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How to Choose an Effective Domain Name

November 3, 2017 By Scott Fichter Leave a Comment

What Are The Best Top Level Domains (TLDs)?

Before understanding how to choose an effective domain name you must first understand which TLDs are most valuable. The list below is written with the assumption that the domain name represents a commercial business. This domain list of value is called a domain fallback hierarchy.

Domain Name Fallback Hierarchy of Value

The following describes the most recognizable TLD naming convention. #1 Is the best and value drops off from there. The list explains TLDs from most recognizable to least.

.COM Short Word No Dash – This is the 800-pound Gorilla of TLDs. If you find a short (under six to eight characters) one, buy it right away and keep it forever.
.NET Short Word No Dash – This is an excellent fallback. It’s fully recognized and acceptable.
.COM Two Short Words No Dash – Make sure words are not too long. RedDog is good RedPneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis NOT GOOD, yes that’s a word.
.COM Two Short Words One Dash
.NET Two Short Words No Dash
.NET Two Short Words No Dash
.BIZ Short Word No Dash.
.COM Three Words No Dash – The shorter the total characters the better. Do The Words Have a ring to them? For Example BlueToothBreakdown.com It’s long but it rings.
.COM Three Words With Dashes – Keep those characters short.

Do you agree with this fallback Hierarchy? Reply Below.

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Below is a Working Example of a Fallback Hierarchy of Value for “Joe’s Automotive”

joes.com – If this was available it would be worth THOUSANDS of dollars.
joes.net
joesautomotive.com
joes-automotive.com
joesautomotive.net
joes-automotive.net
joes.biz
joesautomotiverepair.com
joes-automotive-repair.com – The Word “Automotive” is long for this one. The users should consider “Car” or “Auto” for three words with dashes.

After creating your list check them all at one time by visiting Dynadot. Dynadot will check availability on all the domains all at one time. Aweseom eh? Don’t forget to check off “I entered complete domain names with TLDs.”

No Success? Try A Few New Words Like:

Joes Car Automotive
Joes Car Repair
Joes Repair
Joes Car Fix
Joes Garage
Joes Car Garage
Joes Automotive Garage

Each name above will be tested against the .com .net with dashes / without dashes hierarchy system explained above.

If after testing these names you still don’t get positive results it’s time to go farther with descriptive names. Below reviews three websites that will help with name suggestions.

1. Coolnameideas.com: Excellent for the person who has naming flexibility. The site asks for keywords and things like business benefits, style, and type. Answering these questions will modify the returned list. Clicked suggested names will display if the name is available as a .com and let you know if the name is available as a Twitter handle.

2. Domainnamesoup.com: This site allows you to enter words and it returns suggestions. The site will let you see if .com and .us are available. It also has a “Wizard” button that remixes your submitted words. You can continue to remix words with the “Wizard” button until you find the name you want.

Still No Joy? – Consider Fivver For Help On How to Choose an Effective Domain Name

You can hire help at fivver.com to do the work for you but make damn sure the person your hiring is of solid character. They could be a domain squatter in sheep’s clothing. They could buy the domain you’re looking for right out from underneath you. Execute due diligence!

Do you agree on this these techniques on how to choose an effective domain name? I’d like your opinion on it? I’d be especially interested in what you think about future awareness of longer TLDs. Will they ever be recognized? Would it make sense to buy them? Reply below.

I hope this helps you with your website venture.

Is Your Web Host Milking You?

October 27, 2017 By Scott Fichter Leave a Comment

The United States is piled high with web hosts who have failed to stay on top of current technology. They stopped innovating because they know they don’t have to. They milk their customer base. They know it’s a difficult to move to a new host so there’s zero incentive for them to improve their service.

Keep Your Flexibility With Hosting

Never host your email and your domain name through your web host. If you do, switching means you’ll have to transfer your domain to a new registrar and deal with reconfiguring every computer so email continues to work. The alternative is to let it slide and continue to deal with the lackluster support, the spotty uptime, and the slow performance.

After reading this information, I’m willing to wager you’ll be motivated to switch to a new host because the technology has improved BIG TIME.

You Deserve the Better Tech!

Web Server Operating Systems – Apache is Old and Slow

Apache Http server — Apache is no longer the best game in town.

The Apache operating system has been the industry standard for PHP driven websites for a long time. This software is popular because it’s free. So why is Apache is loosing market share? There’s a new operating system that can run PHP up to nine times faster. The operating system is called LiteSpeed. It’s more efficient at the CPU level. This new software translates into more speed for your site because the computer hosting your site does not have to work as hard.

