In the first instalment I mentioned this is not a negative process, rather a documentation of what factors contribute to not getting things done. Sure there’s lots of stuff on ISV blogs, the likes of Seth Godwin and others who tell us how to get things done, but very few are forthcoming on what doesn’t work.  Hence this little series as it’s applied to me.

To begin this post I’d like to point out that amongst a negative array positive elements do in fact exist.  For example it never occurred to me ever that I would end up doing website, blog and SEO consulting for businesses and yet through my work in building an ISV using CMS tools like WordPress that exactly what has happened and it’s reasonably lucrative too.  I state this to make it very clear that the objective here is ultimately to underline a contention that failure is in fact a good thing.

A good thing because from it other opportunities arise that are often unsuspected and sometimes worthwhile.  A good thing because failure does not mean a cessation or end to a process, as is often assumed by people, but rather a platform, a foundation if you will, upon which to build sturdier structures.

The reason I have not managed to embrace “release early and iterate” easily as an ISV is because, principally, time became an issue in my life for a variety of reasons and not forgetting I tend to be a perfectionist to the point where productivity is engulfed in a conflagration of anxiety and wheel spinning.  The latter issue being a serious design flaw in the current build – Version 47.1 – of me.

In reality there are degrees of separation in the kind of failures we experience in life.  It is true one persons failure is another persons meat.  It’s also true that it is easy to over emphasise the importance of failure in our lives rather than the value of failure.  In other words we frequently fail – that word! – to utilize and draw value from the experience.  Thanks to the 30 Day development exercise in June 2008 I learned I can produce content online very quickly and easily, that said content is sought after by people and that the SEO advantages of content are extremely powerful and virtually unrecognised by most businesses let alone ISV’s.

Avoiding Reinventing The Wheel – Your Doing It Wrong

As software developers we’ve spoken for decades about avoiding reinventing the wheel.  Time is generally saved by, for example, using a component library, to circumvent having to code each aspect from scratch whether that be a GUI library or an engine.  I admit in all the years of written software, before and after OOP, I have never experienced a situation where this could go so utterly wrong before.

Amongst that “wrong”  the concept has distinct elements of success without doubt.  I’m not suggesting for a minute you should not invest in third party libraries. In fact I still urge you to do so. Sure, not all third-party libraries are created equally.  I have incorporated excellent libraries – such as Krypton Components from Component Factory, which are beautiful functional libraries saving me oodles of time.  I use and heartily recommend them.

I’ve also purchased expensive libraries that have cost thousands of dollars over the course of the last two years that have utterly failed to deliver the value expected or even implied by their developers.  Seriously – if a developer offering a library is using a version of your IDE dating more than two versions ago you are probably going to have some serious issues.  If the developer is supporting a technology, like Active-X, and that support is geared if not laser targeted to that extinct technology you are going to have serious problems.  If the developer is incorporating yet another third party commercial library into their own commercial library – with no source code option available – you are going to have serious problems.  If you have to switch IDE’s to support the component library after the developer tells you your current IDE is supported in the advertising but not really in implementation then you are going to have problems.  If the developer tells you the functions documented and advertised aren’t really available in the library for real world use or at all, then you are going to have problems.  If the developers domain knowledge is less than 35% of your own then you are going to have problems.  Be aware that your testing of complex libraries may not be sufficient tests and that issues frequently arise only after you move beyond the sample code supplied by the developer.

OK.  A series of fail in the paragraph above.  The solution is simple.  Who is using the library?  Even though you may know the developer through an organisation, as was the case for me, who is actually using the library?  Go look at their customers and see what they are developing.  At what standard are those products?  Are they rebranding sample code projects supplied by the developer and labelling them a “product”.   If they are doing that, or the developer is leery of providing customer references then the solution is obvious and simple.  R-U-N and keep your credit card in your pocket!!

The next element in the solution is to know when to cut your losses if you didn’t apply the suggestion above.  If after three to six months the code you’re writing is not happening due to the library it’s time to drop it, arguing past time but it’s difficult when you have invested time and money.  However at the end it’s cheaper to cut your losses on this than to continue trying to make a silk purse out of a sow with swine flu.

To conclude for this instalment – negatives happen, fails occur.  They are not signals to quit in all instances, or even most.  They are grist for our respective mills.  You might have three months or thirty years experience in an industry but you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to have failures.  It is not the end of the world.

