Website Design

Domain Name Expiration Policy

admin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:53:59 +0000

In the event domain name renewals go unpaid, it is the policy of FLASH HQ (Larry ‘Flash’ Alexander) to extend domain expiration dates, then offer those domains for sale at auction. Auctions are listed at:

http://forsale.hqsecuredomains.com

Bids can be entered there and will be responded to within twenty four hours.

Before & After

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:42:33 +0000

Flash Buddy particularly enjoys website makeovers. When it comes to website re-designs, Flash is hard to beat in areas of design, user experience, accessibility, and price. Use Flash’s contact page and tell him what you think of his work.

Are Your Meta Tag Keywords Current?

admin — Sat, 08 May 2010 12:16:41 +0000

My recent copy of Website Magazine came in the mail with some very pertinent SEO information. Whereas the belief in having ones meta keywords relevant and well stuffed has been around for over twenty years, today I’m told it is a waste of time. What responsible webmaster hasn’t been trying to game the system (and not get caught or penalized)? Keyword stuffing is just the start. We’ve used Blog Comment Spamming, Search Engine Submission, Link Exchanges and the ever popular Meta Tag Optimization.

Content is King

Yes, there are new approaches to the aforementioned SEO methods and while important to solid website development and maintenance, they are not the be all, end all of optimization. Today it is important to add unique, relevant content. The best content is that which is focused on the topics your particular website page was built to convey. Like keyword stuffing of yore, the ‘ol copy and paste metod of developing website content has flown out the perverbial window. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing are wise to replicated content and replicators, while not punished like key word spammers, are not promoted one bit in the the rankings.

Duplicated content has its place. One does a visitor a disservice sending them off to another’s website for what can be useful and relevant information. Rather than copy and paste, the pros use a content service or RSS scraper to bolster ones website value by including off site content. Consider the following pages:

Bailey Placencia enjoys blogging on the subject of weddings, it is one of her passions. By using a RSS scraper, it is possible to include Baley’s blog in the existing Central Coast Wedding website. The same methodology works to provide current Northern Colorado gas prices from Gas Buddy, news and entertainment events into the Northern Colorado Online Professionals Directory.

RichContent

RSS scraping is one way, another way to boost ones business is by offering relevant, high quality content :: RichContent is a simple way for website owners to add relevant, high quality articles and videos to their sites. From new to existing websites, users can easily expand or refresh the content on their website.

Content is sourced from an industry leading library containing millions of rights-cleared, premium articles. The same library powering leading industry brands such as McGraw-Hill Companies, The Chicago Sun-Times, Cox Newspapers, Kohler and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.

Can your website SEO and content can use a boost? The best way to start is with a phone consultation. Flash Buddy recommends that you do ‘what you do best’ and let me do ‘what I do best’; create functional SEO friendly webstes that are rich in content.

For Security Sake, Update Your Software

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:55:19 +0000

Does your website use blogging software such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal? Does your website use a shopping cart such as OS Commerce, ZenCart or CubeCart? Are you an artist using image management software? If you answered yes to any of these questions then you are a prime target of hackers.

Hacker is one a terms that has a different meaning depending on who uses it. Among computer programmers, those geeks that forge the software we use, to be a hacker is to be a rock star of the computer world. Hackers are programming code jockeys that can weave together bits of high power code and scripts, inventing new purpose as they go. They are gurus, the Maharishi of the internet.

Why people hack is its own subject. I expect many hack just for the sake of hacking. They explore the possibilities with no malevolence. These are the digital hooligans, or digital graffiti artists of the internet. Others are the sadists who derive pleasure from creating havoc among the unsuspecting, wiping out entire websites. Finally, the more prevalent and easily the more burdensome are those who are paid to hack. Most hackers would like to get in to your shopping cart software to steal the credit card numbers and other personal data that may reside there. They want into your Blogging software in order to commander its emailing capabilities, thereby using your server to send out reams of spam, instead of there own.

Software developers are well aware of hackers and take precautions to thwart them. As hackers find a way to exploit software, developers release patches to fix the ‘holes’, it is an unending, ongoing process.

Bottom line: Keep your software up to date! Who’s responsibility is it to keep website software up to date? It is the end user’s responsibility to keep software up to date. That is the simple factual truth, However, I think in a perfect world the software would be smart enough to upgrade itself. WordPress comes closest to this with dashboard upgrade notification and one click upgrade process.

One of the big challenges that lies before any software platform, will be to put in place a distributed infrastructure that allows users to have their installations automatically upgraded as often as necessary. This would, of course, be a truly complex developer/development problem and I have no idea what the ultimate solution might look like but, sadly, it will have to be done at some point. Hackers never rest and are getting better. Therefore, no matter how important it is for users to upgrade, the reality is that a significant number of them will not.

Wait, there is more to the equation. Consider the underlying software that power these programs. What of a MySQL vulnerability or one within PHP itself to allow your site to be compromised? Obviously this is an impossibility.

I won’t rip you off!
I charge generally a modest $25.00 to upgrade software, unless there are unusual complexities such as customizations that would need to be preserved. If you have questions about your website software, I urge you to contact me for upgrade counseling and advice.

Current Versions

WordPress: 2.8.6
ZenCart: 1.3.8a
OS Commerce: 2.2MS2
Joomla: 1.5.51
Drupal: 6.14
Easy PHP Calendar: 6.0

Twitter | Where Are We Now?