LiteSpeed Dances With WordPress

LiteSpeed has developed a caching plugin for WordPress creating a direct line of communication with the server to decrease load time. I host all my sites at MDD Hosting which uses this system and load time is fantastic. Some of my sites load in under one second. If you set up your site correctly, you don’t even need a content delivery network.

LiteSpeed Is Always Tweaking Their Software For Better Performance

I evaluate the value of a plugin by the frequency of updates. It reflects how much the developer cares about the quality of the software. I can tell you with experience that the LiteSpeed Cache plugin is updated within 14 days all year long. It’s incredible.

Are you using WordPress? If Yes, switch to MDD Hosting. They use the LiteSpeed web server operating system at their data centers. You’ll also be able to use the LiteSpeed cache plugin too. All you need to do is download the plugin activated it, and you are good to go!

Call your web host and ask them if they use the LiteSpeed operating system. If tech support replies that they have no idea, that’s a red flag because if they’d want to brag about it if they had it.

Self Healing Distributed Storage Uptime on Steroids

Does your site die during regular business hours from time to time? If yes, it means that your host has failed to stay on top of the current storage technology that’s available. Below explains how innovative web hosts do it.

You make an update to your site.
The new data passes through a super fast computer with a program that splits and copies your new data over an array of multiple web servers, not just one.
If one server dies, the data is still available for use on the other machines. And the system admins can fix the broken server without any pressure.

This data splitting and duplication is called self-healing storage or distributed storage. There are a few companies out there that offer this tech but the one everybody talks about in the data center industry is Storpool because it’s FAST.

For a fast visual that explains this cool technology check out this video demonstration.

Website Speed Depends on The Speed of Other Networks Responsible for Delivering the Data

Your web host’s server farm (aka data center) is responsible for sending your website information to the reader. Not all routes to the end user are created equal. Networks always in flux. Their performance (speed) is fast one day and slow the next. Power outages, Denial of service attacks, and hardware failure are just a few issues that can damage the speed of a network. Manually selecting what path is best would be an absolute time-consuming nightmare. So what do you do? YOU AUTOMATE.

Does Your Host Use Intelligent Routing Optimization?

Noction is a company that makes a product that automatically chooses the fastest path from your site to the visitor. Their product measures network performance such as latency and packet loss and automatically reroutes the traffic through the best performing internet provider. Does your host monitor traffic in real-time, so the speed of delivery is improved? Call your host and find out.

It Would Take An ARMY of System Admins to Do What Noction Does

MDD Hosting uses this technology at their data centers. The software is continually rerouting traffic through the fastest networks for maximum speed. It would take an army system administrators to do what Noction does. You’ll understand why when you see the steps involved needed to choose which network is fastest. Check out how Noction does it with the video below.

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The Genesis Responsive Header Plugin

September 13, 2017 By Tom Collins Leave a Comment

Affiliate Marketing Freedom

If you’re a fan of the Genesis framework, you’re most likely going to modify your logo for your masthead. There’s also a very good chance your new logo will be wider than what is best for cell phone screens. If you test the page in a responsivetest.net you’ll notice that the logo is cut off. Fixing it is a bit of a pain and it seems to be easier to look for a plugin solution. Nick the Geek developed a fantastic plugin called the Genesis Responsive Header. Before downloading it please read the following.

Finding The Genesis Responsive Header Plugin In The WordPress Admin Panel

Did you install it? Did you find it after the install? It took me so long to find it I almost gave up. Nick the Geek’s instructions on one of his posts states when you install the Genesis Responsive Header plugin, the plugin’s settings button can be found as a sub choice under the Genesis link in the administration panel.

UPDATE:

It’s simply not true. The plugin can be found in Appearance > Themes > Custom. Then click “Responsive Header.”

Is it Safe?

If you’re thinking that this plugin is dangerous because its not listed in the WordPress Plugin Directory, don’t worry. Nick the Geek is respected in the industry. His blog posts have so many comments it’ll take you 15 minutes to read them. Also if you read the forums at Studiopress.com and you do a search for “logo is not responsive” you’ll notice that the senior programmers refer to this plugin constantly.

That’s it. I hope you gain from this info.

Have a great rest of the day, fellow designer person.

🙂

UPDATE:

I just learned that the plugin does not work with HTML5 Themes.

This simple task is turning out to be a rabbit hole. I’m going attack this tutorial to see how it goes.

