From these two seeds my network and this business have expanded far more than the first five years.  Let’s look at how one of the shining stars of social media, Twitter, impacted my business.

Tweeple

Twitter impacted my business by connecting me with new clients and colleagues.

Clients

I have never met any of these clients in real life. I had never met or heard of them outside of Twitter and that remains true today.  This ruled out a lot of folks that I met on Twitter and then met in real life at Boston or Cambridge area events for example.

• Three WordPress migration projects and hosting clients and one WordPress MU project in California
• Three WordPress migration projects in Tennessee
• Three WordPress design and custom programming clients in Massachusetts
• One custom WordPress project in Texas
• Two WordPress MU projects in Arizona

These clients have received web services in the area of website or blog hosting, blog migration, custom WordPress design and programming, Thesis theme customization, merging a blog and website and a custom WordPress MU and BuddyPress installation.

Colleagues

The following list is again very restrictive and includes only folks that I know through Twitter and have never met in real life.

• Two colleagues in Colorado for total of 12 projects
• Three projects out of Arizona
• One project out of Texas
• Two  projects out of Wisconsin
• One project out of the Netherlands
• One project out of Illinois
• Two projects out of Florida
• One project out of Michigan

Partners

My entrepreneurial spirit has also grown since 2007 thanks to social media.  In April 2009 I joined with a partner to form BlogWranglers and we have completed at least 10 projects as of this writing.  Our introduction came through a mutual friend on Twitter.  Our work focuses almost entirely on blog platform migration and blog moves. For example migrating from Movable Type to WordPress or from one hosting provider to another.  He also became a hosting reseller for JBS Partners and has brought in many new hosting clients.

My go-to guy for a lot of development work on WordPress is in Oregon.  Once again we met through Twitter somehow.  We have worked on nearly 25 different projects together since March 2009. This has added a lot of horse-power to JBS Partners’ ability to take on new client work.

Summary

The above are solid numbers that add up to thousands and thousands of dollars in services and revenue that are a result of using Twitter effectively.  It may not be for everyone but I really like Twitter and social media and it has been very good for my business.

These numbers  are not something that happened just because I am on Twitter.  The numbers represents a lot of hard work and I will admit it is work that you could do on Twitter or Facebook or Linkedin or wherever you choose to spread your entrepreneurial wings in the social media space.

You can find me on Twitter as fairminder

What’s your take on social media and entrepreneurs? Can it be useful?

I circled back to this question later in the meeting with an answer.  Possibly not a very popular one.  Although a handful of people came up to thank me for making the point.   So, let me lay some groundwork before getting to my point.

1. Since 2002  entrepreneurs, marketers, authors, churches, attorneys, restauranteurs and large service companies have worked with JBS Partners mostly in developing new website and blogs, as well as various marketing services related to search marketing.
2. WordPress has been the platform of choice and has shown remarkable improvements in ease of use and additional capabilities over the years.
3. Using WordPress.com the average person can setup a new blog themselves.  Self-hosted WordPress installations can be as easy as a few clicks.
4. There are many extremely customized and advanced configurations of WordPress out there that small business folks want to emulate.

Here is my point

When the small business owner sees the fantastic capabilities that are produced by a talented team of developers, it is immediately assumed that the self-help approach is enough to complete an equally complicated configuration by themselves.  It is true that there is the added encouragement of the repeated message that “WordPress is easy”.

After repeated failed attempts to emulate the rock stars of WordPress, the enthusiasm for WordPress being “so easy to work with ” fades and frustration sets in.

By contrast, it is my opinion that Drupal does not have the same reputation.  Those who have not worked extensively with Drupal find it “hard”.

I have been known to explain that Drupal was built by developers for developers, while WordPress was built for writers and is therefor easier to work with, especially on your first project.  I am not here to stir a debate between Drupal and WordPress lovers and haters. Both platforms have a richly deserved place in the Open Source marketplace.

I am concerned with the issue of WordPress having a great reputation that encourages folks to feel like they have a SuperMan suit on and are now professional WordPress programmers and PHP coders.

What is your view?

Is this an issue you have come across?

What are possible solutions?

Jim Spencer answering questions at the Boston WordPress Meetup

Rather than being completely agnostic as I would prefer, for the sake of clarity actual company names will be used instead of target registrar and source registrar.

This example will show how to transfer your domain name from Register.com to GoDaddy. (note: not a big fan of GoDaddy, but they can’t be ignored because of their domain registration market dominance)

Transfer Your Domain Name;

1. Unlock your domain name at Register.com otherwise nothing will happen
2. Be sure that you have access to the admin (Administrator) email account on file in your Register.com domain account. If needed update the admin email address
3. It is advised to cancel your Privacy Protection, but I don’t know why
4. Purchase a domain name transfer from GoDaddy – expires in 30 days. This purchase sends out an email with the Transaction ID and Security Code that you will need later
5. Obtain the Auth (authorization) Code from Register.com via email
6. Enter all there pieces of data at GoDaddy; Transaction ID, Security Code and Authorization Code
7. The transfer can take 5 days to complete

These fundamental steps should be the same for other registrars, so get those domains moving.

You are welcome to transfer your domains with www.jbspartnersdomains.com

Your email address is a vital resource. That is why businesses all over the web are trying to get your email address. They want to sell you something.

