Combining these buttons with the WordPress codex is pretty easy. Insert a couple snippets of code and you can easily add the URL and post/page title dynamically to the “Tweets” and “Likes”.

The codes from the WordPress codex that we’re going to use are:

<?php the_permalink() ?> and <?php the_title(); ?>

Two lines of code and you’re all set up. Copy and paste the code below, style as needed to position the buttons how you see fit. For the Twitter Tweet button, don’t forget to replace my username with yours.

Facebook Like Button

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php the_permalink() ?>&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=21" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:100px; height:21px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

Twitter Tweet Button

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-text="<?php the_title(); ?>" data-count="horizontal" data-via="robbclarke">Tweet</a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Did you find this useful? Wouldn’t hurt to share it with others would it?

Note: The following blog post, while being serious, is meant to be read with a sense of humour and is not intended to be arrogant in any way, shape or form. So, put on your Serious Hat and your Humour Pants and start reading.

Your Website Might Be Outdated

It’s true and chances are that it probably is, well, not entirely at least… but probably parts of it. The web is a constantly changing environment and what was relevant and current six months, a year, two years ago, just don’t make the grade today. If you want your site to be current, you need to not only look to the future but also be prepared for change. A good web designer and developer not only has a rough idea of the upcoming forecast but they also plan for future changes. They can see shifting trends in designs and technologies and plan to utilize them properly for you.

When Was the Last Time You Got a Redesign?

Better yet, when was the last time that your competitor got a redesign? Is their site design more recent than yours? Are they taking advantage of current trends in technology? Why aren’t you?

Has it been over a year or two since you’ve had a new design for your site? If not, chances are that you aren’t taking advantage of a lot of the great new technologies out there that have been released in the past few years. jQuery, Mootools, HTML5, and CSS3 (to name a few) have taken the web by storm in the past couple of years and are major players in where the web will be going.

Was your site designed 4 or 5 years ago? You’re in dire need of a site design. Look at your competitors, chances are that they’ve had theirs done in the last little while. Now think about the two sites from a consumer’s point of view, which one are you going to gravitate towards? Exactly, the more modern, stylish design. Why isn’t that you?

You’re Using Social Media, Right?

“Social what?!” you say? Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook, for example, are great ways for you and your business to interact with clients in real time. Prompting users to “Like” your Facebook Fan Page on your website will give them instant access to your Page and keep up to date with you and your business even if they aren’t looking on your website itself. The same goes for Twitter. Having a Twitter feed appear on your site or at least prompting users to follow you on Twitter will give you another means to connect with that user. Keep them up to date by Tweeting updates and prompting them to visit your site.

Look around my site. There are a million and one ways for you to get ahold of me and to interact with me. Why don’t you take advantage of that for yourself and use Social Media tools on your site?

Is Your Site Build Using Tables?

HTML Tables are a thing of the past. It’s not 1995 any more… and hasn’t been for about 15 years so why is your site coded using Tables? They don’t allow for easy changes done to the site. They’re clunky and messy and severely outdated. Your site should have been coded using a combination of HMTL and CSS that will allow for easier changes to be made to the layout and format of your site. View the source of your site (View > View Source [or similar] in your browser), if you see “table” “td” “th” and/or “thead”, you’re in trouble. Time to get an update!

Do You Have to Get Your Web Guy To Update Your Content?

If so, why? Why are you paying your web designer/developer each time you want to add a new news item to your site or change your contact information? Why wasn’t your website coded using a content management system which would let you update the website at your leisure without paying extra to do it? Content management systems like WordPress (for example) are becoming easier and easier to use and install. It shouldn’t have to cost you extra each time you need to change something on your site, which brings me to the next point.

How Often Are You Updating Your Website?

If you’re paying your web guy their hourly rate each time you need to update your site then chances are the answer to that is “not very often.” Taking advantage of a content management system will let you make changes whenever you want, on your own time and without having to pay an arm and a leg to do it too! Using a content management system will even let you easily install a blog onto your website where you can keep users up to date with new product arrivals, business changes, pretty much anything that you want. Hell, they can even subscribe to an RSS (really simple syndication) feed and be notified instantly of new news items or blog posts made on your site.

Flash Sucks

Not everyone is going to agree that Flash sucks, and really, it doesn’t. It’s extremely powerful and used in the right way, it’s absolutely perfect but its days of being the leading way that websites are built are in the past. As a web building tool its dying. Search engines can’t read content in a Flash file so if your website’s navigation is built in Flash then they have no way of visiting the pages on your website and therefore don’t know that they exist and therefore can’t index them which then means that they aren’t searchable to users using the search engines. See how that’s a bad thing for you? I’m not going to use any names for the following anecdote but rest assured that it’s true.

