s free, you still pay residential line rental, plus you get cheaper daytime calls and a free Yellow Pages listing.
www.ubd.co.nz
UBD are another online business directory, currently on a PageRank of 6. Their pricing and service is similar to Yellow Pages and they provide all sorts of options for how you want your listing to appear. At around $38 + GST per month, the basic listing with a link to your website is a good investment*. Once again, make sure you include your most important keywords in the description.
* Keep in mind that I recommend these products for their value as quality web links only. Don’t expect to start getting a lot of sales enquiries just because you are listed in the Yellow Pages or UBD.
Summary
An easy to use, content rich website that is recommended (by way of a link) by other content rich websites will always rank well in Google and the other major search engines. Klixo websites have the added advantage of belonging to a network of websites that are already have a good PageRank. Plus our Klixo Website Manager makes it easy for you to create new content for your website at any time.
Appendix: the major popular search engines
- Google: http://www.google.com/
- Yahoo! Search: http://search.yahoo.com/
- MSN Search: http://search.msn.com/
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posted by Daniel Larsen, 03 Jan 2007 | 0 comments | comment | link |
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posted by Alex, 21 Jul 2009