You value your ‘privacy’ and don’t like email spam any more than the next person.

Create a New Email Account

If you are handy that way and have unlimited email accounts you can create a new account every time you sign up for something. Just create a new email account with the name of where you are signing up.

For example; If you register at spammywebsite.com, you can create a new email account called spammywebsite@yourdomain.com.

In my case spammywebsite@jbspartners.com. Now if I ever get an email from anywhere else that uses that email address I know immediately who sold my information.

For those who say that is too much work, and have read this far, he is another great solution.

The Mailenator Solution

http://www.mailinator.com

Mailenator - email kind of

I had to read the entire FAQ until I grasped what they are doing at mailenator.com.

Here is how you use it when you want to sign up somewhere that requires and email address that you don’t want to share and you are sure you NEVER want to hear from them again, for any reason, no matter what.

In the email sign-up box type in <……>@mailenator.com You fill whatever you want between < and >.

Then go visit www.mailenator.com and in the big box on the home page enter the very same email that you entered at the other site.
You will be presented with the email message from the other site.

That is it. It is that sample.
You get the goods, without risking your email.

It is That Easy

Mailenator will keep your email for up to two hours, is entirely public, with no sign up whatsoever. I highly recommend you read the entire FAQ before using it and never use it for anything private. Oh, and they have other domain names that you can use if “Mailenator.com” gets refused when you enter the email address at the spammy site.

I used mailentor.com to obtain a free form that I wanted.  Great stuff.

How do you handle keeping your email address safe?

The presentation covers four major areas

1. Domain Names
   1. How to Choose
   2. How to Register
   3. How to Retain
2. Why use WordPress for a website (even without a blog)
3. SEO
   1. Key Word Research
   2. Local SEO
   3. Directories
   4. Citations and Links
4. Website Redesign walk-through

The audience had great questions on choosing, registering and retaining domain names, key word research, WordPress for websites and renaming files. They also had great observations about the motives for the website redesign what made the changes appealing and effective.

Special thanks go to Selina McCusker for assistance with the slide deck design.

More LaunchCamp presentations;

click the link to visit the speaker’s site and view the presentation

Mike Troiano on Achieving Scalable Intimacy

Two out of three of the domains at auction remain priced at $10,000 or below.

There are no .net domains priced over $11,000. The .com domain names are clearly the most desirable in this auction.

Reserves Not Met

I am surprised to see that only 5 our of the 31 domains have met the reserve price. And one is bid up to the lowest price of the auction, $1,000 for 5r.net.

il.com has a reserve of $500,000. Even though it has bid up and shows one of the highest bids, it is still well shy of the reserve price.

cd.net seems like one of the most commercially viable generic names in the auction. Of course .com would be better, but for a current bid of almost $10,000, it is worth considering. One more bid and it meets the reserve price of $10,000.

Possible Buyers

Too bad the days of the P4 are over, or maybe the seller of p4.com might have interested Intel in that domain name for their Pentium processor.

I wonder if a major car manufacturer might be bidding on xb.com. Scion, where are you? That would be a great marketing move. Think of the resale value of that domain even if the car gets canceled in a decade.

It is interesting that some of these domains are showing less than 100 visitors a month. Clearly their owners have not been developing this Internet Real Estate. Instead they buy and sell, while leaving the development to someone else.

Two Days Left - Click to visit SEDO auction page

Which is the most commercially viable domain name in the lot?
If half of the domains do not meet their reserves, is this auction a failure?

Please leave a comment below and share your insights and questions.

See the first post in this series, along with the opening bids here - SEDO’s Two Character .com and .net Auction

There are 31 domains in an auction that began today and will run for 6 more days.  It is interesting that the reserve prices range from $1 to $500,000. Already nearly all of the domains have met their reserve prices.

The Domains

Every domain has at least one bid on the first day of bidding.

64.com already has 24 bids, the most of all today.

P4.com has 11 bids. Most  other domain names have one to five bids.

il.com has the highest bid of $85,000

nl.com has a bid of $30,000, which is the next highest

There are only 10 domains with a current bid price under $5,000

What, No Website?

Nearly all of these domains have no website and generally under a 100 inbound links.  Although one has over 8,000 inbound links.

This means that you are buying potential.  You are buying scarcity. You are buying Internet Real Estate.

These domains do not have operating websites with a developed revenue stream.  They may be parked (at SEDO of course) and earning a revenue stream on direct type in traffic converted via Google AdSense.

If I had the money would I love to own a 2 character domain name? Absolutely!

Day 1 of the Auction - click to visit SEDO site.

How Will it End?

Which domains will fetch the highest prices?

Which domains will garner the most bids?

Which domains won’t sell?

– What do you think?

Read Part Two of this series here SEDO’s Two Character Domain Name Auction

The Idea

There has been a significant rise in the number of requests to move blogs to WordPress.  I was dealing with three clients in one week on this subject and figured there might be a niche business opportunity targeting blog moves / migrations / transfers to WordPress.

Domain Names

First, I thought of the qualities of a good domain name.  I started with keyword focused names like;

BlogMigration.com or MoveMyBlog.com.