Recently we were approached because a website wasn’t showing up in search results, even when you searched the domain name itself. This was absolutely horrible for the site. What’s the point in having a website if it can’t be found, right? The problem was that the whole navigation was coded in Flash and like I said earlier, this means that the search engines can’t read it and therefore couldn’t find any of the other pages on the website. The content itself was also coded in Flash, again not readable. It was no wonder that this site wasn’t showing up anywhere. Combined with a number of glaring search engine optimization errors, the site was a disaster. After a couple hours rebuilding the framework and recoding the site it was good to go and was relaunched. Within a few days it was indexed by search engines and quickly skyrocketed to the top of search results. Its been holding steady at or near the top of the results ever since.

I ask again, why was your site coded in Flash? To do some fancy rollovers and your navigation that can be done using CSS and HTML and maybe a little Javascript? Combine that with the fact that Flash isn’t viewable on iPhones or iPads and you’ve got yourself one hell of a problem. That’s right, if I go to your website on my iPhone (which happens A LOT) and your navigation is in Flash then I hit a dead end and I can’t go any further and immediately start looking at competitors’ sites. I’m not the only one. How many people do you know that have an iPhone? Ask them to go to your site.

Maybe it’s time to re-examine why your site was built using Flash, eh?

I Can Help

I can. It’s true. I wouldn’t lie. What’s stopping you from sending me an email to get the ball rolling? Is it the lack of a contact form? I can help with that too. VOILA!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is, in its simplest form, making your web site easy to find via search engines with targeted keywords and key phrases. The main goal is to increase the volume and quality of organic search engine traffic to your web site.

Search engine optimization starts with the coding of your web pages (including meta tags, meta descriptions, browser titles, etc.), proper keyword placement within the content of your web site as well as other techniques used to increase the effectiveness of search engine indexing.

Many SEO companies focus on pushing as much traffic to your web site as possible. There are many methods used to achieve high rankings with search engines, and some of these methods (known as “black hat SEO” or Spamdexing”) are not considered relevant or proper by search engines and can have negative results such as lower ranking or even blacklisting from the search engines themselves. All of our SEO techniques conform to search engines’ guidelines and involves no deception.

When we work with our clients to search engine optimize their web site, we focus on one key metric, quality of traffic first, then quantity of (relevant) traffic. In the end, the main goal for many companies’ web sites is to sell more products or services, and/or provide valuable information to their current clients.

Pushing as much traffic to a web site for the sake of getting traffic does not benefit the web site owner in the least, and performing simple web site traffic analysis will quickly show you if the traffic to your site is relevant or not.

Essentially, a search engine optimization strategy should be no different than a basic business strategy – provide answers and solutions to people’s problems and needs. With this focus in mind, you will not only achieve higher rankings (as you will be addressing the needs that people are searching for) you will also increase the conversion of these leads into customers! This is really what search engine optimization is all about – connecting people with questions and needs to web sites that answer or fulfill those needs. Converting your web site traffic into relationships is much more successful with highly targeted and relevant traffic!

Search engine optimization is really just a piece of puzzle. The first step is to make sure you have a web site with focused goals and methods of tracking success. Understanding these goals will help you optimize your site to attain relevant traffic to reach your goals. Once this is achieved, your search engine optimization and marketing starts to pay off!

Now you are getting traffic on your web site. This is where the fun begins! With traffic analysis, you can determine how people are finding your web site, and how that traffic is interacting with your web site. Adjustments must be made on your web site to better service and fulfill your visitor’s needs. Analyzing the keywords they are currently using to find your web site will allow you to search out and find other keywords that your target audience may be using to find similar products and services you are offering.

The loop starts over. You optimize your web site for these new (and sometimes better) keywords and key phrases and analyze the traffic that comes in from them to determine if the conversion rate is improving.

You can probably see now that merely shoving non-relevant traffic to your web site will not help you convert traffic into client relationships, but only increase the number of people that leave your web site annoyed that they wasted time on your site looking for something you did not offer.

Source: http://www.connetik.com/website_seo_services.php

What does that $30 get you?

• One domain name.
• Installed WordPress content management system (letting you update and modify your website at your own leisure).
• 40+ themes for you to choose from to style your website, these themes are changeable at any time!
• The ability to upload your own themes and plugins to further customize your site!

Want to save even more money? Pay for a year up front and save $60 on the annual cost. That’s right, for only $300 a year you can get a domain name and a website up and running!

* A custom designed and built website is not included in this special.

Interested? Fire off an email now!

This week I’m proud to announce the launch of the new River Valley Arts Alliance website. The website is build on the WordPress content management system, letting the client update the website at their leisure.

The site features:

• an events calendar
• photo slideshow
• photo gallery
• member application forms
• donation forms
• an artist database
• a microsite for their annual Dooryard Arts Festival

The website is going to be a great resources for keeping up to date with RiVA and the arts community in and around the Saint John River Valley. Be sure to check back frequently as we near the festival dates for Dooryard as more events and festivities are announced.

