St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

The rumors are that Google’s “no follow” crusade is back firing for them. If you believe the rumors, Google is having trouble finding content. Google has always been about incoming links, a little less for the last year or so, but for competitive key phrases, it’s obvious that the sites with the most inbound links will have a better chance of ranking higher for their desired key phrases, no matter what the folks at Google say. Here’s Matt Cutts Google’s spokesman on the subject of do follow links and no follow links:

Our take on why no follow links are more valuable than Matt says and more insight after the jump…
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WordPress version 3,.0 has just been released.  This latest  version of WordPress has some exciting features for the more technically inclined.  It’s touting more features for those out there that aren’t.  The trouble is that some of these new features just make it easier for them to destroy their blog. 

There are also some disturbing things about this latest version for those of us “in the know”.  We aren’t going to speak more until we’ve confirmed some things.  But  we recommend holding off for just a little while until we (and the many tech writers out there) have had a few days to do some testing.

Look for the good, the bad and the ugly (if there is any) here.
UPDATE:
WordPress 3.0 is definitely safe enough. A word of caution, if you use the new “custom menu” feature however, your existing menu will be lost forever. If this happens to you, don’t worry we can fix it.
We recommend upgrading your blog to v 3.0

We’ve had another search engine success with a new web site. This is a new web site, targeting a fairly competitive keyphrase: Florida Data Services.  It has done so with some success and again just minimal effort.  It’s true “Florida Data Service” isn’t the most searched for keyphrase out there, but it highly targets the market this web site is seeking to capture.  Withing 5 weeks this site shot straight to #2 on Google.  Yahoo, Go.com, AltaVista, AllTheWeb.com seem to be madly in love with the web site, as it’s #1 on these search engines for several key phrases.  This is usually an indicator that it will be #1 on Google for at least some of these secondary key phrases in the near future.

This site has had no more than our Basic SEO Package.  That worked out this time because we were able to find a niche without a lot of competition.  For more more popular key phrases, some variation of our Advanced SEO Package is usually needed.  But consistently, we’ve proved that if your willing to put the resources into it, we can get you the top spot on Google for just about any search phrase you’d like.

With methodology that’s typical of both Microsoft and the GOP, these two spent millions making and promoting this huge web application that proports to be just what the people want, ( a “virtual town hall meeting”) which doesn’t work and isn’t what it says it is…

For the record I am NOT a Democrat nor a Republican and I am, like most Americans NOT happy with either party.  This story is not about politics, but instead about what happens when you don’t plan, test and launch a web application successfully.  further this article will speak a little about honesty in marketing.  Any comments that try to say that I’m saying these thing because I don’t agree with the politics of the web site will not be published, as will any comments that rant about one political viewpoint or party.  We welcome all comments that focus on the marketing or technical aspects of this web application.

First we’ll address the “doesn’t work” part, then after the fold we’ll address the part where it isn’t what it says it is.

On the first day I heard of it, I went to check it out. It displayed nothing but a blank screen. I checked the source code, there was the complete source code for a blank html page. Well stuff happens I guess. So I checked back a few hours later, same thing. So I tried in the wee hours of the morning, same thing.  I don’t know how they think this is okay, but if this was my web application, it would have been ready for the massive amount of traffic on launch day, it would have been thoroughly tested before release and any errors that somehow made it through this process would have been fixed promptly.  If not, my efforts would be considered and absolute failure. Given the GOP and Microsoft have access to so many more resources than me, these failures are completely unacceptable.

Now it’s three days later and I go there and, lo and behold, we get a front page. But that’s all. All the pages linked to on this page, return the famous asp.net error screen (which some say is a huge security hole in asp.net web applications). See screen shot above.
There is a video on the front page. It does work. Sadly it’s hosted by youtube and has all Google’s tracking systems intact. Really? The GOP can’t afford to and Microsoft doesn’t have the know how to host it’s own video? They really think it’s okay to give up all that info on it’s users just to avoid hosting their own video?  BTW, youtube.com is owned by Google which is Microsoft’s #1 competitor.  I’d have to say that using youtube to host this particular video on this particular web site and Epic Fail, wouldn’t you?
The video goes on and on about how they want the public’s input on policy. The info the founder (Kevin McCarthy) released to the press used the phrase “virtual town hall meeting”. The site couldn’t be anything further from that. But it is designed to make it look like one.
Here’s some of the differences between a town hall meeting and this web application:
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Bubbles! Everyone loves bubbles! Okay, maybe not everyone, but I don’t think anyone hates bubbles do they?

Blue Bubbles is a free WordPress Theme from out St Petersburg Web Design team.  The central area is 900 pixels wide, with two columns inside.  It has a horizontal drop down menu.  In fact it’s our special “easy use” drop down menu which eliminates the “mouse chase” effect which make so many drop down difficult to use because the menu disappears unless the mouse isn’t in exactly the right spot.

This is the download page for this free WordPress theme and also the support page.  It’s a pretty straight forward theme, like most of our themes.  Which means it’s easy to use and customize.  Just install it like normal and edit it like one normally would.   If you do have questions, please just post them as comments below.  Links and terms after the jump . . .

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Everyone knows that cPanel is the hands down, the most effective, most reliable, most feature rich and the most common Web hosting control panel.

Nope, no they don’t.  I’ve heard for the second time in a year, someone say they’ve never used cPanel for a web hosting control panel.  In both times these were fairly bright guys, these were fairly experienced guys.  Neither was really responsible for choosing a web host ever before though.  Both had also worked mostly at larger corporations.  Yet they had never heard of WHM (Web Host Manager) either.  WHM is the multi-domain to entire server level software. sometimes it’s hard for the open source software to compete against the giants like Microsoft in advertising. Even with this disadvantage, cPanel is used on over 1000 times as many web sites as Microsoft technologies.

That’s okay.  If you’ve never tried cPanel you really should.  It really is the most complete hosting management software out there.

Here’s some of the great features and unique features: Read the rest of this entry »