The ImageX Media Blog

Corporate Manual: Wiki-Style

Chris Geoghegan — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:27:36 -0500

We’ve been using Basecamp from 37signals for quite awhile now for client communications and project management. We soon started to use it to store and manage our employee manual too. However, there are certainly limitations, as you can only have one level of categorization and hierarchy and you can’t change the order in which they appear.

So we decided to “port” the manual over to Drupal and write a blog post about how we did it. This post will cover how to setup a manual for both your clients and your employees using a combination of the book module and wikitools. We will also go into how to setup notifications and some other helpful related tools.

EDIT: Please note that we are currently using Drupal 5.x for our production site as we are waiting for stable releases of CCK and Views before upgrading. However, this tutorial is not dependent on either of those modules and this may very well be possible with Drupal 6.x though there may be some differences in the modules.

Step 1: Installing the Modules

You will need to make sure the following core modules are turned on:

You will then need to download and install the following modules from drupal.org:

Book Access (Set specific permissions per book so that clients can see the Client Support book and the Staff can only see the Staff Handbook.)
Comment RSS (Subscribe to comments on the site via RSS)
Default Filter (We can use this to set the default filter for certain content types and roles to be different.)
Diff (Compare revisions)
Freelinking (Similar to the linking syntax of Wikipedia)
GeSHi Filter (Allows for code highlighting. NOTE: You will need to download and install the GeSHi source code. See the modules README.txt for more info.)
HTML to Text (Required for Subscriptions)
Mail Editor (Required for Subscriptions)
Pathauto (If you don’t already have it, you need it anyway.)
Table of Contents/Headings anchors (Allows us to add a Table of Contents for a given page based on the headings similar to Wikipedia)
Talk (Puts comments for a node on a separate tab called “Talk” similar to Wikipedia)
Textile (An all around easy to use and great text markup language, used by 37signals in Basecamp)
Views (Not necessary for this project, but it makes it easy to make lists of nodes.)
Wikitools (The power behind all the wiki functionality we will be using.)
Subscriptions (This will allow staff to subscribe to specific sections of the Staff manual. It can be configured per user in very specific ways. NOTE: We only need to enable Content Subscriptions, Subscriptions, Subscriptions Mail, Subscriptions UI, Taxonomy Subscriptions)

Step 2: Setting up the Book Content Type

First, we will want to make some changes to the Book content type settings.

Go to admin/content/types
Find the type “book” in the list and click “edit” to the right.
You may want to rename the Book content type to something else, we called it “Manual Entry” as that best suited this scenario. You’ll probably want to change the description as well so it makes more sense for your situation.
Under the “Workflow” fieldset make sure that “Published” and “Create new revision” are checked and the other options are not.
For our needs we disabled commenting by default. For now, we don’t need clients to be able to comment on Support pages and so we will turn it on for staff handbook pages on a case by case basis. You may decide you want them on by default.
If you have enabled and installed the “Talk” module then there will be an additional check box that says “Display comments on separate talk page”. Make sure to check that as it will come in handy later.

Step 3: Configure pathauto settings for books

Let’s not forget to configure pathauto for books before we go and create the book pages so that we can save ourselves the trouble of updating the paths later on.

Go to admin/settings/pathauto
Under the “Node path settings” find the field “Pattern for all Manual Entry (Book) paths” (It will be named whatever you called your book content type)
We set this to [bookpath-raw]/[title-raw] which is the best format for a book page because the hierarchy of that page will be represented in the URL like so: “handbook/maintopic/subtopic”.

Step 4: Create the Client & Staff Manuals

Now that we have the content type configured the way we like it and the paths set up nicely, it’s time to create the actual books. You do this by creating the first page in the book and setting its parent as the top level. We’re going to create two books. One called “Support” for our clients and another called “Handbook” for our employees.

Go to “Create Content” > “Book” or whatever you may have renamed it to (node/add/book)
Type in the title of this book, in this case we’re calling it “Support”
Set the parent to the top level (which is the default)
Add in some content, I suggest adding an overview of what the book contains and how to use it.
Repeat this for the second book which we’ve called “Handbook”
In addition we’ve actually explained about how to use the Wiki features of the handbook to our staff.

Step 5: Setting Permissions

In addition to the two default roles anonymous user and authenticated user we have three roles: super (has access to everything), admin (has access to day-to-day site administration functionality), staff (see below). I’ll let you decide what roles you want to use on your site, but I would suggest that you have at least one that is similar to our “staff” role. The staff role has the following permissions checked:

Book Module: create book pages, edit book pages, edit own book pages, outline posts in books, see printer friendly version
Comment Module: access comments, post comments, post comments without approval
Node Module: access content, revert revisions, view revisions
Search Module: search content, use advance search
Subscriptions Module: subscribe to content, subscribe to content types, subscribe to taxonomy terms

Once those permissions are set, head over to admin/content/book. You will now see the two books that you have created. Optionally, you can click on “outline” and it will show you all the pages of the book and allows you to easily edit the titles and order them. Not too exciting since we only have one page each. For now you can ignore this and click on “Access control” tab (admin/content/book/access). This new tab is provided by the “Book Access” module we installed earlier. We’ve specified that everyone can view the Support book but only admin and super can edit/delete pages. For the Handbook we’ve specified that only staff, admin, and super can view/edit the book and only admin/super can delete pages. Note that I didn’t allow staff to delete pages. This is because there is no “undo” for deleting pages and so we need to have a certain level of safety.

Now that we’ve given access to users, we need to put it somewhere they can find it. You can do this by editing the menu settings of the two book pages you created and specifying where you want them to appear.

Step 6: Setting up the Wiki Functionality

Now we have the basic book functionality setup we need to add in the wiki functionality that will help to make this more dynamic. The great thing about wikipedia is the way that it’s deeply linkable, collaborative, and constantly in flux. This meets the needs of our company manual well.