I’m proud today to announce the launch of the new York Street Dental website, the new online home for Drs. Andrew Smyth and Jim Roxborough. The York Street Dental website features information about the practice’s team members, services and includes online appointment request forms as well as patient education software and videos.

You can view the website at http://www.drsmyth.com

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking.

Search Engine Optimization is not as easy as you might think. It requires a lot more effort than just adding a couple of keywords here and there and waiting for the Google Fairy to come along and rocket you to the moon. That being said, Search Engine Optimization isn’t complicated either. Whoa! Hold the phone! I just said that it wasn’t easy and then I turn around and say that it’s not complicated? What the deuce? It’s hard work and you need to be on top of things but it’s not overly complicated at all. The underlying principles of Search Engine Optimization are pretty simple; use keywords wisely, focus on your target market and don’t be stupid. It’s not rocket surgery.

With all that said, I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization which for sanity’s sake we’ll refer to as its more common abbreviation; SEO.

Myth: Meta-tags carry the most weight in rankings

What is this, 1995? This couldn’t be further from the truth. Meta-tags are essentially one of the most useless things on your website as far as SEO is concerned. Google has even said it themselves, they don’t look at meta-tags like meta-keywords anymore. They have absolutely no weight in SEO and rankings anymore. None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Who is to blame for that? Porn. Plain and simple. The porn industry used to, and still does for that matter, flood their websites with keywords not related to their content just to get you on their sites. Search engines saw through this ploy and opted to focus on other aspects for rankings.

Fast-forward from 1995 to today and you’ll find that search engines now use hundreds of variables to determine rankings including title tags, content and the freshness of said content, incoming and outgoing links, alt and title attributes as well as your header tags.

All that being said, not all meta-tags are bad. Meta-descriptions help users find out more about your site on their search results. You can also add in useful data like your geo-location, the author, copyright information and much more so don’t write off meta-tags altogether – just meta-keywords, toss those buggers to the curb.

Myth: Hidden text is a your key to success

Designers and developers used to think that they were clever when they hid content on a website by making it the same colour as the background (white text on a white background). These clever chaps flood their websites with keywords that may or may not (usually the case) be related to the content of their website. Their train of thought was that they were being clever hiding the content this way because you as a user couldn’t see it but the search engines could.

Well Hot Shot, guess what. It doesn’t work. It does absolutely nothing to help you out. In fact, it actually hurts you. That’s right, it hinders your ranking. Search engines aren’t dumb robots that troll through websites collecting data and throwing it in a database. Like the T-800s in Terminator, they’re “learning computahs”. They’re smart and they know what to look for and most importantly they know when someone is trying to trick them. When search engines find that someone has attempted to trick them by flooding their sites with hidden keywords red flags shoot up and you get classified as a jerk for your shenanigans.

Long story short; hidden text on your website is a no-no.

Myth: If you build it, they will come

So, you paid good money to have a website designed and coded by a world class designer and your site goes “live”. Days pass and no matter how much you search yourself on Google or Bing you just don’t show up. The first thing that shoots through your head is that you’ve been had! That SOB walked away with your hard earned money! Sue that sumbitch!

Ok don’t. Simmer.

This semester my students have been building their portfolio sites and a week after one of their sites went live one of them asked me why he couldn’t find himself on Google. The answer is simple – Google didn’t know that the was there yet. Their bots hadn’t stumbled across his corner of the Interweb. Patience is a virtue. It takes time for search engines to crawl your website for the first time. Having incoming links to your site will help speed up the process so get on those social media sites and share your URL with people.

Before you run off to Twitter and Facebook and piss off all of your friends by flooding your status with “Check out my new website” and “I done got me one-a-dem-der websites” you also need to consider that there’s more to it than just patience and incoming links. According to Google, “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

A website not only needs to be built in a search engine friendly way but once it’s launched it will need an Internet marketing campaign or at least a reason for people to visit your site. Hopefully you’ve already taken this into consideration before you decided to get a website and paid someone to design and code it. If you haven’t then what the hell?

Competing websites are probably already using some sort of marketing campaign so a site without a campaign of its own will fall to by the wayside pretty quickly – and no one wants to be by the wayside, it smells there.

Remember that it will take days, if not weeks for search engines to find you in the first place and then even more time for you to climb your way up the rankings. Keep your content fresh with blog posts and changing content. Give the search engines and ultimately more importantly, the users, a reason to come back to your site more and more often.

Myth: Your website will be “number one on Google”

This is such a common request for designers and developers to come across. Mary Sue Internetexpert wants her website to be “number one on Google.” It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked website on Google is Google. Go ahead, try to get ahead of them. If you do it, I’ll give you a buck. The second reason being that I’m fully aware that when the client wants to be “number one on Google” that they don’t mean the first ranked site on Google itself but that they want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but they don’t know how to articulate that.