I hopped on IM with my buddy Don to throw some ideas around.  In the process we  confirmed that we could not use the phrase WordPress, but we could use WP, in a domain name.  So, we considered shorter, brandable names like;

Move2WP.com and Switch2WP.com

Well, the domain names were flying back and forth.  I was not wild about numbers in a domain name. Putting keywords in the domain name made it really long.  So, we settled on a memorable and brand-able name instead.  Thanks for the suggestion Don!  I hopped over to my account at Fabulous.com and registered the name for $8.

We Registered www.blogwranglers.com

• This name is memorable, but a tad long
• It is a dot com, but it has only one keyword
• It is not limited to one platform, which is good, but it does not have WP in it.
• Best of all it is a name that we could have fun with.

Like many other purchases registering a domain name is full of compromises.

Hosting

Having a dedicated server for my business, setting up hosting was pretty simple.  No great details to share here.  I also installed WordPress right away.

Theme

I simply used the WordPress Admin area feature to search for a free WordPress theme because I wanted to get something up fast. Momentum is key when you have a great idea.

The wrangler term suggested blue sky, green grass and lots of brown colors; dirt, horses and so on.  I searched for a theme based on the blue and brown and in less than a minute selected an eco theme to start things off.

A Free Theme Made for a Quick Decision

Configuration

The first setting I changed was the title and tag line.  They have been refined a dozen times since then, but the message is getting clearer.

On the hosting account I configured the primary email account to forward to both Don and I. The rest of the email accounts forward to our individual day-to-day email addresses.  This way we do not have yet another email account to check

Plugins

Keeping it light to start with I installed just a few plugins

1. Contact Form 7
2. Sociable – removed due to 43 XHTML Validation errors
3. ShareThis
4. Retweet
5. Google Analyticator
6. Subscribe to Comments
7. WordPress Database Backup
8. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
9. All In One SEO Pack
10. Google XML SiteMap

Accounts

I created only a few important accounts to get things rolling.

1. GMail – BlogWranglers
2. Google Analytics – BlogWranglers.com
3. Twitter – BlogWranglers
4. ShareThis
5. Google WebMaster Tools – submitted XML SiteMap

I thought about Share This and a few other accounts, but used Sociable instead.  I declined to use TweetMeme, until they clean up their code so that it validates.

Content

Don was great and jumped in and wrote up the first three pages for the website.  I went in later and built the contact page and form.  We both provided complementary editing services to each others writing. That part was cool.

We had fun infusing the writing with the Wrangler theme. For example, the Contact Form button says “Give us a Holler” instead of Submit.  These subtle changes make a big difference.

Give us a Holler, instead of a Submit Button (Click to Enlarge)

No Dead Ends

Next, I revised every page to eliminate “dead ends”.  I added “call to action” text and a link to the contact page on the bottom of all three pages.

We want visitors to know what we want them to do and we don’t want them to read to the bottom of the page and wonder what to do next.

Posts

Next Don and I each wrote a post.  I wrote about a small trend I see driving the migration to WordPress.  Don wrote about the blog software used by the Top 100 Blogs according to Technorati.  WordPress is tops, being used twice as much as the next contender.

Links

Don operates a forum site that offer tips and was able to throw in a link to our new site.  He also found a couple of great blogs to leave comments on, which now link back to our new site.

What Did We Learn

Well, once we started to focus on content we did a few research based searches on the Internet and were greatly disappointed to learn that we were not the first to think of using the term Wrangler.  We had already named ourselves SEO Wrangler and Data Wrangler.  Oh well.  I figured, so what. No one can have a the sandbox all to themselves right?

Fun and useful domain names are available without having to go into the after market and spend lots of money.

Next Steps

I expect we will;

1. Keeping writing posts and articles
2. Continue building links to the new website
3. Evaluate submitting to a couple of directories.
4. Install an SEO plugin and get the meta titles and descriptions sorted out
   
5. Probably ignore the new BlogWrangler Twitter account and just use my account.
6. Setup a FeedBurner account and configure it
7. Consider designing a logo and a custom designed theme for the site

What Would You Do Next on Blog Wranglers?

Share your current suggestions in the comments area below. And thanks for stopping by.

Twitter Searching

twitoria- Unfollow people who have not posted a tweet in week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 6 months or a year.

tweetbeep – Alerts.  Track any time someone mentions you, your products, your company, anything, with hourly updates!

tweepsearch- Search friends and followers, or just a keyword in all bios currently indexed.

whendidyoujointwitter – Enter a user name name and see when the twitter account was created.

backtweets – searches for links on twitter, even shortened ones.

twellow – List your profile, search twitter, followers, friends, groups also includes a profile editor.

Anonymous Tweeting

secrettweet- A place to tweet anonymously – crazy, scary and hilarious tweets.

Twitter Hashtags

tweetchat- hashtagged tweets are aggregated into on place. You can tweet and it adds the hashtag for you. Great for events and webinars.

tagdef – look up the meaning of a hashtag, like #redsox, but we know what that one is.

Twitter Polling

twpoll- Create a poll and send it on to your Twitter followers on.

For more see Rachel Levy’s big list of Twitter tools

If you liked this post, you may also like Twitter Tools to Share with your Followers

as well as How Your Twitter Profile Can Attract Followers

I went through a series of excuses in my mind after each failure to post my finely crafted comment.  I thought;

• What a lame website
• Did I click cancel instead of submit?
• Is CoComment “doing something” here?
• Is one of my 40+ FIrefox plugins playing tricks on me?
• Wait a minute something is going on here

Maybe I am being viewed as a low life spammer.

