I had a great time down in G’ville two weeks ago. I strolled onto the University of Florida campus to talk with Professor Lisa Duke Cornell‘s ADV 4101 Copywriting and Visualization class. I walked the same route from Murphree Hall to Weimer Hall that I walked 12 years ago. Very cathartic.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day 2010
Happy St. Patrick’s Day 🙂 Leprechauns visited our office early this morning and left some shamrock cookies. YUM! We hope everyone is enjoying St. Paddy’s Day. View our March Newsletter.
Video: The importance of defining your budget for design, development, and marketing projects
When you’re shopping around for web services (design, development, marketing, etc.), be sure to share your budget range with your prospective vendors. Your budget is an important part of the equation when choosing between hosted, open source, or custom software. Also, it’s imperative to share your feature requirements, target audience, goals, and schedule.
Video Screencast: Four easy and affordable ways to build web forms
Update 3/13/2012: Machform v.3 is now available. The color scheme of the admin isn’t my cup of tea, but the new functionality looks great. I love the PayPal payment option.
Also Forms for Joomla v.2.5 is available. I’m very pleased Phil Taylor at Blue Flame IT decided to support Joomla v.2.5. If you’re using Joomla and need forms, then I highly recommend Forms for Joomla.
In this short screencast, I review four easy and affordable ways to build web forms, including Wufoo, MachForm, Forms for Joomla, and Drupal Webform. In the past, coding a form required special coding skills. Now it’s easier than ever for a non-technical content manager to create, edit, and publish forms.
Video screencast: Why you should 301 redirect your old URLs when launching a redesigned website
So your website has been around for a few years and it’s time to redesign. Maybe you’re planning to use a CMS such as Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress, and you want to use SEF URLs instead of your old “index.asp?pageid=123” dorky ones.
Sounds like a great plan.
Search engine marketing 101: three ways to get your site and business on Google, Yahoo, and Bing
“How much does it cost to get my site on Google?”
I get this question several times a week from small business owners, and my standard reply is:
“It’s easy. There are three ways. The first two are free, but it can take weeks or even months to see results. The third way will cost you, but you’ll get targeted traffic to your site within a few days. It’s best to do all three, but if you need leads quickly, then you should start with #3.”
Run with us and get a free hour of marketing consulting (a $150 value!)
On February 21, Sonja and I will run the Third Annual 26.2 with Donna, The National Marathon To Finish Breast Cancer. We ran the half marathon last year, and it was an extremely inspiring event. We’re both excited (and a little nervous) about this year’s race. We’re not fast or competitive, so we just hope to have a fun, injury-free race day.
Using open source content management systems for school web sites
We recently used open source content management systems for two education websites. For Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering, we used Drupal, and for Melbourne Central Catholic High School, we used Joomla.
The first site, for Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering, was designed by Piszko.com of Atlanta. Motionbuzz completed the Drupal CMS integration. If you’re not familiar with Drupal, it’s the same CMS used for whitehouse.gov and many universities.
Some of my favorite books of the decade (2000-2009)
I love reading. When I was younger, I devoured fiction like finger lickin’ fried chicken. But during the first part of the decade, I read mostly non fiction. I was just starting my business and needed to learn new computer programs all the time, so I would just buy a manual and figure it out. I believe in traditional education, but I learn best by doing. I’m a self-proclaimed autodidact—at least when it comes to some of the technical stuff I do here at Motionbuzz. After I discovered the free video tutorials on YouTube, I stopped buying how-to manuals and began reading more books about the big picture (of business and life).