OLD Komotion

Upcoming Developments and How You May be Affected

Post author By Razvan Neagu
Post date November 10, 2012
No Comments on Upcoming Developments and How You May be Affected

I want to give you a heads up on a few things we are working on and how these may affect you.

New Automated Subscription Plans

We are currently working on integrating automated subscription plans for Komotion WebPacks. Existing Komotion customers and clients are on custom plans so those new subscriptions will not apply to you, at least not right away. Over the next few days you may see changes in the admin dashboard, in the top menu bar and sidebar menus. Please ignore those new menu sections for now. If you encounter any screens prompting you to sign up for a paid plan, you should be able to ignore, cancel or choose a “free” plan and get back to what you were doing. There should be nothing preventing you from continuing to update your website during this transition. Please let us know if you find anything otherwise.

As you are currently on a custom plan, any restrictions in terms of plugins, upload quota, etc. that apply to those new subscription plans will not apply to your custom plan.

I will follow up if there are any changes that will affect your website. Once the new features are implemented, you will be able to access additional features from your dashboard including many help resources, tutorial videos and an automated way to get support.

New Network Infrastructure

Following this we have another exciting transition that we will undertake, related to moving our hosting infrastructure from dedicated servers to enterprise class infrastructure using Amazon Web Services Cloud Hosting. This will provide your website with the highest level of reliability, security and performance in addition to being able to dynamically scale with your needs.

This transition means our server will have new IP addresses so your domain name will need to point to a new IP number. We will follow up with more specific instructions when the time comes.

Updated Komotion Website

We are also working on updating our main Komotion website with tutorials, samples and other useful information to help you get the most out of your Komotion WebPack.

Trends

How to Make QR Codes Work for You

Post author By Razvan Neagu
Post date October 20, 2012
No Comments on How to Make QR Codes Work for You

Here is a great way to extend the usefulness of any printed, physical materials by linking them to relevant Web pages. Users away from a computer but equipped with smartphones can then easily get access to your online information. It will also allow you to track and measure the impact of your outreach campaigns.

What are QR Codes?

You’ve probably seen them around, but in case you are not familiar with what they are, QR Codes (short for “quick response”) are barcodes readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data. These codes are starting to get wider usage in convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). It basically bridges the gap between the physical and digital worlds, between printouts and the Web.

These codes are useful on printed materials, from pages printed from your site, brochures, postcards, ads – printed in a magazine or plastered on a billboard. Since printed materials can be found away from a computer, these barcodes provide users with camera smartphones to quickly extend the information from the physical materials to their online extension on your website.

QR Codes storing addresses and URLs may appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards, or on just about any object about which users might need information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR Code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network, or open a web page in the phone’s browser. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks.
Wikipedia – QR Code

Many Android phones come with QR code readers already installed. Blackberry phones running Blackberry Messenger 5.0 (or more recent versions) can also scan QR codes using the “Scan A Group Barcode” option in the BBM menu.

How to Use

Google URL shortening service -Screenshot from http://goo.gl

Go to the new Google URL shortening service at http://goo.gl. Enter the URL you want to get the QR Code for and get it shortened . For example, I entered the URL of this post – /20101001/how-to-make-qr-codes-work-for-your/, and got it shortened as http://goo.gl/0MfW.

This is great if I want to Tweet a link to this post, it will now be short and sweet.

Now to get the QR Code, simply add “.qr” at the end of it and go to that URL – http://goo.gl/0MfW.qr; and will see the QR Code automatically generated for you.

But wait, there’s more… You can also get access statistics for the page, acccessed either via the QR Code or via the shortened URL directly.

Get Statistics

Click the Details link on the main page where you created your shortened link; it’s in the lower-right. Or, simply add “.info” to the shortened URL to go directly to see the statistics – http://goo.gl/0MfW.info

Screenshot of the statistics screen — Google URL shortner – statistics

Tags Google, mobile, print, QR Code

General

Sitemap: Nest galleries under topic or under main gallery page?

Post author By Razvan Neagu
Post date July 25, 2012
No Comments on Sitemap: Nest galleries under topic or under main gallery page?

Should a gallery page (one of several galleries in the website) be nested under a page about the specific gallery topic or under a main gallery page?

A client recently posed this question, related to their sitemap which had pages dedicated to several treatment services and photo galleries related to each treatment:

There will be multiple galleries (1 for most treatments), there should be a main Photo Gallery page that links into the other galleries. I think each treatment gallery should be on a separate page from the treatment page itself. With that said would best way to create the nesting of the pages be:

Treatment Pages

Treatment A service page

Photo Gallery for Treatment A

Photo Gallery Main (with links to the gallery pages)

– OR –

Photo Gallery Main

Photo Gallery for Treatment A

Treatment Pages

Treatment A service page

I think this is a great question and one which has relevance for many different cases. So here is the answer:

It can go either way, depending on what and navigation strategy you want to promote. The way to think about it generally goes like this: If the user is on the Photo Gallery for Treatment A page, are they more likely to want to go (or do YOU want to have them to go) to the main Treatment A page or to the main Gallery page?

