Draft Motif

Marketing & Communications for HigherEd

More About Me...

My name is Paul Prewitt, I'm a marketing and communications professional specializing in e-marketing strategies in Higher Ed. I am the Electronic Communications Coordinator at the University of Arkansas Alumni Association and manage all electronic communications and marketing efforts for alumni & friends.

What it’s all about…

This site is intended to be a resource for other Higher Ed marketing professionals looking for information on email marketing, social media, web development, print design and other means of direct marketing in today’s challenging world.

Showing newest posts with label Web. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label Web. Show older posts

Why Do We Fall Down? So That We Can Learn How to Pick Our Self Up!

Check out my guest post on .eduGuru to learn about a ‘FAIL’ that we recently fixed and hopefully you can learn from it too.

Why Do We Fall Down? So That We Can Learn How to Pick Our Self Up!

The Social Marketing Campaign: Are You Social? We Are!

Check out my guest post on .eduGuru and get the inside scoop on the Arkansas Alumni Association's Social Marketing efforts.

The Social Marketing Campaign: Are You Social? We Are!

4Q Survey Helps Answer Why Visitors Come

If you have not tried the free 4Q Survey tool by Avinash Kaushik and iPerceptions then you are behind the game. The 4Q Survey is designed to help you better understand "Why" people are coming to your site.

Well, who better to explain what 4Q is all about then Avinash the original creator himself. To hear Avinash's explanation visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2LJliORQPQ.

So the video leaves out one simple thing to help the sales pitch for any tool, results. Therefore, we'll be going over the Arkansas Alumni Association's results for the survey loaded on the www.arkalum.org (only domain loaded on as we have others too). Since the tool has only been online for a few months we’ll go over September 2008 as we have full statistics for.

Since I'm a designer at heart lets start out with the important part, how it works and looks on my site (after all their logo is green).

So it is pretty simple looking and will fit into almost any site. Also since they co-brand it to your organization it appears to come from you and looks rather good.

Last but more importantly is our results. After all why bother unless you can actually get something out of the tool. Well, they claim that you can get the answer to "Why" and that you can and so much more.

First we can get a simple view of our overall participant satisfaction and even get a satisfaction trend over the life of the survey. This can tell us if our site needs improvement and even what needs improvement.

Next up is the Task Completion score (comparable to Goals in Google Analytics). This is probably the most significant score you can get on the tool as it helps answer tell if visitors completed the goal they came to the site for.

Last up is probably the most complicated portion of the survey but also the very best part too. The "purpose" distribution helps us tell "why" a visitor came and if it was successful visit. Not only based on our predefined purposes/goals but also allowing for the user to define their own.

Although the free version is lacking in exporting tools for the data a little time on ones part and all the collected qualitative data can be pulled out in a usable form. After we get all the data pulled out we can run it through a Tag Cloud generator like www.tagcrowd.com and start learning what is really important to our visitors.

Update: Sarah-Jane Morris, Marketing Manager at 4Q/iPerceptions pointed out that there is a new data export feature available in the 4Q Survey results section.


Below we see the top user defined purposes (for those completing their task) for September 2008. The top three are: scholarship, information, and alumni.

Also, we can see the top user defined purposes (for those not completing their task) for September 2008. The top three are: scholarship, information and alumni.

The above two clouds can defiantly help us to determine what is important to our site visitors and possibly what we should be promoting in the months ahead. Also the clouds can be generated for each of the specific purpose responses (open-ended comments collected).

All in all, this is a great tool for understanding "Why" a visitor is on your site and better yet if they are able to accomplish their goal/task. If you have not tried this tool out yet then I would strongly recommend it, as it has helped us learn that information "news and other" is very important to our visitors (but previously was at the bottom of our list).

"Why" not try it today!
http://4q.iperceptions.com

Get More by Tracking URL Redirects

Well you've probably got a URL Redirect out there already, but are you tracking it? Why not? There is so much that you can learn and it can be quite simple, especially with Google Analytics and a little code.

The most common reason for a redirect is a "Short URL" this is merely turning a really long/confusing website address like www.dartmouth.edu/~alfund/ into something like www.dartmouthcollegefund.org. These are also known as a "Print URL" as they are much easier to "print" on publications or tell someone on the phone. Also a redirect can be used to help show partnerships with other programs like www.uclalumni.net/MasterCard.

