Internet Marketing Strategies and Drupal Tips

Jun 23 2010

Free Online Tools for Your Small Business

1. Primo PDF – This is a free tool that enables you to convert your Word documents and Photoshop designs to PDF format. It comes with a plugin that works like a printer. You choose it from your printer menu. Works great! I use it all the time to send design mockups and documents to my clients. www.primopdf.com

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Jun 23 2010

Keep your website healthy and secure by upgrading to Drupal 6

A new project I'm currently working on is upgrading www.Fightwriter.com. It has 2500 articles about boxing. The original site was created in Drupal 4.5 and will be upgraded to Drupal 6.

The site owner first contacted me to ask me to fix his website. Since his web host company no longer supports PHP 4, his site broke down and he was not able to upload images to the website. Here's the advice I gave him.

Unfortunately, your current website cannot be fixed. You will need to upgrade to Drupal 6 to have a stable working website. You have plans to expand and improve your site, now is a good time to do that. We can update your design, add new features and give you a stable working website. Now is the best time to expand your website and add the new members section.

We recommend that you upgrade your website to Drupal 6. This means that we will build a new website for you in Drupal 6. The new website will be very secure and stable. Your old website software is no longer supported and will most likely keep breaking down.

This is good advice for anyone running a Drupal 4 website. Most web hosts have upgraded to PHP version 5 and no longer support PHP 4 which is used on most Drupal 4.x websites.

Drupal 7 is expected to be released late this summer. After that happens, Drupal 5 will no longer be supported. This means that no Drupal 5 modules will be updated or no more security updates will be available for Drupal 5.

Please contact us
to help you transition to a stable secure version of Drupal.
Jun 4 2010

Why Seascape Web Hosting?

1. We provide managed hosting plans for our web design clients. This means we take care of your website for you. We provide Free setup and upload for your new website. We also set up your email addresses and setup your domain to work with your new web host account. This is all included free of charge with your SWD web hosting plan.
 
After your site is launched, we take care of your website so that it stays up and running smoothly. If your website goes down for any reason, our staff will get on the phone with the tech support people at our web hosting company and work with them to get your site up and running as soon as possible. The time we spend fixing your web hosting problems is included free of charge as part of your website hosting plan.
 
2. If you go choose to go with another web hosting company, you are responsible for supplying us with full access to your web host panel. We will upload your new website files to your web host account free of charge and set up your site for you. However, you are responsible for setting up your email addresses and also for pointing your domain to your new web host account.  Let us know if you need help with this. We provide this service for a setup fee of $60.00 CAD.
 
After your website is launched. and your site goes down, you can call your Web Designer, Katy, to fix the problem for you. We have Express support services within 24 hours available at $100.00 per hour.
 
3. In the web hosting industry, what you are paying for is the level of support. If you go with a less expensive web host, you will find their level of support limited. With our managed web hosting services, we manage your website for you. It makes sense to have the person who designed and built your website to also take care of web hosting since we can fix the problems as quickly as possible.

4. We provide quotes for hosting your website starting at $25.00 per month. Get 2 months free when you sign up for a yearly subscription. Contact us for more information.
Jun 3 2010

Top 7 Ways to Boost Your Google Ranking

Enjoy your FREE issue of our monthly Internet Marketing Tips for May 2010:

1. Get inbound links on related sites
Find websites related to your industry that are not direct competitors that would like to link to your website. Look for websites that have a Google Page Rank of 3 or above. Use your keyword phrase in the link text for these links. For example, one of my clients is ChinookRafting.com. They could approach the company that supplies their whitewater rafting boats and ask to exchange links. Then both companies can benefit from the resulting traffic.

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May 7 2010

What to say about Drupalcon San Francisco?

It was an amazing experience to be in a room with 3000 people listening to Dries Buytaert give his bi-annual State of Drupal address. It was also live streamed for those in Europe who couldn’t make it due to the volcanic ash cloud drifitng over Europe. Only 100 critical bugs left to be fixed in Drupal 7 before it can be released. Volunteers worked hard and the number of critical bugs was down to 90 before the week ended. The earliest expected release date for Drupal 7 is June 2010 and the latest is September 2010.
Apr 13 2010

DrupalCon San Francisco, April 19-21, 2010


I'm looking forward to attending DrupalCon San Francisco, April 19-21

Keynote: "The State of Drupal" 1:30pm, Monday, April 19th

Dries Buytaert will give his bi-annual State of Drupal talk in the beginning of DrupalCon SF, where he'll discuss where Drupal is and where it is going. In particular, he'll discuss Drupal 7, usability, the Drupal.org redesign, and other developments to Drupal.

More info: http://sf2010.drupal.org/
Apr 7 2010

How to Prevent Identity Theft and Keep your Client Data Secure

I met up with George and Monica Greenwood last evening at the Langley HOBN meeting. George is giving a free seminar on Identity Theft Prevention. Here's the info:

Don't Let Identity Theft Happen to you, your family or your business!

Join us at the Coast Hotel and Convention centre,
20393 Fraser Hwy, LANGLEY, BC
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
Doors open at 6:30 pm for a 7:00 pm start (precisely)

Admission is free - Please go to http://www.itcanthappentome.ca to register for free
Apr 4 2010

Update on TweetLater.com

It seems that tweetlater.com has been changed to http://www.socialoomph.com/ You can still schedule your tweets.

Apr 4 2010

7 Tips on How to Use Twitter for Your Business - Part 1

1. What is Twitter? Twitter.com is a website where you can send short messages to the public. You create an account and start sending 140 character messages. These messages are called tweets. People follow you and they can see your tweets on their home page, much like your wall on Facebook. And you follow them and you can see their tweets on your home page. See my tweets here: www.twitter.com/seascapeweb

2. Twitter is a conversation. You can reply to other people’s tweets and they reply to yours and that way you can have a 2 way conversation.

Mar 8 2010

Top 5 Blogging Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Here are some excellent tips on what mistakes to avoid in your journey to becoming a better blogger.

Business blogging can be exceptionally rewarding. When done correctly, a successful blog can bring attention to your business, can attract new customers, and can turn your current customer base into the type of fans that companies like Apple, Netflix, and Ben and Jerry’s have: people who will not only buy your product or service, but evangelize it to their peers. Of course, like anything, there is a right way to go about starting a business blog and a wrong way.

Creating a blog for your small business isn’t easy; it requires hard work and the ability to think creatively about your work. But if you avoid the five big mistakes laid out in this post, your chances of building a successful business blog will be much better.

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