So last night I wrote a pretty angry post about how I believe the internet should be much faster and how the American people are being cheated out of time and sanity and all that, so I did a little research to see if there were some things I could do to increase the speed of my current setup.

I use Firefox as my main web browser, so I googled “tips for making firefox faster”.  Turns out there are lots of things you can do to crank up the performance of your web browser.  I haven’t checked for similar tips for other browsers, but I’m sure they’re out there as well.

Here’s what I did to make my browsing experience much faster

I enabled pipelining. When your browser calls up a webpage, it typically will send a request, then wait for the answer, then it will send another request, and so on… Well if you enable pipelining, your browser can keep requesting the page over even if it hasn’t received a response yet.  This trick alone made pages load much much faster.  Here’s how to do it…

1. Type about:config into the address bar and hit enter.  There will be a screen that says you might void your warranty, but I just hit ‘okay’ since I don’t understand how free software could possibly have that good of a warranty.  This pulls up a long list of setting that govern how your browser performs.
2. Find the file labeled network.http.pipelining click on it so instead of ‘false’ it reads ‘true’
3. Find the file labeled network.http.proxy.pipelining click on it so instead of ‘false’ it reads ‘true’
4. Find the file labeled network.http.pipelining.maxrequests.  Double click the file and it will pull up the number 1 that you will need to change.  I read recommendations for anywhere between 8 and 30.  This is how many times it will call for a page without hearing a response.  Naturally I picked 30, but if you’re scared you can just pick 8.

I set the pages to render quickly. Do you ever notice that when a large webpage loads it will load part of the content, then another part, then another part, etc.  Well, did you ever wish that it would just get it over with already!?   This is the fix.  After I did this, pages typically loaded in 1 or 2 parts instead of 5 or 10, which I greatly appreciated.

1. Go to the about:config screen again.
2. Right click somewhere in the window and select New > Integer.
3. Type content.notify.interval as your preference name.
4. Enter 500000 and click OK again.
5. Right-click again in the window and select New > Boolean. Create a value called content.notify.ontimer and set it to True.

Enable faster loading. This was pretty amazing as well.  Do you ever notice how your browser gets really sluggish while you’re loading a page.  This has always been really annoying to me.  Here’s the fix.

1. Type about:config and press ‘enter’.
2. Right-click in the window and select New > Integer.
3. Type content.switch.threshold, click OK
4. Enter 250000 and click OK to finish.

Increase the cache size. Your browser stores certain elements of webpages you visit frequently in a cache so that it can load the page more quickly.  Bigger cache = more stuff that can be called up more quickly.  This works best if you have 2+ gigs of RAM on your machine.

1. Type about:config and press ‘enter’.
2. Right-click anywhere in the window and select New > Integer.
3. Type browser.cache.memory.capacity, click ‘ok’.
4. Enter 65536 and click ‘ok’.
5. Restart your browser.

I got a lot of these tips from TechRadar.com, they had a few others as well, but they were pretty specialized and not really great for most modern web users (just my opinion).  Anyway, enjoy a faster experience on the web and let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

If you go to web design and development blogs (six revisions and smashing magazine are two good ones) you’ll see the writers going on and on about the great new technologies that are even as we speak expanding the functional capabilities of the web.  I worry though….

I worry because it seems that in the last few years the Internet has gotten slower and slower.  This slowness comes from two sources.  1) Developers are figuring out how to extend the functionality of what can be done in your browser to a staggering degree.   and  2)  Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) are either unwilling or unable to keep up.

I still remember back in the early 2000′s at the time of the .com bubble burst.  I had just gone to college and tasted my first non-dialup high-speed internet connection.  There was way more bandwidth than the market required (one of the causes of the crash) and things online were good.  We weren’t watching much video online or using many complex web apps, so basic surfing and content consumption was an absolute joy.

But now look at us.  We’re addicted to web apps like twitter and facebook, we spend all our time online, and we’re absolutely clogging the pipes that make the Internet work.

So why is this an amazing business opportunity?

This is a HUGE problem and it’s only getting huger.  If anyone out there has a good solution I can almost guarantee that there are plenty of investors who would give it a shot.

The future will very likely look nothing like the present.  We need new and innovative solutions.  We need new options for getting connected.  We need someone to do for Internet service what Vonage did for phone service, which means thinking about it in an entirely new way.

Gmail (google’s email product) is a fantastic, versitile and free tool for staying productive with your email duties.  However not everyone is aware how easy it is to manage multiple email addresses from a single gmail account.

Let’s say you’re like me and you’re involved in multiple organizations… I’ve got a few different email addresses: colin@tribeswell.com for my primary business, colin@mwmcmusic.com for my music business, and I also manage email accounts for info@tribeswell.com and booking@mwmwcmusic.com.  I can manage all four of these accounts right from a single gmail account.