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:27:20 +0000

When twitter first became the rage I found myself tweeting quite frequently throughout the day. Today, I find myself tweeting several times a week; I’ve slowed down substantially. Realistically, even though I have hundreds of followers, I don’t think many of them read my tweets. It is far more likely that one of my tweets using a hashtag gets read. If I stick #fortcollins or #jayleno or better yet, #tigerwoods into one of my tweets; thousands of people who follow those subjects will see my entry in their list.

Twitter Desktop Applications
I don’t go to http://twitter.com to read tweets, that would take too much time. Instead I use Seesmic. Seesmic is a deskktop twitter application that runs in the tray on my Vista computer. It allows me to have several twitter accounts and to send tweets to any or all of them. It also allows me to organize whom I follow and thereby filter incoming tweets into sensible categories. There are plenty of other twitter applications that do some or all of this. I’ve tried most of them and settled on Seesmic.

Seesmic Desktop Twitter Application

If you intend to use twitter and be able to leverage its social power then a desktop twitter application is highly recommended. You may want to consider TweetDeck, TwitterFox, Twhirl (Windows & Mac), and plenty more.

Vacation Immanent

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:48:22 +0000

That time of year has come around again where Flash and the family will be heading out of the basement with all its attractions and into real life instead. Our first stop will be Ja Jolla. Grandma and Grandpa are demanding to spoil Zac and Max up close and personal. From there we take the train to Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley. Aunt Judi is looking forward to sharing the fruits of California’s immigration while enjoying 100 plus degrees of valley weather.

I’ll have a laptop in tow (I’m borrowing one) so will be getting my mail almost (but not quite) daily. Additionally, I’ll have my phones forwarded to my cell. Don’t be bugging me unless it is an emergency. BTW, an emergency is NOT a typo you found, that has been there for over ten years!

Add Images/Video to your Tweets

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:05:38 +0000

One can not actually embed an image or video into a twitter tweet, but one can upload an image or video to one of the many services whom in turn will provide a shortened url to the content to be copied and pasted into your tweet. Some of these FREE Services will even post the tweet with the image and or video url in it to your twitter account; provided you supply your login and password. A couple of my favorites are Posterous and PikChur (impossible bad spelling url)

Here is a brief roundup, and by no means a complete list. New services continue to come online:

TwitPic
TwitPic lets you share photos on Twitter You can post pictures to TwitPic from your phone, their API, or through the TwitPic website itself.

Pikchur
Pikchur is a way to share photos with your friends and family, no matter where they are! Pikchur accounts include a social aspect.

yFrog
Post images and video. Supports the iPhone app Tweetie to post images and video straight from your phone.

Flickr
Flickr has just released their long awaited feature for posting photos to Twitter. It’s been in beta over the past few weeks but now is live. Flickr is a free images hosting service, maybe the most popular too.

Posterous
No account necessary. Email attachements to upload photos, video, mp3′s and files for instant posting. Posterous accounts include a social aspect.

Twitgoo
No account necessary. Email attachments to upload photos, video, mp3′s and files for instant posting.

FileTwt
FileTwt, a beta service for file sharing on Twitter, is a basic but convenient utility for quickly sharing any file, up to 20MB, with your entire Twitter network or just a single user.

TwitDoc
The EASY way to share your documents on Twitter. Upload your file, shorten the URL, and post a tweet all in one easy step.

What’s New from Twitter

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:45:57 +0000

Twitter just released a new widget designed to pull targeted information. In its simplest form one can easily add a dynamic scroller of twitter feeds specific to ones city, town. That just scratches the surface of what the widget can pull in and display.

Twitter’s Search widget makes use of Hash Tags and key words, focused by AND/OR operators. Lets use Oprah Winfrey for an example. Searching the hash tag #oprah gives us all tweets that specifically use the oprah hash tag. Adding in OR #oprahwinfrey will then display all tweets with either #oprah or #oprawinfrey. The following is a list of search operators supported by twitter:

Search Operators

You can type these search operators directly into the search box. (Alternatively, you can use the advanced search form to automatically constuct your query.)

Operator	Finds tweets…
twitter search	containing both “twitter” and “search”. This is the default operator.
“happy hour“	containing the exact phrase “happy hour”.
love OR hate	containing either “love” or “hate” (or both).
beer -root	containing “beer” but not “root”.
#haiku	containing the hashtag “haiku”.
from:alexiskold	sent from person “alexiskold”.
to:techcrunch	sent to person “techcrunch”.
@mashable	referencing person “mashable”.
“happy hour” near:“san francisco”	containing the exact phrase “happy hour” and sent near “san francisco”.
near:NYC within:15mi	sent within 15 miles of “NYC”.
superhero since:2009-07-26	containing “superhero” and sent since date “2009-07-26″ (year-month-day).
ftw until:2009-07-26	containing “ftw” and sent up to date “2009-07-26″.
movie -scary	containing “movie”, but not “scary”, and with a positive attitude.
flight	containing “flight” and with a negative attitude.
traffic ?	containing “traffic” and asking a question.
hilarious filter:links	containing “hilarious” and linking to URLs.
news source:twitterfeed	containing “news” and entered via TwitterFeed

Example Oprah Feed

Twitter Search Widget»

Social Media Email Series :: FREE!

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:18:51 +0000

All FLASH HQ subscribers will begin receiving my Social Media Series; a series of tips and free tools to help you manage twitter, facebook and more.

Social Media Package Available Now

admin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:16:12 +0000

Social Media Package

You get:

3 social media accounts; twitter, Facebook and scrnshots
Custom graphics for twitter, Facebook and website links
Registration with top five twitter search engines
Facebook business page
Twitter feed integration into website

Cost: $250.00