MaconMacGuy.com » web design

Add voicemail to your website

MaconMacGuy — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:30:56 +0000

Just ran across a new service called SpeakPipe, which is in beta as I type this [March 26, 2012]. It offers an EASY way to add “voicemail” to your website/Facebook page / WordPress/Joomla etc.

I’ve added it to several of my sites, and am pleased to report that it was very easy to implement and has worked flawlessly.

The only issue I saw was in the WordPress site – but that was because the WordPress cache took time to refresh after installing the code. It started working after about 10 minutes after the server took care of it’s business.

They are going to follow the “Freemium” model – where the basic account is free, but extra features will be charged for. One blogger I read said they were going to charge something well under $10 a month for the Premium features, which is dirt cheap for this type of functionality.

It is well done, easy to use, and was easy to implement. Check it out!

Fonts on the web

MaconMacGuy — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:37:47 +0000

I recently had a new client who had expressed concern about the look of her site under development. She has had me set it up, and rough in the structure, but is having a writer fill in the pictures and text inside each area of the site.

I received an email requesting that we change the fonts on the site – to match the other designs she is using around her retails store, signage, etc. This is my explanation on how fonts work onlin – I thought ti might be helpful to others.e

1)
You need to think of the fonts online completely differently then in graphic design. Once something is printed on paper, it’s fixed. On the web, the images are RECREATED every time they are viewed – and the look of the re-creation is totally dependent on the capabilities of the machine you are using to view it.

A practical example: Let’s say we set the site to use the font Minion. it looks great on your machine – because you have Minion installed on your machine. If I pull up the site, and do NOT have Minion installed, it will look completely different – and what font is substituted will completely depend on several settings on my machine. The designer has NO control over it.

2)
The look of the site and the content of the site are totally different. At this particular moment I strongly suggest just getting something up on the site so we can pull the “temp” front page.

Worry about the look later – because we can specify the fonts in ONE spot which will automatically change every usage of the font across the site. [There are several "depending on...." things there, but I've loaded this up with too many details as it is].

Bottom line:
Get the content posted first. Deal with the design later – the search engines look at the content only, so the sooner we get something posted the sooner you can be found online.

PrestaShop ecommerce – some random thoughts

MaconMacGuy — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 03:20:16 +0000

I’ve been using Prestashop for MacMusicGuy.com for several months, and though I’d jot down some views. I was looking for an ecommerce solution that easily allowed downloadable products – this particular shop doesn’t sell physical products – at least for the forseeable future!.

I looked at several different possibilities – Magento, etc – even looked at using WordPress, which could be theoretically doable – but settled on Prestashop because the base store is free, and it comes with a plethora of features. It is easily extensible with add-in modules (similar to the WordPress Widgets and Plugins) – many are free, and there is an active paid developer community as well.

Other attractive features are the options for multiple languages, multiple currencies, multiple shipping partners (which I don’t need for this particular store), and the template design setup.

The shop has been up and running for some time – I am still loading product into the store at odd times, so it will be some time before there are more than a few products available.

Overall, I am pleased with the software. The only two “gotchas” I had to wrestle with were the PHP upload settings on the server – fortunately my host provider (MidGaHosting.com) allows me to change the settings to allow larger file uploads), and needing to unblock some ports on the hosting firewall, which took a bit of trial and error.

Prestashop is available at Prestashop.com. Tell them the MaconMacGuy sent you!

Facebook: how to auto-update your Facebook Page

MaconMacGuy — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:34:31 +0000

This is a quick-and-dirty summary of how to automatically update your Facebook Page with entries from a blog.

BACKGROUND: I have several website that are WordPress based, and thus have an RSS feed as part of the setup. Several others are using Feedburner to distribute the feed as well.

There are also some Facebook pages setup as an auxiliary web presence – See the HamSandwichTees Website vs. the Facebook Page for an example.

What I wanted to do was to add an entry to the website, and then have it automatically transfer in to the Facebook Page.

Here’s how:

Login to Facebook
Click Pages (left menu)
Click on the Page you wish to edit
Click EDIT PAGE button – top right
Click APPS link on left menu
Find the NOTES app – click the “Go to App” link
Click EDIT IMPORT SETTINGS link on left sidebar.
Add in the appropriate RSS link (something like http://hamsandwichtees.com/feed/)

Online Ecommerce Shopping Carts

MaconMacGuy — Tue, 24 May 2011 13:15:51 +0000

I have been researching several shopping carts as I setup a new online store (MacMusicGuy.com, which will sell downloadable music, sheet music, etc.). It has been interesting looking at the tons of open-source options, as well as the commercial software options.