Scott Kane

“Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely.”
~ Henry Ford

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To begin – this is NOT a negative rant.  It has a positive bent, but it is self analytical and brutally honest.

Regular readers will remember June 2008 where a bunch of software developers elected to “build a product in 30 days”.  Kind of the bungee jumping of rapid release and marketing. Those that followed will also be aware that only a handful of developers actually made it to the end in the sense that they actually released a product.

Sane commentary on the lack of value in the exercise for business building aside for now – yours truly was NOT one of those who made it.  In terms of 30 days it was an unequivocal FAIL for our products release.  The launch never happened because the product wasn’t completed – and still is not completed.  It gets close and then I find myself drawing back.  I’m going to cover some of these reasons over time.

During the course of 2008 I switched audio libraries from my own engine, to an expensive commercial engine and midstream during the 30 days to another commercial product which I still use but which has at times brought me mega pain due to a variety of “undocumented features” and downright agony with documented features that simply were not there or failed to operate reliably if at all.  The value of the latter has improved a great deal since my submission of bug reports.  However submitting bug reports on every other feature almost weekly for an expensive development library is counter productive over the longer term for a variety of mega obvious reasons.  The first and foremost one being the reason for using a custom library – to simplify and prevent wheel reinvention is utterly negated.

By December 2008, as documented in this blog, I switched from Delphi after 13 years to Microsoft .Net.  From a technical standpoint this was a sane move.  However, there is a tapering FAIL attached to that sanity in that the paradigm shift after 13 years is massive.  During my 30 years association with programming I have been forced to learn and apply, last time I bothered to count, twenty three programming languages.  Most of those are almost and in some cases entirely extinct now.  It’s true I figured Microsoft’s .Net was just another language to add to my belt – “three months, she’ll be right mate.”   FAIL.  Superficially three months is adequate, but not for complexity and not for truly commercial grade products.

But Wait – There’s More!

With all this on your plate award yourself a cigar if you figured you’d not take on anything extra.   I’ll forgo the cigar as I did the opposite.

Politics.   I’m here to tell you it’s impossible, if not utterly ludicrous to immerse yourself in politics while developing any business, let alone a software business.   Impossible if you’re serious about either and impossible if the political party you’re involved with is in serious “gasping for air” barely surviving mode.  Utterly bloody pointless if the factions to the far left, and ostensibly the far right, are united against the “centre” in an exercise of $%^^&&& (click the link for the definition and explanation of that omitted expletive in the political context – it’s point 1 of the list on the definition page, an ugly phrase but sadly very apt)  for their own ends.   This week the Australian people go to the polls and this time I have to decide whom I vote for, because this time I can’t vote for myself as I’m not running.  To be an endorsed candidate for the senate and then not run is a difficult conundrum.   It is a bit of a FAIL even though the reasons for not are damn good ones.  One tends to feel like a football player on the benches with a broken leg.  You can only watch but you can’t do anything.

Over on his blog Andy Bryce recently wrote an article providing commentary from ISV’s who, for a variety of reasons and a variety of levels, failed.  They are honest and there’s a lot to learn from them.  I seriously contemplated submitting something when Andy asked for ISV’s to volunteer stories.  It’s worth the read and it’s in context with what I intend to do here on this blog for a while.  In short I’m going to document the FAILS – my own.  The intention is to motivate me to do something about it and if that documentation assists even one other aspiring or existing Micro or larger ISV then the FAILS become worthwhile.

Andy’s article opens with:

“No physician is really good before he has killed one or two patients.” – Proverb

Read his article, the ISV’s are brutally honest.  My intention is to document my own over time in a little more detail.

Scott Kane

“I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong”

Benjamin Franklin

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While each point is very good I particularly liked the line:

“Contacts” are not nearly as valuable as you think. Relationships are the key.  People who trust you and like you are very likely to help you.  In addition, they are very likely to induce their own relationships to help you.”

Do yourself a favour and read the full article on Andy’s blog by Clicking Here.

Scott Kane

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Fast-forward to July and now August.  I started to notice during July a definite drop in speed on Slicehost.  A whole percentage point in fact.  What had been quick was more sluggish, though certainly quicker than most sites.  Now that Google has admitted site speed is a part of their ranking factor for websites – read Matt Cutts article, he suggests this is not a panic issue – and given I saw results for myself in the additional speed verses rank I figured it wouldn’t hurt to play with what was reportedly a quicker service recently – Linode.