That being said, chances are that you won’t be the number one ranked site for your search term either unless your search term is something completely obscure like “The mating rituals of the Lower Shibobian Albino Alpaca”, in which case, it’s yours for the taking.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. Personally, I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top of the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest as well as your client’s to focus where and how you want your website to be found. A broader, more vague search term is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

Myth: Flooding your content with keywords helps

It’s a common misconception that flooding your website’s content with keywords over and over again will do wonders for your ranking and search results. The reality of it is that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes and content with keywords is not going to help you. Like good old hidden text; it’s probably going to end up hurting you. Search engines will begin to avoid you like the plague if you start using the same keywords over and over again. Search engines see repetition of the same keywords as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read your content out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget; the content on a website isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people out there that will (hopefully) be reading that content as well. If you repeat “[your city]‘s number one night club” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when you’re writing your content and placing keywords.

What have we learned today class?
• Meta-tags like meta-keywords do absolutely jack for your rankings.
• Hidden text is for amateurs.
• SEO doesn’t happen overnight so stop assuming that it will.
• Vague search terms are like camouflage; you won’t be found.
• Read your content out loud, does it sound stupid? If so, change it.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t the most complicated thing in the world. A lot of it is common sense. If you know when and where to place keywords as well as to use <title> tags, header tag and alt and title attributes you’re going to go a lot farther than Mary Sue Internetexpert.

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things that most people think they can do easily, while this is somewhat true, there are a lot of common mistakes that are made which either hurt you or do absolutely nothing to help your ranking. I’m going to talk a little bit about common misconceptions and mistakes made with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

You Will Not Be “Number One on Google”

You would not believe how often I receive requests from people that “want to be number one on Google”. It’s not going to happen for a couple of reasons. The first being that the number one ranked site on Google – is Google. Good luck getting ahead of them. The second being that I’m fully aware that you don’t mean that you want to be the first ranked site on Google, you want to be the first ranked site under a certain keyword but you don’t know how to articulate that.

Vague search terms are not your friend. You really need to narrow down what search terms users will find you with. I know that I’m not going to be ranked anywhere near the top on the Google search results for the phrase “web design” but if I narrow it down to “Fredericton Web Design” I’m not doing too bad. It’s in your best interest to focus where you want to be found. A broader, more vague search is going to lead to millions of results but if you narrow your focus then you’re going to find it easier to step into the spotlight.

In August when I launched my friend Nick Forret’s photographer site he wasn’t even registering under the most common search term for local photographers; “Fredericton Photographer” but now, 2 months later, Nick has sky rocketed up to the first page and is quickly overtaking established sites. What’s this doing for Nick? Well, it’s increasing his business for one. People are now able to find him.

This leads me to my next point…

Search Engine Optimization Does Not Happen Over Night

No, it doesn’t. It happens more often than not that people pay to have SEO applied to their site and then they call the next day or week and ask why they “aren’t the first result on Google.” Half of the answer to that is above, the other half is simply because it takes a while for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo to crawl your site. It takes time for these bots to travel around the internet and read sites. According to Google “[c]rawls are based on many factors such as PageRank, links to a page, and crawling constraints such as the number of parameters in a URL. Any number of factors can affect the crawl frequency of individual sites.”

Expect the time between crawls to be a week to a month for a low traffic website. Sites with much higher traffic with more incoming links get crawled more frequently and thus have their reports updated quicker.

Flooding Your Site With Keywords Does Not Help Your Ranking

Flooding your <title> tag, alt and title attributes, meta description and content with keywords is not going to help you, if anything it’s going to make search engines avoid you like the plague. Using the same keywords over and over again raises flags with search engines and they see it as spam. The best way to avoid this is to read what’s your writing out loud. Have you used the same word 15 times in the span of three sentences? Does what you’re reading sound really awkward to you? If the answer is yes, then you need to cut back on the keywords. Don’t forget, that content isn’t there just for the search engines to read – there are real people that will hopefully be reading the content on your site as well and if you repeat “Fredericton Web Design” 15 times in a paragraph then they’re going to think that you’re a bit of an oaf. So be smart when writing your content and placing keywords.

Meta Keywords Do Not Do Anything Anymore

This doesn’t count as a full item so it only gets half a point. It’s been speculated for years that search engines don’t see much weight in Meta Keywords and just recently Google announce that they don’t even look at them. It’s true, Google said it themselves. Adding them to your site does absolutely jack. You can thank the porn industry and spam sites for that.

I hope this has helped clear up a few misconceptions about search engine optimization. So next time you’re going to talk to your web guy about being the “first on Google” just stop and think for a second and remember what you just learned.

Thoughts? Feedback? Hate mail?

Before you start promoting yourself or your company via social media there’s a lot that you really need to know. It’s not as clear cut as some people might lead you to believe; that being said, it’s not rocket surgery (see what I did there?) either.

Without further ado, here are some thing that you need to know about social media before you start promoting yourself using Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.