Where is the trouble?

I knew that quite a few of the recent blogs I visited were WordPress blogs, so I focused there.  I thought a Blogger blog gave the same trouble, but wasn’t sure.

Contacting WordPress Blog Owners

I began contacting blog owners vie email, twitter or whatever I could find.  All replied.  But the puzzle wasn’t becoming clearer to me. Mostly I just received confirmation that they saw no comment.

A friend suggested that maybe Akismet was invovled.  Hmmm.  Akismet is the blog spam solution that is provided in WordPress.  The parent company of WordPress and Akismet is Automattic.

Akismet could be working with only the limited set of information that I as a commenter provided, such as;

1. My local IP address
2. My email address
3. My website address
4. My name
5. My comment

To test my theory and reduce the number of factors I left two comments on www.digiphile.com.  The first comment was made with my customary information.  The second was made with a diffferent name, website, email and comment.

The first comment was not published and the second was published right away. I asked Alex to see if the first comment was marked as spam and it was. He was kind enough to publish both comments.

This proved that it was not the IP address that was being caught by Akismet.

The Solution

I visited www.akismet.com and poked around a bit until I landed on their Contact page, which was very revealing.

The Contact page has a paragraph explaining why the form does not use Akismet.  The reason is that inhocent people contact them about being caught and marked as spam by Akismet.  If Akismet was running on the form, those messages would not get through resulting in very poor customer service.

This was encouraging. I left a short message explaining my plight.  The following day I received a message from Akismet support apologizing for the problem and telling me that the problem is now fixed. Yippee.

Contact Akismet Support

If your blog comments are not posting, check and see if they are being marked as spam by Akismet.  If they are, just fill out this form http://akismet.com/contact/ and if you are inhocent you will get a pleasant reply in short order. Mine was within 24 hours.

Have your comments been disappearing on you?

567 Massachusetts Avenue – The Enormous Room

Lovely space for a meetup.  Long room with plenty of comfy furniture.  Bar at the back along with three unisex washrooms.  One suggestion: next time, put a sign on the downstairs door so that everyone doesn’t go into the restaurant and then get redirected back outside and in the next door.

The Beginning

Adam Lasnik was introduced.  He revealed that there were at least another dozen Googlers in the room, including a small handful from Friend Connect.  The crowd was more webmasters, SEOs, SEMs and less marketers and PR folk than other meetings I attend.

It was great to see familiar faces like;

@robertcollins, @seosem, @repcor, @JoselinMan, @myimedia, @recklessstudio, @digiphile,

as well as a couple of people I had never met before, including;

@AdamPieniazek, @knowledgejockey, Vinesh Duggar

And I had the bonus of the always thrilling experience of meeting a twitter buddy for the first time in real life, @manfmNantucket I wish I could have talked to him more.

And @KarenRubin, who I recognized, but couldn’t place.  I finally tapped her on the shoulder and asked. Her posse of Hub Spot co-workers laughed and feared that her celebrity would be going to her head now.  A new acquaintance immediately asked for her autograph. It was hilarious.

Google Content

I listened, but heard nothing that was not already familiar or of vital importance to me.  The preparation was useful. They requested questions on the web and then let folks vote on the questions.  So, Adam had a kind of crowd sourced script for the Q&A in his hand.

Thankfully he also took questions from the audience.  I asked about Web Master Tools. I wanted to know what percentage of the backlinks Google knows about are listed in the console.  I was told that nearly all of them. They try to include all that they know about.

Many answers included the “we don’t pre-announce” products and services line.

Adam told us that Google is indexing most of Twitter pretty fast now.

Friend connect released their API.

Chrome is being developed for Linux and Mac, using dedicated teams to build from the ground up.

They are looking at the semantic web. Hmm.

A question from the web got a hearty laugh, “What’s the secret sauce to better rankings?” The standard Google answer was offered. “The answer is 42.”

Another great question, “whether using Google AdWords would help their website rankings?” Nope.

They held a Google Trivia quiz and offered up a bit of swag, including, 6 T-shirts and 2 coffee mugs.  The mugs were shiny, but not Chrome.

Conclusion

Good group of folks, including some who drove all the way from NY and NH.  Cambridge parking is hard, but there is a city lot directly behind the building.  The subway is across the street.

Googlers answered the questions that they could. This means nothing prospective and everything retrospective.  It was very helpful to put some human faces to the Google Borg.  The big elephant in the room was the common concern about Google aggregating information it gathers, personalizing it and knowing just too darn much about you and me.

I heard from @knowledgejockey who spoke with a Google lawyer in the room who told him that they can’t/don’t aggregate personal information.  Not sure he was convinced though. Tin foil hats on boys and girls.

Here is a challenge for future (MeetUp) event coordinators that support networking. Figure out a way to get people together so that they don’t have to yell at each other.  Please.  Is a bar / night club venue ideal for that? Is a meeting room better?

If Google has another meetup I will be inclined to think up some questions, pluck up my courage (so that I meet more new people rather than talking to people I already know) and attend.  Thanks Google.

