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We hope you will join us in this new stage of our business journey.

Our first entrepreneur is Robbin’s Wreaths.  The small local business has been trying to build a website to market their hand made wreaths to the online market.  $10,000 later, they still have no website. Read the complete article online at the Oceanside Star or watch the first episode online now, free!

Hosting Nation wants to hear your tales of website woe. Submit your stories at www.extremewebsitemakeover.tv and you may win a free website makeover worth $6,000.

Most custom websites range in the multi-thousand dollar range, whether that cost is in outsourced labour or time, a successful website will cost as much, or more than the average used car over it’s lifecycle.  Understanding how a website can break and what may cause long term problems has given all of us at Hosting Nation an appreciation for using standard methods and practices.  So we’ve compiled this checklist to help you give your site a much needed checkup.

Ten Tell Tale Signs your Site is Sick

Your site was originally designed for 800 x 600 resolution or smaller.

Since the proliferation of affordable widescreen monitors has hit the market, most sites have dropped 800 x 600 in favour of a minimum resolution of 1024 x 768.  Sites built in 800 x 600 look too small on a widescreen monitor, and you’re just not taking advantage of the many areas you have for content.

Your current design is more than five years old.

Web standards have changed a lot over the last five years, so what worked once might not work any longer.  Browsers render content differently (IE 7 vs. IE 8), old methods are deprecated and could even hurt your site.  I think three years between redesigns is normal, but you should not go longer than five years.

You’re unable to edit your site on your own, or you’re using a ‘free’ website solution.

I recently encountered a family member wanting to revamp and improve their website.  It turns out that they had a “website in a box” solution.  When I dug deeper, I found out some disturbing things.  The site could not be optimized in the ways that mattered.  The domain was owned by the company they got the site from, as were the graphics and the templates.  They were limited to five pages, and could not edit the look of the site in any way.   Worst of all, the “Free” website they had was costing them over $7.00 per month.  For one website.  With five pages.

On the other end of the scale is the client that wants to make their own edits, but has to send them to a webmaster.  There are some really great content management systems out there with thousands of extensions, looks and purposes (WordPress isn’t just a blog).  There’s no need for someone to spend thousands on a site they can’t edit themselves, when they could get something much more affordable, editable and contemporary, for under $500.

Your site uses dated methods for playing multimedia.

Using Quicktime or Windows Media for your site is akin to using leeches to cure the common cold.  With so many services like YouTube and Vimeo available, or flash players by the thousands,  you would be remiss to have your media content displayed in any other way.

Your site uses tables instead of CSS.

Used to be if you wanted anything too complex with your layout, you would have to use tables to achieve it.  Now, there are frameworks like Blueprint and the 960 Grid system that allow for all sorts of layout choices, from complex grids to simple three column designs.  Using CSS over tables will make your site work better in multiple browsers, run faster and be more conducive to making global changes and edits.

Your site does not work well in Firefox.

w3C reports that Firefox has approximately 47% of the market share, over IE’s approximate 40%.  Five years ago, you probably wouldn’t have built for Firefox. Now, most developers and designers build for Firefox and tweak for Internet Explorer.

Your site has a lack of standard navigation practices.

Maybe you used image navigation because you wanted more than simple text links, or some complex JavaScript method. There’s nothing wrong with using JavaScript for your navigation, but there are better ways to do it now than there were five years ago.  Plus, if your old JavaScript breaks – it can render your site inoperable.

Your site has multiple fonts, sizes and colours.

One font to rule them all.  It’s said you can use two if you really must, but no more than that.  Links should all be the same colour everywhere and your font sizes should be consistent.  Back in the day, the overuse of inline styles would cause all manner of problems with sizing.  It still can, but with many of the content management systems being used today it’s not as much of a concern.

Your site is built primarily in Flash.

Google still can not crawl and index flash sites properly and contextually (they can’t read the contents of a flash document).  Now, many things that used to require flash for a dynamic effect can be achieved with JavaScript or AJAX.

Your site has broken or missing links.

I see this quite a lot.  Links break, or are missing.  A page changes and the links don’t get updated, or a form submission stops working.  If people use a site with broken links, they go elsewhere.  When’s the last time you checked the links on your site?

If you need help diagnosing your website’s health, contact Hosting Nation today for a free assessment.

