Content Management Systems are great tools that allow you almost complete control over your website content. However, we’ve found that a lot of users find a number of these systems difficult to use.
As a result we have been conducting some heuristic evaluations of some of the more popular Open Source systems to determine what the most significant issues are.
First off, we had a look at Joomla!
Google places is another great FREE online tool that helps promote your business. Most of us are already using Google Place pages for our business. If you are not using it as yet maybe it is something you need to consider. If you are using it, are you using it to its full potential?
Google places not only allows you to plot your business location but it also allows you to give a little bit more information about your business or service in order to entice customers! You can include a business description, photographs, business opening hours, contact information and a link back to your website. You can also categorise your business to aid your chances of being returned on search. If you have YouTube videos associated with your company up to 5 of these may be uploaded to your listing at any time.
Google collects data about your business, such as reviews from various other websites and combines this information with what you enter on your Google Place page.
Ever thought about selling online? E-commerce accounts for 26pc of turnover for Irish companies. It is a huge opportunity here, compared to 15pc in the UK and 12pc across other EU countries. Read the full report from Silicon Republic here… SMEs urged to tap into online shopping – Business | siliconrepublic.com – Ireland’s Technology News Service.
SitesToGo offer secure ecommerce website solutions, using shopping cart software such as Zen Cart and Roman Cart. All our shop sites are compatible with online payment systems such as Realex and PayPal. Twomey Butchers in Cork is one of our first online butcher shops.
Shortly after I had written this post about Google’s new app inventor I was informed that there was a phone upgrade I could use to get myself a smart phone if I so wished. Since I don’t like Apple I declined the offer of an iPhone. However I did find the prospect of an Android phone enticing so I opted for the HTC Desire .
I have to say it’s quite brilliant or ‘quietly brilliant’ as the HTC tagline has it. What is not so great however is the battery life. In fact it’s awful. If you don’t use it too much you might be able to get a full day out of it. Trouble is it’s it a lot of fun to use!
Facebook has now launched the Guide to Facebook Ads. This page was set up to give advice and tips for building effective ad campaigns on Facebook. Learn how to make your Facebook advertisement stand out and attract attention, while getting the best results for your money.
Do you know when to schedule your ads in order to reach your target audience? Do you know how to optimise your Facebook campaign? If not visit http://www.facebook.com/adsmarketing/
The guide can also be found by clicking on ‘Learn more’ in the left-hand navigation of your Facebook Ads Manager.
I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to update the design of this blog. Well I’ve just done that. I like to keep things minimal as you may have guessed so the theme is very sparse. I created the theme myself.
Some people like to mirror the exact design of their website on their blog and there is nothing wrong with that. I personally like a blog to be a bit more distinct and perhaps more about information than design. Hence the minimalism.
I did however add the word ‘blog!’ to our logo above in red – just in case there was any confusion!
VPS hosting is becoming increasingly affordable these days. We’ve had a number of clients recently who needed their own hosting solution so we advised VPS. One boon (or possible disadvantage depending on your outlook) is that you get full root access to your (virtual) machine.
Security as usual is of utmost importance in such a scenario.
One of the first things I install on a new virtual machine is an Intrusion detection system. Naturally our choice is an Open Source solution – in this case it’s Ossec HIDS. I set it up to send email notifications of any strange behaviour.
By far the most common such activity is brute force attacks. All day everyday it seems someone somewhere is trying to guess the passwords to try and break in. It’s all automated of course but it still surprises me just how persistent these people are.
So choose your passwords wisely. Especially root passwords.
Our new website @ http://www.sitestogo.biz is live. That is, our new design has been applied.
There have been a great deal of content changes also but the main point was to spruce up the look and feel.
We felt that there was too much text on the homepage of the old design and that the site look was too ‘busy’. As part of the new design we have examples of designs we like scrolling at the top of the site.
This may look a little like flash but it is entirely JavaScript based, as is
the scrolling text on the left.
I will probably change the blog look and feel soon also.
The whole notion of an ‘app’ as dreamed up by Apple has contributed greatly
to the iPhone’s success. It has been something of a gold-rush for developers
also – who knew people would be so willing to part with their hard earned cash
to put a load of useless (and some useful) applications on their phones.
An ‘app’ is nothing new of course – its simply means an application like all
applications you have on your phone or computer already.
Apple is simply very good at marketing.
One of the perceived weaknesses of Android phones is that the choice and variety of apps compared
to the iPhone is limited. In an effort to address this shortcoming Google have created a website
where the non technical can go to create their own Android app. Check out the site here:
http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/
I may look further into it myself but as of now I’m afraid I don’t have a ‘smart’ phone.
My poor old phone is still very stupid and can only do really boring things like make and receive calls!
Youtube was hit by a cross site scripting (XSS) attack over the
weekend. I expect some script kiddies were having a boring independence day so decided
to see what mischief they could get up too. It wasn’t a particularly harmful
attack. Mostly it was fans of Justin bieber who were redirected to a site
saying he had died or something.
In any case it is rather surprising to see that
one of the most popular sites on the web – owned by google no less – was vulnerable to
an attack of this sort. They fixed the vulnerability within a couple of hours.
No doubt security types will use the attack for scaremongering – “If it can happen to google” etc..