Some observations:

OScommerce has been around a long while, and has a tremendous community built up around it. My impression is that the look is dated, and debugging/configuring the install will take quite a while.
Xcart is something I’ve had some peripheral experience with through a former client. It is commercial software, and is quite capable. I’ve decided for budget reasons to not go commercial, however.
OSCommRes is an option available in my MidGaHosting.com host account. There is little info on the web about it, though, and I really do not want to start up a new online store with dead software.
Zencart looked interesting – it looks like a more modern version of OScommerce. Several posters commented that it was a better choice than OScommerce, but it would still require significant tweaking.
Magento also looked promising. It is an opensource/commercial hybrid – the so called “freemium” model. Unfortunately for me the “Community” edition was missing some features that I need in this store.
PrestaShop is what I decided to try. It looks like it will do what I need it to do, and the setup seems to be fairly straightforward. I am still in the midst of configuing the backend, and then will start loading product into the store. At that point I’ll make the shop active.

The short list of my requirements:

mysql/php based
Easily add downloadable products
Some carts can do “multiple stores” inside one install. That might be useful later should this store branch out into shippable products.
Backup capability inside the admin panel
multiple admin users – I’m going to need some help later!
Ability to add free products to the mix.
Builtin RSS feed
Multiple currency capable
Builtin hooks to Paypal and Google Checkout

More later as I continue this journey!

WordPress tip 3

MaconMacGuy — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:37:11 +0000

I have a client who was asking some questions about adding material to their website – which is WordPress based. I thought this might be useful for someone.

The client was having trouble deleting a table using Visual view in WordPress. They could delete the data in the table, just not the table itself, in an entry.

Tip 3

Probably the easiest method is to delete the text inside the table, and then add in some “marker text” that is easily see-able (like a bunch of dollar signs) at both the top and the bottom of the now-empty table.

Switch to HTML view – there’s a tab at the top of the editing window. You’ll see both your text and all the html codes there – it’s a visual mess unless you know html. Fortunately, you don’t have to worry about that.

Scan down until you see your “marker text”. Tables always begin with the code and end with

– so you should see a tag just before your top marker text, and

just after your bottom line marker text. Delete those tags and everything in between.

BTW – the tags may have some extra stuff in them – like . Its still a
tag.

WordPress tip 2

MaconMacGuy — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 15:32:33 +0000

I have a client who was asking some questions about adding material to their website – which is WordPress based. I thought this might be useful for someone.

Tip 2

The headlines and such in a WordPress Page or Post are set using what’s similar to Word’s headings – i.e. you mark it as a heading, and Word auto-formats it to whatever font/size/style –> which can be changed in Words styles area.

The web has something similar –
,
etc. When creating or editing a Page or Post you should see the “Format” pulldown in the editing toolbar when typing up stuff with “Heading 1″ “Heading 2″ etc. That is exactly what those are referring to.

Making it even odder – what you see in the editing box is not necessarily exactly what you’ll see live on the website – in terms of the look. This is NOT a big deal, but you do need to be aware of it. How different the editing box and the final result are depends on your theme and a whole slew of CSS settings…..but generally it is not a huge deal as long as you are aware of it.

The bottom line is that you mark some text in the editing box as “heading 1″, BUT what exactly heading 1 looks like is set elsewhere. That’s why there’s no specific font option inside a post.

WordPress tip 1

MaconMacGuy — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:32:25 +0000

I have a client who was asking some questions about adding material to their website – which is WordPress based. I thought this might be useful for someone.

Tip 1

You do NOT want to copy/paste information from Word into the website. Word’s html is extraordinarily odd, and makes things difficult to change later.

There IS a good way to do this, though – which is especially handy if you like typing material in Word because you are comfortable with it.

Open up a new page or post (as the case may be).

If you are in Visual view (click the “Visual” tab, not the “HTML” tab, you should see a row of tool icons at the top of the editing area. Click on the icon that looks like a clipboard with a W on it.

A window will popup. THAT’S where you paste from Word.

Paste the info from Word into the Popup.

Click the button at the bottom what will insert the new material.