I’m thankful for the Xenu Link Sleuth tool.  If you need to check the link integrity of your site, there’s no better way to do it.  Xenu finds not only broken internal links, but also finds orphaned files.  It’s fast, it’s free, and it has proven invaluable in the fight against link degradation.

I’m thankful for the myriad of design blogs that give me advice, inspiration and practical knowledge that all help my stay on the cutting edge of design trends.  Included among my faves are Noupe, SpeckyBoy, SixRevisions,  A List Apart, Smashing Magazine, Hongkiat’s Design Blog and many, many others.

I’m thankful that I get to work with such great people.  When you like the people you work with as much as the work itself, it makes every day a pleasure (even when the work isn’t pleasurable).

When I’ve had a hard day, I’m thankful for the sites that make me laugh.  Emails From Crazy People, XKCD, and This is Why You’re Fat – to name a few.

I’m thankful for Irfanview because when you just need to do a quick edit, Photoshop takes too long to open.  Irfanview is a nice, quick and free alternative that offers quick and easy viewing, resizing, cropping and editing. It also has a batch renaming program where you can rename literally any batch of files (images or otherwise) easily.

I’m thankful for Mailchimp, because it’s a great solution for sending email campaigns.  They make it fun to create a campaign and the help and support is second to none.  I’ve looked at many email solutions over the years, most are dry and boring.  Thank you Mailchimp for re-inventing the wheel (and giving it some low profile tires to boot!  Vroom vroom!)

I’m thankful for WordPress, for making publishing on the web fun and easy.  I’ve used it for years, and it just gets better and better.  It extends for miles, with plugins and themes for nearly any purpose.  Just the other day, we built an entire website for a client in 1/2 a day using WordPress, and it looks as good as any “custom” sites I’ve seen.

I’m thankful for Firefox, and all of the extensions that save me so much time.  ColorZilla, MeasureIt, FireBug, xMarks, the SEO Tool for Firefox, Fireshot and many more.

I’m thankful for all of the clients that stay with us, and even those who haven’t.  You’ve all helped us become the company we are now.  Your feedback, your support and your business are invaluable to us.

And last, but certainly not least, I’m thankful for the marketing advice I’ve received over the years from authors like Jeffrey and Brian Eisenberg and Aaron Wall, from people like Steve Roper, from websites like Search Engine Land and Threadwatch and too many others to count.

PS.  Here’s a big picture of a Wild Turkey.  Gobble Gobble everyone!

In this part, we’re going to discuss some of the canned and affordable options available for non-existent and low budgets.  Custom design and development easily costs thousands of dollars, so it’s best left to another conversation.  For now, let’s start with the no-budget scenario.

The no-budget website is suitable for individuals and community organizations with limited funding.  Notice how I excluded small businesses?  We’ll get to that in a minute.

No-Budget Solutions

WordPress (hosted), Blogspot, TypePad – if you want free, you’ll be limited to blogs or other similar platforms.  While there are other free options available that work off of subdomains and other trickery, I’m loathe to recommend them as you never know if they’ll be there in a year or two, and you could lose all of your data.  Plus, free isn’t always free.  With Homestead and Vistaprint (and a million others like them), you get a ‘Free’ website when you purchase other materials.

If you happen to be a non-profit, check out Tech Soup for resources and downloads available specifically for non-profit organizations.

Low Budget Solutions

There are hundreds of solutions for under $500 (too many to list here).  The common theme is that they all start with a shared hosting account (valued at $100).  From there, you can install WordPress or Joomla (both for free), get a free or premium template (templates start at about $20 and range to just over $100) and so far, you’re still under $200.

If you are a small, local business, most of your clients probably come from referrals and good word of mouth, but your visitors still need a place to get a snapshot of your business.  If you use a no-budget solution, people will judge your business accordingly.

Web development takes two things, money and time, each to varying degrees.  The more time you’re willing to spend, generally speaking, the less it will cost.  To keep your costs down, you can learn to do much of the work yourself (something I do) or you can use a free or low cost solution, one that gets you started.   Don’t think that you have to spend thousands of dollars, there are a lot of solutions for under $500 out there including our My First Website plan which comes with one year of shared hosting, a free domain and a fully loaded website based on the WordPress platform for only $199.

Want to learn about more of our sub-$500 solutions?  Let us know!  Contact Hosting Nation to get started today.

Assuming that your budget falls somewhere in between $19 and $100,000,000, here’s an idea of what you should expect to spend.

