Specifically, we discuss:

• Crawling through HTML Forms — Friday, April 11, 2008
• Dynamic URLs vs static URLs — Monday, September 22, 2008

In a nutshell, Google says they pull “important” terms from surrounding pages and use them to populate search boxes and other forms in an effort to get more content. Some of the terms they pull don’t seem like things normal people would be searching for, so we’re not sure how exactly they decide what terms to try or not try. You should be able to scan through your access logs and pick out examples of the bot filling in forms to see for yourself.

As for the 180 degree flip on dynamic URLs vs. static URLs, we’re pretty much in agreement that it’s not a green light to shut off URL rewriting or stop doing “pretty URLs”. Pretty URLs enhance the user experience, and in cases where you have an existing web site that is already turning ugly, dynamic URLs into pretty static strings, you should DEFINITELY not deviate from the status quo. Changing all of your existing URLs will cause a horrendous drop in traffic while the engines try to figure out what you’ve done and get everything sorted out.

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MSN Live's Jeremiah Andrick

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I know I go through business cards like water goes through a sieve at conferences, so make sure you’re well stocked and they’re current. If you wait too long, you’ll either end up with craptastic cards that look like you had them printed at the Kwik-E-Mart, or you’ll pay out the nose for shipping. Or possibly both if you’re exceptionally unlucky.

So consider this my little PSA reminder :)

Designed it myself ;)

The reason I thought to issue the reminder is because the mailman *just* brought me a big heavy box full of print collateral! (I know… the strangest things make me happy. What can I say?)

My box of goodies contained my new Lafayette Online business cards, my new BeFoundLocal.com cards, and my new (pictured to the right) cshel cards. Oh, and a couple thousand rack cards for Lafayette Online (rack cards go in the visitor information stands at hotels, the Chamber of Commerce, restaurants by the interstate, etc.)

I was worried that the new cshel cards were going to come out a little weird because I decided to put an enormous blue seashell on the left side of the card and it literally occupies a third of the printable space. The worry, however, was for naught because the color looks great and I’m really, really pleased with the way they turned out. These definitely sparkle with me.

Also, I don’t know if you noticed, but the seashell is the exact same image I’m using as the favicon for cshel.com. Yay for consistent branding :)

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Come hear me speak on Wednesday, July 30th at the Gleacher Center, Downtown Chicago

You might be wondering what management has to do with social media, SEM, online advertising, etc. If you’ve ever worked for a not-online-only company, chances are you know *exactly* what manglement has to do with it — or more to the point what role they play in preventing you, and the people like you who know what needs to be done to get it done right, from doing your job.

This talk is aimed at upper management and executives who either think they know about social media, SEM/SEO and internet advertising, or who realize they only know the buzzwords and need a better understanding of the concepts and ideas.

The goal of the session is to give these decision makers with a better grasp of the concepts involved, and help them start thinking about ways they can modify current business procedures to accommodate these new and emerging technologies.

It’s all great to walk into the marketing department and declare, “Let’s get on Digg! Let’s get a million visitors!”, but seriously, is that really what the company NEEDS? How do you even define what is needed?

Once you have your needs and goals defined (because really, you can’t define your needs until you define your goals… it’s hard to create driving directions without a start point AND an endpoint), then how do you go about implementing your plan of action? Here’s a hint: meetings to schedule more meetings, to throw things back to committee to review and then another meeting to discuss the findings just isn’t going to cut it. The cycle time for decisions and actions is dramatically shorter now than ever before, and if you’re used to doing business the way you did business 30 years ago, or even 10 years ago, you’re going to miss A LOT of opportunities, or you’re going to waste a lot of money doing things ineffectively.

Wow Carolyn, this sounds FASCINATING…. when is the talk?