Time to Start Tracking with Google Analytics:

Now that you have a redirect going to a page on your site and you are using Google Analytics, I recommend that you follow Karlyn's Fast Tip Friday: Google Analytics URL Builder. Also check out Kyle's Free Destination URL Builder and Tracking Tool. This is going to defiantly improve your knowledge on where they came from and what they accomplished.

Going one Step Further and Tracking External Links:

Wait we are not done yet; I've got one more URL Redirect type for you to track. How about we track those 'partnership' redirects. That is right we can and should track the www.uclalumni.net/MasterCard redirects so that we know what kind of traffic we are referring to our partners (albeit some will share that info). Since Google Analytics is not an option here we'll have to switch to the Server Pages as I mentioned in the Making URL Redirects 508 Compliant post.
<?php
//Tracking the User First
$mail_body = "Redirect: ".$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']."\n".
"IP Address: ".$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']."\n".
"Date & Time: ".date("l, F, j, Y h:i:s A")."\n\n".
"Referer: ".$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];

mail("you@school.edu", "redirect name", $mail_body, "From: Redirects <redirect@school.edu>");

//Redirect the User Next
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.draftmotif.org");
?>
So there you have it now we can track all sorts of redirects both to our site and going to a partner site. Also, since I'm going to be writing a MySQL version of the above script soon if you've got tips, ideas or want a copy just let me know.

Now What? Stop and Think!

Having trouble thinking how you can put this to use (not a chance)? Before you print your next appeal or add a link like http://chancellor.uark.edu/13226.php to a magazine consider a "Short URL" and track it too. Got a TV advertisement running soon; why not track it and get a more accurate response rate. Also, visit Kyle's post on Using Redirectors for Offline Campaigns for a list of Offline Campaign Types.

Happy Tracking Everyone!

Making URL Redirects 508 Compliant

So as you may well know I've been looking for an answer to the question on "How to Make URL Redirects 508 Compliant". The odd thing about it was that the answer was staring me right in the face to begin with.

To being with we first need to understand the 508 Compliancy priority 2 that we are actually discussing as the 508 Compliancy guide is really big and this is just one small part. This ironically also holds the key to our answer.

"7.5 Until user agents provide the ability to stop auto-redirect, do not use markup to redirect pages automatically. Instead, configure the server to perform redirects. ~www.w3.gov"

In short the above states that URL Redirects cannot be done by the visitor's browser. That means that the HTML Meta Refresh & JavaScript options are out (don’t use them). However, it does say that you are permitted to use Server Level functions to perform URL Redirects. That leaves us with two options:

.htaccess redirects which can be done like so:
Redirect /OldDir/old.php http://site.com/NewDir/new.php
Redirect /link http://www.MerchantDomain.com/affil.cgi?12345
Pre-Executed Server Pages (ASP or PHP):
<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://http://site.com/NewDir/new.php");
?>
The last important thing to make sure is that your Redirects are giving back the right HTTP Request responses (aka the 404, 301 or 302 response). This will make all the difference in getting search engines to update your links.

If you'd like to see what Response Codes your links are giving out then I'd suggest using this Check Server Headers Tool by SeoConsultants.com. Keeping the number of responses low is always recommended; get to the page in one shoot don't redirect to a redirect.

So after the long and exhausting research we now have an answer. Yes, URL Redirects are able to be 508 Compliant and yours probably already are.

Understanding Google Analytics Benchmarking

So you are sharing data and administration is asking you for all those amazing benchmarking reports that they were after. Well maybe we cannot answer all of their questions but there is still a lot of information available.

What can we learn from these new stats?
We will start by reporting what we can and look forward for more to come.

Selecting Date Range & Vertical Industry!

First off let’s make sure that we set the appropriate date range along with selecting a particular industry for comparison. Otherwise you will be looking at an even larger group of sites then you would probably want (all sites sharing data of a similar size).

You will notice that for Draft Motif we are comparing to the broad category of “Internet” but that will change as a better option becomes available and I change it.

Visits & Bounce Rate Benchmarks

Next up is the golden “Visits” which drives the benchmarking service along with the “Bounce Rate”. But what exactly does it tell is? Surprise I’m beating the benchmark... looks like my marketing efforts are working (hey you are reading this). Yet, it looks like my articles and site design is lacking since everyone leaves after reading the particular post.