Color me custom

Gentle readers, there’s no easy way to say this, but a custom design/build for your website will cost at least $1500.  Minimum.  Period.  And that’s a bare bones website.  No frills, no bells OR whistles.  Basic website, home and inside page.  Designed, probably not sliced.

In my mind, if you want a custom website, you should be prepared to spend up to $10,000.  It may not cost that much, but you should be prepared to spend that much.

OK, well, maybe I don’t need a custom website.

The odds of somebody seeing a website that looks just like yours is slim and, even if it does, honestly?  Nobody will care.  Using pre-built applications, services, frameworks and designs can save you a fortune and give you something that looks really slick.    There are a lot of possible choices for a semi-custom website including Joomla, WordPress and many others.  Templates are available in multitudes, either free or paid and come pre-sliced.  If you’re not committed to a creating a unique user experience with a striking, modern custom website, you can cut your expenses down to less than a thousand dollars including your hosting and domain.

Oh, goody, so what you’re saying is that if I do it myself, I could get the same results for much cheaper?

Screech.  All stop.  I’m not saying that at all.  In fact, I’m fairly certain that unless you’re already a web designer, you won’t be able to create an awesome customer experience on your first go.   What I am saying is that once you commit to working with a design agency, armed with the knowledge that there are affordable solutions available,  you can keep your costs to a minimum.

But I really think I can do this, I saw one company that offers FREE websites and it looks really simple.

I’ve seen those sites as well.  Make sure you read the fine print with these folks.   Most of them charge between $4.99 and $6.99/month for a 5 page basic, no frills website.  In many cases, you don’t own the domain or the design, so it’s best to check with the company first.  It’s true that they’ll have you up and running quickly and they offer thousands of “professionally designed” templates, but you’re giving up source control, SEO and a variety of other features you get with standard shared hosting accounts.

Seriously though, it doesn’t seem that difficult to me.

I hear this all the time.  The answer is that it’s as tough as you want it to be.  Hamburger Helper and Filet Mignon are both beef dishes.   I make the Hamburger Helper and it’s still only going to be as good as its ingredients.  Would you make Hamburger Helper for the main course of a dinner party?  Even if you happen to think it’s the best Hamburger Helper ever?  Even if you made it with your own two hands?  Even if you’ve never made Filet Mignon before, and it seems scary and intimidating?

Intermission

Check out this short video on the vendor client relationship produced by Scofield Editorial, Inc.

OK, I get it.  I wouldn’t serve the Hamburger Helper, I would serve Filet Mignon because I want my guests to remember their experience fondly.  What’s next?

Next?  Stay tuned, in our next post we’ll talk about what the best options available are for a range of budgets, technical know-how levels and objectives.  If you’re done looking, and want to discuss some solutions, contact us for more information on solutions for getting on the web starting under $100.

Despite the challenges that I’ve had managing SEO for Joomla sites in the past, there are only three tools that I could find for providing reliable, DIY SEO solutions.  Artio JoomSEF, sh404SEF and the Joomla SEO Patch.    My reviews are based on my own experiences with licensing & cost, installation, configuration and implementation of each tool.  Visit our hosted Joomla demo to read comprehensive articles on each of the SEO solutions.

Artio JoomSEF is a free or paid-for SEO and mod_rewrite solution.  The paid solution for Joomla 1.0.x is €24.99 as is the paid solution for Joomla 1.5.  The difference between licensing is in what you pay for.  Joomla 1.0.x users pay to have third party advertising links removed while Joomla 1.5 users pay for support.

Installation.  If you are committed to using Artio for an SEO solution, check to see what kind of support you get on older paid versions.  I recently tried to install a paid version of Artio on a small Joomla 1.0.x site with only 5 pages. The zipped files I had for the installation wouldn’t take (warnings of corruption) despite downloading the component several times.  The solution they presented in the Artio forum (to decompress and recompress the file before installing) completely broke the site I was working on.  I have successfully installed it on Joomla 1.0.x sites in the past so I’m not sure what’s happened.  Artio for Joomla 1.5 installs fine, very smoothly.

Configuration: All three SEO tools requires the same global settings to work properly.  Configuring Artio to start working is a snap and is easily handled on just a few screens., though some of the language is a little ambiguous (Disable creation of SEF URLs?.. y or n).  The JoomSEF Metabot – which allows you to set custom meta information, is located elsewhere and has different configuration settings.