Naturally – still running on NginX and loving the server response with that.  Still miles faster than Apache.

The results was a massive speed difference.  Still awaiting third party confirmation on the exact figures – which I’ll post when I have them for comparison – but according to Google webmaster tools we’ve moved up – and to quote “This is faster than 73% of sites”.  Up from 64%.  Which was, to my mind, worth the effort of trialling it using this blog – as is my custom.  It was gratifying indeed to receive an email message from Steph G at FollowSteph noting a sudden change in SERP for this blog.  So – over came the other sites. 

Adverts?  WTF?

Yes.  It’s true, your eyes are not deceiving you.  I’ve placed two adverts for products on this blog.  I’ve said time and time again I hate Google adds, they are messy and spammy looking to my taste.  So there are still none of those here.  Rather the adds are for two products I both use and heartily endorse.  Being Woothemes – arguably the best of the best in WordPress themes and WPMUDEV for stunningly powerful WordPress plugins.   Between these two subscriptions – I have developer accounts with both – I have streamlined the number of plugins I use on this blog and my websites, such as MixAction, and increased their search engine spider readability to boot.  Lovely clean tools.  So I’m happy to endorse them, and yep – if you click the links they do drop a cookie and they are affiliate links.  Given the amount of traffic I get from non mISV’s or ISV’s for articles on rip-off sites like NowDownload it seemed reasonable to spread the load a little in terms of costs.

Seriously though.  If you’re looking for decent themes and plugins as ISV’s you can’t go past these two.  I tried the others, like ThemeForest and so on, certainly a lot cheaper, but frankly most of them are simply not up to par at all.  The backend for Woothemes is a delight, the plugins from WPMUDEV are fantastic (they have a great shopping cart in beta too).  Haven’t met anything close to these.  I’m about to trial the Thesis theme soon, which I’ve also licensed and which has caused an enormous  row in WordPress and GPL circles due to it’s non distributive license – recently partially revoked – and while it’s certainly a clean theme it’s also an ornery one.  It’s power is also it’s biggest drawback when it comes to time.  Matt Cutts uses it on his blog, as do a number of other notaries and I may trial it here once I trick something original up with it.

Finally…

I’ve succumbed to the Dark Site and purchased an Apple iPhone – the 3G, the aerial on the 4th generation will be a problem for me out in the sticks beyond Melbourne’s outer edge.  Frankly I’m enamoured.  I generally loath mobile phones, but this ones actually useful.  Synchronizing appointments, contacts, mail etc with Outlook is great and the built in iPod is awesome as a car player, cars being something else I replaced recently, upgrading from a little four cylinder Nissan Pulsar to a nice comfortable 4 litre six cylinder Ford Falcon.

Scott Kane

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I’ve been fairly busy coding and haven’t updated here and I wanted to take the opportunity to both thank and recommend a service that certainly made it painless for me and seems to be going from excellent and moving beyond.

First up.  Some stat’s.

The above score is for all sites, given they all run off of a WordPress MU installation (source is a once a month emailed report that is sent to me automatically from WebCEO.com who monitor the site).  The difference between the figures above and all previous hosting arrangments is significant.  Previous hosting (both shared, VPS and Dedicated) ranked 3-4 out of 10, whereas you can see above the score is now 7/10.  The DNS lookup in particular is excellent.  Connect time is great, hosting ping and download time could be improved on (I’m working on that), but reasonable given it all comes of off one single (though dedicated) MySQL database.  A pure HTML site would probably score higher and I’m pretty sure the site detects the tool WebCEO uses to test as a bot, and so never serves cached pages to it – which means the human site visitor will often experience faster load time.

Note – the site uses no control panel.  So there’s no behemoth idling away the CPU cycles and pinging the database server, just WordPress and the SMTP server (POP email is hosted using GoogleApps, which is working out extremely well so far).

Some of the things I’m looking to do is run the WordPress MU “sites” on their own databases (mutli-database), which takes a bit of fiddling.  If the Aussie dollar returns to sane levels (it dipped this last two weeks by 10 cents and is fluctuating like a compass that can’t find North) I may host those databases on a separate slice.

The recommendation I want to make?  The VPS Bible. (note – not a “paid or affiliate link”).  For those who are not afraid of the command line there’s step by step tutorials that can’t be beaten.  Those are my recommendation.  For those feeling less adventurous (and believe me you’re missing out if you don’t at least have a play at setting up the good old manual way) he’s produced the first two of a series of automated scripts that, apart from a few edits to variables, will set the whole shebang up for you (only just added last week).