Pageviews & Avg. Time on Site Benchmarks!

Then we come up to the “Pageviews” and the beloved “Avg. Time on Site” statistic, which helps continue the assessment that marketing is working but that maybe it’s not the right type of marketing. Then again people do tend to skim through information online. However, compared to the available data users are spending more time reading so I guess I’m doing good with my articles (let me know what you think in the comments below).

Pages/Visit & New Visits Benchmarks!

So now we come to the last currently available benchmark data the “Pages/Visit” and “New Visits”. Well assessment confirmed looks like my site is not doing to well at passing visitors from one article to the others. But at least it is grater than 1 page/visit. Also, compared to others my site has a greater new visits percentage but this is a good thing since my site is still so new. Hopefully, it will soon come to an even match (after all this is a resource site and return visitors are the goal) with a slightly positive percentage. Remember that for most sites (not portal/Facebook sites) 70% new is typical.

Keeping it in perspective!

The most important thing will be to remember the goals of the site and comparing with those in mind. After all the Admissions site will likely want more “New Visits” them an Alumni Association or the main University.

Last thing is putting the information to work!

That is right use the information to make changes and improve the site; review and repeat. What’s the point if you don’t act on what you learn? And don’t give me that the statistics were too small to matter – I’ll defer you back to the Adopting Google Analytics Benchmarking to prove that wrong.

Did you catch that it was learning in action and next I’ll be working on a related articles feature. Then it’s back to the drawing board for more/better marketing efforts.

Adopting Google Analytics Benchmarking

Well, if you haven’t heard yet Google Analytics has launched a much needed new feature called “Benchmarking”. The feature is designed to allow site administrators to compare their site to that of the industry verticals (a least as Google sees them).


First things first let’s persuade administration that they don’t have to fear the new benchmarking service. The following comes from the FAQs on Google and answers administration top questions:
What does it mean to share my Google Analytics data anonymously with Google and the benchmarking service?

If you only choose the anonymous data sharing option, Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, then combine that data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable industries and report them in an aggregate form. Google will use this anonymous data to improve the products and services we provide you and enable benchmarking in your account.
Key point to notice is the anonymity of your site and the collective category combination. Therefore, no one would be able to directly compare University A to University B.
How many sites are in each category?

There are a minimum of 100 accounts in each benchmarking category. The number of actual websites can vary since a single account can contain multiple websites and we are always in the process of accepting more participants for our benchmarking service. Therefore, each category can have anywhere from 100 to hundreds of thousands of websites per category.
So basically you cannot do benchmarking comparisons unless there is at least 100 other sites (that assumes the minimum of one site per account – and I’ll tell you that I have more than one site in my account) to compare against.
How do I choose which industry vertical to compare my site against?

To change the industry vertical you want to compare your site against, navigate to the category picker from the Benchmark report.
Yes, although you might be in the Educational industry you can compare to other vertical industries of “sites of similar size”. Although, I’m not sure what good it would do.
What does "sites of similar size" mean?

Based on the number of visits each site receives, sites of similar sizes are grouped together under three classifications: small, medium, and large. This way, you can compare yourself to other similarly sized sites. You are not able to view benchmarking data for sites in other size classifications.
Well there has to be some limitations in beta! So now we come to the first and biggest down side – we cannot compare to “larger or smaller” sites currently. At least we have something to look forward to.
Why does my benchmarking data appear to refresh over time?

We regularly adjust the benchmarking data to help ensure that it is representative of participating sites and relevant for its users. Some of the factors we take into account when we reclassify the data are changes in the site's content and number of visits. We group sites with other similarly sized and categorized sites, so we check the latest number of visitors for each site to adjust the benchmarking data accordingly.

Benchmarking data is also affected by the number of sites that opt in to the service over time. As more sites participate, a wider variety of categories is available for you to compare your site against.
All in all Google plans to make this service grow and improve over time. This leads to the last question...
How much does Google Analytics cost?

Google Analytics is absolutely free! We're very pleased to be able to offer this web analytics solution for no charge, allowing anyone with a website to track conversion data, analyze the flow of visitors through their site, and identify elements of their site that could be changed to improve visitor retention.