THE FINAL SOLUTION – updated 10/31/17

The reason why this plugin has not been updated and the reason why nobody cares about it is because there no need to use it. Take the following steps and you will learn how to modify your logo.

Create you logo in photoshop. Make a note of how tall and wide it is in pixels.
Make sure the background has been removed and save it as a PNG24
visit tinypng.com and compress you newly created logo file
Save the logo to your downloads file. Name it logo.png
Log into your WordPress admin panel
go to Appearance > Editor
Open up the functions.php file
Look for the code under this note // Add support for custom header
Change the width and height to match your new logo file
Hit save
Now click appearance > Customize
Click header image
Select your image or upload it in the next screen
It will ask you to crop the image make sure the crop includes entire image and hit save.
Check the logo on the front end. If the logo is not in the right position you’ll have to modify the CSS.

Front Page Website Layout That Works

July 23, 2015 By Scott Fichter Leave a Comment

Effective front page website design follows the function of understanding visitors and making them to act. There are truths that are understood about your audience.

There’s a percentage of visitors who have little or no knowledge or your business. That percentage is dependent upon your brand authority online.
Your site is competing for the attention of your visitors.
Site visitors make an evaluation as to weather they stay or leave. Your site has seconds to convince them to stay. Below are main elements that assist in keeping them around.
- Valuable content
- Fast load time
- Professional Design
- Intuitive navigation / ease of use
- Simple and impactful message

When the internet was new, website design was like the wild west. Design styles were created with little thought as to what the users was experiencing. Design was a bit more flamboyant.

Now design follows strives to make things easy for the visitor. The site’s design steers the users in into digging deeper in to the site. Have you noticed that sites design is more conservative? There’s a reason for it.

Below summarizes why layout looks the way it does. Websites have grown up and form now follows function function.

#1 Upper Top Navigation

This location is commonly used for websites that offer access to a client area, shopping cart or membership login. If your business does not offer this kind of service this area can be omitted.

#2 Masthead: Logo (left area)

The masthead information is to reside on all pages. The right side of the Masthead contains your logo. This is the first thing the human eye sees when visiting your site and so using it to sell your brand is important. It is understood that the logo is a link to the front page. Also, make darn sure the Alt tag contains your business name. Google is listening.

Avoid logos with excessive height. It is the goal of the developer to minimize vertical space so that more area is seen before the page must be scrolled. Wide logos are better for websites. Learn towards this aspect when designing it.
Combining two companies by showing two logos is a very bad idea. By combining brands you are diminishing both. One website… one logo.
Good logos have a simplicity in their design. This makes for a bold brand and a fast load time.

#3 Masthead: Contact Information (right area)

This area is best for contact information because it a visible area on your site and you don’t want to hide contact information. I’ve noticed that businesses who wish to mitigate incoming support calls like to hide their phone number from this area. This is detrimental in developing trust with your visitors. Take pride in posting phone number. Don’t hide it. Below lists common contact information posted in this area.

Phone / Email
Hours of Operation
Social Icon links
Notices, instruction, and or warnings.

#4 Primary Navigation

Most site now use horizontal layout for their primary navigation. It has become a standard. Vertical layouts are rarely used because scrolling may be necessary to view all the buttons. The following buttons will be expected by the general public so don’t omit them.

Home (could be omitted)
About
Product or Services (or both)
Contact

Why Can “Home” be Omitted?

If your business has a savvy web audience and you feel they understand the logo is the home button, then you can omit it. If on the other hand, you believe there’s a percentage that may not understand then you MUST include it. 90% of the time it should be there.

Design That Disrupts The Subconscious Mind

Most human beings meander when reading content. That’s why they call it surfing. When we surf our conscious brain is does the reading and our subconscious finds the information. Good design is made for the subconscious by following design trends that have been adopted by the general public. If you fail to follow the design rules, you force the visitor to figure out what to click. When this occurs, you break their focus. The goal is to make them act on a call to action not focus on what to click or how to click. An example of failure is when the designer explains in writing what to click or how to click. Remember, if you have to tell them what to do you have failed. Keep them reading not thinking about what to find.

No More Sub Choices – A Leap Of Faith

Sub choices for navigation are quickly becoming a thing of the past. The reason is simple. When a user mouses over a primary navigation button and sub choices are revealed, the user ends up spending time deciding what sub button to click. Superior design moves these choices to the pages seen after the click. This is one of many techniques that keeps the user focused on your content in this noisy world. Don’t forget you are in competition for your visitor’s attention.
Be As Litteral As Possible.