There is no immunity to the folly of Internet Explorer 6.   You can even find a website devoted to the demise of IE6.  JBS Partner’s first Drupal project fell victim to IE6.  After the brand new website went live, we learned that the majority of the client’s visitors use IE6 and were seeing a blank white browser page.  We also learned that they are located in rural areas and use dial-up to connect to the Internet.  I was told upgrading the browser could take over 30 minutes to just download the files.  So, we fixed the problem.  Here’s how.

The Server Config

On a dedicated server, we were running Drupal 5.1.5 on Apache 2.2.20 Unix, PHP 5.2.6, MySQL 5.0.67 and JQuery 1.2.6

I wanted desperately to fix this issue.  There is no shortage of articles on www.drupal.org about IE6, the WSOD and blank pages in IE6.  Rob over at Mustard Seed Media and I searched and searched for an answer to no avail.   Marc Ray over at Right Sprocket volunteered a strong effort. And my old co-worker Bob Caslin looked for a solution as well.

Drupal Performance

Initially it was discovered that visiting the Performance page and disabling Caching and CSS Aggregation stopped the IE6 blank white page problem.  However, that did not feel like a solution to me.  The site would have run just fine, but we hadn’t found the root cause of the issue.

Matthew Saunders referred me to Andy Lasda who found solutions in short order.

CSS Aggregation Solution

One of the requirements of the project was a backup of the database that emailed the .gz file to the site owner.  The 5.2 dev version of Backup and Migrate offers this capability.

However, the 5.2 dev release of Backup and Migrate also contains significant JavaScript to streamline select administration functions. It was this JavaScript that caused IE6 to incorrectly load aggregated CSS files.  This is why the CSS loads failed.  It was especially problematic after using the browser Back button.

It was also discovered that the dev version of Backup and Migrate was causing frequent PHP errors.

Moving to the stable version ( http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/backup_migrate-5.x-1.2.tar.gz ) did  not eliminate these problems.

The Backup and Migrate module was removed. Instead a combination of Mutt, Chron and a little scripting enabled the database backups to be emailed out and then deleted from the server so that they don’t accumulate over time.

Caching Problem Solution

It was also discovered that during the Drupal install file permissions were effected which prevented the web server from caching files to the temporary directory.    The group and owner was set to an account that is not the account that the web server runs as.

Server Performance Bonus

I also asked Andy to review the server’s overall performance. He found that it was quick and responsive.  Music to my ears.  The server load through testing remained at .4 and MySql performed up to standard.

The memory_limit in the php.ini file was increased from 32MB to 96MB which was a good idea.  Also zlib compression was enabled.  The following was added to the Drupal site’s /etc/httpd/conf/sites/www.xyadomain.com conf file.

# Enable file compression by MIME type
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSI[E] !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html

I truly hope that this is helpful to someone else as they troubleshoot IE6 issues in Drupal 5.1x.

Each server (hardware), OS, software, security patch level and configuration is different. We are hired to get the site working where it is hosted, rather than proving that it works on a developer’s machine.  I can certainly understand why some developers find it faster and more economical to only do projects if the client will host on their server, an environment that they are familiar with.  As in this case, getting to the root of the problem in an unfamiliar server environment is not always meaningful or affordable, while getting things to work is always meaningful.

By the way. I met all the guys listed above through Twitter.  Very good guys.  I can recommend them all.

What have you tried to solve your IE6 issue?

Retweet This – This GreaseMonkey script makes retweeting a snap on the web. Adds a nice little Retweet button to your Twitter webpage. Note, it inserts “Retweeting”. I edit this to the now standard and much shorter RT, instead of Retweeting.

When I take the time to figure out how to edit the source file, I will update it here. RT is better than Retweeting.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/26500

Search Twitter - Keep track of all mentions of your Twitter name.

http://search.twitter.com

The following syntax will limit the search to mentions of your name by other people only, thereby excluding your own tweets. In the following example, the username is fairminder. The search string means to exclude from the search the name fairminder when the mention is from fairminder, but search for all other mentions of fairminder.

-from:fairminder fairminder

Twittelator Pro for the iPhone – great tool http://www.stone.com/Twittelator/

Not being entirely intuitive, here a few powerful tricks that I had to look up.

• Reply = Tap once. On the next screen, tap the reply arrow at the top left.
• Scroll down = tap the arrow in the footer.
• Scroll all the way up = double tap the header, where the time is displayed.
• ReTweet = touch and hold the screen. ReTweet and Copy Tweet options become available.
• Add Follower = You meet someone IRL you want to follow. On the Accounts screen, click on <your twitter handle>’s Tweets. Mine says “Fairminder’s Tweets”. Double tap your own avatar (photo). Type the new Twitter name in the Follow field.

There is lots more help here;http://www.stone.com/Twittelator/Twittelator_Hints_Tips.html

Hashtags Add #redsox to the end of your RedSox tweets. Then use Twitter search, listed above, to quickly find all of the Tweets related to the RedSox. Sports games, conferences, meetups and other live events will often start the hashtags flying.

Twitter Karma is great for reviewing who you are following and who is following you. You may find folks that have not tweeted in three months and want to unfollow them. You may find folks you talk to regularly but you have not followed yet. Good information discovery tool.
http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/

A lot of folks love TweetDeck to create following groups.

Free Twitter Background Designer: Create a custom background with images and text in a few minutes and upload it in your Twitter settings page. http://freetwitterdesigner.com/

What tools can you not live without?

