Smugglers Cove | www.smugglerscove.net.au

What is RSS?
RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is an XML-based format for content distribution and is a quick and easy way to see updates to your favourite sites without having to check the site every day for the updates. Letting the content come to you, not you search for content. By subscribing to your favourites websites RSS feed you are alerted as soon as the site is updated.

A majority of RSS feeds currently contain news headlines or breaking information the long term uses of RSS are really limited to your imagination.

How to subscribe to RSS Feeds?
Most of the time the publisher of your favourite website will actively promote that there is RSS feeds available to follow the content.  Our site look for the blue icon at the top right of the page, or take the ABC website, that has multiple RSS feeds to follow covering a wide range of subjects.  See here: http://www.abc.net.au/services/rss/

To subscribe you can either use an online or offline RSS reader and you simply click on the link or copy the address to your RSS reader. I use FireFox which has a built in RSS reader, so when I click on the RSS link I’m taken to the feed and given the option to add it to my “live bookmarks”.

Another RSS reader I use is my iGoogle page, if you have a Google account you can set up your iGoogle page to access your favourite feeds and many different useful and not so useful widgets.
Resources:

• To subscribe to 101 Web Technology please follow this link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/101WebTechnologyNews
• If you want a iGoogle page and you don’t have a Google Account you can get one here: http://www.google.com.au/accounts
• To get FireFox go here: http://www.getfirefox.com.

If you have any questions or are getting stuck please post a comment or feel free to contact us.

As a business owner you may not be supervising your staff the whole time, though you will have an understanding of how the business is traveling, the staff morale and the bottom line.

Have you have even had the experience of a team member not performing? How often is it that you simply just let it be and see if things improve with no intervention? As a business owner/manager this is costing you money and the best way to resolve the issue is to engage with the team member and discuss the concerns and address any issues that may have arisen. Sometimes this is enough and usually with the right coaching and support the team member becomes a valuable member of the team with improved efficiency and workflow and the end result is you see productivity again going up.

Just the same as you the proactive business owner keeps track of your physical staff, what about your virtual team? They are often the forgotten ones, they work 24/7, take no holidays, never allowed to get sick (99.9% uptime guarantee, if they live with 101 Web Technology), have very little interaction with the other staff members, except for being told that they don’t work, a waste of money, out of date and not in touch with the business any more and often told they are ugly. Without the necessary time-out and understanding this team is often left to be dressed in outdated fashions, using out-dated tools, not up to speed with the latest trends and pretty soon you have a team member that is potentially costing you business.

So what exactly is your website doing all that time? By understanding what your website does with its time and how it treats your customers when it is working we can start to fine tune the process and make it work more efficiently and that’s where the reports from Google Analytics come into play.

Top Entry Pages

These are the pages that are first inline for traffic to the site. Depending on your marketing campaign this could be your company’s homepage, blog, online shop. Your top entry pages tell you if your marketing strategy is working.

For instance if you are doing a letterbox drop and on the flyer is your companies website address, during that campaign you would expect to see a spike in direct traffic coming  to your homepage.

If however are getting mostly referral traffic and you are in the middle of a search engine marketing (SEM) or search engine optimization (SEO) campaign and your top entry page is the page you have been targeting you can safely assume that you are heading in the right direction.

Top entry pages tell a good story on there own however combine them with an understanding of how the traffic is getting to your site and you start to have some good insights into where your energy is best focused.

Top Exit Pages

This is the report that tells you where people are leaving your site from. Most people view this as a bad thing. This one has many different variables and can tell a different story depending on the context of which people are coming to your site.

For instance:
A client of 101 has a free DVD on offer and a lot of SEM work goes on promoting the DVD, they run Google Ads, Yahoo Ads and other Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns. Instead of leading the person through to the homepage of the site to again do the sales work that is performed in the copy of the ad the user is pointed to an alternate page commonly referred to as a Landing page. This page is the call to action and is where the ordering takes place and the process finalised. Users coming to this page know what they are after and will fill in the details hit submit and then most leave the site. This is not a bad thing as the intended transaction has been completed.

By reviewing the Top Entry and Exit Pages lists, they are able to keep a track of how the PPC ads are converting, by the number of visitors who are entering and leaving on specific landing pages.

Above is an example of how by having a good understanding of your website combined with some good stats analysis, you can shape the business direction of your website and create an informed user experience.

If you have a website and you are not getting the user stats, then how do you know that your virtual team is working towards your business success?

As part of my role as Senior User Centered Design Analyst I find myself working more with Word typing up reports and analysing designs and user interaction patterns as apposed to coding and design these days. Yesterday I found out a great trick in Word, and I use the word trick very loosely here as it is a standard feature of Word that I just hadn’t tapped into before now. Using the Numbering icon I can auto number rows in my tables, and if I change the order of the information in the rows the numbers automatically update for me. Magic? no, handy? YES…

For instance I was writing up an evaluation report which had over 50 findings (1 per row), as I was working in draft I would type up the findings in no particular order. During the time between draft and final stage I wanted to move the rows around so there was some logical flow to my findings.  This quickly become a time issue when I moved the rows as I would then need to re-number my rows, this was all before I knew about auto-number.

