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Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

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What is Web 2.0?

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I often get asked "What is Web 2.0?" And usually I do the best I can to explain it, but recently I jotted down some notes on Web 2.0 that I thought I would share with you. This list is far from complete. so feel free to�contact me with�your thoughts on the subject.

Web 2.0 attempted definition

It's similar to what supreme court justice Potter Stewart said when describing pornography, "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." But I'll give describing it a shot anyway.

From the users perspective

It usually consists of large fonts of simple text that make it easier for users to understand your website.
It usually consists of a lot of open space on the site to make it easier for your users to find the product, service, or task that fits there needs.
It usually gives users more descriptive options at the bottom of every page so that after users finish scanning the page they are directed to popular or related pages.
It usually consists of clean simple designs (that one is a little subjective).
It usually consists of dynamic content (especially on the home page) that makes it easy for users to find current and relevant information without cluttering up the page.
It sometimes consists of user interaction that allows the user to generate some of the content for your site.
It sometimes consists of the the ability to perform services on the web. This is the Software as a Service model (SaaS). An example would be if your clients would pay a subscription or subscribe for free. They would get a login and password to your site and you would provide them with�a relevant service.�But it has to be something of value for your clients and partners.
It sometimes consists of content that is updated very frequently with interaction from the user and allows other users to aggregate this information easily with RSS feeds. (Think podcasts).
It sometimes consists of webservice that allow partners and users website's to interact with your website.

�Technically speaking

Technically it is also a way of developing websites that isolates content, style, and behavior. So the content is managed by the CMS. The style is handled by separate CSS, and the JavaScript or server side behavior is all separate. This makes it easier to update one portion of your website (eg content) without changing the other parts.
Technically it is also a way of using rich internet features like Ajax to give your users access to a lot of information without cluttering up the website.
Technically it is also a way of building website so that they work on old browsers, but as new features become available the website becomes more feature rich.

For graphic designers

I hope that gives you a starting point when discussing Web 2.0 with your clients. There is no definitive explanation (as far as I know). Some folks focus on the client interaction. Some folks focus on the design. Some folks focus on the SaaS. Realistically it is probably some combination that fits with your business and your budget. Smaller budgets focus on the web 2.0 design aspects. While larger budgets focus on the user interaction and SaaS which are usually more expensive to build.

Blogger Templates by Alighten

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Alighten has recently completed a customizable template for the Blogger weblog system. If your client is interested in a low cost website, a Blogger weblog built to look like a corporate website might be an alternative. Custom Blogger templates look more professional and offer the reader more credibility than standard Blogger templates.�You can read more about a recent client that went live with a Blogger template by Alighten (including a list of features) at the following URL.

Spinach and Honey Choose Alighten

If you would like to get a quote or learn more�about custom Blogger templates contact Alighten.

Coding tips for designers 1?

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

For those of you interested in my coding tips for other developers. I have been actively posting them over in the Sitefinity forums. From time to time I will post a list of links to my code snipits in the Sitefinity forums so that designers interested can take a look at them and gain some valuable insight into how modules, controls and customizations of the CMS system are programmed.

I can see that some of your eyes are already glazing over. If you would like to check back next week I will have another great post geared specifically for designers.Welcome to "Coding tips for designers".

Windows Live Messenger in CMS
http://www.sitefinity.com/support/forums/support-forum-thread/b1043S-bathke.aspx

This UserControl allows CMS admins to easily add a Windows Live Messenger window to the support page of their website. This makes it just that much easier for clients to get in contact with business owners. I also posted a description of this geared toward designers over at Increase Your Website Sales.

Ajax WYSIWYG CMS Tooltip
http://www.sitefinity.com/support/forums/support-forum-thread/b1043S-bbambc.aspx

This UserControl allows CMS admins to use the standard "Generic Content" WYSIWYG content manager to add content Ajax Tooltips. Then tell the tooltip when to open (e.g. id="mydiv" event="onmouseover") and presto, your content appears in an Ajax tooltip.