Enter the Dell Latitude E6500.

Shopping

Aside from performance, my shopping was motivated by price, low price.  This is my primary computer and gets hooked up to a 21 inch monitor. I don’t travel but once a year, so weight is not a factor.

I looked at the typical retailers; Best Buy, Circuit City, Costco, Sony Style, the local computer store, even Apple to get some perspective.

I looked online at ToshibaDirect.com, NewEgg.com, SlickDeals.net, BensBargains.net, CheapStingyBargains.com and others.

In both cases they had a few models from a few brands, take it or leave it.  Many systems had 60% or even 75% of my ideal feature set, but none had 100%.

Best Shopping

I found the Dell Outlet offered the widest range and greatest quantity of optional features and available laptops.  I could quickly sort for the features that appealed to me.  I could make the choices that I wanted.

Shopping for a refurbished computer meant that the prices were very low.

A special Dell Outlet 20% discount on Latitudes I learned of on Twitter ended my shopping days, thankfully.  Follow @DellOutlet on Twitter.

My Twitter Personal Shoppers

I had a lot of help along the way, mostly through my Twitter buddies.  A shout out to most of them follows, including;

@dellservergeek Many Tweet Q and A

@Bruceericatdell Hour long phone call after a few Tweets

@chrislackey Mulitple Phone calls and lots o IM. A good friend.

@lisawood Tweets and IM.

@OnSiteStudios Many, many Tweets

@zestor Many Tweets.

And many more Twitter buds than I can list here offered one or more replies to my hardware and configuration questions.  Thanks to you all. I really appreciate your input.

I know that the folks at Dell will be happy to assist you as well.  You will have to ask the other folks individually because they have jobs that are not at Dell.

Ordering

It just so happened that as my research was culminating I learned that there would be a 20% discount offered on Latitudes at the Dell Outlet in a few days.

I had scoped out the inventory pretty well and printed out my top five choices and made a little feature grid as a kind of crib note.  I didn’t know if there would be a mad rush. I had read somewhere that Dell had sold over a million dollars of computers through Twitter.

On the day of the discount I checked the @DellOutlet account moments after posting the discount code and ordered my laptop.  The code worked too.

I ordered on Monday. It arrived Thursday afternoon. I chose the 5 to 7 day shipping option for $20. It arrived in 3 days.  That’s cool.  Well, they didn’t have to build it did they?  Just ship it.

Features

CPU – My first goal was a faster CPU.  I wasn’t clear on the value / performance curve so I didn’t know if I should look for a 1.8, 2.0 or 2.4Ghz CPU.    I got bits of advice here and there and decided to shoot high.  My laptop has an Intel Dual Core Duo 2.53Ghz CPU. It has two cores, so it’s like a 5.6GHz CPU.

HD – 5400 RPM Hard Drives are pretty standard.  I knew that 7200 is faster but needed to learn if heat or battery usage were relevant issues.  I decided they are not.  My laptop has a 7200 RPM SATA HD.  Disk size was not a concern because the standard (160GB) is well beyond my requirements.

OS – I have a Dell desktop with Vista that my wife and kids use. I use XP day to day. I don’t really like Vista, partly because I don’t know it as well.  Lots of people said skip Vista, get XP and that suited me just fine.

Shopping for XP is another story.  Very few stores offer it.  Online you have a better chance.  However, at Dell Outlet, you can search for systems with XP Pro and Vista Business.  I really liked that.  Vista only was a deal breaker.

RAM – Don’t care.  I looked for as little RAM as possible because I planned on buying 4GB from Crucial.

Video - The debate here is interesting. There is no question that embedded video is not superior to a separate video card.  However, learning whether I could tell the difference or had a NEED for a separate video card was well nye impossible.

The shopping was very challenging for this component at the Dell Outlet Store.  You can search for 0, 128, 256 or 512 MB of RAM for your video card.  However, the E6500 offers an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M.  Chris clued me into the fact that this is a separate card, which would be much better than the embedded Intel video that is also offered.  Being 160MB, it does not show up in any of the searches except for when you search for All.  I felt this video offering was very hidden.  Thanks to Chris and @zestor for helping me see the difference.

Wireless – The network packages varied as well. The gang on Twitter got me sorted with the alphabet soup that is wireless networking. B A G N in order of acceptance.  Well, N is not widely accepted just yet.  I chose the card that offers A G N.

DVD/CD – This model offers both 8X and 24X speeds.  You have to know that both are available to get the faster one.

Battery – Again two sizes are offered 6-cell and 9-cell. More cells are better. I got the 9-cell for more battery life.  What I forgot to remember is that the larger battery is a feature. It sticks out the back of the laptop a good inch or so. Not an issue because the power and network cables are right there anyway. It just surprised me.

Power – Again two powers are offered, 65 watt and 90 watt.  The 90 watt will charge faster.  I got the 90W.

Display – There are a few offerings here. I chose the LED display (1440×900) for a better view than I have now.

L2 Cache – This is memory for the CPU to work with.  More is better. The E6500 I chose has lots, 6MB.

FSB – The Front Side Bus, again faster is better. This one has a 1066MHz FSB.