Naming your buttons should be literal. Business some times fall into the trap of reinventing the name of what a nav button should be. Don’t forget; your message is being broadcast to a percentage of visitors who many know nothing of your business. The message must be simple. For example, name the button “Employee Bios” not “Industry Experts.” The name of your buttons should be clear. Don’t get tricky with it.

#5 Slideshow Area

Statistically, visitors do not read this area. It’s considered to be a gigantic banner by most. I recommend the placement of a single message with a professional photo. It can be animated but must be made simple. The message must be engaging and powerful. Cycling several photos and messages is not effective. Most will skip over the messages. Very few will wait to see the slides. If you don’t catch their attention right away, they will move on.

Fast load time is crucial to keeping visitors. Using several large photos in your slideshow can add to the time need to load the site. This is another reason why the slideshow must be kept to one or two slides max.

#7 Info Squares (were the action occurs)

Your front page receives the most traffic. This is an opportunity for your business. This area is researched to entice your visitors to go deeper into the site. Ask yourself a question. What’re the most commonly asked questions about your business? After uncovering these subjects develop a small sentence that will draw the user in. For example, if you are in the automotive repair business and you get calls regularly concerning transmission help you must place a square that highlights how to get help for this type of repair. You are essentially giving information with the hope of getting the sale. You are fishing for visitors on the front page.

#8 Call to Action / Outro Text

This section is where you ask for the action. It may be to call for service or to fill out a form. It’s also a place to add more information about your company. This section is not required.

#9 Footer

The footer is to contain information that answers the question, “What do I do next.” Duplicating the primary navigation in this area will satisfy this need. Worried that the navigation is duplicating information? Fix this by only placing links to main pages. Did you know that Google changes search results based on your location? Adding your full address, with a link to Google maps is important in the footer for this reason. Adding links to your companies affiliations and certifications will also help with validation.

Front Page Website Layout Is Fun

hope you can take some of this information and apply to your site. Also, reply below and let me know if you agree or disagree with what I’ve written. I also would enjoy your opinion on layout strategy that’s worked for you. If it makes sense, you can bet I’ll add it.

Best wishes with you project

What Hosting Companies are Best?

December 19, 2014 By Scott Fichter Leave a Comment

The 800 Pound Gorillas of Hosting

I’m sure you have surfed around on the net and found the big players in the web hosting industry. Let me take a guess, do these companies sound familiar?

1&1
GoDaddy
Endurance International Group (HostGator, BlueHost, here’s the entire list)

Before you make your decision on who you are going to choose, It’s important you understand what you’re getting for your money. Although these hosting companies make grandiose promises about unlimited storage and 99.9% uptime, I suggest you consider issues that are swept under the rug. Don’t get sucked in by their cunning marketing techniques. This information is created by me a guy who builds sites for a living. Although I’ve worked in this business for over 15 years, I don’t think you should consider my opinion as 100% fact. Do your own research online. Then make an intelligent decision after developing your own global perspective on what’s going on.

Fast & Knowledgeable Phone Support is Crucial

If you purchase hosting from the big boys (listed above) get ready for 20 minutes + hold times during the 9:30 am to a 4:30pm time slot. Hold times will be even worse when you attempt to contact their “live chat” systems accessible from their front pages. Beware! Email support is even slower.

In respect to support, their high volume of clients is your loss. It’s referred to as being “Oversold, ” and it means that the ratio of customer service representatives falls below the number of rising customer accounts. When things go bad for the big hosts, the phones ring off the hook and support falls apart like a 1971 Chevrolet Vega.

If you finally get in contact with your support person take note of their communication skills. Receiving a well-educated person who speaks clear English is not a guarantee. For example 1&1 support staff is not from the United States. Many have broken English and depending on who you get can barely be understood. Godaddy and the EIG companies are ok on this.

Receiving staff who have a comprehensive understanding of how web servers function is also a roll of the dice. It’s not uncommon to hang up the phone, apply the solution only to learn that it does not work and they you must call back only to be placed back in the 40-minute queue again. It’s painful, to say the least.

Carrots On A Stick

99.9% Uptime – What is this percentage based upon? Is it a month/year / lifetime? The percentage is worthless if it’s based upon any length greater than a year. If the percentage is based upon a period of a year, 99.9% is the same as saying .1% which is a whopping eight hours. If you’re running a successful online store, this could mean lots of lost money so move to a host with 100% uptime. To be fair, there are times when the server must be upgraded. During the upgrade, the server must be taken off-line. These are controlled outages and are usually executed from 2 am to 4 am. Hosts usually execute these updates at night when everyone is asleep. Good hosts will send a notice via email warning you about it.