By setting auto number in the first column of each row, every time I tab to create a new row, the new row is given the next number.

Heres how you can Autonumber your Word Table too.

1. Create your table in Word
2. Place your cursor in the column you want to be the number column.  (Most common for my documents is the first). Now press the Numbering icon.  Looks like this
3. Note that a number 1. will now be displayed in the column. Insert another row and number 2. will be displayed and so on.
4. Thats it, start typing and forget worrying about numbering your rows.

Easy…. Now for some format and output options.

What if you want to restart your numbers? right click on the list and choose restart numbering. This will end the number sequence from the point your cursor is placed and start again at 1. You and contine the sequence by choosing continue numbering from the right-click menu also.

What if you want letters not numbers? right click and choose bullets and numbering. From this window you can choose the customise button and even change the format of your numbers from 1. to 001. if you preferred that output. That is a handy one for me as I prefer a more structured and a uniform look.

Hope this tech tip helps you out. Until the next one…

Spring is now upon us and we should be well and truely into spring cleaning, clearing out the junk around the office, backing up the PC, applying the patches, upgrading the machines and software. But do you think about looking at your website and updating the content? Most likely not, our experience has shown that site owners are not always the most proactive when it comes to updating their site, but while it may not be the most glamorous job, think of it this way, do you walk into Ford and want them telling you about the AU XR6 released in 1998 or do you want to talk about the new 09 FPV GTP? The same can be likened to your website, if you website is your 24/7 sales person, then arm them with the most up-to-date information you can.

Here are a few simple tips to updating and fine tuning your website.

Content stocktake
Starting from your homepage, go through all pages on the site checking that links are working along the way. On each page take note of the content and read the page from the perspective of a first time visitor to your site or someone who has not even heard of your business before. You will soon start to see that the content needs a refresh and while it made sence when you first wrote it, two years later you will have a different view and most likely want to make some minor adjustments.

Run a broken link report.
A broken link report will tell you if any of your links to pages within your site are broken. On the web there are not many things more annoying to your clients then to have them on your site looking for information and when they try to access the information you give them a big 404 error message. It is about offering good customer service and creating a strong and positive image to your clients that you take pride in how you present your business.

To run a report you can make use of many of the free tools online that will check through your site, or alternatively you can contact us to perform the task as part of the routine maintenance and updates on your site.

Check your stats
Check your access stats to see how people are finding your site, what are your most popular pages and what sites are linking to you. With this information you can start to make adjustments to your sites navigation, the way that pages link to each other and you easily see which pages are working for you and why.

So how do you get these stats? All sites hosted by 101 Web Technology have access to these stats via there sites, control panel. Contact us if you do not know how to access your control and we will be more then happy to assist and point you in the right direction.

101 Web Technology also recommends using Google Analytics for site tracking analysis. All sites built by 101 now come with the tracking scripts installed and reports are emailed at scheduled intervals. The reports are intuitive and 101 Web Technology is able to explain in an easy to understand way how you can extract the information out of the reports to ensure you get the most of the information.

So there you see a few ways to go through and fine tune your website this spring. To make it even easier for our clients 101 Web Technology offers cost effective maintenance packages to take the headaches out of your routine site maintenance.  To find out more please contact us or visit the maintenance package section of our website.

Name Drive

NameDrive parking is a service whereby you can park your domain names free of charge. NameDrive then places targeted advertising on your parked domains and you earn money whenever visitors to your domains click on the ads. Advertisements are generated from marketing partners associated with NameDrive and you are paid a commission each time your domain is accessed and an ad is clicked. Content sensitive ads are displayed to the user of the domain in much the same way as how Google Adsense may work on your developed website.

Why would you use NameDrive? Many people when setting up a business or have a new business idea the first thing they do is purchase a domain name to protect the name and their online identity. As many people will know when you set up a new business getting a new website is not the first thing to happen or the development time may take a bit longer. You can use these in-between time to earn some more, especially if the domain name is a popular one.
Buy and Sell Domains

NameDrive offers its users the ability to buy and sell domain names. By signing up to the NameDrive service you can keep a look out for domain names that may be of use to your business or business idea. Likewise if you purchase a domain name that may have some commercial value you can offer the domain up for sale, while still parking the domain and earning revenue.

Many people when looking for a new domain name will go to there Internet Browser and try and access the domain name they want. If you have a popular domain, people could be doing thousands of domain lookups on your domain each day, each with the potential to click through on some of the targeted advertising.