Back-lit keyboard – That just sounded cool. However, I haven’t figured out how to turn it on yet. (Update: I figured it out)

I managed to get a configuration without a fingerprint reader, for which I am grateful.  Above is not an exhaustive feature list, just the ones that I considered.

Here are the full specs right from Dell.

Dell Latitude E6500 Setup and Quick Reference Guide

First Impressions

Arrival in three days was awesome. Glad I didn’t pay for expedited shipping.  Providing an initial delivery date of three weeks. Not so awesome.

In the box is the laptop, a simple Setup and Quick Reference Guide and the following CDs.

1. Dell drivers
2. Dell Webcam
3. Cyberlink DVD
4. Roxio Creator 9.0 DE
5. Windows Vista 32BIT SP1
6. XP Pro SP2

Unpacking, I was impressed by the industrial sized power cord. It is very thick and powerful looking.  The “brick” is flat which will make for easy travel.  I don’t remember paying extra for the blond hair under the transformer strap though.

Power Up and Installation

First thing was to install XP Pro.  That was short and easy having done it plenty of times. I enjoyed the Monks humming along, encouraging me. Thanks for the background music Microsoft.

First thing installed was Firefox.  Now I have to go install a lot of software.

Conclusions

A bit early for those. But both of my kids commented on how ugly it is.  What they don’t know is that it will be 10X faster than my current system.  I don’t care that it is black and square. It is a business laptop and not many people will see mine.

It looks solid and reliable and it will be fast and serve my needs for years to come.  Did I say it will be fast?

What features do you look for in a computer?

Where do you prefer to shop?

If you want cheap domain names, and by that I mean you only want to pay $10 or less for a domain name (the registration fee) and don’t want to sign up with the various drop services, you still have some options.

How to Find Domain Names

You can search for and find domain names at godrops.com

This site allows you to search for recently dropped domain names that have been tasted, but not registered.

Tasting describes the process of registering a domain name, seeing how it performs, and then returning the non-performing domain names to the registrar for a refund within 5 days.  This serves as a quick filter, preventing you from searching through lots of undesirable domain names.

Domains with hyphens, numbers and domains that are not dot coms are undesirable.

How to Evaluate Domain Names

You could simply pick the ones that sound good to you.  This is an unreliable approach for selecting a domain name.

Instead, you might evaluation a potential domain name by gathering some relevant data before making the purchase.

Let’s run through an example. Today godrops.com shows that premiumstoves.com just dropped and is available for registration.

Search Google

Search Google for “premium stoves”, “premiumstoves.com” “premium” and “stoves”

How much search volume is there?
How many paid ads are there?
What do the top listings look like?

Search the Google AdWords key word tool for premium stoves

Is there any search volume?
Is there adequate search volume?
How much competition is there?

Also, take a peak at Google Trends.

Gather information at Estibot

Enter your domain name at estibot.com and look at the collected data.  A domain name that already has traffic and ranks is generally better than one that does not.

Enter in another domain name or two to get some perspective.

The dollar figures should be taken with a grain of salt.

Search the Wayback Machine

Visit the Wayback Macine and enter the domain name.

Was a website ever built on the domain name?
If a website was built, does it look good or not?
Was the domain name parked?
When was the domain first indexed by the Wayback Machine?

Search and Evaluate Domain Names for Free

This quick evaluation demonstrates that premiumstoves.com does not fit my profile for possible acquisitions.

Additional Domain Name Search Resources

Bust A Name – enter a few key words as it searches for matches
Make Words – combine key words into domain names that are available
Dot Center – find expired domain names
Domainsbot – creates and searches for domain names based on keywords
SmartPageRank – helps you find domains based on criteria you set.
If you want to purchase software, consider the Domand Research Tool.

There are hundreds of additional resources to find, select, evaluate and purchase a domain name.

How do you find domain names?

How do you evaluate domain names?

I will be happy to udpate the list with your suggestions.

Line spacing in paragraphs plays in important usability role. Just like with happy couples, closeness shows that content is related. When paragraphs and headings are equidistant it is harder for the reader to know what is related to what.

The WordPress editor will strip out br and p tags that it decides are redundant.

WordPress will strip out multiple returns (enter).
WordPress will strip out br tags
WordPress will strip out p tags

Removing paragraph tags and break tags is not what most bloggers expect to happen. In fact, the removal of paragraph and break tags is a common source of frustration for WordPress bloggers. We want the paragraph formatting to be right. Hitting enter and enter and enter has no effect.

WordPress offers equal spacing between paragraphs

paragraph
paragraph
empty blank line / space
heading
empty blank line / space
paragraph
paragraph

To improve usability give readers spaces

paragraph
paragraph
empty blank line / space
empty blank line / space
heading
empty blank line / space
paragraph
paragraph

Here is how to add empty blank lines or spaces between paragraphs

Select HTML mode

Type in < p >< code >< br/ >< /code >< /p > without the spaces

Copy and paste on each line that you want to add a blank empty line or blank space between paragraphs or headings or ordered lists or whatever.

Veiw the source code below to see an example

paragraph
paragraph
space
heading

paragraph
paragraph

I hope that if you find this helpful or you have another suggestion that you will leave a comment below.


1. How long have you been working in website design and marketing and what attracted you to it?

JBS Partners started in 2002 providing website design and hosting services.  Thankfully the website business has grown as more services have been added to meet client demand.   The attraction to the work includes my interest in art and design, computer and technology as well as general business and Internet marketing.  These are all wrapped up in my website design and marketing business, which is pretty cool.