Unlimited Transfer and Storage – Before I begin to explain the next carrot, transfer refers to the amount of data being sent and received from your site. Storage is the total file size of your site. When you hear hosts talk about “Unlimited” transfer and storage its best to take this with a grain of salt. When hosts say Unlimited what they really mean is “reasonable” usage. Take HostGator for example. They explain unlimited by writing, customers who use 25% or more of system resources for longer than 90 seconds will be in violation. In other words, if your site uses 25% of the server’s resources storage or processor resources your site will be stopped. How is that unlimited? In fairness if your site is small you shouldn’t have an issue with this limitation but, if your site begins to grow and your site generates revenue, you should consider moving your site to a more robust host with superior service and performance.

cPanel Vs. Customized Software

1&1, Godaddy and many others have custom software control panels that’ll drive you insane due to their convoluted and antiquated design. Godaddy is the worst. The number of clicks to accomplish simple tasks like setting up email forwarding is insane. The number of attempts to upsell you on similar products is also irritating. Make sure the hosting company you choose uses cPanel as the control panel. It allows you to see all the controls on one page. The need for clicking is minimized. Finding things is easy.

So What Hosting Companies are Best?

If you’re on a small budget and you’re just starting out MDD Hosting is an excellent choice. Support is by email only, and their response is fast. They employ cPanel and their up time is fantastic. They also use something called LightSpeed which accelerates PHP processing. In other words, your WordPress website will Fly! They also understand the intricacies of WordPress which great.

Yoast (actually spelled Joost) is a highly respected WordPress, and SEO guy out of the Netherlands. He recommends a shared hosting company called WestHost out of Providence Utah. I have used them for a few clients, and their service is excellent. Hold times are minimal, they are knowledgeable, and their monthly fees are small for small sites. They provide the cPanel software, and they offer FREE nightly backups which are fantastic.

If you’re interested in researching further avoid the sites that list in the “Top Website Hosts” sites. There has been talk online that these rating sites are paid off by the big boys. It’s affiliate marketing. Your best bet is to read what other designers are saying on forum sites. These websites will give you real human opinion on every company. After reading these forums, you will get a bird’s eye view on what companies you should avoid.

Below is a list of web hosting forums that you can browse.

Check WordPress For Cryptophp

December 1, 2014 By Tom Collins Leave a Comment

CryptoPHP Backdoor Greg Gurev at MySherpa sent me an email about a backdoor program that has been proliferating on Drupal, Joomla and WordPress CMS systems this month. MySherpa is a very popular managed IT firm in Wilmington Delaware and Greg is very aware of what’s up with the industry. Needless to say when I get a virus warning from him I look into it. Sure enough everyone is talking about it and many have been infected.

Upon further research it appears the backdoor installs itself into CMS sites via pirated versions of paid themes and plugins. I don’t venture down that road so the red flag in my brain lowered a bit. As I continued to read I learned that a company called Fox-IT in the Netherlands was the company that discovered the vulnerability. They wrote an in depth white paper about the hack. Below is what I extracted from the 50 page document.

Its All About Black Hat SEO Strategy

The software is a backdoor because it creates an opening for a third party server to add content to your site. The reason is to inject links and content to websites into your site pages. This is then read by Google as a back link which gives that site receiving the link better rank. There are also some instances of folks being redirected to a Justin Bieber youtube video which I believe is a fate worse then death. So to boil it down, this backdoor allows a third party to manipulate your content so another website can receive higher rank on Google. It’s the ultimate black hat SEO play.

How To Check WordPress For Cryptophp

Removing Cryptophp is fairly simple. What you do is copy your entire site to your computer and search it for a specific shortcode.

Do the following;

Create A New Duplicator Package: If you don’t have the duplicator plugin I highly recommend it. Its the fastest way to get a copy of all WordPress site files on your local computer. Here’s a video tutorial on how to use it if you’re not familiar with it.
Download And Uncompress Your Duplicator Package: The end result is to have a copy of all your site files on your hard drive.
Search for the following include call in your site files. “<?php include(‘images/social.png’); ?> The search program I use is called Easy Find.

If your search finds the PHP call, it’s time to remove the offending template file or plugin. If the call resides in your theme, you’re going to have to use another (rebuild your site) or buy the actual theme. If you’ve pirated themes or plugins and got infected, well that’s a shame. Remember, the hackers are fueled by greed and love to prey on low level pirates. Stay clear of that activity and you won’t have trouble.