Here’s how you pull it off…

1. Log into your gmail account and click the ‘settings’ tab in the top right corner.
2. Look for the tabs in the yellow section of the screen that say ‘general’, ‘labels’, ‘accounts and import’, etc.  Click the ‘accounts and import tab’.
   
3. The second section down on the next page you get to should be labeled ‘send mail as’.  In this section there is a large button that says ‘send mail from another address’.  Click this button.
   
4. A new window will pop up asking you which name and email you want to send emails from.  Enter your name and the email address you want to use.  Click ‘next step’.
5. The next screen gives you the option to send emails through gmail or through your domain’s SMTP servers.  I like to use gmail, because it is way easier and seems to work great for most needs, so select ‘Send through Gmail’.
6. A screen will pop up asking if you want to send a verification email.  Click ‘send verification’.
7. Gmail will send you an email with a verification code, so check your other email, and copy the code by highlighting it and pressing ctrl+c (or command+c if you’re on a mac).  Then paste the code (ctrl or command + v) into the next screen that pops up and hit ‘verify’.  The popup window will close. 
8. Go back to the original gmail settings screen and your new email should be added to the list with your original gmail address.
9. Now the only thing left to do is go into your old email address and tell it to forward all email to your gmail address.  This step will vary in compexity based on your particular email system, but can usually be performed fairly simply in the settings or options panel.  I like to have it forward the email to gmail and then delete the copy that’s in the old system, but that’s just me.  You can forward it however you like.

Now when you go to compose an email you’ll have a dropdown that allows you to select witch email you’d like to send it from. Pretty cool eh?

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I think this marks the 3rd or 4th time that I’ve went on the rampage against the term ‘social media’.  I especially hate this term when it relates to marketing.  Today I ran across this video post by Gary Vaynerchuk where he totally agrees with me.

Here’s the dealio… You can use various ‘online social mediums’ to get your ideas out about new products.  You can use them as a customer service aid or as a market research tool, but symantically speaking, THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY THAT AN ORGANIZATION CAN CREATE SOCIAL MEDIA.

This is the other part of the word social media that I hate.  It throws the word media around in completely nonsensical ways.  Media would be things like text articles, audio recordings, static images, or movies.  Social media would be when people (not organizations), collaborate to create or modify some sort of media product.

The tools that enable this creation are ‘social mediums’ just like tv is a video medium, radio is a sound medium, and newspapers are a print medium.  Facebook is a social medium, because it allows users to create media in a social way.  I type a short blurb.  My friends comment on it.  I post a picture of my friends, my friends tag themselves in it.

So when @comcastcares uses twitter, a social medium, to solve a customer’s problem, the PERSON who is operating the @comcastcares account and the person with the problem are creating media together.  Sure, comcast’s brand is a part of that, but the ‘social media’ is created between 2 or more humans using a ‘social medium’.

So enough of that… here’s Gary’s video

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There’s been quite a bit of trash-talking about wordpress in the last few months and I felt that since Tribeswell builds all of its websites in wordpress, I should weigh in.

For those of you who don’t know, wordpress is a software program that acts as a framework for building and managing a website.  This is known as a content management system or CMS for short.  Currently wordpress is the most popular and widely used CMS in the world.

WordPress is also an open-sourced software product, which means it is free for anyone to download and modify the software to suite their individual needs.  Because of this, a vibrant developer community exists that provides thousands of add-ons and extensions for wordpress that allow it to perform a staggering variety of complex functions.

Web Developers and designers (typically) LOVE wordpress for all of the above reasons.  We don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add a new feature to a website.  There is a good chance that another developer has already solved the problem for us.

So back to the initial questions…

Is WordPress Secure?

WordPress is a software product that lives on the internet.  Like any other online tool, it is vulnerable to attack from hackers or viruses.  Let me reiterate… ANY online tool can become compromised by hackers or viruses.

Fortunately there are lots of things you can do to prevent your wordpress website from being attacked.  In fact, if your wordpress software and plugins are up to date, and you have strong passwords for your admins, it is very unlikely that you will ever have problems.

As I mentioned earlier, WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, therefore more websites use it, and there are more stories about its vulnerabilities than other less popular CMS’s.  You should also consider the source of much of the negative press about wordpress.  It usually comes from people who have their own proprietary systems that compete with wordpress.

Is wordpress good for website owners?

If you look around, you can easily find countless CMS solutions that are easier to use than wordpress.  You can also find CMS solutions that have more functions and can do more things.  However, wordpress occupies a unique niche in that it is fairly easy to use and also performs a wide array of functions.

No CMS solution is right for EVERY application, and there are some things for which wordpress is not ideally suited (ecommerce for example), but for the average website, wordpress is an excellent option, because of its fantastic balance between high funtionality and ease of use.