2. In your opinion, what’s the measure of a good SEO/PR/Blogging professional?

If you think about the design process for a new website, it moves along a design and development continuum.  The SEO work needs to start at the beginning so that the key word research can inform the information architecture, page structure and titles and content.  Clients are pleased when they start to see prospective clients hitting their website and filling out forms, even though we are still fine tuning or tweaking the not-quite-completed website.  Getting results out of the gate is a good measure.


3. Whose Blog do you read the Most?

Mine of course. Each article has to be drafted, written, proof read and then reread.  I used to read Aaron Wall’s SEOBook a lot and the SEOMoz blog.  These are good resources for general knowledge and industry trends.  Lately, I spend more time on IM and Twitter sharing and learning with others, which leads to reading a diverse range of blogs and websites across the Internet.


4. What’s your best “SEO secret” or blogging tactic?

No secrets here. Transparency and openness are the rule.  For some reason clients and SEO’s think that there is a silver bullet answer out there somewhere.  Some of these folks think that there is a lot of mystery.  Although there are a lot of moving parts, it is not a mystery.  The search engines are trying as hard as they can to think like humans.  My advice is to engage, participate and join in the conversation.  Write, comment, tweet, blog, interview and experiment.


5. Search engine algorithms are getting smarter, and a lot of people predict Organic SEO services will become obsolete. How do you plan to adapt?

My experience with clients suggests that they will continue to value and appreciate the blend of search and marketing advice that allows them to compete successfully in the market place.  That will never be obsolete.  There will continue to be best practices as well common practices that should be avoided.  We help our clients navigate these choices.


6. Please Describe the biggest challenge you face in your current job.

There are a couple of challenges, neither of which is insurmountable.  One is educating the prospective customer.  A lot of effort is required to explain abstract services to allow the value to be understood and then appreciated.

The next challenge is maintaining the momentum of a project.  Clients get distracted and project delays are introduced despite a genuine interest in the final results. I have even had clients tell me that they need to be nagged.  Calendar software is my friend.


7. Do you have any advice for someone who is interested in SEO, but doesn’t have a background in it, on how to get started in this field?

Read. You will quickly discern the garbage from the prize information.  Do.  There is no experience like experience.  Design, program, blog do these things and experiment.  Test, test, test, break things, fix them and break them again.  Make connections with knowledgeable people that will guide you and help you find the answers that you need.  Work for yourself or for an agency and then switch.  Understand both sides of that market.  Lastly, build your own properties to generate income.


8. If you could rank for any keyword phrase you don’t currently rank for, what would it be?

One could make a lot of money ranking for Viagra or similar terms, but I would be happy to rank for
boston website design or small business websites


9. Assuming you had never gone into website design and SEO, what would you be doing now?

Well, I was a systems administrator for a large mutual fund company and than a start-up, so I would likely still be involved with computers, networks, operating systems, domain name servers and the like.  And hopefully be in some type of customer facing role. I enjoy intermediating between people and computers.

If there was a departure with the past, I would likely be even more involved with Social Media tools (Twitter, WordPress, Linkedin, FaceBook, Flickr etc.) and helping clients understand and benefit of the new rules of marketing.


10. What’s Your Favorite professional sports team and why?

Living in Boston it feels quite natural to be a big Red Sox fan. I became a fan in 2004.  Before that the newspaper sports section was of no interest what-so-ever.  Now, I enjoy keeping up with baseball.  I have since learned that my grandfather was a Red Sox fan.  For some reason the other New England sports teams have not caught my interest, although I will watch play-offs.
Well that’s the end of our interview.

Thank you to @MelaniePhung for writing the questions for everyone.

Feel free to follow me on Twitter (@fairminder) !

Here is a simple example to illustrate a fundamental point:

1) Search Engineers - they create the search algorithms

2) Search Algorithms – are constructed to provide the searcher with relevant search results

3) Relevant User information – the Search Engines hope to provide relevant results to you

Now, off to the side are the search marketers with a decision to make as to where they focus their attention to improve a website’s search results.  The choices are listed above, 1,2 or 3.  Which do you choose?

1) Search Engineers.  Never met one.  I assume that they must be pretty tight lipped in order to keep their jobs.  Not an easy target.

2) Search Algorithms. Again, never met one.  I assume that they don’t even have lips. Not an easy target.  Now you can setup a test bed with hundreds of domains, scrutinize Google patents or read celebrity SEO bloggers and gather information that may have been relevant.

You can never be certain of every detail and the details definitely change as sure as the sun will rise the next day.  The search engineers constantly improve the search algorithyms to provide more relevant information to searchers. It’s certainly a moving target.

3) Relevant User search results.  I am one who seeks relevant search results.  I have met other people who use search engines seeking relevant results.  Maybe this is a sensible place to focus my attention for the long term.

Technical or Fundamental SEO

If you choose #2, you are called a Technical SEO

If you choose #3, you are called a Fundamental SEO

If you are a Fundamental SEO and focus on the user, you will by default have pretty good aim on the algorithm as well.  Seems reasonable and sounds like the Fundamental SEO’s have a bit of a short cut.

How do you approach your SEO?