We previously installed the wikitools module, so let’s start configuring it. Suprisingly there isn’t much we need to do:

Go to admin/settings/wikitools
You have the option to specify a wiki main page, but since we are using the book module for everything I am going to set the “Wiki Path” and “Title of the main page” to nothing/blank.
We only need the wiki functionality for our manual so under wiki node types I will only check off “Manual Entry”
Under Options I have checked off the following “Node Creation”, “Node Search”, “Automatic Redirect”, “Unique Title”, “Treat underscores as spaces when looking for node titles”. You can read more about what each of these functions does exactly, right beside the check box. This is really the meat and potatoes of what wikitools does. Your settings may differ from ours of course.
I kept “Hijack freelinking filter” as checked because we will be using the freelinking filter for the wiki links and we want to make sure that wikitools is used when a wiki page does not exist.

NOTE: There are other wiki filter formats out there, like PEAR Wiki Filter, which allow you to use various markup languages such as MediaWiki. I chose to just use the freelinking module because our staff was already used to using the textile markup language so I didn’t want to introduce something new.

Step 7: The Wiki Input Format

Setting up wikitools alone doesn’t do much though. You really need to have an input format to see the fruit of it. I’m going to walk you through the set up of the input format that we have used. You’ve already installed the necessary modules in the first step of this article, so we can get started configuring them.

Code Highlighting (Optional)

This step is optional, and only recommended if you believe you will be including code snippets throughout your manual. Since we’re a web development company, this feature really makes sense for us.

To follow along you will need to have the “GeSHi Filter” module installed as well as the GeSHi Source Code.

Go to admin/settings/geshifilter
I’ve kept most of the geshi settings as they are by default except I have changed the following. I’ve set:
1. “Default highlighting mode” I set to “Drupal 5”
2. “Default line numbering” I set to “normal line numbers”

Freelinking

Configure the freelinking module by going to (admin/settings/freelinking)
See my settings below. Note that I have disabled camel case. This would turn something like MacBook or McDonalds into a link and that isn’t helpful for us. Instead only text enclosed in [[Square Brakets]] will be converted to a link.

Now that we have setup the code highlighting and freelinking we can actually create the input format.

Head over to admin/settings/filters
Create a new format. We’ve called ours “wiki-style”.
Make sure the new format is at least available to the staff role
Under filters we have checked: “GeSHi filter”, “Headings to Anchors”, “Table of Contents”, “Textile”, “URL filter”, and “freelinking filter”
Save the settings
While still on the same input format click the “Rearrange” tab. Here you can adjust the order that filters are executed. I haven’t noticed any conflicts, but you may want to keep an eye out and adjust as necessary

EDIT: In the above image I had “Line break converter” selected, however, with the textile converter this is not necessary and depending on the order they are interpreted in could even cause double line breaks.

Now that we have the input format setup, to make life easier, let’s set it so that input format is used by default when staff create a manual entry.

Go to admin/settings/default_filter
Add the following entry (Role = staff; Format = Wiki-Style; Node Type = “Manual Entry”). This will override the default and says, when a user with the role staff is editing or creating a manual entry use the wiki-style input format.
Add other rules as needed.

Now, let’s test out or new wiki system. I’ve included a text file which you can download, open, and copy and paste into a book page. It will give you a general idea of all the options available to you and how it works.

Download Sample Wiki Entry

Here is what that page will look like:

A couple things to note…

You may want to learn more about the textile markup language
Note the table of contents functionality; it will automatically add anchors to the H2 and H3 tags and produce a table of contents.
Normal URLs are automatically parsed
Text surrounded with [[Square Brackets]] are made into wiki links. Try clicking on one.

Step 8: Managing Revisions

Earlier on in this process, I got you to set revisions on by default. We’re going to take advantage of this now. Go ahead and make a change to an existing page and add a log message. When you do this the revisions tab will appear. Because we installed the diff module earlier we will get an added bonus when we click on the revisions tab.

You can now choose two different revisions and then click “Show diff” which is short for “Show differences”. When we do that we are shown the changes that were made.

Step 9: Discussions

So we’ve setup two books to be used as our client and employee manuals and we’ve add the wiki functionality to make this a more collaborative effort. However, from time to time we need to discuss company policies or best practices. We’ve already installed and configured the talk modules so let’s go ahead an enable it for this message.

Edit the book page you just created and under “Comment settings” set it to “Read/Write” and save. Notice that right away a talk tab is added. If you click on that you can now post the first comment.

Step 10: Staying up to date

It’s no use having a manual if no one reads it. Initially, we thought we might be able to keep people up to date via RSS. One could easily install the Views module and create an RSS feed and in addition install the Comment RSS module to include comments. However, that doesn’t allow for people to only get notified about the topics that matter to them and it doesn’t ensure that all changes to manual entries that affect them run past their eyes. So we decided to the use the subscription module.

Upon installing the Subscription module you will want to make sure Content Subscriptions, Subscriptions, Subscriptions Mail, Subscriptions UI, and Taxonomy Subscriptions have been installed. In addition you will need to install “Mail Editor” and “HTML to Text”.
Create a new vocabulary called Departments. (admin/content/taxonomy)
Set it to show up for “Manual Entry” or “Book” (whatever yours is called)
And allow “Multiple select”
Next add the terms that you would like to use for example: Contractors, Design, Development, Employees, Information Architecture, Sales
Go to admin/settings/subscriptions
I set the unlisted content types and blocked content types to all but the manual entry (book) content type.
I set all the vocabularies to “restricted” and “omitted” except for “Department”
Under user defaults you can set the defaults for new users, I added the following to the defaults:

NOTE: I haven’t added any default subscriptions to specific user roles. You may want to.

Conclusion

That’s it. We’ve created a corporate manual that we can use for documenting client support as well as for internal employees. We’ve used the book module so that we have the ease and strucuture it provides, but we’ve also used wiki and revisions tools to allow for a collaborative. And in the last few steps we’ve enabled subscriptions so staff members can stay up to date on policies that matter to them.

