Google XML Sitemap Plug-in for your WordPress site

March 22, 2007

If you are lucky enough to be running your site on WordPress as I currently do then you�ve got to love the plug-ins that independent developers keep building. Arne Brachhold develops one such plug-ins for WordPress that really rocks. It�s called the Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress v.2 Plug-in (even though in recent years MSN and Yahoo have accepted sitemap.xml as a standard format). It�s really dirt easy to install if you�ve ever installed a WordPress Plug-in you�ll know what I mean.

In the configuration of this plug-in steps are taken to ensure that novices as well as pros can gain a quick understanding of what they are installing and how it works. If you are developing your site over the long run than having a visible (HTML/XHTML) as well as an invisible (XML) sitemap is a great idea for search engines learning to love your site and offering your customers / viewers a better way to access information.

Luc

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General, SEO / SEM | Leave a Comment

Using Smarty to Code your Template Pages

March 20, 2007

I�ve been around in the PHP world for the past few years and I am used to coding up sites and things like that. Anyone that has tried scripting their own pages knows that this can be tedious which is where Smarty comes into the picture.

What is Smarty?

Smarty is a Template engine or �PHP Presentation/Template Framework� that uses objects written in PHP and allows the developer to call PHP object as needed. It�s nice and lightweight and saves you a good amount of time on coding tasks.

What makes Smarty so cool, hot and sexy?

Speed � Not only is Smarty quick to develop in but it also allows your application/site to run quicker with less code.

Security � Because of the limited nature of the Smarty Framework it is a secure option when developing in PHP.

Ease of use � Smarty uses what it calls �tags� that allow you to perform a number of various functions and easily embed them into a site to have it work and look the way you want it to.

So what does Smarty look like?

Here is a snippet that I borrowed from Smarty�s site�

index.php file

include(’Smarty.class.php’);

// create object

$smarty = new Smarty;

// assign some content. This would typically come from

// a database or other source, but we’ll use static

// values for the purpose of this example.

$smarty->assign(’name’, ‘george smith’);

$smarty->assign(’address’, ‘45th & Harris’);

// display it

$smarty->display(’index.tpl’);

index.tpl file

<html>

<head>

<title>User Info</title>

</head>

<body>

User Information:

Name: {$name} 

Address: {$address} 

</body>

</html>

Output:

<html>

<head>

<title>User Info</title>

</head>

<body>

User Information:

Name: george smith 

Address: 45th & Harris 

</body>

</html>

If you are using Smarty Tags or the Framework in developing your online business system, Smarty’s site has a ton of information to make the transition easier.

Luc

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

Surgery for your email marketing campaign

March 16, 2007

For those of you business owners that use email as a way to showcase the latest updates about your company to your lists of subscribers and customers, Campaign Monitor, has decided to create a new series called �Extreme Email Makeovers�. The idea is taking a company�s email and making it better. They’ve got an excellent article about a company called Teenie Tiny Tots that takes you through the thought process of redesigning a newsletter to give it a greater impact on your audience.

Email is one of the cheapest and best ways to get an excellent return on the dollars that you invest into a campaign because�

The people you are targetting are interested in what you have to say or what you are selling

Your subscribers can bring more traffic and attention to your site, products and services through viral marketing to their friends

You can track stats related to the distribution of your email easily and quickly

For those of you business owners that don�t currently use email marketing to draw in the crowd of existing customer and viewers of your site you are leaving a lot of money on the table. What are you waiting for?

Luc

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

Google Analytics: Adding an exclude filter to block your visits

March 14, 2007

I was checking my stats in Google Analytics the other day and I was wondering to myself if there is a way to block my visits so that I get the real stats of my site. I don�t need to know how many times I visited my site. Now I�ve got to say that I am learning more and more about Google�s Analytics program and its really a cool program to say the least.

The first thing you have to do is save a hidden HTML document with this code (thanks goes to Justin Cutroni of Analytics Talk for the code). Name the file whatever you�d like and upload it to your web server.

Next thing you need to do is go to the file that you just uploaded to your web server and throw in some text into the form on this hidden page. Doing this sets a cookie that is specific to the computer that you are on. If you access the site from more then one computer on a regular basis you�ll want to make sure to do this from those terminals as well.

If you�ve setup a filter in Google Analytics before then adding an exclude filter is not much harder, you�ve just got to know where to go and what to enter. I entered the following data

Have a look at the screenshot to see what I am talking about if you are a visual learner like myself and if not then have a look at the code values below.

Filter Name = Call it �Exclude�

Filter Type = Customer Filter and then select the �Exclude� option

Filter Field = �User Defined�

Pattern Filter = The text you entered in the form you installed

Case Sensitive = �No�

As I learn more about the sheer power of Google Analytics I will be posting more articles so feel free to ping me with any questions or problems you are having.

Lucas

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General, Google Analytics, Tips, Tricks and Tools, Web Analytics | Leave a Comment

Google Analytics has 3 views that meet your needs

March 13, 2007

Analytics Logo For those of you who�ve never had a chance to play around with Google Analytics or you hate statistics (I seem to run into a lot of people like that) then let�s start with the basic offerings that Google Analytics allows you.

3 Views into your website

Executive View � The executive view allows you to see things on your site like the Geo Map Overlay, Visits by Source, Conversion Summary, Marketing Summary and others. It helps you take the pulse of your website, online business, etc.

Marketer View � The Marketing View gives the user to see things like Keyword Conversions, Keyword Considerations, CPC vs. Organic Conversions, and others. Naturally this views main goal is to show the overall stats related to marketing a given site and the data that has been collected from the site itself.

Webmaster View � Bounce Rates, Goal Tracking and Defined Funnel Navigation takes stats in relation to the architecture of the site that is being targeted and how the customer are using it and where the possible bottlenecks may exist.

Why should I care about this analytics program you speak of?

Well a couple of reasons actually. First, you get to join and use it for free. You can add your Adwords Campaign into Google Analytics tracking software giving you a more complete view on your advertising, increasing your ability to track the success or failure of a given campaign. If you place an Ad in the local paper for your business you probably wonder how many people look at it, what they do after they read it and what interests them but you�ve got no way to track things like this whereas online advertising allows for a great deal of tracking your customers habits.

Keep in mind that Google analytics is just one tool of many that are available to you.

Luc

Posted by Lucas | Filed Under General, Google Analytics, Tips, Tricks and Tools, Web Analytics | Leave a Comment

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