This free version is limited to 5 million pageviews a month - however, users with an active Google AdWords account are given unlimited pageview tracking. In addition, Google Analytics is completely integrated into the AdWords front-end and with your AdWords campaign, making it easy to track your AdWords ROI.
So why do I suggest the free version? Well when you think about it if you are actually getting over 5 million pageviews a month then you probably already have a good marketing mix and if it doesn’t include AdWords why not just add it. Plus the free hosted version offers faster updates and less recourse (staff & server) on your part.

I’ve got administration behind me; what next?
Understanding Google Analytics Benchmarking

Mastering Google Webmaster Tools

So you’ve probably heard about some of the amazing new tools that Google has setup for webmasters to improve sites. No! Well check them out and let me show you some simple tricks to get the most out of the tools.

In less then five minutes and one simple Meta tag you can get access to see your site the way Google does.
Automatically inform Google when you update your pages: Google Webmaster Tools provide you with detailed reports about your pages' visibility on Google. To get started, simply add and verify your site, and you'll start to see information right away.

Discover your links and see how users are reaching your site: View, classify, and download comprehensive data about internal and external links to your site with our new link reporting tools.

Enhance and increase traffic to your site: Learn which queries drive traffic to your site, and see exactly how users arrive there.

Find out more about the cool tools and get started at http://www.google.com/webmasters/start/.
So let’s start the Tricks!

Well if you are like me you’ve added your primary site like http://www.arkalum.org to your dashboard and maybe even a few of the other sites that you work on. But, have you considered adding your sites subsections?

Most sites these days have grown past the basic home page or main site URL and include things like http://arkalum.org/scholarships or maybe you use sub domains like http://scholarships.uark.edu and I’m just guessing but I’d bet you do direct targeted promos to those sections too. So let’s track how well those sections are doing.

That’s right, you can track the subsections of your sites and the best part is you’ve already done all the hard work. Remember that Meta tag? The one Meta tag works for the entire site domain including the subsections. Just go to your dashboard and add the subsection URL and verify with the Meta tag option and you’re done; nothing more to do besides read and learn great marketing secrets from Google.

Why bother; how is Google’s data going to help me?

The more you know the better you can promote your company. Let’s look at the searches "queries" on Google that actually lead to site visits.

http://www.arkalum.org


http://www.arkalum.org/benefits


From the first option we learn that our main site is doing good for the overall goal of “Arkansas Alumni” and overall for the organization. However, the subsection report tells is something a little more important. No! Its not that the magazine is the best benefit the company has.

Rather, this report tells us that the “Arkansas Magazine” is seen as a valuable publication that the company produces. As a matter of fact it shows us that there is enough interest out there that prospective readers are searching for it by name. Name recognition is one of the best things for any product or company.

These reports along with the many others, offer webmasters and marketers great insights on site visitors and potential customers. Use them wisely!

Search Engine Optimization Good Practices

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is probably one of the more debated topics on the web. With the battle to be #1 on major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN and the technologies behind the engines ranking methods always changing/improving it can be very hard to keep up.

So what are some of the “good” SEO practices that can help your site today?

Basic Meta Data w/ Structure:

What this means is that although having key words, a title, description, and all the others are "good things to do" there is one step that can be done to make it "better". Add structure! Just because the Home Page of your site is "Company Name/School Name" that does not mean that this is the best name for all the sub pages of your site... the more relevant to the page the meta data is the better the search results. For instance take the title and added a variable page description to it like "The Fight Song | Arkansas Alumni Association" see online at: http://arkalum.org/traditions/fightsong.php

You'll notice that the page description comes before the title... the reason for this is to help people find what they are after on the search engines after all they are more likely to type "razorback fight song" than Arkansas Alumni Association hoping to find that page... so show them what they are after first and then who it is by second.

You’ll also notice that it improves the readability of the results on the search engines page; although not our original intention this only helps the end over find the right page and sends more valuable clicks to your site.

So what about the home page? Well we did "Home | Arkansas Alumni Association" but that is just the option we took you could always leave the word home off too.

The same should apply to the meta data for description and key words the more relevant to the page the better the search engine will return on them for relevant searches.

If you leave the description blank most search engines will pull the best matching text for relevance to the search terms from the pages content (as shown above). This can be useful if you have a large number of unique pages with multiple content controllers.