Generally the former is better. The individual treatment gallery page has conceptual/semantic ties that are stronger to the Treatment A page that to the gallery page. When someone is looking at a Treatment A image, they are likely more interested in knowing more about Treatment A, rather than look as images in general, such as images for other treatments.

There is another important reason why it is better to nest gallery pages to some richer text parent pages rather than having them nested to a main gallery parent page. Google can’t extract as much information from an image – basically only text that is in the image title, description, alt tag, etc. Subordinating the image page to the word rich treatment page, will trickle more keyword juice to those images than if the parent of the page is just the main gallery page, which is likely to lack text content or specificity.

Since I see utility for user to also want to look at pics and navigate through several galleries, it is useful to have a main gallery page linking to each treatment gallery, as well as have the reverse; a link from the treatment gallery page to the main gallery page. But these links are secondary.

The primary, most important navigation or logic structure should drive where the actual pages reside and specific parent/child relationships. So even though you can have any page link to any other page, when creating a sitemap one should create the nested structure that identifies the unique location of the page in the hierarchy. The sitemap is at the basis of how the website pages will be nested into directories, with each page at one unique location.

Tags gallery, nested pages, sitemap, sitemap structure, website

Trends

The New Sharing Economy

Graphic showing people sharing transportation and tools

On a macro level, our capital based society is bases its growth on people buying “stuff”. This growth has been fueled by companies artificially inflating the desire for consumers to have more, better, faster; to discard the old and upgrade to the new. Technology has enabled the producers to get more and more sophisticated in their ability to manipulate consumers and further fanning the demand. I have been concerned about the time consumers realize the growing desires are less and less related to true need. Will our society’s economy crumble like a house of cards?

The benefits we got from free over-the-air TV and more recently from Google Search or Facebook social networking are not really free – we get it in exchange of our privacy or by allowing companies to continually pitch us; overtly through ads and more covertly through various recent online marketing schemes.

I see a glimmer of hope though. The technological advancements which can help producers manipulate demand, can also help the consumer side of the equation. I came across an interesting article – The New Sharing Economy (from Fast Company) – which provides more insight into this topic; a great read.

The ability for consumers to find and squeeze more value out of the product cycle may ultimately save us. Access to online networks enabling sharing of tools, transportation, even lodging, enables us to be smarter of how we participate in the new economy.

Tags economy, sharing, society

SEO Websites

SEO: Do it Yourself or Hire an Expert?

Post author By Razvan Neagu
Post date June 20, 2012
1 Comment on SEO: Do it Yourself or Hire an Expert?

Close-up photo of a hand holding a pen and writing on paper

I recently had a number of clients ask about search engine optimization (SEO, for short) and if/how they can tackle this themselves. They varied in the knowledge they had about it; some knew a few valid tips and some had erroneous notions or interpretations. This post is meant to shed some light on how to decide if a business should do SEO in-house or if they should hire an outside expert.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings. Wikipedia

Many businesses or website owners don’t have any idea how to best approach SEO and when to hire consultants or specialized copywriters (people writing copy, or “text”) to do this for their website. Sometimes this is best done in-house. Other times, it makes sense to get help from an outside expert you trust.

Writing for the Web Yourself

As long as you have a person with an understanding of your business, decent writing skill, some basic technical aptitude and logical thinking, they (or you) can do it themselves. Developing this type of expertise in-house can be a valuable business asset.

Not only will it save you money, it may possibly save you time when you consider that for a consultant to do a great job, you will need to teach them about the specifics of your business. The time you would spend educating a third party about your business, competitors, website audience, clients and business strategy may be better spent for you to learn and understand how to do SEO yourself.

Going through this process yourself will also surely sharpen your own understanding of how SEO works and can have a positive impact on how you develop your online business strategy for best effect.

Note also that if you are already planning to write copy (or “text”) for your website in-house, it makes practical sense to have some knowledge of SEO, so your writing is conceived the right way from the start. Otherwise most work will need to be redone (more time and money investment) when the person doing the SEO revises it.