If you’re looking to setup a lean, mean, website on a VPS and don’t want the resource pain of what is otherwise a superfluous control panel then get over to the VPS Bible for the best $15 investment you’ll make this year.  Tell “The_Guv” Scott sent you.

Next post I’m going to discuss how all this has affected SEO – and why micro ISV’s should care (hint – Google’s telling Pork Pies on server response speed vs SEO and Matt Cutts has admitted it).

Scott Kane

“May as well be here we are as where we are.”

-Australian Aboriginal saying

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This post is the first one for this blog running under SliceHost.  It’s been quite a month.  I’m fed up – frankly – with webhosts!!

Now, it’s no secret that shared hosting is a busted ass for anybody getting more than 5 visitors a week and a couple of HTML pages.  But it seems to have gotten worse.  Indeed I’d argue at this point that the vast majority of the hosting industry is an enormous joke perpetrated in a manner to create endless sign-ups of new fodder – but not designed for anybody to stick around.  So….

But we added “unlimited storage!!”  

Hmmm.  On those new fangled unlimited hard drives nobody has invented yet I suppose?

If somebody offers you a VPS without root access R-U-N!!   Because you can bet you're not the only customer hosted on the image.

Dedicated – note to whom-ever.  GD’s (you can work out the host from the initials, right?) dedicated aren’t what you’d expect paying for a dedicated server.  See – they store your passwords and access them.  They use them to enter the site, on the pretext of looking for naughty things – and turn off things like – hmmm – XCache and other PHP optimizers because “they are a security risk”.  Oh – and reboot you without asking permission, forgetting to make sure the reboot is clean and not hung.  Oh yes!

VPS’ – again – with “burstable” RAM.  Sounds like a plan – huh?  Sure.  Until you work out how much RAM you’re really getting.  CPU’s that are so fragmented with stacked images pulling on them you’re lucky if you can get Apache to deliver an empty text file, let alone a web page.

Some years back now Patrick McKenzie  waxed lyrical about SliceHost.  So did a bunch of other dev’s.  Of course, I took one look at the “setup instructions” and tutorials and thought – bloody hell!  And ran the other way – being endowed with, clearly, smarter smarts, I figured I’d let others (hosts) do the hard yards for me.

Well – I was wrong – Pat And Others Were Right.

After a certain host switched off PHP optimization, turned off the firewall and “forgot to turn it back on” (no harm done – but bugger that!) and a rather unpleasant, internal, political campaign that targeted not only myself (on that score I couldn’t and don’t give a damn – Elton was wrong – Saturday’s nights aren’t made for fighting, every night is), to some extent family and without question my business I needed to find a reliable host outside of Australia because of the fallout with that.

That’s when Mike Wilson  gave me the push I needed.  I mean, seriously – if a POM can do this – hell!  So can I. 

(aside – Mike’s a friend of mine and “POM” is a jest – before the PC varmints swarm the comment section).

So I paid for a slice, rolled up my sleeves and – hate to admit it – had a ball!

It’s like taking a time trip back to the 1980’s on the command line in DOS, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it (the command line, not DOS).  There’s a bunch of cool tools I’m going to post about to assist, an yeah – the obvious reference to stuff like putty – but also some nice graphical tools for those of us chained to Windows, too.

OK.  So that’s the gist of it. 

Enter NGinX, a replacement for Apache.  It’s lean, it’s mean, it’s fast.  Takes a little getting used to (do not install from the binaries, compile the source and save mega pain later with updates and if you’re following any of the many tutorials to get things going for the first time then your paths are going to match the tutorials and that’s one less issue to fuss with).

Of course, not to be outdone here in the “config the rig” stakes I’ve opted to install WordPress MU using sub domains and then mapping fully qualified domains to those.  That means one WordPress install for 19 sites.  Right now only the core site (with an offline page running presently), a couple of redundant domains I had laying around – for testing purposes – and this blog of course, are hosted here.  Tomorrow, and the coming days I’ll be upping the stakes and moving the other domains across.   