Content is the Key:

With the basics out of the way, what is next? The most important part of any site is the Content (even more important than the graphics) since that is what the visitors are after is information or content. SEO companies will tell you that Content Optimization is KEY! Although I'll agree content is the KEY don't sacrifice quality content for SEO placement. SEO companies tells you to use the structured key terms frequently throughout the content... but they forget to tell you not to elaborate.

Get to the point quickly we all know that site visitors skim content and only read about 10% of anything written on the web... example you are probably skimming this article. So use the relevant terms within the content but don't just make it longer to say them more and more.

Keep the users perspective in mind and you'll do just fine.

Search Engine Submissions:

Wow! The fact that people actually pay for this is just shocking to me. Why pay for that which is FREE? If you want to do this just search on Google for "Search Engine Submissions" and use one of the Million FREE services offered out there or even better just search for "submit my site to $searchenginename" and submit them your self:
It really doesn't take that much time I promise and it could save you $100s.

Link Exchanges vs. Strong External Links:

Well if you haven't heard link exchanges are against almost every know search engine out there... but that doesn't mean that links back to your site are not useful. This is probably the more complicated portion of SEO these days. Avoiding link exchanges while still having other sites link back to you when appropriate.

The easiest thing to say here is that the sites that should link to you probably will anyways, but it doesn't heart to ask them to do it today (rather than tommorow). However, you shouldn't have to offer them a link back in exchange. The sites that you need to have link to you are when their visitors will benefit from it anyways thus, they will probably do it at some point anyways.

So after you find the appropriate sites (University Main Site, Department Sites, Student Sites, Industry Related, etc.) then you are in for the fun part.

Using Relevant Anchor Text for Links:

The goal here is to have the links out there pointing to your pages add to your site’s ranking and positioning. Yep more "structure" here. The search engines also value score the "text" portion of the link that is coming to your site so the more relevant it is the better your placement.
  1. Recently, this site wrote an article on good SEO practices. For more information, click here.
  2. Recently, this site wrote an article on good SEO practices. See http://larsic.blogspot.com/2008/01/search-engine-optimization-good.html for more information.
  3. Recently, this site wrote an article on good SEO practices.
So from the above options you can easily see that #3 is the best choice for relevant anchor text. Just remember to keep it relevant to what the user is after like "Search Engine Optimization good practices". After all that is what this is all about.

Relevant Naming Structure:

This is probably something that you’ll only get to play with part of. Site naming structures include the URL, folders and file names but, your site name is probably already set... and getting a new one is no easy task. However, you or someone will be able to control the folders and filenames.
  1. http://www.uark.edu/11018.php
  2. http://www.uark.edu/index.php?page=profesor+dub+ashton
  3. http://www.uark.edu/professors/dub-ashton.php
So from the above listing you’ll see that option #1 shouldn’t even get considerations since there is no way to tell what it relates to and although options #2 can be indexed the best choice’s #3.

Not only does the structure for # 3 work best for the SEO part of our design, but it also works best for any printed materials that want to reference the page or professors section.

Doing your Homework:

The only other service that SEO firms really offer is "Doing your Homework". They will research which terms are the most useful for your site and then give you the options for the ones that they believe they can make appear at the highest point on a particular search engine. Although it is very interesting to see some of the results that they come up with, when was the last time you paid someone to do your homework and felt good about it?

There are many tools out there that will help you determine which terms are the best or even better which terms are already being used. And you can probably already tell me which term you want to have used so why pay them for that?

Update: Google's SEO Starter Guide a compact guide that lists some best practices that teams within Google and external webmasters alike can follow that could improve their sites' crawlability and indexing.

Last but not least ask your friends for help. I personally offer any and all source code information from www.arkalum.org up to you to examine and change as needed for your site. Our site currently comes in #1 for "arkansas alumni" on Google so I always love getting SEO calls when they tell me to pick a word or phrase... it is nice to see them stumped when they check the phrase.

Form SPAM Prevention

The alternative to the Captchas. If you haven't already heard, I've come up with a solution for form spam prevention that seems "...to be more effective than other ways..." ~ The Email Wars.


Personally I always found those Captchas an annoying waste of time when I was trying to fill out a form. Therefore as a designer I decided not to use them and came up with this idea instead. I should probably point out that this is not a totally new idea all my own.