Drupal Camp Vancouver

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:03:35 -0500

Calling all PHP web developers, themers, programmers, Drupal enthusiasts and anyone else interested in learning more about the hottest open source content management system in the world… Spread the word! Drupal Camp Vancouver is coming in less than a month!

On May 9th and 10th, the SFU Wosk Centre for Dialogue (Hastings & Seymour) and Workspace in Gastown will become a multi-track conference all about the Drupal CMS. This event is for all Drupal enthusiasts and will provide a forum for learning, sharing and networking. Some of the themes that will be addressed in the sessions are:

Drupal 101
Development (Beginner and Advanced)
Theming, Business & Community
Site Case Studies & Implementation.

Tickets are $20 for the two day event, and that includes 2 lunches and a lovely eco-friendly T-shirt that you can wear proudly. To register, you can purchase tickets online. There are just over 80 spaces available and they’re going fast so act quickly!

Drupal Camp Vancouver is run by volunteers and kept affordable by the help of many sponsors. ImageX is a gold sponsor and we hope to be able to contribute as presenters and volunteers as well. Here are some of our peers who are also making the conference possible:

Check out the official Drupal Camp Vancouver website for more info. See you there!

10 Sins of Blog Usability

Linda Bustos — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:07:12 -0500

“Sinning” is an archery term, which literally means “to miss the mark”. If you’re blogging to establish a two-way dialogue with the world, the “mark” is the optimal reader experience. The following is a list of ten things that can hurt your blog’s usability.

10. Sending Mixed Messages

The focus of your blog should be decided before your first post and then committed to. Random blog entries about a melee of topics might work for a personal blog read by friends and family, but is not a good approach for a serious, professional blog. The lifeblood of any blog is in its loyal subscriber base. And readers are more willing to subscribe to blogs that talk about their area of interest on a consistent basis.

If your blog’s “personality” includes the odd personal entry, create a separate category for “fun stuff”, “random” or other “personal”, and think about each post’s fit with your target audience before you publish. Or start a separate blog on that topic and cross-link your blogs.

9. Making It Hard to Subscribe

Because subscribers are such an important part of blogging success, you need to make it easy for users to sign up. Since not all users understand and use RSS feed aggregators like Feedburner and Bloglines (also called newsreaders), offer both email and RSS options. Make them very conspicuous, preferably placing them at the top of your navigation menu and above the fold.

Don’t be afraid to “ask for the subscription” at the end of each post as well. Chicklets are mini-icons that make it easy to add to feed aggregators and social bookmark sites like del.icio.us and Netvouz with one click. You can find more information on adding chicklets to your blog with the Chicklet Creator.

If you are using free blog software and hosting, it may not be possible to add these extra functions. So plan ahead when choosing your platform.

8. Inconsistent Posting

Now that you have a loyal fan base who are notified of every new post, don’t disappoint them with time lags between posts. Pick a posting schedule that’s realistic for your time schedule and stick to it. If you can’t think of anything to post about, blog about someone else’s post related to your topic and include a link back to that post.

Will this hurt your own blog to send subscribers away to another blog? No, because you’re still offering them something useful in lieu of you posting something. You can also leave a comment or trackback on the other blog that links back to your post which can send traffic back to you. Bloggers often monitor their trackbacks or incoming links through Technorati, PubSub or other services. They might end up blogging about you in return.

7. No Contact Info

Some blogs can pull off the mystique of an anonymous posting. But if your website is for business, it’s hard to have a two-way dialogue when you make it impossible to contact you. Transparency is fundamental to building trust on the web. And you don’t want users to mistake your reputable blog for a “splog” or spammy blog that scrapes content from other sites.

If you don’t want to advertise your email address because of spammers, you can still enable comments on your posts. Yes, you’ll still get spammed, that’s the reality of the Web. Wordpress blogs come with Akismet anti-spam which does a good job at catching most spam. You usually have the option to moderate comments before they appear on your blog.

6. Not Moderating Comments

Allowing anyone and everyone to post whatever they want in your comments section is asking for spam. Not only is this annoying to your readers, but it really takes down the professionalism of your blog.

5. Excessive Advertising

It’s fine to monetize your blog or use affiliate links, as long as they are not intrusive to users and overshadow useful content. When ads appear all over the page and even in the middle of posts, the user experience suffers. Avoid contextual ads-programs that highlight words in your posts to make them look like hyperlinks, but popup an ad when they are rolled over with a mouse. Just like having items appear clickable that are not has been a usability issue, so is tricking users into clicking on ads or viewing ads when they appear to be hyperlinks.

And if your blog is very new, it’s a good idea to wait until you’ve built up a history of useful posts before running advertising.

4. Not Linking to Posts

When you’re referring to something that can be found on the Web such as a news story, another business, person or other blog post (whether on your own or someone else’s blog), allow your reader to check out the background info. Linking back to previous entries also builds page strength for those posts and can help you with search engine rankings. But don’t be afraid to link off your site, this generosity can help you get noticed by other bloggers. And it’s also nice to give credit where credit is due.

3. Dark Background, Light Text

What’s been a general usability rule for years certainly applies to blogs. Anything that makes your blog harder to read should be avoided. Remember, it’s harder to read online than offline. The worst culprits for eyestrain are white text on a black backgrounds, low contrast combinations like black with red and busy patterned backgrounds. And it’s a good idea to avoid blocks of red text, even on a white background.

2. No Search Box

Returning visitors may remember a post that’s not intuitive to find through your navigation menu or tag system. Regular readers might also want to find their own comments, so make that possible by placing a search box somewhere in your layout.

1. Hiding Navigation

Most blog software comes with a variety of lovely templates to skin your site. But not all of these templates are optimal for usability. Templates that require users to scroll right down to the bottom of the blog to find navigation are not the best choice. Stick to conventional left column or right column navigation.

One of social media’s best gifts to the World Wide Web is the ability to “tag” posts by subject/content and automatically create a navigation categories. Users can easily browse by subject, and hone in on all your posts related to a specific topic or microtopic. This also helps users find you on blog portals like Technorati.