WordPress cleans up the wonky Word html and pops it into your new page/post. At that point you can continue formatting it as needed – often you want it to look different than how WordPress formatted the text.

New Client: SCNSE

MaconMacGuy — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:24:18 +0000

I’m closing in on completing a site for the Society of Clinical Nursing Specialist Educators, a professional organization dedicated to enhancing the education of Clinical Nursing Specialists.

This is a new organization, and their website needed to be clean, easy to navigate, and yet allow for conference registration…. and not cost a lot to develop.

I created several tie-ins with Paypal in the site, working with the groups treasurer. For a new organization cost containment is obviously a critical issue, and we found that Paypal’s pricing for handling the credit card payments was significantly lower than the SCNSE’s bank.

I also added a feedburner tie-in so that anyone can be notified when news is added to the site.

Behind the scenes I am working with the organization’s board to create a communications structure, including email addresses, contact information, and training a “PR” person on adding news to the site.

“Being online” means more than just having a website. It has to integrate into the business (or in this case, the organization) – and that means having a communications process setup to answer questions and comments, add material to the site, etc.

There is a lot of additional activities and features that could be added to the site, but for now what is there is enough to get a new national organization started.

Check it out for yourself:

Society of Clinical Nursing Specialist Educators

Hosting vs. Domains – HUH?

MaconMacGuy — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 19:07:27 +0000

I had an interesting conversation with a student who wanted to start a website – but he was very confused about domains and website and such.

Domains

A Domain in just a name given to a particular computer/IP address. [IP address = a numeric address that every box connected to the internet has to have]. MaconMacGuy.com, for example, actually behind the scenes gets pointed to a particular IP address and a particular areas of that particular machine.

When you “purchase” a domain you are essentially “renting” that domain so you can use it. That’s why you have to re-up your subscription every so often, and why it’s a per-year charge.

Hosting

Hosting, on the other hand, is renting space on a webserver where your website live – i.e. where the files that make up your site are stashed. The computer is accessible via the Web, so anyone looking for your site can see it on the web.

DNS

The DNS system is essentially a big phone directory that ties the domain and the IP addresses together – MaconMacGuy.com and 66.40.34.135, for example. This way you can type in the easily remembered MaconMacGuy.com instead of 66.40.34.135.

The Domain purchase and the Hosting purchase are really two separate transactions – which means you can purchase the domain from one place and the webhosting from another. I have had several clients go ahead and purchase a domain – so they already “own” it – before they know what they will do with it. Later, they’ll purchase hosting from MidGaHosting.com, and we’ll have to do a bit of extra work to get the two tied together.

It’s usually easier – and better – to go ahead and purchase the domain and the hosting at the same time, from the same company. You’ll have ONE company to deal with, ONE account, ONE place to go and renew your website or domain, ONE user interface, etc.

I – for biased reasons, mind you! – recommend my company MidGaHosting.com for both. The prices are competitive, and the Control panel is easy to navigate through. It really doesn’t take long to figure out how to get something done [as opposed to the one in GoDaddy, which I find incredibly arcane and annoying to navigate. I frankly don't have that kind of time to waste!]

Keep your website up – Communicate!

MaconMacGuy — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:00:26 +0000

I had a client recently whose website was put on hiatus – they had forgotten to pay the hosting bill!

Fortunately their domain was good for another year, so all that happened was their site was temporarily replaced with an “account suspended” page – easily fixed by paying the bill.

So why did this happen?

The easy answer is that someone wasn’t paying attention to their emails! After all, the system starts sending out reminder messages a month in advance!

Looking deeper, however, reveals a flaw in the system setup – and this is why I look at the whole system when setting up a new website. There should be a line of communication that is put in place to ensure someone who can react to problems vis-a-vis the site is kept apprised of problems.

This particular client is a homeowner’s association – and as such has a management staff PLUS a volunteer board of directors. Communication lines have not been clear in the past, which made it difficult to decide who needed to know what when originally setting up the system.

As a result, the original setup was for account info be sent to the main office email account….and here is where the flaw was exposed last week. The office does not have a clear communication setup – the website email account is used, but also a additional “off-site” account, which was getting heavy traffic (and thus most of the attention.

The fix? The primary hosting account now is listed as an alias – which automatically forwards everything to the webdesigner, the board’s president, the office, PLUS the communications committee.

A lesson learned with a very small price to pay. You don’t often get those in adulthood!