WordPress MU is a nice piece of kit.  In the next month or so WordPress 3.0 will be released and the merge of the standard edition and MU will be public.  That’s going to upset a lot of shared hosts who don’t allow people to run MU (a growing number) as users discover they can host “sites” on one installation without a $20 a month control panel.  Expect some refugees…

OK.  I can see ‘nix commands when I close my eyes, so I’m going to end it here, will update over the coming days as sites come online here.

Oh – and the new Doctor Who series.  What a bloody disappointment! 

Scott Kane

“Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.”
(Sam Ewing)

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It is the only analogy my tired mind could think up tonight, so you’re stuck with it, and being stuck by Vegemite is extremely icky, so don’t try it at home. 

For the record I’m still coding MixAction.  It’s been an incredibly long time but the team of beta testers, now 50 in number, will soon be pulling it apart.  Between this, our three other products (two released and one also in development), politics, family issues, server security issues (China, Russia, Romania, ROC, South Korea, Indonesia – all blocked now – reducing traffic by around 3/4) I’m also seriously looking at relocating my place of residence and office, one or both.

Whinge, whine over – for now…

A highly recommended read for start-ups from 37 Signals,  the people who brought us Basecamp and Ruby.  Called “Getting Real”.  The links on this article BTW contain no affiliate codes.  You can read the book online free or order it as a paperback:  Click Here

I did both, read it for free and then ordered a copy which came a few weeks ago.

Personally I found it to be refreshing.   It’s written in a style that reflects the way 37 Signals run their business.  Clean and simple, just the facts, nothing wordy, some of it in stark contrast to many similar and/or conventional start-up books.

Conclusion.  A must read.  Personally I think it’s gold.  Your mileage may vary but if it contains one thing that assists you then buy the paperback.  Encourage them to write more.  The industry needs open and honest, if not at times “arrogant” tomes.

The “arrogance” BTW is relative.  To my mind they are merely using the same technique in their writing style as they use in building their software and their business.  Or to paraphrase from the book – “because it doesn’t matter”.

<Updated>  Reason for blocking countries above is the incredible amount of hack attempts coming from those regions recently.  Don’t know what the trigger was.  Side benefit – spam on website and blog comment sections reduced to a trickle.

Scott Kane

“Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.”

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Those of you who’ve been marketing on the Internet since the 1990’s will remember the hazy far off days when “meta descriptions” where SEO magic, the biggest news on the news sites was somebody called Monica and a mysterious Presidential stain on her dress, and Linux was going to take over the desktop within 12 to 18 months.

In 2010 things are different, right?  Meta descriptions are out, nobody remembers Monica – or her dress,  and Linux has taken over the desktop.

Actually, that last line is complete bollocks.  It should read nobody cares about Monica, her dress or that President and Linux-ists are still predicting the takeover of the desktop in – just another couple of years (they are lovable idiots).

A preamble on SEO Black/Grey/Blue/White.  If you read this, or any other site with similar content, looking for clues on how to game the system AND STUFF THINGS UP FOR ALL OF US then I am hoping the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits and your chooks (chickens) turn into Emus and peck your dunny (toilet) down.

But Meta Descriptions?

They’re back, in a sense.  So are meta keywords too. Not in the same way we used them in the 1990’s, but more subtle and much, much more powerful for ISV websites.

Meta Descriptions are those snippets of text you see in search results beneath a site link.  Some time back Google said they didn’t use them as a ranking factor and nobody seemed to bother anymore – except me, well, almost.  Meta Keywords are tags embedded in HTML and designed to give a search engine an anchor on which to determine what a site is about.

Search engines evolved, Google in particular, and their methods of parsing text for relevancy evolved right along with them.  It was only natural that as the SEO spammers abused Meta Descriptions and more often Meta Keywords that they’d be relegated to the scrapheap along with pure HTML websites and the “Dancing Baby”.

However a couple of things have changed of late.  Google has started Personalized Search, basically using cookies to show you content you searched and clicked last time, and CMS software such as Joomla and in particular WordPress (there are other platforms of course, but for brevity we’ll call them all CMS).

These two factors turn the table on both of these meta tools.

First – search engine results.  A page that returns a relevant, logical synopsis – genuine sizzle and not fake stuffing – via it’s Meta Description is more likely to be clicked on than those sites who don’t bother or shove a bunch of keywords in there -which mean nothing logical to humans.

Second – CMS software uses the concept of tags and categories.  Both of these, due to “pretty” or “SEO friendly” page naming are rich follows for the search engine IF the content they contain is relevant.  Robots love content and rich links.  Be nice to them, don’t abuse them and they can and do look after you in turn.

