Web development, design, and site optimization.

For the past 2 months I have been working within the Custom Web Design industry, getting my first tastes of dealing directly with end customers in getting their custom designed online presence. Wow, what a roller coaster ride! But that is a post for another day.

There are many elements to getting a website online. Basically though you can break things down into 3 stages. This is what you can expect when working with my company and likely many others out there.

1. Comp/Mock-up stage: This is where we play with various ideas taken form the customer input and our own and come up with a Photoshop-made mock-up. Depending on the complexity, turn-around time on this is anywhere between 1 and 2 days.

2. Content gathering and site build: This is where we move ahead on an approved comp and build the website. We also look to the client to feed us as much content as possible. The site build takes anywhere from 5-7 business days. Getting content takes anywhere from hours to months :).

3. Site publish and ongoing maintenance: The website is published live with no less than 75% of the content. The site is then only requiring random maintenance on a monthly basis, content changes mostly. Clients can contact us pretty frequently on a monthly basis, any changes that are requested will be applied within 1 to 3 business days depending on complexity and how much is already on our plate.

My target for all my clients from start to finish is 30 to 45 days for the entire build cycle. That is from our first call to the site being online.

A non ecommerce website will costs you $785.00 up front and then $99.00 per month. Ecommerce cost you $985.00 up front and then $195.00 monthly. The monthly fee on both packages takes care of your website, hosting, domain name, privacy protection, and up to 10 email accounts.

Service is all about providing a convenience to someone. A good service will make both the client and the seller happy. A service doesn’t have to re-invent the wheel. In most cases it just needs to fulfill a need that the client has.

I choose to pay someone to cut my lawn, not because I can’t do it myself, but because I rather spend that time with my still less than 1 year old son. I am happy, the guy who takes my money is happy.

A common question I get as a blogger is about setting up a Wordpress blog. Again and again I answer it. Well this week it dawned on me that maybe I could and should make a few dollars off of this. I know how to setup Wordpress, others don’t and don’t want to even bother learning how to. So its a win-win situation.

If you are interested in getting setup with your own blog without all the hassle, visit:

SetupMyBlog.dropthemike.com

You don’t have to be real technical these days to get started on creating a pretty elaborate Web project. I say web project because I am trying to be as broad as possible. I am talking about creating a blog, a website, a community portal, a classified listings page, an ecommerce site, etc., etc. You don’t have to do a thing these days to install some of the more popular Open Source web scripts that exist. All you have to do is login to your Web Hosting Control Panel, find and launch Fantastico, and click on the scripts you want it to automatically install for you.

Fantastico is a commercial script library that automates the installation of web applications to a website. Fantastico scripts are executed from the administration area of a website control panel such as cPanel. Fantastico’s web site claims that they are installed on ten thousand servers, with a million users worldwide, which would make it the leading product of its type.

No need for you to configure databases, just worry about setting the admin usernames and passwords. Easy stuff.

Now if your web hosting company does not provide you with Fantastico, shame on them. Most hosts these days make it a standard part of their offering. Netenberg.com, the company behind Fantastico, lists the following as official partners of theirs. Though there are many more providers who, though don’t have a direct partnership, do provide Fatastico.

For a complete listing of the web scripts Fantastico is currently offering click here.

In running a blog you need to continually benchmark yourself. Whether you use one or many methods of doing so is not important as long as you are consistent with the tools that you use. Myself, I use AWStats, Google Analytics, and Alexa.com. Oh and recently I also added to the mix WebsiteGrader.com although this is more of a consolidation of things like Google Rank and Alexa rank just to name a few.

As of this post, my rank on Alexa is: 693,06262

That places dropthemike.com in the top 2.17 % of all websites.

What other useful information does Alexa provide me?