It’s not as easy as you might think. It requires a lot more effort than just signing up for an account and making the occasional post or Tweet. Social media isn’t like the old standard of creating an ad for television or print and letting the ad do the work. You must constantly be engaging your followers and users and promoting interaction.

That being said, social media isn’t complicated. Yeah, yeah, hold the phone, I just said that it wasn’t easy so why isn’t it complicated? It’s hard work and you need to be on top of things but it’s not overly complicated at all. The underlying principles of social media are pretty simple; sharing, communication, relevance, being helpful, engaging. The major failures out there have come from people’s or company’s inability to share, communicate, be relevant, be helpful and engage their members or followers.

Things can and will go wrong. You can’t forget that things posted on the internet are visible by anyone and everyone. Social media can and will hurt companies. Does everyone remember the infamous Dominos employees in the United States that taped themselves picking their noses and putting it in pizzas? They posted that on YouTube and it immediately hurt Dominos. How about fellow East Coaster Dave Carroll? Dave spent months trying to get United Airlines to fix a guitar that they had broken, when they refused he posted a video on YouTube about the incident (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&feature=fvst. Almost immediately United Airlines felt the hit and their stock dropped nearly 20% to the tune of somewhere near $18 million. All that because they didn’t want to replace a $1,500 guitar that they broke. Of course these are all examples of the public using social media to show how the companies had wronged them. Companies should be using social media as a barometer for consumer opinion and acknowledge concerns and try to remedy issues as soon as possible. Use social media as a way to monitor current chatter about yourself or your business. Radian6 a Fredericton based company has made a name for themselves doing just that.

In spite of some of the ads floating around Twitter and Facebook at the moment, social media is not a get rich quick scheme. Doing anything type of marketing via social media requires a lot of time and effort on your part. Personally I’ve been actively networking for about a year now and only now am I starting to really communicate with more people in my field and start to get my name out there – although my name usually incites a “who?” but I digress. Building relationships with others and users takes time and commitment on your end. With millions of people promoting themselves on social media and you need to stand out. It’s all about the quality of your relationships and posts over the quantity of followers and friends. Simply because you have thousands of friends or followers doesn’t mean that you’re doing things correctly. Are they really your target market? Did you start following them or did they start following you? These are all questions that you need to ask yourself.

Can anyone do social media? In short, no. Not everyone is willing to put themselves out there and engage users as much as they should be. Some people just don’t like sharing like others do. Organizations and businesses are often uneasy about the lack of control that social media gives them. The risk of making a very public mistake and having that mistake broadcast world wide in the blink of an eye is something that everyone must be aware of. The other day Scott Stratten from UnMarketing made a great Tweet about posting on Twitter but it applies to all social media. He said “Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on a billboard with your name/face/logo/phone # and your mom driving by.” Sure, not everyone can commit to having a presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn and others all at once. Try focusing on one or two or if you’re a business, delegate different sites to different people.

Back in August I wrote an article about My Top 10 People to Follow on Twitter and I’ve decided to expand on that and narrow the field down my Top 10 people to follow in the design and web industry. This list includes designers, developers, social media folk and much more, it’s list of people that I draw inspiration and learn from on a daily basis.

I use Twitter not only as a social communications tool but also as a resource for learning more about the industry and with the amount of people posting on it, it’s very easy to keep up with the latest trends and learn new techniques. So, without much more rambling, here is my list (in no particular order).

Naldz Graphics / Ronald Bien

URL: http://www.twitter.com/naldzgraphics
Why: Naldz Graphics is a design blog for designers and design lovers. They showcase the best tutorials, freebies, inspirations and other useful and informative resources to help and give love to design community.

Smashing Magazine

URL: http://www.twitter.com/smashingmag
Why: Smashing Magazine is an amazing source for design techniques, inspiration and new lines of code. They’re always updating their Twitter with not only site updates but also useful posts from around the web. Following them has helped me improve my design skill and coding ability a lot.

Site Point

URL: http://www.twitter.com/sitepointdotcom
Why: The official Twitter for Site Point, they generally keep users updated with what’s going on on their own site, not that that’s a bad thing. Site Point is a fantastic resource for designers, developers and anyone in the industry.

Unmarketing / Scott Stratten

URL: http://www.twitter.com/unmarketing
Why: Unmarketing is the Twitter account for Toronto based marketing and social media guru Scott Stratten. Scott is always giving great advice on new social media trends.

Orange Sprocket / Bill McGrath

URL: http://www.twitter.com/orangesprocket
Why: Bill McGrath, the CEO of Orange Sprocket, is a social media addict. Being very into tech and web trends, Bill is always updating his Twitter account with industry news. Following him on Twitter has helped me keep up to date with a lot of new things in the industry.

Carter McLaughlin

URL: http://www.twitter.com/carter_vagrant
Why: The personal Twitter account of Vagrant Web Services owner/operator Carter McLaughlin. Like Bill McGrath, he’s always updating his Twitter with industry news. Following him has been a great way to improve my knowledge and skills.