This solution is actually just taking some of the core basics to site design that I've learned. The solution is actually two parts:

1) Form Validation:
if (!empty($_POST['formElement'])) {
put code for spam bot submission here or just error out.
}else {
put code for good submissions here.
}
2) CSS Standards:
The only other part is to use CSS Standards to hide the form element from valid site visitors, or show that they should not fill in the form element.
Thus, at the end of the day we've made one less thing for our good site visitors and pot the extra work on the spammer.

**Note that this only prevents what is known as a spam bot or automated form filler. A human would still be able to submit unwanted information by actually filling out the form. But most spammers won't take the time.**

rimajol.com

My first online community including forums and live chat rimajol.com is likely the largest and still growing used site that I had designed by 2005. Although the content of the site changes it all works around the sites layout.

As you can tell the site is built using the phpBB and mxBB systems to create a monster portal fourm site. Along with the enhancements made to add the chat rooms and some of the other features this site took off like a rocket within the niche market. The layout is a hacked version of the Smooth Blue template - so I don't take all the credit.

superiorspraysystems.com

Match it to our logo and make it elegant. That was the directives given for the superiorspraysystems.com project. However, the company has moved forward and redone their logo and the site. However, this is the design that I did for them to get the rolling on the whole web marketing.

Along with those guidelines the site was to include a monthly specials page and multiple photo tours (photo galleries). Additionally the site was to be SEO Optimized for spray foam.

pettuslaw.com

A simple clean design and the use of the our buildings photo. That was the only requests made for the look and feel of the pettuslaw.com site. Although we never managed to get the content together we were able to draft up a pretty cool design.

The site was to showcase all the professionals within the Pettus Law group along with their services. While not providing any legal advise via the website.

peaceriverwaterfowlers.com

This Canadian Hunting Resort site peaceriverwaterfolwers.com never actually managed to make it out the door. However the designed was drafted in 2004 as part of the a set of sites for a large client. Although you wont be able to see how it was to function I can still show you what it was going to look like.

The idea was to have the photo gallery part on the left side and the ability to click to a larger full picutre from the previw images along with multiple pages to the gallery. The main photo at the top was a randomly changing image with a different saying for each one. We had a rates section although there was no online billing scheme for the site at the time.

keckforstaterep.com

The Keck For State Rep website keckforstaterep.com website was designed by in 2004 as part of the campaign to get Keck elected for state representative of Arkansas. As you can imagine the site has since been taken down. However, I can still show you what it looked like.

We started this site with the simple idea of patriotic colors (red, white, and blue). The site was also to include an email list sign up tool, and used a drop down menu. Along with these the site was also required to show off his stand point on particular views (which we did through the random photo at the top).

fergusonknives.com

The Ferguson's handcrafted knives website fergusonknives.com was first designed in 2003. The website started out as a place for knife maker Lee Ferguson to show off his handcrafted knives and let people know what trade shows they could be found at when.

The site was then realigned (reworked) by me to include a listing of his wife's (Linda) handcrafted knives as well. Along with that we added the ability for purchasing knives via a PayPal shopping cart, which turned out to be a great addition to the site.

suregripracks.com

The Sure Grip Racks website suregripracks.com was designed in 2003, and has seen been redone. Never the less, the site was probably my very first hunting product site. It started out as the simple idea of get my print brochure on the web to increase awareness.

However, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Before we new it we had a fully featured website with photo gallery, faqs, and a parts line-up with prices. Along with the Quick Tips section which now days would be done via an RSS feed.

Although this layout is no longer in use I am very proud to have started the ball rolling on the Sure Grip Racks website. The new site features a shopping section and online purchasing so be sure and check it out if you're into hunting that is.

nickmasullo.com

Nick Masullo's website nickmasullo.com was designed in 2003. This site was actually one of my first sites to make without much direction from the owner. The only thing you could say that was given to me was that he liked the color blue and to listen to his music.

After that the site follows after what would be considered a typical musician's site. It had all the cool features of the times like: artist photos, awards, the album listing with sample clips, and even reviews from the critics.

All in all this was a very fun website to have made, however, the portion I liked the best was probably the little square boxes (ads) throughout the site. Those required the most creativity and were of course the most challenging.

jammin-java.com

The Jammin Java website jammin-java.com was designed in 2003. The design comes from a mixture of the company logo (the saxophone and coffee cup) and a sample site for color scheme provided from the store owner.