Is wordpress good for users?

By users I mean the people that visit your site.

WordPress allows developers to create websites that delight users.  Granted, a great website can be made from most any CMS solution, but wordpress is unique in that there are so many design resources, pre-built themes, and modules that it is very easy to create a full-featured website that will impress your core users.

A well-built wordpress site loads quickly, is easily searchable, and often includes great functionality due to the wide array of plugins and extensions available.

So in conclusion…

If someone tells you that wordpress is not a good website solution, make sure you do your research.  I think you’ll find that there are a lot of good reasons why it is the most popular CMS in the world and there are lots of simple things you can do to avoid security issues.

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Microsoft is a technology company.  They obsess about the technology in their products.  Apple is a user experience company.  They relentlessly strive to e delight their users.

Starbucks sells high quality, high efficiency and a sense that you know what you’re going to get when you walk in the door (and now thankfully… free wifi).  Your local coffee shop sells a unique experience that you can’t get anywhere else and a sense of community that gives you the warm fuzzies.

Google is in the ‘organizing your information business’.  Yahoo is in the ‘content business’.

American auto companies are in the “they’ve always bought a new car from us every 5 years forever, so why would they stop?” business.  Japanese car companies are in the “making innovative products that last forever” business.

I’m not saying (directly) that you should be in any particular type of business, but it IS important to know what business you’re in and to then dominate that segment.  I can’t imagine my grandparents driving around in a Honda Civic.  They’re Buick people all the way (and they always have been).  I also can’t imagine people lining up around the block to witness Microsoft’s newest innovation (the way they do for Apple Products), but they still have a massive lead in market share of computer operating systems (though Apple is now a more profitable company due to its innovations in the mobile space).

Knowing who you are, what business you’re in, and who your customer is is the best weapon you have in the marketplace.

Life isn’t fair.  I know this to be brutally true, because my parents chose to curse me with a name that has high competition on Google.

When I have children, I’m going to give them totally wacked out bizarre names just so that they can rank for their own names on Google.  (I’m also going to make sure I get their .com URL’s, if you’re the person out there who owns colinclark.com I have been super pissed at you for over a decade, because I really want it)

There are 2 reasons that it has been notoriously difficult for me to rank on the first page for my name.

1. Colorado Rapids soccer player, Colin Clark – this guy, in spite of his awesome name, is apparently way too good at soccer and is always getting news stories written about him.  For this reason, he is typically the most dominant force on the ‘Colin Clark’ search page.
2. Colin Clark the economist – This guy apparently invented Gross National Product, or something like that.  It must be a big deal, because before the soccer player hit the scene, he was always the number 1 result.

There are a few other players like Colin Clark the photographer and Colin Clark from EventCloudPro’s Twitter account. (please forgive me for not linking to you, I really want to stay on the first page.

So finally, I’m on the first page of results…  How did I do it?

Well let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.  I started an entire website, colinaclark.com, to act as my personal blog and SEO machine that links back to this site.  I also built several sites for the music projects I’m involved with, mwmcmusic.com, pissedoffcatfish.com, litendz.com, and mwmcpedia.com, that all contain lots of keyword rich content that links back to here as well.  I also use the name colinaclark for Twitter and Facebook URL’s (as well as several other social networks), so that probably doesn’t hurt either.

I’m super excited.  Google has finally admitted that I am indeed the REAL Colin Clark.  I just hope it lasts.

I’ve got to be honest, I’ve always thought that Facebook had amazing potential for serving targeted advertising, but typically the ads never seemed to be that effective, at least the ones that I saw on my page.  But, that all changed today when I saw this ad.

There are several things that made this ad particularly excellent.  First, it is very obviously targeted at people like me.  I have listed in my profile that I play bass, so it’s likely that I might have wanted a resource such as this.  I also am listed as a woodworker, so any advertiser can find out that I’m relatively hand and like to work with my hands.  I don’t know precisely that they used both of these criteria to target this ad at me, but the fact of the matter is that I was quite interested in finding out more.

Needless to say I clicked on the ad and filled out the necessary contact information to receive the free ebook.  When I opened the PDF file, I was absolutely delighted.  This is really one of the best free ebooks I’ve seen.  It’s filled with great tips that I’m sure I will use extensively for years to come.

This advertiser has successfully gotten my attention, gotten me to voluntarily give my contact info, and given me a great free resource.  I’m not sure that I’ll ever buy any of the custom basses that this company manufactures, but they’re definitely on my radar now.

So if you want to have success with your facebook ad, here’s a breakdown of everything that Jerzy Drozd Basses did correctly to get my attention and make a great impression.