Implementation: There’s good and bad for Artio SEF.  I really like the  feature that allows you to stop generating new URLs without disabling the component, something I believe is critical for large sites with a lot of dynamically generated information.  URLs and meta information are all managed in one place and easy to work through.  Configuration remains simple and fast for beginners while offering a lot of options for advanced users.

On the other hand, with certain components I’ve experienced bugs where the URLs don’t rewrite and redirect properly.  I also recently had a Joomla 1.0.x site crash and burn as a result of trying to install Artio.  I wish there was more to handle duplicate URLs and aliases, which are a major issue with any large Joomla site.

Overall impression:  If you have a large site with a lot of dynamically generated content, you pretty much need to use Artio.  The ability to disable the component without turning it off completely makes Artio my top choice for large sites, while the cost and complexity make it a bit much for a small or medium sized site.

sh404SEF was, up until September 7th or so, a free URL rewriting and redirecting tool for Joomla 1.0.x and Joomla 1.5.  The tool still exists, but has been sold/moved/changed hands as of this week and now requires that you register and pay a subscription of $35.  I sure hope they add some extra functionality here, otherwise – I’ll just stick with the patch.

Installation:  sh404SEF can be installed easily using the built in Joomla functionality for installing components.  Because you don’t have to use .htaccess, you can jump straight into configuring the component for best SEO. It also suggests that it works natively on IIS, which is good news for people on Windows servers.

Configuration:  sh404SEF requires the standard Joomla global SEO configuration before it will start working.  There are a lot of advanced configuration options, but I found the instructions very helpful in getting the component configured properly.  You can choose to run mod_rewrite with or without .htaccess and switch back and forth between them at will.  The difference is that without the .htaccess file, all of your custom page names will include /index.php/.

Implementation:  I had been using Artio for years, and just recently tried sh404SEF.  The control panel is laid out in a very similar way to Artio, so I found the controls familiar and easy to use.   For a new user, I think Artio is easier to navigate but I like sh404SEF’s functionality better.  On the down side, the meta information isn’t on the same page as the URL renaming/redirection tool, so you have to do a bit of jumping around between renaming a page and setting the title and meta information.  Because you can’t disable URL generation, sites over a certain size could encounter problems.

Overall impression:  sh404SEF is my favourite solution for the bulk of small to medium sized Joomla sites out there.  There’s a ton of functions for tweaking the component, the installations were trouble free and stable and the price tag is unbeatable.

The SEF patch for Joomla is a free or paid-for extension to Joomla 1.0.x and 1.5.  The patch allows you to add custom titles and meta information to all of your site’s pages, but does not allow you to rename or redirect page URLs .  The patch can be used concurrently with other SEF tools such as Artio or sh404SEF giving you lots of flexibility with your titles and meta information.

Installation:  The free version of the patch requires an upload via FTP to the root of your Joomla site.  You’ll be overwriting core Joomla files when you do this, so if that makes you nervous you may want to go for the €8.99 paid version which can be installed as a component.

Configuration:  The patch is just adding more options to already existing content, so the configuration is all stuff you would have to do to SEO a Joomla site anyway with a few extra bells and whistles.

Implementation:  All of the extra meta information is attached directly to the content or menu item, editing is super easy.

Overall Impression:  For a small, static Joomla site, this tool is perfect.  I don’t think I would go for the paid version as many of the “extras” aren’t worth the cash.  The simplicity that makes me like the patch also raises issues of scalability.  I wouldn’t use this tool for anything over 15 pages.

Final Impressions

Artio’s recent failure to run on a Joomla 1.0.x installation takes it out of the race for previous Joomla versions, though it still works fine on current Joomla versions.  For small sites with 5-10 pages, the patch is the best solution.   For medium to large sites with fixed content pages (no dynamic content) I recommend sh404SEF and for large sites, with a lot of dynamically generated content, I recommend Artio Joom SEF.

While all of these tools provide you with the resources to do proper SEO on your Joomla site,  you still need a solid SEO strategy.   Hosting Nation provides SEO for Joomla services in addition to SEO consulting and everything else under the web.

Well, the word they used was scammer, I added all the others.  Still, they suggest that the SEO community at large is full of people that stuff keywords, spam search engines and generally clutter the search engine results with a unique brand of useless crap.

Is it true?  Are we all scammers and charlatans?

In a word…  Yes.

I know.  You’re shocked and surprised, and awed, and amazed.   In one breath, I say that most professional SEO’ers are scammers while admitting to be an SEO professional myself.