Hiring an SEO consultant to write your copy

This is the best approach if any of the following conditions apply to you:

Your budget affords you to hire an expert
You can get an expert you trust (important since good SEO work is not readily and immediately apparent)
You already did your best and want to further improve your Website SEO performance
You are in a highly competitive business and need help to get on top
You do not have internal resources or time required to perform this task
You read about how to do SEO and got overwhelmed
You do not have the interest (or aptitude) required to perform this task (that’s OK, not everyone wants to become an SEO geek)

The consultant doing SEO for you should have at least two important sets of skills:

Be a good copywriter with experience writing for websites (which requires a specific style)
Know SEO techniques (how to create relevant copy, quality links, domain trust, social popularity, search engine connectivity, etc.)
Provide examples of measurable SEO success they have achieved (search rankings)
Offer references from previous clients using their SEO services

Next Steps

To learn more about SEO, read our Search Engine Optimization Guide.

If you need help, we can teach you how to do it, assist your during this process or do it for you. Find out more about how we can help your business.

Have some relevant experience related to making this choice? Please share by leaving a comment below…

Tags copywriting, keywords

News Trends

State of the Blogosphere

Technorati provided the annual State of the Blogosphere, based on a survey of 7,200 bloggers.

Some key takeaways as identified by Erick’s Schonfeld from TechCrunch:

Self-employed bloggers now account for 21% of those surveyed, compared to 9% last year.
But only 11% say their primary income comes from blogging.
Hobbyists still make up the bulk of bloggers at 65%, but that is down from 72% last year
Corporate bloggers now make up 4% of the total, up from 1% last year.
Two thirds are male
They use many types of social media (LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg), but when it comes to driving traffic back to their blogs only two social media services really count: Facebook and Twitter
Tablets and smartphones are impacting impacting blogging styles for 39% of bloggers
Of those, 70% are writing shorter posts, 50% are posting photos from their smartphones, and 15% are using less Flash
When writing about brands or products, 71% will only write about brands they approve of.
One third boycott products, but only one fifth write about their boycotts

Check out the full slide presentation below.

State Of The Blogosphere Presentation 2010

News WordPress

Moving Your Blog from Windows Live Spaces

Post author By Razvan Neagu
Post date October 21, 2010
No Comments on Moving Your Blog from Windows Live Spaces

Microsoft has announced that their blog offering, Live Space will be terminated and users forced to move to WordPress.com. If you are a Windows Live Space user, now is a great time to improve your blog website. Here is how to do it.

First use the official Microsoft function to move Live Space to a WordPress.com account. This will get all your posts, comments, and photos to WordPress.com. See more details on how to upgrade from Windows Live Spaces (offline http://en.support.wordpress.com/upgrading-from-windows-live-spaces/how-to-upgrade/).

You will use this as a bridge only. From WordPress.com you can easily export your blog to a more versatile format, freeing you to move your content wherever you want. To get your site to have all the features and power we offer Komotion users, simply import your site to your Komotion account.

Tags Live Spaces, WordPress

News WordPress

WordPress Domination

WordPress everywhere

Microsoft just announced at TechCrunch Disrupt (original announcement here) that it is giving up on Windows Live Spaces, a blogging service for Windows Live users. It is moving all users to the WordPress (WP) platform. Certainly confirms our strategy to build on top of WordPress technology.

Through the power of Open Source community, WordPress has outgrown its roots to become a full-fledged Content Management System. Other CMS-es, even those that are powerful and actively developed through an active Open Source community, like Drupal and Joomla, will have a hard time to keep up with the momentum behind Wo0rdPress. Matt Mullenweg, the de facto chanpion of WP, is just better at organizing the development, keeping the community happy, developers focused. But the most critical key is that Matt understands the power of design, and great user experience. As he says it “code is poetry”.

[highlight1]WordPress already has 26 million of users and powers 8.5% of sites across the web.[/highlight1] And that is not counting the 30 million(!) users that will now migrate from Windows Live Spaces. Users have 6 months to move. Must be quite humbling for Microsoft and I believe this is just the beginning.

When Open Source is handled well, it harnesses the wisdom of crowds and closed companies with proprietary technologies can get toasted. It is great for Microsoft to set the ego aside and get aligned with the new wave.

Microsoft took down the signup for Spaces and post this message instead:

Screenshot of message from Microsoft Windows Live Spaces — Text message shown on Windows Live if you want to sign up for Spaces

UPDATE: Well, turns out the original report had wildly overestimated the number of Windows Live Spaces users. Turns out that 30 million was more about monthly visitors and expected active blogs to be only about 300,000…

Tags CMS, Microsoft, WordPress

3d Interiors Group C Portfolio

Project 22 Title Here

Post author By Razvan Neagu
Post date October 14, 2010

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3d Interiors Group C Portfolio

Project 17 Title Here

Post author By Razvan Neagu
Post date October 14, 2010

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