You also have the option of displaying calendars, archives and tag clouds which may or may not be useful and can clutter up your page. Keep in mind that with usability and design, less is often more.

Conclusion

Taking some time to evaluate your blog wearing the hat of your reader can greatly improve the user experience. Considering what makes a user-friendly blog before you begin blogging helps you plan for optimal usability right from the start.

Ten Ways To Clear Bad Press From Search Engines

Linda Bustos — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:47:14 -0500

What do you see when you search for your company or brand name? Is there anything on the first page of the search engine results that you wouldn’t be proud to display on your home page? Consumer review sites, blogs and forums have made it easy for anyone to say whatever they want about your company, whether they be disgruntled customers or competitors who like to play dirty.

If you’re in a situation where negative publicity is front and center in search results, there are ways you can reclaim search engine real estate for your corporate identity. Though you can’t make negative results disappear from the search engine indexes entirely, the following strategies can help them slip off the first few pages of search engine results.

1. Good Old Fashioned Networking

Even if you take none of the advice following in this article, the first thing you should do is contact the webmasters of the sites in question with a polite request for removal of negative comments. There’s a good chance they’ll be willing to co-operate. Note that, even if they do remove the listing, the cached pages may remain in the search engine indexes for some time. But users who click through the search engine results will land on a page with the comments removed.

Check out some of the sites that already have something good to say about you. Send them an appreciation note, and offer them a link back from your site. You could even create a special page called “Gary’s Garage On The Web” (if that’s the name of your business) or “Press Room”.

2. Tap Into the Power of Wiki

Wiki websites allow users not only to add their own content, but also edit pages. They get their name from the Hawaiian word “wiki wiki” meaning “rapidly”. There are many wiki pages like AboutUs.org and LoveToKnow.com that you can use to create content about your company. If your company name is “notable“enough (meaning there are objective third party sites that already have pages citing facts about your company), you might also be able to create a page in Wikipedia. This is easier if your company is publicly traded.

3. Raise Your Profile

Some websites like PR.com allow you to post your company’s profile. An annual fee might be required. It’s not easy to find these sites, but you may find some opportunities by searching your competitors’ names and discovering where they are listed.

4. Wet Your Pen

Articles can help you kill three birds with one stone. Not only can articles rank for your company name, they also build valuable backlinks to your site and position you as an expert in your field. You can use your company name in the resource box at the end of an article along with a link back to your site.

Using your company name in the article body gives it a better chance of ranking well. You can research potential sites to submit your article to by searching for one of your industry keywords in a search engine like this: “car mechanics” + “submit article”. Or submit it to various article directories like Article Alley.

5. Become a Socialite

Using social bookmark sites like Netvous and Del.icio.us is an easy way to quickly create a page that ranks for your name. You can create an account for yourself that bookmarks all of your positive press, and anything interesting on your website, such as articles or videos. Make sure you use your company name in the titles of the articles (even if they are not the real titles) and in the descriptions. Although this may seem to be “spamming” the bookmarking sites, it really is not, as the purpose is to create a page that ranks for your name, and there is no ethical reason why you should not be able to create an account that keeps track of all your company’s press. You are simply choosing to make the list public for those that may be interested.

The links themselves are not given much weight by search engines, but you have an opportunity to use your company name in the titles and descriptions of your bookmarks and photos. Make sure you make good use of the tagging feature, using general keywords as these will also begin to rank for your name. For example, Gary’s Garage should tag: “Garys Garage”, “garage”, “autobody”, “mechanic”, “mechanics”, “body shop”, “car” “auto body” and so on. When you are first starting out, the more popular tags will start appearing on pages 1-5 in Google. They will eventually drop off as Google finds and indexes your content as you get it out there on other websites.

6. Become a Lensmaster

A company blog is certain to rank well, and it’s easier than ever to create one with Squidoo.com. When you create a “lens” for your site, you can easily upload pictures and also make use of tags. Unlike other blogs, Squidoo won’t show the posting date, so your lens won’t look neglected if you ever stop posting. You can build your blog’s link popularity by submitting it to blog directories like LSBlogs and BlogHub, and linking to it from your site.

Once you’ve done that, why not drop some other lensmasters a line and exchange lensroll links (Squidoo’s answer to blogroll). This may be a tactic that is passee in search engine optimization link building, but remember that Squidoo is a community. So it’s not as much link building as networking. In my experience, Squidoo lensmasters are quite keen to cross-promote.

7. Broadcast Yourself

Do you have promo videos or other visual media about your site? Why not create a channel on YouTube?

8. Explore Shopping Engines

If you sell products online, consider listing them in comparison shopping sites, or “shopping engines” like Shopping.com, Bizrate or Nextag. If you are not ready to manage a new ecommerce channel for many products, you might consider listing one product in one engine to start.

9. Use Directories for Deep Links

Search engines still consider a page’s number of relevant backlinks to be a strong indicator of quality and relevance to a search term. Octopedia, WorldSiteIndex and Microsoft’s Small Business Directory are a few examples of solid directories that allow you to link to deeper pages of your own site, like your About Us page, to help raise their rankings for your company name.

10. Post an E-Help Wanted Sign

Leverage the strength of sites like Craigslist.org to post your company’s current job offerings. Make sure you use your company name first in the posting headline: “Gary’s Garage Now Hiring Junior Grease Monkeys”, for example. This will ensure the title tag for that page is optimized, which is very helpful for SEO. And make sure to describe your company in the ad, repeating your name three or four times.

Tracking Results

I strongly recommend setting up an account with Google Alerts (free) which monitors the top 50 results, or with Google Alert, a professional tracking system that will monitor the top 200 results for you for as little as $4.95/month. You will be notified daily when new references to your name have been found in Google – not only to see when your articles, profile pages, blog posts and so on get indexed, but also to keep on top of any new negative or positive references to your name outside of your own reputation management efforts.

How Long Will This Take?