The truth is that most of SEO is just a boondoggle.  I talk to people every day who were promised search engine glory and have yet to see traffic go up one bit.  I looked at one site where the client had paid for SEO – what they got were poorly researched keyphrases and an entire site made of images (that’s right, the text was rasterized right into the PSD, then sliced and reassembled).

Whether you choose Hosting Nation for your SEO, or someone else, you should be reading our article “11 SEO strategies whose days are numbered” before you do.

1. Meta Keywords tag.  Hasn’t worked in years, Yahoo! used to use it for information retrieval, but it’s doubtful that they do now that their search is powered by Bing.  Really, it hasn’t been used since 2002.    Now, I can’t prove this, so if you think it’s helping your rankings go ahead and implement away.  There’s one way to be sure.  If you don’t have them, add them and see if anything changes.  If you have them, remove them and see if anything changes.  I expect that nothing will.

2. Meta Title tag.  Right, so one tag on your web page says <title>your page title here</title>.  The other says <meta name=”title” content=”your title here”>.  The latter of the two is completely deprecated, only the content between the <title>  </title> tags is valid.

3. Toolbar pagerank matters.  Chasing pagerank is like going on a snipe hunt, even if you catch it you’ll end up with a bag of nothing.  Actual pagerank is extremely complicated and is always shifting and changing and is rarely an absolute number.  TBPR data is usually old, about three months old.

4. Submit your site to search engines.  Don’t.  Bother.  Well, don’t pay anyone to do it.  If it’s part of a package, ask to have it removed.  The way to get your site crawled and indexed quickly is to have a link from a third party site that gets frequently crawled pointing to your site.

5. Your content should have X% keyword density.  Another ridiculous statement.  Show me the evidence that a site with 3% density always does worse than the exact same site with 9% density.  You can’t, because it doesn’t exist.  Just write, naturally, about your product or service.

6. The XML sitemap.  XML sitemaps are useful if you have hundreds, or thousands of pages of frequently changing or updated content.  If you have 5 pages that will never change, an XML sitemap is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

7. Latent semantic indexing, semantically related phrases, phraseology.  Whatever the kids are calling it, it’s the process of placing keyphrases into your copy that are related to the topic of your page, but not the same as.  Suggesting that there’s a special skill required to implement this is pure hornswaggle.   The only skill required is the skill to write effectively.  If you can write, you can write for SEO.

8. Duplicate content will get you penalized.   What I believe is that while duplicate content won’t help you, it won’t hurt you either.  Search engines want results that have an original perspective on a given topic.  If you don’t offer an original perspective, they won’t rank your page, and I don’t blame them.  Would you?  How is your copy of the wikipedia article on the spawning rate of the pacific salmon contributing?

9. PageRank sculpting.  It’s the process of adding the nofollow attribute to certain page links to direct the flow of PageRank to more ‘important’ pages on the site.  I’m guilty of doing this on sites, especially my own.  I can’t say if it works or not though, it hasn’t ever made a real noticeable difference and I probably wouldn’t do it on a client site unless they requested it.

10. Paid links are bad.  They are not, I’ve seen them provide results for people plenty in the past and many SEO people that I respect and follow have asked the question “Can Google REALLY tell the difference between paid and unpaid links?”  The answer, of course, is obfuscated.  Search engines will never tell, but the evidence says they can’t tell at all.  Just don’t make it the core of your SEO strategy.

11. My final piece of advice is not to believe what I say, or what any professional SEO’er says.  After all, we all have motives such as increased business, or glory fueling our opinions.  Demand examples of success from whomever does your SEO and request specifics on how they achieved it.  If they won’t tell you, do you really want to do business with them in the first place?

The scope of the project was to create a web site for Leo that would be the foundation for her web presence as well as answer three questions we thought visitors would ask.   “Who is Leo Sawicki?”, “What is Leo Sawicki doing?” and “How can I connect with Leo Sawicki?”

The site uses a smooth streamlined design to bring visitors in where they can interact with Leo on her blog, read articles, view photos and follow Leo around the world as well as connect with her on the popular sites Facebook, Amazon and LinkedIn.  Visitors can also browse through Leo’s publications and even purchase them from the online bookstore, built custom by Hosting Nation.

Visit www.leosawicki.com now to browse Leo’s website, and visit www.hosting-nation.com/design-community for details on this, and other projects we’ve worked on.

Screenshot of the homepage for www.leosawicki.com.