Aldebaran Web Design - Newsletter 1
Welcome to Aldebaran Web Design’s first newsletter!
(if you don’t want to get these in the future, please simply email me)
Want More Website Traffic?
I wrote a huge article on everything I’ve learned and wanted to say to a new website owner after I’ve finished their site on how to get visitors to their new website. (go here to read the article). Be prepared, it’s long. After a few interactions with a representative from YellowBook.com, who was heavily pushing me to recommend pay-per-click to my clients, I wanted to present what I thought was a fair and balanced explanation of the two approaches: organic vs pay-per-click. Anyway, read the article and send feedback!
Tired of getting Contact Form Spam?
A new client of mine wanted to prevent spam via her contact form. This is not the same as email spam, where bots crawl over your site and grab your email address (if I’ve designed your site, I’ve already encoded your email address using unicode to help prevent that). This is when webbots automatically fill your contact form with websites they want you to visit (usually slimy ones) and submit this form to you over and over again. I was getting tired of getting these (2-3 a day), but wanted something that would not make it too hard for “real” people to contact me. Many websites use “CAPTCHA”, which is a little program designed to tell humans from webbots. I’ve now installed one of these on my own contact form. It randomly generates two single digit numbers and ask you to add them before submitting the form. It seemed easier than asking people to decipher difficult to read letters and numbers. Anyway, you can see how it works on my contact form…just put “this is a test” or something like that in the comments field. Try it out…put in the wrong sum, etc. If you’re not getting contact form spam, don’t worry about doing this…but if you are getting it, I can help put a stop to it.
Preventing WordPress Blog Spam:
While we’re on the topic of spam prevention, if you have a WordPress blog installed on your website, be sure to activate the built-in plugin called “Akismet”. As I’m writing this, my own Akismet has blocked over 400 spam attacks on my blog. Pretty good!
Google AdWords:
I’m just beginning to get my feet wet helping two clients manage their Google AdWords pay-per-click campaigns. I’m writing down what I learn as I go (you can read my still-under-construction article here). It’s a fascinating process and Google has a impressive (and a bit overwhelming) amount of information on how to run an AdWords campaign. Now, you know from my experience with CitySearch, I’m wary of pay-per-click. But the amount of control Google AdWords gives you is just awesome. The jury’s still out, but so far, it’s been quite a learning experience!
For clients with eCommerceTemplates (ECT) Stores:
- Admin Area Login Alert and or Lock Out. If you don’t log into your admin area often, there is a variable that can be set to alert you if someone tries to log in to your store. Likewise, there’s also a variable that prevents logging in. I can set one or both of these variables for you, which means you’d need to contact me in order to log into your admin area.
- New Versions: ECT is continually putting out new versions of their store carts, and you can get free upgrades for 6 months after purchase. The upgrade process does take a bit of time, around 30 minutes, and longer if we’ve made custom changes to your cart’s files. But if something isn’t working right, let me know and I’ll see if a newer version has fixed the issue.
(Click here to view the archive of old newsletters)
Jill--------------
J. Olkoski
Aldebaran Web Design, Seattle
Jill Olkoski has a BS in Engineering, a BS in Computer Science and a MA in Clinical Psychology. She delights in using her advanced technical, psychological and interpersonal skills to help small business owners develop cost-effective and successful websites.
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