Results may vary but they won’t come overnight. You will get out of your reputation management efforts what you put in. It could take anywhere from a few months to a year. Expect monitoring and tweaking your strategy to be a long-term activity. As new pages are being added daily to the Web, search results for your name can fluctuate daily, even hourly.

The danger with social media optimization for reputation management purposes is that whatever you create easily through social media sites can easily be re-created by users disgruntled with your company. Using sites like 43Things to quickly create a high ranking page using your name in the title bar for “Buy XYZ Product” can attract similar posts like “Boycott XYZ!!!”

Wrapping it Up

As the World Wide Web turns, you may come across new or different ways to help your cause, especially as social media sprockets keep creating new opportunities. If SEO’s not your bag, consider hiring a consulting firm skilled in copywriting and public relations. The key is to look at reputation management as a long term activity and to take advantage of all the options you have to keep the search engine results positive.

Welcome to Our Blog

Linda Bustos — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0500

All of us at ImageX Media are excited to have finally launched our newly redesigned site this week along with this blog. We’re looking forward to connecting with many of you in the coming months as we start contributing a regular flow of articles and begin to interact with those who find value in what we have to say. We hope you’ll learn a thing or six & join the conversation!

By subscribing to our blog feed, you won’t simply stay in the loop about IXM news. In our blog you’ll also find timely articles on:

Web design
Web development
Drupal
Web usability and information architecture
Social media marketing for business
Internet marketing
Our articles will range from instructional/tips for non-techie business owners to discussions with industry insiders. You can choose your track to subscribe to based on your interests.

The easiest way to keep in touch with us is to subscribe to our blog via email or RSS feed. If you’re unfamiliar with RSS, this video called RSS in Plain English will bring you up to speed.

We also want to take this opportunity to introduce you to the faces of ImageX Media:

Alex J. Ventpap

Position: Web Designer/Flash Animator
Expertise: Graphic / Web Design and Flash Animation,
Blogs I Read: Smashing Magazine, Computer Luv, Giz Modo, Cool Hunter, Motion Grapher
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: I just don`t like the orange juice from starbucks
Favorite Pastime: Movies, read some books, apples and walk & take some picures
Childhood Hero: Space Ghost

Anne Ikeda

Position: Administrative Assistant
Expertise: Administration
Blogs I Read: PerezHilton.com (jk)
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Mocha Frapp (but only as an occasional indulgence)
Favorite Pastime: Traveling and eating good food.
Childhood Hero: Cookie Monster (“Me want cookie!!”)

Chris Geoghegan (Presently traveling in Europe)

Position: Project Manager
Expertise: CSS Theming, Programming, Drupal Development, Business Administration
Blogs I Read: My own blog
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: I like the orange juice
Childhood Hero: David Lee Roth
Favorite Pastime: Traveling with my lovely wife

Chris Hartman

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: CSS Theming, Graphic Design, PC Hardware
Blogs I Read: Digg, Engadget, LifeHacker, Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Strawberry Frappuccino
Childhood Hero: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Favorite Pastime: Videogames, Racquetball, Golfing and Friends

Glenn Hilton

Position: President/Founder
Expertise: Creative Direction, Visionary, Human Resources
Blogs I Read: Canucks.com (does anything else truly matter?)
Favorite Starubucks Beverage: Extra Large Double Double (oops, that’s actually from Tim Hortons)
Favorite Pastime: Spending time with my fam, my dog Abby and my heaterfan
Childhood Hero: Christie Brinkley

Doug Gough

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: Drupal, Drupal Module Development, CSS and XHTML, Social Networking
Blogs I Read: Of First Importance
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Venti Earl Grey Vanilla Tea Misto
Childhood Hero: Sigurd the dragon slayer
Other interests: Playing my Stratocaster as loud and distorted as my roommates will let me.

Rick Vugteveen

Position: Sales Manager
Expertise: Drupal, CSS & XHTML, “Getting It”
Blogs I Read: Planet Drupal, Kottke, 456 Berea Street, Common Craft, Paul Stamatiou, Apophenia, Mac Rumors, Stereogum, Signal vs. Noise, 43folders, Desire to Inspire, BlackRimGlasses, The Wiire, etc…
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Anything with chocolate
Favorite Pastime: Road trips, Snowboarding, Friends & Family, Guitar
Childhood Hero: Pavel Bure

Robert Phillips

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: Drupal, Web Development, Drupal Module Development
Blogs I Read: Six Apart, Lifehacker
Favorite Starubucks Beverage: Not a coffee guy
Childhood Hero: Iron Man

Susan Villecroze

Position: Usability Expert/Information Architect
Expertise: User Experience Design, User Research, Information Architecture
Blogs I Read: Sitepoint, Digital Web Magazine, 456 Berea St, A List Apart Favorite
Starbucks Beverage: Marble Mocha Macchiato
Favorite Pastime: cooking, running, traveling, getting to know people
Childhood Hero: Didn’t have one

Tom James

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: Drupal module & theme development, HTML, CSS, PHP, jQuery
Blogs I Read: Facebook, Drupal, BBC, Mashable
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: Wouldn’t touch the stuff
Favorite Pastime: Travel, exercise, sport, languages, music.
Childhood Hero: MacGyver

Joel Kitching

Position: Drupal Developer
Expertise: The Internets, Browsers, Codes, Photoshops
Blogs I Read: Reddit, Google News, The Daily WTF
Favorite Starbucks Beverage: If I must support the giant multinational corporation with ridiculously overpriced drinks, a chai tea latte.
Childhood Hero: Charlotte Diamond

Search Engine Copywriting Tips for Business Owners

Linda Bustos — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:10:15 -0500

Do you write your own copy for your business website? Could you be doing it better? Many people have “heard somewhere” that “SEO” or search engine optimization” is important…but they’re not sure why, or how to go about it. And the thought of hiring a big fancy firm to take care of it for thousands of dollars makes them scared. Does this sound like you? Well take heart, if your site has existing copy, this article explains how you can make simple changes yourself that will help your site grab more targeted traffic from search engine rankings.

