Our New FanPage

During the Christmas break we launched our FaceBook Fan Page at http://www.FaceBook.com/NetMania. We have also included the FanPage badge to the left of our web site http://www.NetMania.co.nz to make it easier for both our clients and followers to join us and take advantage of FanPage only specials.

Since we launched our FanPage we have made some customisations based on your emails to us. Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts.

We hope to have more interaction with you in our FanPage so feel free to visit and join us.

Web site maintenance tips.

For many small business owners we deal with there is usually a thought that “out of date site plugins, old seo materials and even copied pages that have been copied multiple times” will cause no issues to their site.
In reality old plugins and code can cause many issues such as slow page speed, confusion for developers as they are looking at irrelevant code and even conflicts with new updates that are required to be installed.

If you spend 30 minutes going through web site deleting and updating old plugins and removing old and irrelevant pages and information you will increase your site traffic and reduce future cots and time with site updates.

Often when a page is copied and copied the html becomes corrupt and if you have copied the page from a CMS such as WordPress there will be a lot of code that is irrelevant and difficult for developers to work with.

If you constantly copy files to create new pages you should consider having a template created giving you the benefit of the same page, only relevant code and no need to copy and paste and delete information all of the time. The end result will save you costs and be more beneficial for all if you can look past the initial set up cost.

FaceBook vanity URL’s

It has been a number of months since FaceBook released vanity URL’s (your name in the URL) for personal pages and then to Groups and Fan Pages. An example is our FaceBook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/NetMania .

Initially a FanPage or group required 1000 members or fans to be eligible for a vanity URL.

Sometime later FaceBook publicly announced that it had reduced the limit to 100 users. Both requirements caused many small organisations to cry out and ask for the requirements to be reduced.

FaceBook without any major publicity announcements changed the criteria to a minimum of 25 members or fans thus creating new opportunities for millions of Fan Pages and groups.

Now many admins and would be creators of groups and Fan Pages are asking how to obtain their new vanity URL.

Simply log into FaceBook and then visit http://www.faceBook.com/username or as we mentioned in our earlier post http://fb.me/username .

http://Fb.me – FaceBook URL Shortener

FaceBook recently added a new shortened URL “fb.me” to make it simpler to access pages, profiles and groups.

Initially it may appear that there is no need for such an URL shortener as most people have heard of FaceBook and know the FaceBook Url www.faceBook.com .

But there are 3 main advantages:

1.  The increasingly popular Twitter service with its 140 character limit can show readers that it is a facebook link and promote your brand at the same time.
2. The popular mobile market that access the web via their smart phones and other mobile devices.
3. It is much easier to give people a short URL to your pictures on your profile.

There are 2 main disadvantage at the moment.

1. There is no way to track how many clicks your links are getting which will make online marketing with the fb.me URL difficult to analyse its success.
2. If your Fan Page does not meet the minimum criteria of 25 Fans then you do not have a vanity url and therefore your Fan Page will not have a memorable fb.me URL.

The benefits of having statistics and other analytical tools associated with a URL shortener are so emence that we would expect that FaceBook will roll out the new features in the near future.

Profile picture in WordPress comments

Adding a profile picture to WordPress comments is an easy process that will give your comments and posts more authority and credentials.  The image or avatar is officially referred to as a Gravatar.

If you have a Wordpress Website

If you have a WordPress website, you probably already have an online profile but haven’t uploaded an image and email address to be associated with it.

Hosted Wordpress websites need an API key to run the spam filter. When you obtain an API key from WordPress, you also get an online profile complete with Gravatar.

1.    Go to www.wordpress.com.
2.    Login using your Wordpress.com username and password or click on the Signup button and get a username only account.
3.    Hold your mouse over the My Account link at the top right of the screen.
4.    Select Edit Profile from the drop-down list.
5.    Click on the Change Your Gravatar link under the grey face and upload your image.
6.    Make sure the email address is correct (if you change it you will need to confirm by email).
7.    Add your website address.
8.    Click Update Profile button at the bottom.

9.    Logout of Wordpress.com (top right).

If you don’t have a Wordpress Website

1.    Go to http://en.gravatar.com/
2.    Setup a free account
3.    Enter your email address and upload a photo or image.

This is ideal if you are a regular commenter on other peoples blogs or perhaps a regular commenter on a variety of blogs.

Web host and design myths

A list of some myths we have encountered over the past 15 years in the NZ Internet industry with helpful resources at the end of the article.

1. If you have a small web site and or only 1 email address, Google offer you a free service.
2. There are hundreds of web site addresses that may suit your business more adequately than .com or .nz but your web company can not make money on the others so will not tell you of them.
3. .com address is cheaper to own and maintain than .nz .
4. Many will use a site template for most of their customers and then on charge you for the original design of the template as well as the modifications you request.
5. Most popular web site systems or Content Management Systems are free to use and offer thousands of free templates, this includes eCommerce and Blogs. It only takes hours to customise these sites.
6. Many will tell you that you need to host your web site with them for a large number of false reasons.
7. Often a specialised system will be created making it technically difficult for you to change companies.
8. Companies often advise that it is too technical and that it is easier and cheaper if they maintain your domain name and charge you between $20 and $200 per annum when all they do is act as a middle man for your invoice.
9. In more serious cases you will not own your domain name but will pay an annual rent for it to your web host.
10. If your request is not in the standard set of knowledge of the company, you will be changed for their staff to learn the technical side of your request. Alternatively you will be told that it is not possible – only because the company do not want you to go else where.
11. Most web site updates take only a few minutes yet are charged out as a full hour of development. Updates to your web site should be charged in increments of 15 mins based on an hourly rate of less than $50.
12. Very few design companies have experts related to your web hosting requirements and will often contract in a third party or the reseller to attend to your requests thus generating time delays and more expense.
13. Social Media FaceBook, Bebo, Twitter etc are the new Internet being utilised by many international commercial entities to maximise their web presence. Web hosting companies can not make any money from this so they will not tell you about it.

Questions to ask your web host provider *

1. Where are your web servers located and who owns the servers?
2. How many people work at your company and how many people are responsible for customer service?
3. What customer support is available, ie Phone, email or web based. Some companies only offer web based support with a 48 hour turn-around period to reply.
4. What is the response time of your customer support?
5. What hours does your customer support team work?
6. How often are the sites backed up and how quickly can you access a backup?
7. Are there any charges in obtaining a backup?
8. Apart from the monthly or annual hosting fees, what other services will you be charged for ?. This is extremely important as most web services should be made available as part of your hosting plan.

*Sourced from http://www.community.net.nz/how-toguides/it/publicationsresources/ownership.htm  where you can also see more details of considerations when acquiring web hosting.