LogoMotives / Jeff Fisher

URL: http://www.twitter.com/logomotives
Why: LogoMotives is the Twitter account for Portland, Oregon based designer and author Jeff Fisher. Jeff’s creations have been an inspiration for me since I started following him on Twitter and watching what he does has definitely helped me improve with my logo design.

Mashable / Pete Cashmore

URL: http://www.twitter.com/mashable
Why: Mashable’s CEO Pete Cashmore is a social media/networking guru. Following him as helped me improve my knowledge of the industry(?) ten fold. With over 1.3 million followers, the guy definitely knows what he’s talking about. If you want to learn anything about Twitter and/or social media, this is the guy to follow.

Colorburned / Grant Friedman

URL: http://www.twitter.com/colorburned
Why: Colorburned is the Twitter home of the website of the same name as well as owner/creator Grant Friedman. Colorburned is a great design resource featuring tips, tricks and tutorials. If you want to learn any of the new design techniques floating around the web, chances are that these guys can help. Check them out.

Radian6

URL: http://www.twitter.com/radian6
Why: Founded in 2006, Radian6 was created with the idea that companies need to be listening to the social web in order to effectively participate. Intelligence about online conversations is critical: companies need to know what’s being said about their brand, industry, and competitors online. So, they built a listening platform designed to help companies do just that.

Oh, and don’t forget to follow me @ http://www.twitter.com/robbclarke.

Did I miss anyone? Thoughts? Feedback?

Sick and tired of boring old underlines to show that a bit of text is a link? Here’s a really quick bit of CSS to show a dotted underline on your links (like this).

It’s so easy to do this that it hurts. We’re just swapping the underline for a border.

Dotted Underline on Hover Only

a:link, a:visited {
text-decoration: none; }
a:hover {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #000; }

What this does is remove the underline from the text so that when it’s not being hovered over there’s no underline. On hover, the dotted border appears.

Dotted Underline At All Times

a:link, a:visited {
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 1px dotted #000; }

This removes the underline and replaces it with the dotted border at all times.

Obviously a dotted border isn’t the only option out there. Play around with the other options and see what looks good and fits your site the best. Here’s the list of all of the types of borders that you can do.

CSS Border Types

p.solid {border-style: solid; }
p.double {border-style: double; }
p.groove {border-style: groove; }
p.dotted {border-style: dotted; }
p.dashed {border-style: dashed; }
p.inset {border-style: inset; }
p.outset {border-style: outset; }
p.ridge {border-style: ridge; }
p.hidden {border-style: hidden; }

Is Social Media a Fad?
Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

A lot of people are hesitant to make the leap into Social Media because they just don’t see the benefits. People also said that Television was a fad… the same went for the Internet, iPods and even Blu-Ray. Yup, those were fads alright </sarcasm>.

Some fun facts for you about Social Media:

• By 2010 GenY will outnumber Baby Boomers
• 96% of them have joined a social network
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met via Social Media

Years to reach 50 million users:

• Radio: 38 years
• TV: 13 years
• Internet: 4 years
• iPod: 3 years
• Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months
• iPod Application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months

Other Information:

• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest
• Chin’a QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services
• 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online cirriculum
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices; people update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences…
• Generation Y and Z consider email passe
• In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to incoming freshmen
• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
• YouTube has more than 100,000,000 videos
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles
• Studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica
• 78% of these articles are non-English
• If you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 a per hour
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 54% of bloggers post content or Tweet daily
• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• Only 14% trust advertisements
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
• Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
• 70% of 18 to 34 year-olds have watched TV on the Web
• Only 33% have ever viewed a show on DVR/TiVo
• 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phones
• 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
• We no longer search for news… the news finds us
• In the near future we will no longer search for products and services… they will find us via Social Media
• Social Media isn’t a fad. It’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos etc) are shared on Facebook… daily
• Successful companies in Social Media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy… listening first, selling second
• Successful companies in Social Media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertisers

Still think Social Media is a fad?

What did we learn today? Companies that aren’t utilizing Social Media are going to quickly fall to the wayside when it comes to Customer Service. A large number of companies use Social Media as alerts for poor customer satisfaction and even have response teams to address issues as they arise.

Large numbers of people turn to Social Media, especially Twitter’s “Trending Topics” and Facebook “Statuses” as a source for breaking news. Large news providers like CNN, CBC and BBC are turning to Twitter as a way to keep people informed.

Did you know that many of the largest newspapers in the world are preparing to be paperless within the next 10 years?

So who can benefit from Social Media? Absolutely anyone! Small companies can keep clientele informed of specials, Realtors can post new listings, big corporations can monitor customer satisfaction, restaurants can monitor reviews… the list goes on and on.

Still on the fence? That’s your loss.

Wanna chat about Social Media? Want some advice on the subject? Feel free to drop me a line or comment below… whatever floats your boat.