Frequently CMS software allows these pages to easily have Meta Descriptions based on their content either auto inserted from the content (best) or entered by the site owner (don’t be tempted to scam here – you’ll loose).

Tags, using plug-ins in a CMS package can be turned into Meta Keywords.  Two years of experimenting with this has paid off.  The formula is simple:

• The Page Link accurately describes the page content.

• The Meta Description accurately describes or summarizes the page content.
• The Meta Tags provide links to other relevant pages and perform a minor role as Meta Tags (requires automation for best results).  The reason here, as far as I can tell, is purely reinforcement.  On their own the Meta Tags are useless – almost.  But combined they seem to have an effect.  Valuable if inserted automaticaly from content.

You’ll notice from the above the word “relevant” is used in each bullet point.  That’s because, at the end of the day, relevancy, hard work and honesty increasingly count more in SEO – though they have always counted for something – than ever before.

In fact, these items probably make up most of the value of content rich websites to the engines.  All of my tags and meta keywords on my sites, and of course meta descriptions, are inserted automatically.  The tags, unless I specify otherwise, are checked via automation with Yahoo and scored on what people are searching for.  Often some odd ball tags/meta keywords are inserted.  But you’d be surprised at the combinations people use when searching.

Keep in mind – at all times though – that irrelevant traffic is irrelevant.  Try and constrain yourself to the people you are trying to market to.  Nobody needs bandwidth soaks from streams of disinterested clicks.

Scott Kane

——————————–

Q. What do you call an xhtml document with a spade in it’s head?
A. <head>a spade</head>

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1. Google Local Search

If you sell local specifically this is critical.  Not going to be helpful for those targeting internationally though.

2 Webpage Load Time

There have been some hints from Google’s Matt Cutts that how fast a website takes to load may affect its ranking.  In other words the faster a site loads the better the chance of getting a decent rank for your niche keywords.  Some things about Google really get my goat.  For small companies server load time can be extremely hard to manage.  Mostly because the majority of small ISV’s are on either VPS’ on overloaded networks, shared hosting or a little dedicated box hidden in the water closet of a datacenter somewhere in downtown Dallas.

However them’s the breaks.  Looks like this could get important with the theory being concocted that fast loading websites are delivered by a “reputable web host and fast internet connection.”  Which says quite a bit about the hosting industry. 

3. Social Media

As the world grapples with the social and moral implications of “social media” you don’t need to be Nostrildamus <misspelling intentional> to see it’s the new shiny thing for 2010, as it was in 2009.  In theory social media has become an essential tool to reach out, communicate, build trust and build relationships with consumers.  It’s also a phenomenal time sink waiting to suck in the unwary into futile exchanges.  Use it carefully – but use it.  Facebook and Twitter in particular are proving so far to be worthwhile sources for secondary results in the engines.  Buzz words emerging = “Micro Targeting” and “Personalization”.

4. Mobile Users

Mobile communications is a still growing market that’s already significant.  Despite Apple’s marketing destroying the definition of the industries abbreviation “App” for application – I’m already meeting consumers correcting me in conversations for saying I’m writing an “app” – “For the iPhone!!”, they shout enthused.  When  I answer “no , for the PC”  they declare “…if it’s not  for an iPhone it’s not an “app”".  Grrrrrrr!

You are going to have to make sure your site loads cleanly at 800×600.  Just as 22” widescreen becomes almost entry level some ning nong shrinks our real estate again.  Some folks seem to be opting for a compromise here and getting and using a sub domain like mobile.xyz.com and sticking something friendly in there.  If you’re running an RSS driven site this is easy – but be careful of duplicate data lest the Google Police get on your case.

5 Analytically

I’m not a fan of Google Analytics as such – mostly because I cringe at the idea of Google having my data and the EULA they wrote to accompany it.  But Google isn’t the only player in town and if you’re like me and hate external data collection of your logs then you can take a look at PIWIK   – Click Here to investigate – It’s free, open source and it runs on your own server.  Adds a load to your MySQL databases and CPU but if you’ve got the resources available it’s quite a good tool (I run it in conjunction with standard Apache logs and some WordPress stats programs).

The idea of analytic tools is to answer the “how” as opposed to the “why”.  What that means is you can see how many and who visited a page on your site but it won’t necessarily tell you why they didn’t actually buy anything.  Don’t hold your breath while waiting for the latter tool. 

