Web Projects as an Deep Water Oil Rig

Imagine a world where large critical projects never catastrophically fail. No huge BP oil spills. A world where T-mobile Sidekick users didn’t wake up one day to find their phones had lost (literally) their life into the great bit bucket in the sky.

Why is this so hard to get right? In the software arena, missed project deadlines, or worse buggy software, are chronic problems that have plagued the industry since day one.

In the web space, projects suffer even worse. Often, unlike their software brethren, web projects don’t have dedicated QA (quality assurance – testing), network and deployment topology is a neglected after thought, and the under-resourced team has to live with a schedule that basically consists of “get it up ASAP, we will fix it later”.

Some days this is cause for despair. If a big company like BP can’t get a drilling project right, how can we keep a large web application smoothly running, given all the cards stacked against it in the first place?

It is the very transient nature of the web that saves us. Sure the code was slapped up there ASAP and sure it was hacked and tinkered with to massage it to ever changing requirements (”well now that I see it … it needs to …”), but web infrastructure often doesn’t last. Web sites are continually evolving and changing. A project is doing well if it lasts more than 3 years without a major rewrite. Vendor platforms get swapped in and out like a new pair of shoes.

With the web we can tear down the foundations and rebuild at the whim of the latest VP. It just takes money. We don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike BP. And given the chaotic nature of the web .. that’s a good thing.

wordpress theme frameworks, thematic

After poking around at both Hybrid and Thematic, wordpress frameworks, I went with Thematic. The reason? Better documentation. I followed Hybrid’s instructions on installing a child theme and and got a broken theme. I was more successful with Skelton, but felt overwhelmed by the amount of work I need to do in css land to get to a reasonable looking theme. So in the end I installed Thematic which has some basic layout css files prepackaged to get you started with your child theme. Of course my decision to go with Thematic may reflect some learning challenges on my part, but in the end, Thematic got me quicker to where I needed to be.

Note this project is for a separate blog, not this one. The cobbler’s children makes do with last year’s shoes.

A bit more on frameworks and why you should care. Using a WP framework gives you some separation between functionality and presentation, always a worthy goal. And it allows you to subclass (well kind or) distinct functional components while preserving the ability to upgrade the originals. What I mean by this, is that you can copy a php file (say header.php) from the parent theme to your child theme directory and alter the copy. Wordpress, in it’s later versions, knows to look first for the php files in the child theme. The idea here is that when wordpress and the parent theme is upgraded, there is some insulation … I’ll let you know how that goes when I get there.

I mentioned that I went with Thematic because of the better documentation. It took a little digging, but this tutorial series of blog posts are really helpful to get you started. I particularly appreciated the pointer to a sample xml file you can import into your theme to help QA it and review all the little styles you might want to customize. That in itself was a nice find.

Avoiding Internet Marketing Outsourcing Disasters

Outsourcing is the latest buzz word to hit Internet Marketing circles, teleseminars, and niche websites. It is certainly not a new concept to outsource work, but like so much else in our lives, the Internet has given rise to a new dimension of this popular technique. Because of this, there are a number of issues to keep in mind when looking at outsourcing as a viable alternative to doing it yourself.

For good reason, outsourcing is a concept that internet marketing professionals and newbies alike should acquaint themselves with. Because a large number of internet marketers are running the show by themselves or with a limited pool of additional assistance, there are just too many tasks to complete alone. In addition to the time factor, it is simply not possible for any one individual to possess all the technical skills necessary to accomplish all aspects running an internet marketing business.

With time and skill level being the two primary factors that lead Internet Marketing to outsource, it is important to understand which of these two needs you are fulfilling when you proceed to outsource.

When analyzing your outsourcing needs on the basis of time constraints, it is advisable to have a good understanding of what an hour of your time is worth relative to the task at hand.

For example, let’s say it takes you six hours to accomplish a redundant task and it would take about 15 minutes for you to teach someone else to do it for you. Then look at what you may be able to accomplish in that same six hour period. Would you be able to use that time to finish an ebook that could be resold for untold profits, or write thousands of lines of code to package and resell? If so, then any modest fee that is paid to outsource that redundant task could be worth its weight in gold.

Outsourcing on the basis of skill level becomes a little trickier and this is where most internet marketers who are new to outsourcing can get themselves in trouble. It is imperative to keep in mind that even though you may be outsourcing an activity that you are not capable of doing yourself, you still need to be in control.

This is your business and your image and income depends on it. Failure to have a firm grasp on what you are outsourcing will almost always mean that the end result will not live up to your expectations. And this is not productive for you or the individual you have contracted with.

Communication is the key component when outsourcing a task that you are not readily able to do yourself. For example, let’s say you are not the greatest artist in the world and you contract with a designer to develop header and ebook cover graphics for your sales page. Telling the designer nothing more than the title of your ebook and expecting the graphics of your dreams to result is just not going to happen.

The more detailed you can be about your likes, dislikes and expectations, the greater the chance that you will be thrilled with the end result. Remember, just because the designer has skills that you don’t, one of those skills probably isn’t reading minds! If you don’t like the color green, there is no way someone is going to know this unless you tell them.