Optimizing for Keyword Phrases

Before you begin SEO copywriting, it’s important to understand that you want to optimize for keyword phrases rather than single words. Why? Trying to optimize for “restaurant”; is near impossible! If you are a Japanese restaurant, you would be competing with “fast-food restaurant”, “Italian restaurant”, “Greek restaurant”, “restaurant in Boston” et cetera.

You will have better success optimizing for longer phrases like:

“Japanese restaurant in Vancouver”
“Vancouver sushi restaurant”
“Vancouver Japanese restaurant”
“best Japanese food in Vancouver”

*“Vancouver sushi bar”

These terms will bring you better targeted traffic. People looking for Japanese restaurants in Vancouver will likely type in one of the above rather than “restaurant”.

If you offer services like “dog grooming”, you would also want to include variations like “pet grooming”, “groom your dog” and “dog groomer”. Not only does this make you relevant for the variations that users naturally type, but it will make your copywriting sound more natural than if you used “dog grooming” 10 times on one page.

Creating Specific Pages for 2 – 3 Keywords You want to optimize for all the important products and services you provide. However these may require their own detail pages. Trying to optimize the home page for everything you do or sell will not show the search engines what is specifically important on your page because it appears EVERYTHING is important! Try not to optimize for more than 2 or 3 separate phrases per page.

Another benefit of creating focused pages around products and services is you capture buyers in later buying stages. For example, if Mary types in: “blue widget XYZ replacement cartridge”, she knows exactly what she is looking for and is more likely to buy than someone who is looking for blue widgets.

Finding Keyword Phrases with Keyword Research

If you need keyword phrase ideas, go to the Google Keyword Sandbox tool at: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Enter in your general keywords to get more suggestions, or enter in your URL under the “Site Related Keywords” tab to have the tool extract potential keywords based on your existing copy. You could also do this for a competitor’s site to glean from their SEO efforts.

To get a feel for search volume, select from the “Choose Data to Display” dropdown menu: “Global Search Volume Trends” to get an idea of what forms of your keywords are searched the most. For example, you might discover that search for“computer distributor” more than for “computer distribution”. You want to optimize for the highest search volume phrases more often.

Note that this tool is based on global search trends and has its limitations. Some niche phrases may be very important to your business even though their search volume is relatively low. “Harrison Hot Springs vacation” for example, would not be a high volume search term although it might be a profitable niche keyword for you.

Improving Existing Copy

If you are targeting “music lessons” you probably already have the words “lessons”, “piano”, “singing”, “violin”, “guitar” et cetera sprinkled throughout your site. You can easily start optimizing by turning the solo words into phrases:

Piano lessons, singing lessons, violin lessons, children’s piano lessons, adult singing classes, private singing training in Vancouver, beginner violin lessons, advanced guitar classes…

Using Punctuation Make sure to separate slashes like products/services into products and services or products / services. Search engine spiders ignore brackets, quotation marks and hyphens, so using them won’t hurt you.

FAQ optimization: If, for example, you sell headsets, you can use an FAQ page to use keywords.

Frequently Asked Questions About:

Corded Headsets
Binaural Headsets
WIFI Headsets
Bluetooth Headsets
Monaural Headsets

Not only can you use keywords in a reader-friendly way, the bullet points tell the search engines that these things are important on your page.

Local Keywords

If you have a specific city or region you would like to optimize for, try and include that word in your page titles as well as 2 – 3 times in the copy (for a page of 250 words).

Contextual Links

Contextual links are hyperlinks within your copy – also called “anchor text” This gives a bit more weight in search engines so it’s a good idea to name your external links to other sites with keyword phrases as well as hyperlinks to your own pages. Example:

Last week, I reviewed several karaoke bars (link to your review on another page of your site) in Vancouver. Far and away, my favorite is Kawasaki Sushi and Karaoke Bar (links to other site).

If it makes sense to do so, try and turn existing keywords into internal or external links.

Various Spellings

Even if 50% of searchers type “loose weight” you do not want to optimize for misspellings. There are cases where two forms of a word are correct. For example “birth mother” and “birthmother”. Try to optimize for both phrases but on different pages. That way you have a chance to be found for both phrases, but it won’t look like a mistake.

Checking your keyword frequency

http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

Use this tool if you want a quick count of the frequency and percentage of words on your page or a high ranking competitor’s. Though there is no magic formula for keyword frequency and percentage (density), this is useful to gauge approximately how many times you should include a on a page to rank well.

Is this all Greek to you?

Not every business owner has time to take on his or her own copywriting, nor does every company have the trained staff to do so. For this reason, many look to outsourcing search engine optimization, including copywriting, to Internet marketing consultants. If you don’t feel your organization has the resources to take on SEO copywriting in-house, you would benefit greatly from specialized expertise. An SEO professional can also help you identify the keywords you should be targeting using keyword popularity tools. Even if a consultant’s hourly rate is more than you value your own time, a professional can accomplish higher quality work in less time that it would take you, the end result of increased professionalism, search engine rankings and sales make it well worth the investment.

ImageX Designer Captures Silver at WorldSkills Competition

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:37:55 -0600

ImageX Designer, Joel Kitching, has won a silver medal at this year’s WorldSkills competition, which was held in Japan. This is the latest prize for the young designer who has also been awarded a silver medal for a provincial skills competition in 2005 and gold medals in regional, provincial and national competitions in 2006.

Competitors at this year’s WorldSkills Competition were presented with the task of creating a database-driven website for WorldSkills alumni to keep in touch with each other. Joel’s quick analytical and coding skills and good eye for design helped him snag second place against 20 other top web designers from around the world.

The A-Z of Web 2.0 Jargon

Linda Bustos — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:53:05 -0600

Most people can use social media in at least one way to make life easier. And because of the rapid pace with which social media is permeating our lives, social media literacy is increasingly important. The following is an A-Z glossary of social media terminology to help you understand Web 2.0 jargon.