How about where my users are from:

Being Canadian I am surprised that Canada is listed only as the third most popular source country for visiting my site. I can also see my traffic rank within specific countries. Apparently Dropthemike.com is big in Tanzania :)

When I first got into blogging, like many I stumbled across the blog of the famous John Chow. Famous for being a supposedly wealthy blogger as a result of his blog (s). At the time I did find some use in a number of his post. Some rubbed me the wrong way and left me thinking he must be bogus and just full of himself.

While I don’t question the fact that he has made blogging a main source of his income, I do question just how much he says he makes. But that is not the point of my post today. At the end of the day I do have some respect for the work he has done.

I visited his blog again for the first time in months and came across one of his latest post. This post reminded me of why I stayed away in the first place, he seems to push one “scam” after another. Sprinkled in between these scams he has some good post though, which is unfortunate, because I have and will continue to miss them due to hating to weed through the crap.

In his post he is essentially pushing a $400.00 “Traffic Secrets” course. Obviously he is getting some sort of bounty off this. The whole this looks like a sham.

I posted the following comment to the article.

“Looks like more BS to me. They will not get my hard earned cash. I don’t get how these types of programs actually have an legs or get any traction. The site looks like a scam, it looks like all the other scam sites.

Like with anything else, work hard, be patient and persistent, and you will eventually see results. It won’t be overnight like some will make you believe is possible. But in the long run it will be worth it and you will likely have a better understanding of both yourself and the running of your website.”

I checked today to see how much John Chow fanboy reactions I got. To my suprise I got none, in fact i saw other comments that more or less echoed what I said.

Read the entire post here: http://www.johnchow.com/the-next-level-with-traffic-secrets-20/

So, you are new to blogging and/or you are looking to upgrade from your existing blogging platform. Without a doubt your next move should be to run your blog on Wordpress. You have essentially 4 options.

One, you can sign up for a free account at Wordpress.com.

Two, you can sign up for a managed blog account where a hosting company takes care of installing and managing all aspects of the blog for you, including templates and plug-ins.

Three, you can install Wordpress yourself on your own server or through a hosting package you may have with any provider.

Four, you can find a hosting provider who provides a software suite known as ‘Fantastico’. Fantastico allows you to, with just a couple of clicks, install a number of scripts including Worpress.

For 95% of you I would suggest looking at either option number 2 or number 4. They provide you with both ease and near-endless customization. With that said however, you may find yourself for whatever reason, in a situation where you do need to manually install Wordpress. For those occasions, here is the “5-minute install” guide:

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven’t already.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
4. Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details.
5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server:
   • If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.
   • If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you’d like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called “blog”, you should rename the directory called “wordpress” to “blog” and upload it to the root directory of your web server.Hint: If your FTP transfer is too slow read how to avoid FTPing at : Step 1: Download and Extract.
6. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser.
   • If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php
   • If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

That’s it! WordPress should now be installed.

Dropthemike.com uses Twitter as a key tool in promoting itself to the masses. I have experienced great success with it. I have found that making a quick post like “the best of” or something like that brings in more clicks than maybe a posts with more substance. I do use them to drive new traffic to my site. I do however try and post articles of substance as well. I am looking to not only get clicks, but also return clicks to my blog.

A great post on this subject that I read today is below. Do yourself a favor and read the excerpt below and then check out the full article:

How does that make you any better or different than mass media?

These are the types of Blog posts that get clicked on (and commented on):

- 25 ways to create an A-list Blog.
- The five things people on Twitter will never tell you.
- How Social Media wins during this financial crisis.
- What Paris Hilton knows about Personal Branding (that you don’t).
- 5 things you should always do on MySpace.

(all of these were made up).

Being provocative and bold is what sells newspapers (and it also sells magazines, TV show, advertising, etc…). Most Bloggers, Podcasters and individuals trying to build some kind of presence in any and all of the online social networks know how to write (and be) provocative or sensationalist, because human beings react to visceral and raw statements (like the ones above)… and that’s how it is in a sea of Blog posts populating your Google Reader. Take a quick look through your own feeds and decide for yourself…

FULL ARTICLE