For further information and to signup for NameDrive Domain Parking you can check out the website http://www.namedrive.com

101 Web Technology has launched a new client centre! The new client centre is available by selecting the “Support/Accounts” tab in the client login section (top left of page under 101 logo.) If you have not been sent your welcome email with your login information please contact us and we will arrange to have that information sent out to you. Alternatively there is a forgot password link to retrieve the password for the account.

So we can efficiently work on your requests the client centre allows you to easily lodge a support ticket for any issues you may run into with your hosting or for those clients on a maintainence package you can use the client centre to request updates to your website.

You may also use the support system to upload large files to our server, save the potential issues sending via email and much faster then snail mail.

Check for domain name availability

Too often people will want to register a domain they believe to be available but when it comes to purchasing the domain they find out the domain is unavailable.

The common mis-leader: Testing domain availability using your web browser.

More often people will test for the availability of a domain by typing in the domain name into their web browser. If they are shown a website then that is not available, if they are shown a domain not available error message then it is assumed that the domain name is available only to find out when they attempt to purchase the domain they are unable to.

This occurs due to people purchasing a domain for a variety of reasons, protecting their online identity, domain name parking until the website is built, maybe they just want the convenience of having an email address at their domain. What ever the reason they are not doing anything wrong if they have a legitimate claim to the domain name.

So how do you accurately test for domain name availability?
Testing for domain name availability is an easy process once shown how. You can quickly and easily test the availability aswell as retrieve the contact information for a domain performing a WHOIS search.

A WHOIS search queries different repositories and returns the contact information associated with the domain, the created date and the expiry date.

To perform a WHOIS search, go to http://domains.101webtech.com and use the domain tools accessed by the left hand menu.

To complete the query you will need to type in the domain name and verification image, then hit submit. If you get a match the system will give you the available information for the domain name, otherwise a “No Match” message will be shown. The “No Match” message will let you know that the domain is available for purchase.

Why register a domain name?

The answer is simply to protect your online identity at a cost effective price. Your domain name is your address on the internet and is the first step towards your online presence. The domain name provides you with an online identity or brand. Protecting your domain name or names is important in protecting your online identity. It’s a valuable part of your business identity and an invaluable marketing tool.

To gain the best advantage on the Internet you should consider registering your company name as well as any abbreviations along with any trademark of products and/or services. Abbreviations become more important if you have a long or difficult to spell business name.

For example: a three letter Domain name like www.xyz.com.au is far easier to remember than a long domain name or asking the user to type in a difficult to spell company name.

Further advantages to a short domain name is it can help when customers want to visit or revisit your site, if you have a short easy to remember domain name.

Am I eligible to register a domain name?

There are different rules for different domains as a general rule there is no restrictions on registering a .com domain name. However the downside is you may find it harder to purchase the domain name you are after in the .com space.
.AU

As a general rule 101 Web Technology provides the below advice to client wanting to purchase a .AU domain name.

To comply with auDA policies for the registration of .au domains, the domain name must be:

• exactly match, acronym or abbreviation of the registrant’s company or trading name, organization or association name or trademark, or
• otherwise closely and substantially connected to the registrant. 

If you wish to buy a .com.au or .net.au domain name, you must be a commercial entity and possess either an ACN or ABN. 

How do I buy a domain?

Easy, you can register your domain name with 101 Web Technology with the confidence that you are buying most of our domains up to 50% cheaper then some of our much larger competitors. We do this because we understand that having your own domain name doesn’t need to be an expensive cost added to your online presence.

101 Web Technology brings to you over 40 top level domain name extensions for you to choose from including many International Domain Names, so protecting your online identity has never been more convienent and cheaper.

If your website is not ready yet, when you register a domain name with 101 Web Technology you will recieve FREE DNS Management and URL Forwarding services. What this means to our clients is you can have email at your domain straight away and your domain name is protected for when you launch your new website.

Register your new domain name online at http://domains.101webtech.com

auDA is currently reviewing the Domain Expiry, Renewal and Deletion Policy . The policy is available on auDA’s website at http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2006-07/

auDA invites comment on all aspects of the policy, in particular:

• Whether the current 30 day pending delete period for expired domain names (ie. where the registrant has not renewed their domain name) is appropriate.
• Whether the current “domain purge” procedure (ie. where domain names are purged from the registry at a random time between 10.30am and 5.00pm AEST on the next business day after the pending delete period ends) is effective.
• What action (if any) auDA should take in relation to unofficial domain drop lists, and the domain-catching services being provided by some accredited registrars and other industry participants.

Comments should be sent to:

Jo Lim
Chief Policy Officer
email: jo.lim@auda.org.au
fax: 03 9349 5711

The closing date for submissions is Friday 11 September 2009.

All submissions will be published on auDA’s website at http://www.auda.org.au/reviews/red-2009/.