A is for AJAX

Ajax is a town in Ontario, Canada, a brand of household cleanser and an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML or Advanced JavaScript + XML (see JavaScript and XMLdefinitions below). In a nutshell, it stands for the technologies used in building applications like social bookmarking and social networking sites. Unless you’re a programmer, that’s pretty much all you need to know.

B is for Blogroll

A blogroll is a list of blogs on a blog that a blogger reads and or thinks are useful sources of information related to a given topic.

C is for Chicklet

A chicklet is another name for an RSS button. An RSS button is an icon that makes it easy for visitors to your website to subscribe to your content as it’s added. Examples are “Add to My Yahoo” or “Bloglines”.

D is for Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is one of a plethora of social bookmarking sites where you can create lists of bookmarks like you would with your web browser (Ctrl+D), but like a bookmark list on steroids that you can access from any computer, share with the world, and categorize with tags (see T).

E is for Embed a YouTube Video

You can add a video from YouTube (see Y) to your blog, site or MySpace page with a simple code that will display the video you want.

F is for Folksonomy

Folksonomy is like a taxonomy (way of classifying something) used by regular “folks” on a social media site. For example, if someone bookmarks a news story with “technology”, “cellphones”, “telecommunication”, and “Nokia”, this tells the community what the news story is about without having to read it.

G is for Groups

Most social media sites allow you to build networks with other users profiles. You can also find new people through your contacts by surfing their networks or by surfing tags.

H is for Hacks

A hack is a piece of code that helps you customize or improve the functionality of a software product such as a blog program or a content management system. An example would be adding some code that would allow you to put chicklets at the bottom of blog posts.

I is for Image Attribute

The image attribute is an HTML element used to describe Web photos. This helps search engines understand what the picture relates to, and also helps visually impaired people who use text reading software “see” your pictures. Adding image attributes to your blog’s images can help your site rank higher.

J is for JavaScript

JavaScript is a system of programming codes that can be added to the HTML code of a web page to make it do the cool interactive things you find in web 2.0. (The “J” in AJAX).

K is Knowledge Economy

Knowledge economy describes the use of knowledge to produce economic benefits. Social media is a way of sharing knowledge on a grand scale, using computer hardware and software, interactive websites, self-publishing platforms like blogs, forums and wikis (see W). This mass movement of knowledge may be monetized in many ways including affiliate revenues, e-books, software sales and service contracts that began with a search online, all contributing to the worldwide economy.

A number of New Zealand businesses had been identified as being highly innovative and leading their fields as a result of the knowledge and intellectual creativity that went into their products and services. The resulting success is seen as a pathway for others to follow.

Various observers describe today’s global economy as one in transition to a “knowledge economy”, or an “information society”. But the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy of the 20th century need rewriting in an interconnected world where resources such as know-how are more critical than other economic resources.

Here, there may be a need to differentiate with the Web Economy of Google, Skype and Ebay that seems to have created wealth based more on services dependent on mass interconnectivity rather than on knowledge-based skills.

L is for Linkbait

Linkbait is an SEO term for really awesome content that attracts links naturally by virtue that it’s really good content. This could be a great blog post, a useful web tool or something similar.

M is for Moblogging

When you post a blog entry, photo or photo to the web while away from your computer, you are moblogging or mobile blogging. You could use a digital camera, PDA or cellphone to moblog as long as you have access to the WWW from it.

N is for Newsreader

A newsreader (or news aggregator) translates any RSS or Atom feeds (see above) for websites, blogs, podcasts or other news services you subscribe to. Remember that raw feeds are not reader friendly as is, so you need something to convert it into something you can make sense out of.

A couple examples are Bloglines and NewsGator.

O is for Open Source

Open source code is software code that is available to the general public without licensing restrictions. This is useful to people who know how to use the code (programmers) so they can make innovative social media sites.

P is for Ping

Generally, PING stands for “Packet Internet Groper”. A PING is a basic program used to verify that an IP address can be seen by another. With respect to pinging your blog, you want another site such as Technorati or Google’s blog search engine to know that you’ve added new content, so it knows to come visit your with it’s robot and take a snapshot of your new content to add to its database.

Q is for Query String

Hey, Q’s not that easy! A query string is that stuff that follows the ? in a URL, like

“http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=define%3A+query+string&btnG=Search"

If you’re blogging, it’s a good idea to use Wordpress or other blog platform that will clean up your URLs so they are “clean” and search engines (and users) can make more sense of your URLs as you can take advantage of using valuable keywords in place of &s and %s. That way more people will find your blog / podcast / website.

R is for RSS

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, but most folks like to call it Real Simple Syndication, because that describes its function quite well. An RSS feed is simply an XML (see X below) file full of code that newsreaders / news aggregators can easily digest and translate into a copy of your website’s content on another site (syndicated content).

S is for Sock Puppet Spam

We’ve all had our inboxes invaded by unsolicited mail which we refer to as spam. But there are many types of spam on the Internet besides email spam. For example, link spam happens when webmasters post in forums or otherwise leave their URL somewhere simply for the purpose of gaining a link. With blogs, comment spam can be a problem too. Users who leave totally irrelevant comments about Rolex watches are as unsavoury as canned ham. Spammers now have a new way to exploit social media for their own (temporary and futile) gain – creating “sock puppet” profiles to increase their networks in MySpace, submit or vote on their own content in Digg or to ask and answer their own questions in Yahoo! Answers.

T is for Tag Cloud

A tag cloud gives you a visual idea of tag popularity for a blog or other social media site. The more popular a tag, the bigger the text appears in the cloud. You can click on any word to jump to all the posts that “tagged” each keyword. A cool way of organizing a “taggsonomy” and letting users discover tags as opposed to a boring navigation menu.

U is for User Generated Content

Websites usually push content at you. But when a website supports community and allows its members to add their own content using various media, its content is user generated. Simple as that. Forums, blog comments, 43Things, Flickr accounts, MySpace and so on.

V is for Vlogging

Video blogging.

W is for Wiki

Wiki-Wiki is a Hawaiian term for “rapidly”. So a wiki is a website that any registered user can not only add content to but also edit content for. Some businesses also use wiki pages for project management internally. Public examples are Wikipedia and LoveToKnow.