Mail Merge HTML Content
http://www.sitefinity.com/support/forums/support-forum-thread/b1043S-bbdceb.aspx

This code snipit explains how to send HTML content to a function that then reads an object and inserts data from the object into the merge fields in the HTML content. The function returns a merged HTML ready to emailed to website visitors.

CMS Contact Form
http://www.sitefinity.com/support/forums/support-forum-thread/b1043S-bathtg.aspx

Every Alighten website comes with a contact form that stores the contact data in a database and emails both the client and the website owner. This post contains the complete source code to implement this custom module. Some features include database storage, export to Excel, and email merge.

Meta Tags - What works and what doesn't?

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

By now you know that the following Meta Tags are not only a good idea, but down right critical.

<title>Your�webpage�category,�Your�website�name,�Your�website�description</title>�

<META�NAME="KEYWORDS"�CONTENT="Page�keyword1,�page�keyword2"> �

<META�NAME="DESCRIPTION"�CONTENT="Description�of�the�current�web�page">�

But what about the other tags that many SEO consultants recommend.

<meta�name="revisit-after"�content="7�Days"�/>�

<meta�name="Robot"�content="ALL"�/>�

<meta�name="rating"�content="General"�/>�

I have seen businesses pay $200/month to be told that they need to have the above three tags added to each page.

In this post I wanted to share with you my findings after hours research on the subject of relevant Meta Tags. Let's get started.

Revisit After
The interesting�thing about this�tag is that there has�never been any evidence that�it worked�to begin with.�People simply assumed that since the tag exists that it is used. The concept is this that you can tell the search engines when to revisit your site. However, most modern search engines determine their own schedule for visiting your site depending on your website's relevance. This tag will have no effect.

Robot
The Robot Meta Tag was designed to keep search engines from indexing content and not to get them to come to your website. The default behavior of search engines is to index and follow all content. This tag will have no effect.

Rating
The rating tag is designed to tell search engines and browsers who the audience for that page are. Another possible example�is "Safe for kids". This should not make a difference in your client's websites. This tag will have no effect on your client's search engine ranking.

The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that current, relavent content is more important than tyring to game this system with unneccessary meta tags. Encourage your client's to adobt websites with content management systems (CMS), and encourage them to update their site on a regular basis. This is the most effective way to improve search engine ranking.

Increase your website sales

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The problem

After reviewing your Google Analytics you discover that while your company website receives 60 visits a day you are rarely getting emails and calls from those potential clients.

The concept

One way to increase customer contacts is to make it even easier for potential clients to talk to you. "Live Chat" is a great way to allow potential clients to quickly get instant help online. There are a number of software products that offer "Live Chat" support. However, often they require database configuration, uploading web pages, and oh yes, money.

The solution

Via Nikhilk - Now you can offer "Live Chat" support with a standard Windows Live Messenger account. Using Alighten's advanced content management system (CMS) you can display your status to clients on each page by adding a simple link to your website templates.

Here is the resulting status icon:

Here is the simple markup that you can add to the CMS WYSIWYG content editor to achieve the result above:

< a target = "_blank" href = http://www.alighten.com/chat.aspx > < img style = "border-style: none;" src = "http://messenger.services.live.com/users/49441b18a3d77e41%40apps.messenger.live.com/presenceimage?mkt=en-US" width = "16" height = "16" /> </ a > 

In this example we have changed HREF so that it points to the Alighten "Live Chat" page .

Finally, using Alighten's advanced CMS you can create your companies "Live Chat" page in just a few minutes:

<iframe�src="http://settings.messenger.live.com/Conversation/IMMe.aspx?invitee=49441b18a3d77e41%40apps.messenger.live.com&mkt=en-US"�width="300"�height="300"�style="border:�solid�1px�black;�width:�300px;�height:�300px;"�frameborder="0"></iframe>�

Step by step

1. Create a generic Windows Live Messenger account for your business.
2. Modify the settings for this new account to allow anonymous website users to see your online/offline status.
3. Copy both the "Status" HTML and "Messenger" plugin HTML to your computer.
4. Create a new CMS support page using Alighten's advanced CMS.
5. Modify your CMS templates with the "Status" HTML to notify users, from every page, of your status.
6. Modify your new support page with the "Messenger" HTML to allow users to chat live with a logged in representative.