Source: http://www.socialnomics.com

If you’re like me then you’re using Twitter for a lot more than social networking. Sure, I use the service for what it was intended for but I use it for more than following what personal friends are doing. I follow a lot of people that have great advice on life, coding and so much more. Below is a list of the top ten people that I follow on Twitter and why. Oh, and they’re in no particular order.

Ben Popken

URL: http://www.twitter.com/bpopken
Why: Ben Popken is the creator of The Consumerist and is always posting great financial advice. I turned my financial situation around about a year ago based on advice from his website.

Smashing Magazine

URL: http://www.twitter.com/smashingmag
Why: Smashing Magazine is an amazing source for design techniques, inspiration and new lines of code. They’re always updating their Twitter with not only site updates but also useful posts from around the web. Following them has helped me improve my design skill and coding ability a lot.

LogoMotives / Jeff Fisher

URL: http://www.twitter.com/logomotives
Why: LogoMotives is the Twitter account for Portland, Oregon based designer and author Jeff Fisher. Jeff’s creations have been an inspiration for me since I started following him on Twitter and watching what he does has definitely helped me improve with my logo design.

Unmarketing / Scott Stratten

URL: http://www.twitter.com/unmarketing
Why: Unmarketing is the Twitter account for Toronto based marketing and social media guru Scott Stratten. Scott is always giving great advice on new social media trends.

TimCAD / Tim Absath

URL: http://www.twitter.com/timcad
Why: TimCAD is the official Twitter account for web based comic series CTRL+ALT+DEL and its creator Tim Absath. Not only do I follow Tim because I’m a fan of his comic but he also has a lot of insight into a lot of great games coming to both PC and consoles… not that I do much gaming anymore… but he’s still interesting to follow.

Matt Good

URL: http://www.twitter.com/mattgood
Why: Matt Good is a fantastic Canadian musician. I’ve been a fan of him for well over a decade and not much is going to change that. Good uses his Twitter to keep follows up to date with his music and website updates. While on tour he updates quite frequently as well which can get really interesting.

CBC News

URL: http://www.twitter.com/cbcnews
Why: CBC News is putting Twitter to good use by posting breaking news as it happens. Their Tweets link back to the full story on the CBC website and it’s a great way to keep informed with what’s happening around the world as well as Canada.

Mashable / Pete Cashmore

URL: http://www.twitter.com/mashable
Why: Mashable’s CEO Pete Cashmore is a social media/networking guru. Following him as helped me improve my knowledge of the industry(?) ten fold. With over 1.3 million followers, the guy definitely knows what he’s talking about. If you want to learn anything about Twitter and/or social media, this is the guy to follow.

Colorburned / Grant Friedman

URL: http://www.twitter.com/colorburned
Why: Colorburned is the Twitter home of the website of the same name as well as owner/creator Grant Friedman. Colorburned is a great design resource featuring tips, tricks and tutorials. If you want to learn any of the new design techniques floating around the web, chances are that these guys can help. Check them out.

Chris Brogan

URL: http://www.twitter.com/chrisbrogan
Why: Chris Brogan is a marketing savant based out of Boston, Mass. He doesn’t reveal all of his good tips on his Twitter account, and rightfully so, but you can pick up a lot of good tips and tricks by following him. I’ve always found what he’s talking about to be interesting and helps me as a designer/marketer.

Honourable Mentions

Wil Wheaton @ http://www.twitter.com/wilw
Daiv Russell @ http://www.twitter.com/daivrawks
Nathan Fillion @ http://www.twitter.com/nathanfillion
Radian6 @ http://www.twitter.com/radian6

Oh, and don’t forget to follow me @ http://www.twitter.com/robbclarke.

Did I miss anyone? Thoughts? Feedback?

If you want to dynamically generate the URL of the page/post that you are currently viewing then all you need to enter is:

This code generates and displays the current URL, which is great for submitting articles to Digg, Facebook, Twitter etc. etc.

What a big sigh of relief it was when I found that. The funny thing is that it’s been staring me in the face all along.

Various Codes to Generate Different URLs in WordPress

Below is a list of a number of variables used to generate various URLs using WordPress. The variable is on the left and the result is on the right.

admin_email = admin@example
atom_url = http://example/home/feed/atom
charset = UTF-8
comments_atom_url = http://example/home/comments/feed/atom
comments_rss2_url = http://example/home/comments/feed
description = Just another WordPress blog
home = http://example/home
html_type = text/html
language = en-US
name = Testpilot
pingback_url = http://example/home/wp/xmlrpc.php
rdf_url = http://example/home/feed/rdf
rss2_url = http://example/home/feed
rss_url = http://example/home/feed/rss
siteurl = http://example/home
stylesheet_directory = http://example/home/wp/wp-content/themes/largo
stylesheet_url = http://example/home/wp/wp-content/themes/largo/style.css
template_directory = http://example/home/wp/wp-content/themes/largo
template_url = http://example/home/wp/wp-content/themes/largo
text_direction = ltr
url = http://example/home
version = 2.7
wpurl = http://example/home/wp

You can easily display this information by substituting the variable in the following code for the desired URL:

Did that help? Share your thoughts below!