• Target your ad extremely specifically.  In this case, the perfect ad was served to the ideal prospect (me), and I was compelled to take action.
• Make a simple compelling promise in your ad.  In this case they promise that they will give me a free ebook that will teach me everything I need to know about how to set up my bass properly.  They don’t try to sell me a custom bass or any of their other services.  They seem to only care about helping me.
• Make your offering easy to get, especially if it’s free.  As soon as I clicked the ad, I was taken to a squeeze page where I could easily enter my information so they could email me the free ebook.
• Deliver on your promise.  When I opened the ebook I was absolutely blown away with the quality of the information provided and the overall design.  If it had been crappy or low-quality or had useless information, I would have never given this company a second thought, but instead here I am blogging about it, because it was so great.
• Leave the door open.  In this case, they provided an incentive for me to keep listening to their marketing message.  The ebook is clearly labeled as a work in progress.  They state that every time they make an update to the content they’ll email me the updates.  I think that’s pretty cool.

To get your own copy of this ebook, or just to check out how great marketing works, follow this link to Jerzy Drozd Basses.

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I’ve been talking about this idea with clients for months now, and I just realized that I hadn’t blogged about it yet, and since I haven’t been blogging a lot lately, I thought, ‘what the heck.’

There are new rules that web designers are going to have to be thinking about if they are going to design websites that provide an excellent experience for a wide variety of users.  This is because, increasingly, many website visitors will come to your site from a mobile phone, and to a lesser extent from small-screen devices like netbooks and ipads.

Complicating things further is the fact that ultra widescreen computer monitors can be purchased for under 200 bucks, and an increasing number of users are purchasing 2 or more monitors for their machines, so… Well let’s just say you need a website that looks good on lots of different displays.  So let’s break it down…

Designing Websites that Look Good on Smartphones.

The absolute BEST way to make sure you provide an excellent experience for your mobile visitors is to design a separate mobile version of your website that visitors get when they type in your web address.  There are actually some great wordpress plugins that make decent looking mobile sites, however sometimes it doesn’t make sense financially or strategically to do this, so you might need to make some design decisions to insure that mobile visitors have an excellent experience.

1. Use make use of large navigation, especially on the homepage. This makes it easy for people to find stuff right away without having to zoom in too much and hunt around for what they’re looking for.
2. Provide search. This is actually a good rule of thumb anyway, but you should definitely have a search function on your site, especially for mobile users.  Make it big enough and prominent enough so that users don’t have to zoom in to find it on mobile devices.
3. Don’t use flash. It won’t show up on most mobile devices and there are plenty of alternatives if you just want to create cool visual effects (like javascript).  And if you have videos on your site…
4. Use Youtube. I know there are more functional and better looking players out there, but Youtube is the only one that plays on the majority of mobile devices, so it’s the only one I recommend.

Netbooks and Tablets

I think that really the only hard and fast rule for netbooks and tablets is to keep the width of your website at around 955 pixels.  This will insure that you can see the whole page for the most common screen resolutions.

Also, make sure your site is compliant with Google Chrome, because lots of netbook users like to use it since it takes up less screen space than other browsers.

Wide Screen Monitors

The first rule is to make sure that your site is around 950 pixels wide.  Really narrow websites just look silly on wide monitors.

Also make sure that the visual elements that make up the site are coded so that they extend naturally onto wide screens.

Modern websites (with a few exeptions) should generally also be of a fixed width.  The opposite of this would be a variable width which means that your website elements shift around depending on the size of the browser window.  This generally tends to make websites look really weird and have usability issues.

Conclusion

It is important to make sure that your website matches the technology that will be displaying it.  If you have any questions or things to add, please leave them in the comments.

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And that’s all it is.  I think a lot of business people get hung up when they either make vague promises or make promises they can’t keep.  The best businesses make clear promises and always keep them.

Vague Promises

The web is littered with websites that are filled with copy that makes unbelievably vague promises.  They only purpose your website has is to make a promise, provide some information on how you intend to keep that promise, and provide a point of contact from the visitor to you.

In order to insure that you’re making clear, unambiguous promises with your marketing, it helps to test content with a variety of audiences.  Do most of the people who see your site understand your promises clearly?  Do YOU understand your promises clearly?  Do your PEOPLE understand the promises that they’re making with every encounter they have with a customer?

Making Promises you Can’t Keep

I’m sure that MOST businesses have been guilty of this at some point or another (I know I have).  I’m not saying we’re liars or bad people or unethical, we just want to help as many customers as possible and keep them all happy (which is pretty much impossible).  It is important, however, that we analyze the promises that we make with our marketing to make sure that we can avoid the inevitable poor reputation that accompanies broken promises.

Delivery in 30 minutes or less, or your pizza is free.

Remember the promise that Dominos made?  They probably sold millions of pizzas by making, and keeping that promise.  Powerful promises deliver powerful results.  If your promises are clear, and if you can manage to ALWAYS keep them (hard to do), then your business will thrive.  If you don’t, you might not do as well.

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