Along with that there was a request to keep the site 'artsy' and show the appeal of the downtown Fayetteville, AR where the store was located (it has since then moved).

The site has many cool features including an e-mail list sign up, coming events calendar, and even a product catalog so that users can look through an assortment of the Jammin Java products available for purchase including the mugs that are featured on the home page.

Email Phishing Prevention Script...

As most people know by now listing your email address on any website directly as a mail to link will probably result in you getting an excessive amount of SPAM or Junk Email. This is from something called email phishing, which in short means that some bot/computer is crawling web pages and adding the email@yourdomain.com to a mailing list. So what can we do to prevent this?

Well besides simply not listing an email address on a website and using the contact us form there are a few options. However, you'll notice that they wont work forever, and that is the true problem. Since after I right this there is going to be someone that finds a way around it if they haven't already. But never the less here we go.

The script below was not written by me but I have made a few changes in the way that it works to make it a little more functional.
<?php
# $strEmail. The E-mail address to encode.
# $strDisplay. What will be displayed in the browser. If omitted it takes the e-mail address as it's value.
# $blnCreateLink. Set to true to creates a link. Set to false (and omit $strDisplay) just displays the e-mail address.
# call the function like so asciiEncodeEmail("you@doh.com","you@doh.com","you@doh.com");

function asciiEncodeEmail($strEmail,$strDisplay,$blnCreateLink) {
$strMailto = "&#109;ailto:";

for ($i=0; $i < strlen($strEmail); $i++) {
$strEncodedEmail .= "&#".ord(substr($strEmail,$i)).";";
}
if(strlen(trim($strDisplay))>0) {
for ($i=0; $i < strlen($strDisplay); $i++) {
$strEncodedDisplay .= "&#".ord(substr($strDisplay,$i)).";";
}
$strDisplay = $strEncodedDisplay;
}
else {
$strDisplay = $strEncodedEmail;
}
if($blnCreateLink) {
echo "<a href=\"".$strMailto.$strEncodedEmail."\" title=\"".$strEncodedEmail."\">".$strDisplay."</a>";
}
else {
echo $strDisplay;
}
}
?>
So how does that help prevent email phishing...? Well currently most email bots and crawlers don't actually crawl the rendered version of a website but rather they crawl the code (which is this case would look like junk. So as you can expect eventually they will get smart enough to beat this option too... but I'd rather not require the end user to have JavaScript enabled at this time (although it will eventually come).

However, if you'd like a more advanced option which does use the JavaScript you could use the following option on A List Apart - Win the SPAM Arms Race:
function safeAddress($emailAddress, $theText, $theTitle, $xhtml, $isItSafe) {
// Version 1.5 - by Dan Benjamin - http://www.hivelogic.com/
// set $isItSafe = 1 to get escaped HTML, 0 for normal HTML
// set $xhtml = 1 if you want your page to be valid for XHTML 1.x
// you can call it like this:
//<?php echo safeAddress($entity, $linkText, $titleText, 1, 1); ?>

$ent = "";
$userName = "";
$domainName = "";

for ($i = 0; $i < strlen($emailAddress); $i++) {
$c = substr($emailAddress, $i, 1);
if ($c == "@") {
$userName = $ent;
$ent = "";
} else {
$ent .= "&#" . ord($c) . ";";
}
}

$domainName = $ent;

if ($xhtml == 1) {

$endResult = "<script type=\"text/javascript\">
<!--
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:$userName&#64;$domainName\" title=\"$theTitle\">$theText<\/a>');
// -->
</script>";

} else {
$endResult = "<script language=\"JavaScript\" type=\"text/javascript\">
<!--
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:$userName&#64;$domainName\" title=\"$theTitle\">$theText<\/a>');
// -->
</script>";

}
if ($isItSafe) {
return(htmlentities($endResult));
} else {
return($endResult);
}
}
And hopefully one day we will get to where we no longer need to take such methods and that email phishing will be a thing of the past. But until then we must combat the SPAM Arms Race with all that we can.
 

Licensed by Creative Commons. Designed by Adii. Sitemap. Converted to WP-Polaroid Blogger Template by eBlogger Templates