It's just that easy and it's just that inexpensive! Visit the Alighten live chat page to see live�chat support in action. If you have questions about how to implement this feature contact Alighten today.

Flash embedding vs. Flash scripting part 3

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

There has been an important new development in the battle over standards in the browser community. The "Click to Activate" required by all versions of Internet Explorer when using the standard embedding technique for Flash elements will go away in April of 2008. You heard me correctly! The majority of your clients websites there will no longer be a need to use JavaScript to load Flash elements on to the page.

Via the IEBlog -

Microsoft has now licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing the "click to activate" requirement in Internet Explorer. Because of this, we're removing the "click to activate" behavior from Internet Explorer!�

�	Before April 2006	After April 2006 IE Active X update	After April 2008 Removal
Controls Injected Via JavaScript	No "Click to Activate"	No "Click To Activate"	No "Click To Activate"
Controls loaded Direct In HTML (<object>, <embed>, <applet>)	No "Click to Activate"	"Click To Activate" Required	No "Click To Activate"

Notice that I said "the majority" of your clients websites. There is till the issue of Flash elements with events that can be called before the page load completes. Wow, that last sentence may�set some sort of record for "most nerdy sentence".�I will discuss this last issue in more detail for part 4 of "Flash embedding vs. Flash scripting".

The content bottle neck

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So your client has an idea for a great community website. The site will allow users to share images, flash movies or documents freely with millions of people world wide. You design the site to meet the clients needs, but how do you program a website to scale as the traffic on the site moves from few hundred visitors a week to a few hundred thousand visitors a day.

Enter the Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Via yahoo - A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of web servers distributed across multiple locations to deliver content more efficiently to users. The server selected for delivering content to a specific user is typically based on a measure of network proximity. For example, the server with the fewest network hops or the server with the quickest response time is chosen.

With a CDN your client can continue to use a $10/month shared hosting plan. Without a CDN your client would have to purchase and maintain a webfarm to deliver the community website client to end users. For most startups even those with large budgets a CDN is a logical choice. But for small businesses and startups on a shoestring budget (as many are), even a CDN can be cost prohibitive. Alighten has a solution for that too.

Enter Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (AWS S3).

Amazon Web Services Services Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) is a scalable CDN for the rest of us. With AWS your client only pays for the bandwidth they use. This gives your client's startup accounts receivable time to catch up with the startup costs.

AWS S3 Pricing

Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used

Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in

$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Data transfer "in" and "out" refers to transfer into and out of Amazon S3.
Data transferred between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 is free of charge

Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

Storage and bandwidth size includes all file overhead.

Alighten contract website programmers can build your client's website to utilize the AWS S3. Delivering high content availability worldwide on a shared hosting budget. With Alighten you can�safely tell your client that you have solved the content bottle neck.�Contact Alighten for a quote today.

Why choose ASP.NET to run your website

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I have been putting together a list of reasons why Alighten focuses primarily on ASP.NET instead of Java/PHP and other languages.�Then I stumbled on to this interesting post by a startup company and why they chose to go with ASP.NET.�It summarizes most of the key issues faced by today's website project managers, website programmers, and website designers.

http://blog.jumptree.com/2007/why-we-chose-aspnet-to-run-our-startup/

It's important for you to discuss the pros and cons of each technology when discussing them with your clients. I hope this post provides you with a good starting point to do just that.

2007 San Diego Fires

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Due to the devastating fires in San Diego this week Alighten will be closed until Monday October 29th.

If you haven't heard more than 550,000 people were evacuated from there homes, more than 1800 homes, businesses and buildings have been destroyed and more than 360,000 acres have been burned.

Finally, after days of high winds fanning the fires the wind is subsiding. While this is good news for firefighters, the light winds will mean poor air quality throughout San Diego for another week.

With respect to all of the families that were forced from homes, Alighten will not be conducting any business until next Monday.

For information on the fires and to donate visit the San Diego Area Red Cross�website.