The Lost Knowledge Blog for Web Design » Websites

What if you lost your twitter posts?

Alan Fair — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:49:30 +0000

I poses this question as I wondered, I have control of my website, my blog and many other things, so I can back them up easily, but what about my twitter account.

What if the information I put up on there wasn’t saved anywhere else, what would I do if twitter closed it’s doors, how valuable is that information and what would it cost to replace?

FEAR NOT – Just go to the site below and let it back up for you – Genius!

http://www.tweetbackup.com

Simple chatrooms online, using text, audio, video or all!

Alan Fair — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:58:54 +0000

I came across this site during one of my research of new things on the internet and whilst this is not a new idea, it’s certainly got more of a Web 2.0 feel to it from most of the others I’ve used in the past.

What’s really good about this as well is how easy it is to use, honestly if you have a twitter or Facebook account login, choose a room name, invite people to it and blam! you’re good to go – couldn’t be easier! You can even share your desktop with people, so it’s like having a free webinar program at your finger tips and will cost nothing!

Here’s the link http://tinychat.com

I’m going to try to schedule a chatroom session once every 1,2 or 4 weeks and give out web design advice, so basically a Q & A session, what could you do with it?

Before I do however I would like to guage how popular this would be so please leave a comment for me on this blog post, cheers.

Alan

Free Target Traffic directed from your own niche

Alan Fair — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:08:57 +0000

Ok the jury is still out on this one as I’m still testing it, but I figured that if more of us tested it then we might all be able to tell each other what seems to work well or not, are you up for it?

No – ok thanks for reading you can now take the blue pill and go about your day as normal.

Yes – ok reach for that glass of water, swallow and get ready.

Download this file and have a read at it then go to one of the links in it.

I’m not going to lie I didn’t write it (some good info though) and there is a sort of affilite link scheme going on with it, but as you will see with a free account it’s not really a big deal and the potential to get lot’s of targetted traffic I think is worth trying out at least.

If you do sign up please keep in touch as I would like to compare notes and hope that if this does work we can all benefit from each other.

Social Media – How does it all relate to your own website?

Alan Fair — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:20:31 +0000

How does Search Engines, Social Media, Blogs, Directories, SEO, Articles, Video and Podcasts, Networking, Link Building, Newsletters (the list goes on) all relate to your own website?

I’ve had lots of clients that are confused by it all as they can’t figure out how it’s all related to each other. I have also attended a couple of network meetings that had some talks on the subject, these highlighted to me a need for a simplification of the concept. So I thought I would make a visual representation of the most popular abstract concepts.

The image below shows the main/popular methods and essentially how they can relate to your own website. There are many more options that could be added, but these are the ones mostly talked about by my clients.

One of the biggest realisations of the visual below is that Social Media is fast becoming it’s own form of a people and content search engine outside of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Why don’t you make a comment on the post and I’ll try to update it if there is space or I’ll create a second one to cover the others, like say traditional marketing media (flyers, brochures etc…).

Stock Photo Sites

Alan Fair — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:07:10 +0000

Hi Everyone,

I got asked by a recent client what resources were available for stock images, so I compiled this list and thought I would put them on this blog to help others out.

Stock photo sites

Charging but genrally reasonable

http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php

http://www.shutterstock.com/

http://www.fotolia.com

http://www.dreamstime.com

http://www.creatingonline.com

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net (web quality is free)

http://www.123rf.com

Free

http://www.sxc.hu

http://everystockphoto.com

http://www.morguefile.com

http://www.stockvault.net

http://www.dreamstime.com/free-photos

http://www.imageafter.com

http://www.adigitaldreamer.com/gallery/

http://freerangestock.com

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net (for certain size)

http://www.123rf.com (has some free but not searchable)

http://www.openphoto.net (read Licenses)

http://www.freephotosbank.com

http://www.photogen.com/

Premium Cost

http://www.jupiterimages.co.uk

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk

http://www.punchstock.com

Adwords & Royal Mail Discounts

Alan Fair — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:03:38 +0000

If you don’t have an adword account get £30 free to advertise or get 10% off Royal Mail Direct Mail Campaigns at http://tr.im/wc6P

Royal Mail offer ends on the 31st August 2009

Google doens’t appear to have an end date for their offer.

Alan

Flash is SEO Friendly

Alan Fair — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:47:58 +0000

For any of you out there that still say or even hear the words coming from another web development company “Flash isn’t Search Engine Friendly” go to this page and read the news SEO FLASH

Flash actually has been SEO friendly for a long time now, but most web developers aren’t experts in flash like we are so they shy away from it.

It’s time to dispell the myth once and for all!

Alan

Social Media in 30 seconds

Alan Fair — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:29:20 +0000

I came across this link in my travels and thought it was quite interesting and simplifies social media for everyone.

http://blogs.omniture.com/2009/04/28/social-media-in-30-seconds/

Alan

Broken link checker

Alan Fair — Sun, 03 May 2009 12:12:57 +0000

Do you ever get someone telling you that a link is broken on your site and you panic because you start wondering how long that link hasn’t been working.

What if nobody tell you since it’s most likely new customers that will come across the issue. It could have been a really important link that linked to a special offer, so how many new customers could you have lost???

Why not spend a few minutes with this tool to check the links on your pages.

http://linkchecker.submitexpress.com/

It may save you from losing customers.

Alan

Who’s going to read my Articles???

Alan Fair — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:27:40 +0000

Ok so you’ve typed up a really good article and put it up on your website, great for all the people who visit your site. What about all those people who could benefit from the great content you have but very likely will never see it.

Why not expose your article to the rest of the world, you never know you may just start to increase your visitors to your site and become an expert in your field or just known for giving away some really good solid information that helps people.

All these things usually lead to one thing, more customers, more exposure of your business, you can’t really lose anything but your time for putting th articles together and if you’re doing that for your website anyway then it’s just the submitting time to the potential sites below. This isn’t a definitive list it’s just something to get you going. Some article sites are paid, some free, some in between (ad based), so spend a few hours looking around for a suitable one for your content first.

Alan