Archive for the ‘web apps’ Category

WordPress 2.7, here we go

Posted by Eric on December 16, 2008  |   No Comments »

I just updated my Content Management System to WordPress 2.7.

For those of you who haven’t been following the news, WP 2.7 is a pretty significant update to WordPress.  A bunch of things have been moved around.

Here’s a few initial thoughts:

Plugins:

- Oz Admin Drop Down – one of my favorite back-end plugins is no longer needed – as a matter of fact, it breaks the admin pages.  So you need to delete it, deactivate it, etc.  Otherwise, you won’t be able to see the menu on the left.

-  Custom Admin Branding – no longer works – well, it works, but not as nice.  WP changed the look of the log-in screen so my custom made log in no longer works.  That’s not a big deal for me, but can’t wait to get this fixed for other clients.  Being able to put in a custom Branded log in screen is a big deal.

Back End Menu:

- I love having the menu on the left hand side.  I love being able to shrink the menu to just the icons – giving me more space for writing and other things.  In short it is a big deal.

- The dashboard is now actually a useful page.  Before it was nothing more than just a waste.  Now, I’m looking forward to seeing it in action a little more.  Things like quickPress intrigue me.

OK, that’s it for now.  I’ll have more thoughts later as I work through everything.

Twitter for Business?

Posted by Eric on November 25, 2008  |   No Comments »

I’ve been spending more and more time using Twitter lately (http://www.twitter.com/ehdesign).  But, what I’ve been trying to figure out is how to make twitter into a truly useful, business application.  In other words – something other than just a time waster.

To that end, I just listened to a webinar from Sarah Milstein about Twitter fro business - http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1162.  The webinar happened back on November 13, so it’s just a YouTube video, but it’s worth your time (even though it is about 60 minutes).

Here’s a short overview of some of the thoughts in the webinar:

1.  use search.twitter.com - great way to search for all tweets about a particular subject – very useful.  Didn’t know that it existed.  But, I do now, and I like it.  Great way to find information about your brand, competitors, company, etc.

2.  use twitter for customer service – we all know Comcast customer service sucks (even Comcast knows it).  So Frank Eliason saw Comcast being railed on in twitter – everyone complaining.  So, he made an account and started talking back.  Has 18,000 tweets – most of them are “@” tweets – meaning he’s talking to people.  Wow.  Almost makes me want to use comcast….

3.  Be open and authentic – if you are a company be sure to put a real name behind the business – post at least daily – twice a day if possible.

A bunch of decent questions at the end. 

Pretty good – I worked while I listened to it in the background.

Let me know if you have any other thoughts….

Lotus Jump sample tasks for SEO

Posted by Eric on November 11, 2008  |   No Comments »

I’ve just started working with LOTUSJUMP (http://www.lotusjump.com) for SEO.  Here is a screenshot of my first look at what it suggests I do for Optimization.

By the way – on the previous post – forgot to include my third SEO term:

3.  Fort Wayne eCommerce

OK, here’s the screenshot:

fort wayne web deisgn picture 11 Lotus Jump sample tasks for SEO

SEO with LotusJump

Posted by Eric on November 11, 2008  |   No Comments »

As you have probably read from my recent posts, I’ve been spending a lot of time recently trying to optimize my own website recently.  

I’ve been doing OK on my own, and now thought I would give a new tool a chance.

The new tool is put out by a company called LotusJump (http://www.lotusjump.com).  The trial has two basic purposes: 

1.  See if I can improve my own SEO

2.  Evaluate the value of the service provided by LotusJump

So, here’s the three words I have currently in the lotusjump SEO:

1.  Fort Wayne Web Design – which gets about 210 monthly searches

2. Custom Web Development – which gets about 2,900 monthly searches

Here are my current page results for each:

For “Fort Wayne Web Design”:

AOL: page 2 – #11
GOOGLE: page 2 – #11
LYCOS: not found
YAHOO: not found
MSN: page 1 – #8
NETSCAPE: page 2 – #11

For “Custom Web Development”:

AOL: not found 
GOOGLE: not found 
LYCOS: not found
YAHOO: not found
MSN: not found 
NETSCAPE: not found 

So, I’ve got plenty of room for the second term, also a little bit of room for improvement on my first.

I’m going to try it for 30 days and give you the result.  Consider it a running test…