Dissecting your data is however, jokes aside, a powerful way of understanding visitor reactions to websites and pages.  Things such as trends, stickiness of a site and geo-location to name but a few can go a long way towards helping us understand our customers.  From this we can improve and test – or rinse and repeat if you like – and improve the visitors experience and with diligence increase sales.

6  www vs. http

Here’s an odd one from the people who brought you “WordPress”.  WordPress MU doesn’t support “www”.  It will redirect you to “http” without the “www” every time.  Sure you can hack the PHP but next update it’ll change back again as your hacks are overwritten.  This doesn’t seem to have surfaced in the single site/blog edition of standard WordPress yet – but as the code is now merged it’s probably only a matter of time.

Why?  Security?  Big Internet wide bug?  Nope.  Because “www” is unnecessary according the FOS Unix-head developers at Automatic.  I love WordPress, don’t get me wrong and have a lot of respect for the team who produce it – but come on!  Why redefine a web convention for the hell of it.  Because it’s “unnecessary” is not a reason.  It’s dunderheaded and bubble headed and an instance of the worst kind of geeky arrogance.

The point of raising this is that if it becomes mainstream in CMS’ such as WordPress it’s going to mess your Google XML sitemaps up as Google gets narky about addresses that redirect.  That means telling Google for every site you run that the site “name” has changed.  For one site it’s not a big deal if you generate your XML sitemap automatically.  It’s a bloody nightmare if you do them by hand or run many sites.

7. Organic Search

Some folks are tipping organic search will become less important as some of the item points above – which only scratch the surface of “emerging” things to watch and do.  Personally I disagree.  Given there are indications of Google, Bing and Yahoo using bits of meta tags in pages again – not like the 90’s, but not ignoring them either, as they told us they were not that long ago – and the proclivity for consumers to gradually become inured to advertising due to seeing Google ads at every other site they visit, it’d be nutty to ignore organic search, in fact, it might just be an edge for some folks.

8. Download Sites

If you’re still trying to use these to “optimize” the engines for your product and, as most do, slack off on the SEO and social networking then you’re going to be overtaken in many instances by those who don’t bother with the download sites and have moved on.  Get over it – the engines recognize these sites for what they are – it’s time we all did too.

Scott Kane

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“A man was running late for  the office one day, so he was exceeding the speed limit along the freeway.

The next thing he knows his wife rings up & says that she’s just seen on the TV that there’s a maniac speeding down the wrong side of the freeway.

The man replies:

“It’s not just one, it’s all of them!!”

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One of the things I love about Australia is our unique wildlife.  One of the things I hate about Australia are mega venomous spiders – and Bull Ants!!

I mean – check out the sucker on the left – the ant, not the guy holding the slide – I grew up with these sods.  I learnt very early on that you don’t stick fire crackers down Bull Ant nests for a laugh.  It’s painful and terrifying as these guys are rated as one of the biggest, most primitive, dumbest, most  aggressive species on the planet!  In fact – if you see one – go immediately the other way.  Of course, if it sees you, expect to be chased by it.  It lives to bite.  After a Wildfire, and all the other forest creatures are deceased, bank on the Bull Ants to survive.  In the extreme survivalist stakes Bull Ants have one over cockroaches – an intact standing army!

The “Fight or Flight” mechanism exists in most Earth creatures.

Except Bull Ants.  When they took the course on behavioural science they only got as far as “Fight!” – and then flunked out of school.

In a moment I’ll get to the Social Media Bull Ant syndrome, but here’s a breif explanation on what a Bull Ant actually is.

Bull ants are large with long, straight, powerful jaws and a potent venom-loaded sting. Many species of bull ants have bright red or orange colours on the head or abdomen. There are about 90 species of bull ants in Australia with diverse behaviours and life cycles. Nine bull ant species have been recorded in Sydney, but there may be more as yet undiscovered.

As far as I know there is only one species locally in Melbourne, where I am, to be truly terrified of.  The big bugger illustrated to the left.  Probably has a scientific name of BiteYourAss MegaPainfulless.  I can personally attest to the pain issue.  On our 3/4 of an acre block there are numerous nests.

These ants can deliver painful stings and are aggressive. An ice pack or commercially available spray may be used to relieve the pain of the sting.

Enough With The Wildlife Doco – What’s A Social Media Bull Ant?