Ever so glad you asked… here are the details:

How To Reorganize Management For Social Media, Search Marketing & Internet Advertising

Speakers:
Carolyn Shelby, Social Media and SEO Consultant
David Dalka, Internet Marketing, Change Management and Mobile Search Marketing consultant

Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Time:
6:00p — Registration
6:30p-8:00p — Program
8:00p — Networking and Cash Bar

Location:
University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
Gleacher Center - Room 100
450 North Cityfront Plaza Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60611 USA

Register Online (right now!)

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Btw, I should probably mention that I did all of this development on a completely different domain.

So anyway, as I’m dangerously close to the point where I can flip the switch and turn the new site on, it occured to me that I’m not entirely sure what the best way is to go about doing it… so I’m asking for advice from those of you who know WordPress far better than me.

The Options

Option 1

1. Backup existing site
2. Rm -rf * the entire directory to make sure it’s good and clean
3. Install fresh copy of WordPress with fresh new database
4. Export the contents of the development site using WP’s export feature.
5. Copy the theme off the development site and upload onto the production server
6. Turn theme on
7. Import the file created by the export into the production WP.

I *think* that should work. I think.

The problem is that I have a couple of plugins (remnants from one of the two smaller WPs I had been using on the frankenstein site) that lose tables and data everytime I do the export/import thing because they have all sorts of extra tables associated with them. I won’t *die* if I have to start over with no historical data on those few plugins, but I’d like to avoid it.

Hence, option 2…

Option 2

1. Back up existing production site.
2. Rm -rf * the whole directory to make sure it’s good and clean for the new WP install.
3. Install WordPress fresh, but point the DB at the one currently in use by the development site.
4. Copy the theme files from the development site and put them on the production site and turn on.
5. Fix whatever is broken in the DB to make it work on the new domain.

I guess my hangup on going with option 2 is the “Fix whatever is broken in the DB to make it work” as I don’t know exactly what will break or how much of a migraine it will cause to try to fix it.

So is there anyone who’s done this before? Advice? Suggestions?

Thanks in advance for the help!

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I was checking my email yesterday (which I do about 12 million times a day) and in one of my accounts was a fresh new “restaurant review”. Always excited for more content and feedback, I opened the email to find this:

A new comment on the post #17 “A Pocket Full of Rye” is waiting for your approval
…/a-pocket-full-of-rye

Author : Joe Blow (IP: 71.252.64.50 , unassigned.fema.gov)
E-mail : joeblow@yahoo.com
URL : http://joeblows.com
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=71.252.64.50
Comment: does not exist. No such place! Phone number disconnected. This guide is totally lame!

*sigh* Needless to say I was disappointed and mildly irritated.

I actually do get *polite* email from locals periodically letting me know when a restaurant has closed or opened or changed management, etc. I don’t have a problem with being told I have some no longer correct data; things change all the time and I just can’t keep up with every single little change the instant it happens. I rely on tips and info from the user base to keep things current — and I appreciate the help.

What bothers me about this are a couple things.

1. Instead of emailing me privately, he elected to submit a bogus review hoping to have it appear publicly to embarrass me. Um ok… that’s mature.
2. Instead of leaving his email address and name so I could respond back with a “thanks for letting me know” or “thanks to Bob Smith for the tip” acknowledgment, he chose to leave a fake name and a fake email… probably because he knew he was being a Jerkface McMeaniehead but doesn’t have the cajones to own his own jerkface-osity.
3. Why do employees of a government agency that is already not known for having the best PR in the universe go around leaving “anonymous” snotty messages on blogs? Don’t they have better or more constructive things to do with their time — their paid-for-by-MY-tax-money time?

Since I can’t email directly back to this guy, I shall take advantage of my little soap box here to issue my response… and then I’ll print out my reply and snail mail it to the FEMA office in Indianapolis to the attention of whomever is listed as being in charge of said office, just so that the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Indiana is aware of how their tax-payer-funded resources are being used. Maybe if I’m feeling particularly snarky, I’ll cc the Washington DC office (and maybe the Colbert Report since way more people pay attention to Colbert anyway).