On Tuesday of this past week I got a phone call at the office from a reporter from the local Fredericton newspaper, The Daily Gleaner. He was looking to speak to a graphic designer about what they do and to comment on the industry. I just so happened to answer the phone at the time and was more than happy to help him out.

On Wednesday, reporter Chris Fox came into the office and interviewed me and was followed a short time later by a photographer who took some pictures.

The end result was this article that ran on Saturday, August 22, 2009. For the most part everything was great in the article except for two minor things. The first being that I don’t “handle all the programming and coding for the entire operation.” He got that part mixed up with freelance (for friends and family). I worked with a great team of programmers at Red Cow, Oliver Dueck and Sean Dunphy who have the hardest jobs of them all, they have to make my coded sites actually work. Without them, Red Cow wouldn’t work nearly as well.

The second issue was a mix up of timelines. The article states that I work at Red Cow and teach in the evenings, which is true, but the next paragraph jumps back in time 4 years to when I was doing my Bachelor’s degree and decided that I didn’t want to get into teaching, which is about all you can do with a History Major. It’s a little awkwardly worded but past that, it was good.

I first read the article online when I woke up that morning because, of course, I was incredibly exicted. It wasn’t until later in the day when I grabbed an actual paper copy that I noticed I WAS THE WHOLE FRONT PAGE OF THE BUSINESS SECTION! It was pretty frickin’ cool.

Wait… why are you still reading this? Go read the article!

If you check out the header of this site you’ll notice that it’s an image but if you look at the code there’s no image there, just some text for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. You’re probably wondering how and why, well here’s the math:

As you know, having the H1 on your site filled in does wonders for your SEO, and aside from your Title tag and meta tags, it’s the first thing on your site that’s read by browsers. On this site I have “my name is robb clarke and i build websites” as the information in my H1 tag.  Obviously that text isn’t what’s displayed on the site, I have an image, all nicely styled, in its place. Now, obviously text on images are readable by search engines, so how do display an image while maintaining your SEO?

Here’s how.

HTML

<h1><span>my name is robb clarke and i build websites</span></h1>

CSS

h1 {
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: bold;
width: 900px;
height: 198px;
background: url(images/header.jpg) top left no-repeat;
display: block;
margin: 10px 0 10px 0; }
h1 span { display: none; }

So what this does is takes the text inside of the SPAN tag and applies the “display: none;” to it, thus hiding it from your sight but not the search engine’s. Then to display the image in its place we make the image the background of the H1 tag and set the height and width accordingly.

You can also do it another way without the SPAN tag by just using text-indent.

HTML

<h1>my name is robb clarke and i build websites</h1>

CSS

h1 {
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: bold;
width: 900px;
height: 198px;
background: url(images/header.jpg) top left no-repeat;
display: block;
margin: 10px 0 10px 0;
text-indent: -9999px; }

This will send any text 9999px to the left and out of sight.

Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Good friend and photographer, Nick Forret, approached me in early July about relaunching his website and I was more than happy to help him out. Nick’s old website, while nice looking, wasn’t set up to be easily edited by Nick who has little coding background. Our solution was to set up his new site using WordPress which let him easily update his website and even keep a blog. The new site is set up to automatically add Lightbox to his uploaded images, thus creating a bit of a fancy gallery for his users to view his work.

We’ve also set up a blog with comments enabled to promote discussion about various topics.

Nick is still in the process of adding content to the site but you can view the active site here:
http://www.nickforret.com

Don’t forget, Nick is always available for work!

Unfiltered Smoke is the brain child of journalist, opinion writer, movie reviewer and good friend Jason Wilson. A while back Jason contacted me about working on this project and I jumped on the opportunity. He was looking for a site where he could showcase the works of the many talented people that he has known over the years. He was looking for a site that he could post articles, short stories, videos, photo series and music. The end result is a site that I’m really proud of.

The site features an integrated Lightbox gallery for displaying photo series and dynamic music players which are only activated when the user selects them.

Unfiltered Smoke has very quickly gone from a pet project into a largely popular website that is growing by leaps and bounds every day.

You can take a look at the site by clicking here.

Back in June, good friend Jason Wilson approached me about the creation of a website that would be a showcase “for the creatively gifted.” The website just officially launched this past Friday, August 14th and has already received some press.

The Bugle Observer in Woodstock, NB ran an article on Jason and Unfiltered Smoke on July 28th in which I get a mention.

He’s been meeting with Robb Clarke, a friend and webdesigner, concerning the look of the website.

You can read the full article here:
http://bugleobserver.canadaeast.com/rss/article/742262

If you want to check out Unfiltered Smoke you can do so by clicking here.