These days we live in a world of Social Media.  Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.  It goes on.  Social media has it’s own native fauna that run around, with out the “flight” mechanism, with large pincers to grip their prey, carrying venom sacks with which to inject us with.  Like the Australian Bull Ant this is a primitive species that first appeared millions of bytes ago – on UseNet.  While primitive it’s an adaptable survivor.  It’s survived the age of the NTTP server, the Dot Bomb Ice Age and is thriving deep in this modern inter-web era of RSS.

It’s a ferocious consumer that will “follow” you and attack if you get to near or if it sees you first.  Dropping a firecracker in a nest of them is devastating – to you! Attempting to squash them underfoot will result in a painful bite that may need more than an ice pack.  There is no commercially available spray for treatment.

Negative comments, ad hominem attacks just for the sake of it.  Welcome to Bull Ant 2.0!

All is not lost however.  Just like in the Australian bush (or my backyard) a lot can be done to avoid these encounters for both ourselves, our families and our software businesses.

1. Try To Avoid Negative People And Don’t Encourage Them.

To often we find ourselves obsessed with what is said about us or to us online.  Too many people don’t “unsubscribe” either the negative person or the service in extreme cases simply because they “gotta see”.  This is akin to walking up to a Bull Ant nest and poking a stick in.  Out they swarm – right on queue – ready to bite your butt.

2. Don’t Talk Religion

With the possible exception of Priests, Nuns, Rabbis, Imams and other career professionals who are generally more robust and better able to take idiotic insults from the Web 2.0 Bull Ant. Take it from an ex UseNet moderator of three Big 8 newsgroups with over a decades experience .

1. People will not change their beliefs no matter how well or logically you argued your point.
2. Don’t assume others around you hold the same beliefs as you do.
3. Religion includes debates on Creation vs. Evolution with both sides being capable of being zealots.
4. Keep in mind that people KILL over religious issues.

3. Don’t Talk Politics

With the caveat of “unless you are directly involved in politics.”

I do this – but I am directly involved and like it or not Social Media = Political Campaigning now.

But for the average Jack and Jill – and most software companies – it’s an absolute EPIC FAIL almost on the level of point 2 above.

Most people don’t truly understand politics.  Those that think they do are often the worst Web 2.0 Bull Ants.  Take for example Australia’s Preferential Voting system.  Try and get the average person on the street to understand how a rank outsider can get elected on preferences alone – and not primary votes.  Don’t get me started on the Australian media’s trend of covering elections like Presidential elections USA style – people think they are voting for the Prime Minister, but they’re not – it’s the party at the end of the day, parties elect Prime Ministers – and replace them, regularly.  We have the West Minister system here and the only similarity to the USA is in the name alone of “Senate” rather than “House Of Lords” as in the United Kingdom (that and we’ve always elected Senators, it’s not a birthright like the House of Lords used to be).

With the basics obfuscated it’s small wonder people get narky debating politics.  Stay clear.  From a distance carefully watch the political types (and politicians) screw up on Social networking sites.  Believe me – you aint seen anything yet!

4. Don’t Collect “Followers” Like “Beanie Babies”.

So many people collect “followers” as some kind of competition.  Totally in opposition to the core concept of social networking.  Be selective, follow or be followed by people who are on the same wave length as you, interested in the same topic as you.  Try to apply the same rules to Social Media and networking as you’d apply in real life.  A sane person who believes in religion doesn’t walk into a university paleoanthropology class and argue the origins of man.  Likewise a person subscribing to evolution doesn’t walk into a church service and do the same.  If you hate Lego and think Meccano sets ROCK then concentrate on people who like Meccano – and so on.

5. This blogs comments section is a classic example of what not to do!

Yep.  I have a small cabal of angry Usenet users, all developers, who for a variety of reasons took umbrage to being moderated.  Some are from the Business Of Software forums.  Some are simply people who crawl out from under rocks around the Internet.  While there are some great people who comment here I see a lot of negative numbskulls who post meaningless, unsupported negativity frequently.  That kind of person is a Social Media Bull Ant 2.0.   Most bloggers delete these kind of comments, but I’m fascinated by human psychology and let many of them through.

A final point.  Companies – and probably customers – are using social networking to “check you out”.  What will they find?  A decent citizen or a Social Networking Bull Ant?

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Thanks to the Australian Museum for the Bull Ant quotes.

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Scott Kane

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