X is for XML

XML is what you get when you apply the tagging concept to HTML coding. With XML language (Extensible Markup Language) allows coders to use their own tag descriptions. For example, you could have Curious George and The Man in The Yellow Hat as tags if you wanted to. XML is useful to social media advancement as it puts the X in AJAX. And it makes RSS feeds possible.

Y is for YouTube

You were named Time Magazine Person of the Year thanks to YouTube, a website that made stars of ordinary people by allowing users to upload their own videos.

Z is for Zoominfo

Zoominfo is an example of a business/social networking site that is useful to recruiters and job seekers. It’s basically a niche search engine that allows you to search for information about a company or person using natural language programming, a type of artificial intelligence. You can read more about Zoominfo and its technology on Wikipedia.

Is Your Website Old School? 5 Reasons To Redesign With CSS

Linda Bustos — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:12:38 -0600

Many small business owners have a hard time seeing the value of a website redesign. They believe “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”; And this is understandable. Unless you are eating, breathing and sleeping technology and staying up to date with the moving target of Internet business, you’re not likely to know intuitively if your site needs a redesign.

And as a small business owner, you may be concerned about the up-front costs of a website redesign. But once you understand how a redesign can help you drive traffic to your site, convert more users and even save money, you’ll feel more positive about making the investment in your business.

Old School Web Design – Tables-Based HTML

Not long ago, fax machines were the best way to deliver business documents fast. But now it’s so easy to scan and email documents, and even capture digital signatures through email, the fax machine is quickly going the way of the typewriter. With email, recipients can choose to read and archive the message online, or print it out themselves on their own desktop printer. No need for individual telephone lines for the fax machine, taking up desk space, replacing toner, uncurling fax paper and listening to screeching fax machine tones!

Tables-based HTML websites are like the fax machine. At one time tables were the best way to render information on the Web. But like curled paper and fading ink, tables left something to be desired. Designers were constrained by tables that allowed data to be rendered only in tabular form. The clean, professional and creative layouts today’s best designers create with Cascading Style Sheets could never be achieved with tables-based HTML.

New School Web Design – Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets separate the presentation elements of a website (code) from its content (words). CSS allows web designers and developers to format the layout and style (fonts, spacing, text size, colors and so on) of multiple Web pages using one file, rather than entering the code to each individual page. Making changes to styles and layouts is much quicker and easier with CSS as well, as updating one file “cascades” the changes to every page on the site. There is less room for error, and the website maintains a professional consistency.

But web designers and developers are not the only ones who benefit from CSS. You as a business owner benefit even more. How?

5 Solid Reasons To Redesign Your Website With CSS

1. Branding and Aesthetics

Consumer behavior experts tell us that, presented with many similar product or service options, and little prior knowledge and experience with these brands or companies, consumers will rely on mental shortcuts to make purchase decisions. The way your website looks compared to your competitors has a large influence on how a visitor perceives your company’s professionalism and goodwill. If your website looks modern, crisp and clean, you leave a positive impression on your visitors about your company.

2. Better Usability

CSS also reduces the amount of HTML code a website requires. Tables and extra tags for fonts and colors cause pages to load slowly. The longer it takes for your page to load, the more likely a visitor will hit the back button. Even though the majority of people use a broadband connection, many are still using dialup. And others may be using a high speed wireless network which, depending on how many others are sharing the same wireless channel, may experience fast or slow connections.

3. Accessibility

Rapid advances in wireless communications have made it easy to surf the ‘Net using PDAs and cell phones. Tabular page layouts simply don’t display properly on small screens. A business that wants to be accessible to anyone, anywhere now and in the future needs to have a website that can be viewed on mobile devices.

CSS design also greatly improves the user experience for the visually impaired, as they cause fewer problems for screen readers and Braille programs.

4. Search Engine Benefits

It has been estimated that up to 80% of all purchases online begin with a search engine. And an entire industry is dedicated to helping businesses rank highly for specific search terms to take advantage of the power of search engines.

Although the relevance of a webpage to a search term is determined by HTML elements like title tags and heading tags, content is still “king” because visitors are looking for content, not code. When you have a high code-to-content ratio, your keyword density (the relative frequency of your targeted keywords on your page) is diluted by HTML instructions for how tables, fonts, styles and colors should be rendered. With CSS, there are no tables, and formatting information is contained in one style sheet. So search engines see more keywords and less code.

Search engines are more and are more likely to index deeper pages of your site and send you more referral traffic.

5. Bandwidth

Cascading Style Sheets can save you money and increase the number of eyeballs that see your page in other ways. “Bandwidth” refers to how much website traffic your hosting company will allow you to have each month. Because every time a user lands on your site, he or she must load your pages in his or her browser. Not only visitors, but search engine spiders consume bandwidth too. The more code your pages have, the more bandwidth you use.

If you exceed bandwidth usage your site will be suspend until you buy more bandwidth or reach end of the month. Suppose your site receives a sudden surge of traffic shortly after a popular magazine features your company. That would be the worst possible time for your website to go offline! CSS makes for a more efficient use of bandwidth, and reduces the chances of such problems.

So Are Tables Taboo?

Absolutely not. There are bona fide reasons to use tables to display certain types of content. The beauty about CSS is that you still can use tables when you need to, but you don’t need to use tables for everything which significantly reduces your “code load.”

How Do I Know If I’m Already Using CSS?

A quick test to see if your site is using CSS is to load your website in your browser (any page will do). Right click anywhere in the window, and a menu box will appear. Click “View Page Source.” You should see keywords like rel=“stylesheet” or type=“text/css” near the top of the window that pops up to view your source code.

If you’re already using CSS, there may be other ways your business could benefit from a website redesign. Driving traffic, improving the customer experience, making your website more accessible to users and saving time and money on webmaster updates make it well worth the investment. Whether you choose to redesign now or in the future, make sure that your web designer and developer are skilled in CSS.