My response

Dear Mr. Blow,

I’m terribly sorry you encountered an outdated listing in my Dining Guide. Unfortunately, I am just one person and sometimes restaurants close quietly and I don’t realize they aren’t there anymore; however, I think it is rather harsh to say that the entire guide is useless.

(Not to mention just plain rude — especially when you don’t have the cajones to leave your real name or email address)

I do state several times on the Dining Guide that if any new information is available about any of the restaurants listed, or if there are any other comments or feedback, to please feel free to send us email. Submitting bogus reviews is not the proper means of alerting of us of new information.

In the future, you can send updates and corrections to updates@lafayette-online.com.

Thanks again for letting us know about the outdated information, and thanks in advance for your cooperation in the future.

In Summary…

The moral of the story is that unless you’re using proxy services like HideMyAss.com or something along those lines, you’re probably leaving enough clues behind so that anyone who cares to can trace it back to you. Maybe not ALL the way to you specifically, but far enough to cause problems…

But Carolyn… what if I’m not leaving any snotty comments or otherwise being a delinquent? What if I’m just doing research for my business?

Yes, what if you are just doing research for your business… on a competitor’s website? Hrm? You think they won’t notice? You think they won’t *mind* that you’re snooping? They might not… but then again they might. Do you really want to take that chance?

Also, the secondary moral of the story is don’t be a Jerkface McMeaniehead. Being a pecker just because is not only pointless, it is unproductive and makes people like me do things like send certified letters to your boss. So there.

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The Handout
Seriously, this is frame-worthy. I’m going to get a big laminated version to put on the wall in my office.

Things we cover in this episode include:

• Press releases (for links) — pay attention as there are some good tips for not breaking your budget and how to know when you should use free services versus when it’s a good idea to use the paid services.
• Wikis and Social Sites
• Traditional Link Building — Cherry picking links, how to ask for links the right way, how to NOT ask for links, etc.
• Paid Links, Link Exchanges and Directories

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The initial phase of usability enhancements focused on behind-the-scenes technology and laid the groundwork for future growth.

“In February, we kicked off our improvement plan by implementing new systems that allow dynamic content serving, significantly increased the site speed and provided the room we needed to grow and continue improving,” said Mark Achler, CEO of Spine-health.

As part of the new software roll-out, the entire library of more than 2,000 physician written and peer-reviewed articles, plus the blogs and contributions of 10,000+ active users were ported into a completely new content management system.

“This second phase is exciting because it’s a truly visible sign of the progress we’ve been making. We’re very excited to continue expanding and enhancing our content and functionality to better serve our members and visitors,” Achler added.

Spine-health serves nearly 1,000,000 unique visitors per month, and features in-depth content, written by physicians and peer-reviewed, on pain topics specifically related to spine and back conditions. Spine-health is considered an authority on topics like back pain, chronic pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, lumbar and cervical spinal stenosis and co-morbidities of those conditions such as depression, stress and sleep problems.

Spine-health can be found online at http://www.spine-health.com/

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A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the
ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be a programmer,” said the balloonist.

“I am,” replied the woman, “How did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in Management.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”

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So why would you want to start a social network?
In addition to adding coolness and generating additional traffic for your site. Branded social networks help build your brand by creating a community for your users and fans. The users connect with other like-minded people and while bonding with each other… they emotionally bond with the brand… that turns users into fans and fans into brand evangelists.

Let’s not forget that a social network also creates additional ranking opportunities for your site. More content, more potential spots to occupy on the SERPs.

So why is Lovd so special?
Lovd is a) really cool looking and fully featured right out of the box, b) FREE, c) open source, and d) supposedly very easy to install and run — if you’re familiar with Ruby On Rails. I say supposedly only because I am absolutely NOT familiar with RoR, and will have to defer to Steve’s expert opinion on that topic.

If you’re interested in adding a unique facet to your site, and you (or a geek you love) are familiar with Ruby on Rails, go check out Lovd — check the system requirements, demo, features, etc — then download it and give it a spin. It’s open source and you can’t beat the price :)

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