Another area where Internet Marketing get into trouble is when the outsourcing project involves technical skills or programming. This can be particularly difficult if both sides are not communicating properly.

A non-programmer often sees a project as being far less complex due to a lack of knowledge about the mechanics involved in the programming process. End users are used to just clicking buttons and having things work; they never have to deal or think about what goes on with the coding behind the scenes.

This can have both an impact on the perceived value of the outsourcing bid as well as the time frame and ultimate functionality of the programming project. Misunderstandings with all of these things can be greatly reduced by taking time to clearly and concisely define the project parameters ahead of time. Again, the importance of communication here cannot be stressed enough.

Finally, it is never a good idea to outsource anything you don’t understand or cannot measure. This isn’t to say that you need to understand the mechanics behind the process, but you definitely need to understand the result.

For example, it is not unusual to see bid requests on popular outsourcing sites requesting 200+ inbound links from PR7 or greater sites to be completed within 24 hours. While this may or may not be an exaggeration, the point is, if you are asking for this and adamant that you want to get your money’s worth, you better be prepared to have a means in place with which to judge someone’s performance in completing this task. Otherwise, it is just a recipe for disaster.

Simply put, if you want something done to your satisfaction, you need to be prepared ahead of time to know when that point is reached.

Remember, outsourcing in many ways is just the virtual version of an employee or subcontractor. If you have ever been an employer who created a job description, along with it you most likely implemented a means of gauging the employee’s performance. And as an employee, you knew exactly what was expected of you and the consequences of failure.

Today’s outsourcing concepts are based upon the same time honored principles used in business throughout the ages and understanding this will greatly increase your odds of success.

Web Design In A Small Business

Some people are too tired to do the thinking and will opt to go with the flow whatever is the trend, be it on fashion, sports and even with businesses without even thinking what it is for. Most businesses find themselves in the need of providing websites for their company and/ or products because everybody else does. If you are one of these people, you may now start knocking your head for a very expensive mistake of not knowing what you do. Websites are being made to support a business and not as mere decoration and attraction, and no matter how dynamic your web design is, it will be useless if you are lost in the conceptualization. Now, what you have to do is, since the website ought to support the business and gain earnings, to make sure that the business website is doing well.

There are six critical elements your small business website must have to survive and perform better.

Content. Everybody is going crazy with website design and images, however many missed the principle that it is the content that matters. Users or the Internet users browse the web in search of information and not just to look on a website. Therefore, you have to make sure that included in your website design is the principle of content. Information on the website should be relevant to the site that you own or to the niche where you have included your site. This is very vital when search engine like the Google has to crawl your business site. You will be more referred by Google if it sees that you have a good content about your business. More so, to be more effective, several articles of 500 to 1000 words will help the system recognize your business site. If you do not have the time to spend to do the writing, you can have this outsourced through a ghost writer that will make a good article for you.

Blog. Some people neglect the value of blogging and sees it as for the “nerds only” and yet, blogging has proven its effectiveness of use to support the sites. This is for the reason that blogging can create a community around your site thereby generating traffic and in the long run will ultimately boost your site’s performance. It should be noted however, that a blog is not a duplicate of the site, hence, you should put new content on it to achieve better ranking and reference from Google.

Video. The Internet provides vital information to people, and becomes an effective tool in marketing. However, because of the advertising overload often generated by automated systems, consumers are becoming cautious in browsing the sites to search good content. A video introduction in your site can help attract users that your site is genuine and there are real people behind the website. Additionally, this can be powerful in promoting interactions to generate trust and promote visitor’s loyalty. This means that users will prefer to visit your site often, seeing good information and good users’ interaction, founded on credibility.

Email capture. Internet users tend to be dubious of online businesses. It takes time to establish trust and reliability on the target audience. Unless these users become familiar with the site and have encouraged visits, this will be the only time that these people can think of buying any of your product posted on the business site. Hence, making email capture as part of your web design like giving free reports or subscriptions to your newsletter can be a good way, you can have access to them by being bale to acquire their email addresses. You can have their email addresses as means to contact them for product or business promotions and entice them to visit the site most often.

Credibility through business details. It is a known fact that users are reluctant to visit a site until they knew that there is a real person behind it. Therefore, it is essential that you provide data or profile of the people behind the business. In addition, an address, phone number and other necessary details are helpful to establish that you are a true human being and not an automated system.

Lay-out of the website design. Lay-out is not as simple as the physical appearance. You can have a dynamic website design with a lot of flash files and yet your business site may not be performing well. The essence of the lay-out of the website design is that you should be able to keep the users involved. This should be user-friendly and easy to be understood. Moreover, if you are selling a particular product, the details should be accessible and easy to find. It is a necessity that your website design’s lay-out is not difficult to navigate. People do not have all the time to browse your site and you should be able to relay your message to them in a single glance.

To sum up, all these key elements of website design and SEO points to a single thing: the user. It is the audience that is the lifeblood of the business site. Make them see your site and expect that your small business site will boost its performance.