Vidali ConsultingInformation Technology solutions

If you know a little about web design, and have an eye for it but perhaps not the most up-to-date coding skills, you should consider the wide world of HTML templates.

No longer stuck in the 1997 frames-and-tables mode, you can now find a wealth of XHTML-compliant, beautifully CSS’ed templates all over the internet. Most recently I’ve been using some from ThemeForest, where you can find one for most any site design, including e-Commerce, for around $12.

The only downside is their stupid account refill system, which only lets you put in denominations of $20, $30, or $50, while most templates are not charged in multiples of $10. On the plus side, you can use your credit at any Envato site, which includes FlashDen, which has customizable Flash code and tools.

These days a template can be a great starting point for a design, and a lot of template designers will include original Photoshop files so you can customize to your heart’s content.

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The news is finally in…Yahoo abandons their search engine technology, Microsoft inserts Bing search into Yahoo, and Yahoo acts as ad sales reps for Microsoft AdCenter and seemingly discontinues Yahoo Search ads.

Does anyone care? Not really. Both companies’ stock prices held steady, the media seemed nonplussed, and the deal may take “up to 24 months” to implement. Two years in search engine years is more like two decades. Unless they move fast, Google will continue to eat other search technologies for breakfast. Bing’s search results are actually impressive, and it’s perhaps the best interface Microsoft ever designed, but both Yahoo and Bing usually lag months behind in the freshness of their index. (For a true in-depth analysis of the deal, check out SEOMoz’s article.)

On the plus side, Microsoft’s “graphic designers” and PR people made an amazingly hilarious site explaining the deal to the media. It really is at ChoiceValueInnovation.com, and no I don’t think they bought the domain from Wal-Mart.

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It seems like these days everyone knows how to set up a blog, making it one of the most widely-accepted CMS tools around, regardless of whether it’s Blogger, WordPress, or Tumblr. But what if you have clients that need to update their own content, but can’t exactly be trusted to not muck up the back-end of your website? That’s where the clever folks who brought us Retail Me Not and PDF Me Not come in with their free CMS tool called Cushy CMS. Cushy lets you define editable areas within a standard HTML, PHP, or ASP page without compromising design elements or other important info on the page that might otherwise get muddled. What’s especially great about it is that you can define individual elements like headers, divs, and even single images (!) as editable Cushy elements, not just a big text field on a page like a blog offers. It’s free to everyone except those who want to white-label it to brand as their own to their clients. Check it out and see how worry-free client website management can be!

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No posts in a month…for shame! I’ve been busy implementing some new e-Commerce solutions, and have found out some interesting things along the way. I finally got around to using Kampyle for feedback lead generation. It puts a little floater on your page which users can click on and leave an emoticon rating or a detailed feedback report, and do it anonymously or with a contact email. Why sit around wondering what works and what doesn’t on your site, and pour through Analytics reports when you can cut to the chase and ask users directly? I’m happy with it so far, and I’m excited about the prospect of people catching bugs and oddities on my sites without just getting frustrated and leaving.

I also noticed that Zappos is using SurveyMonkey for user suveys about its new shopping engine and interface called Zeta. Way to do a beta test! There’s no use in letting the general public try a new version without attempting to get feedback about usability. This is also a great time to check out AlertBox, the definitive usability newsletter and blog. But then, that shouldn’t be confused with a new SaS tool called AlertFox, which runs daily tests for uptime on your site, and can handle iMacros to even test forms and login pages. (If you just need basic uptime monitoring, there’s the free AreMySitesUp and Pingdom.)

If you want to try out different content to generate different feedback, I’ve just begun the plunge into Google’s Website Optimizer, which is free, fast and fairly foolproof. It plugs some javascript into your pages and serves up the alternate content for A/B or multivariate testing. The possibilities are endless. On that note, I’ve also been reading Tim Ash’s excellent book, (worth reading!) called Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions.

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Google finally revealed their plans (literally) for the infrastructure that comprises their data centers. Shipping containers packed with rack-mounted computers (motherboards by Gigabyte) that each have a 12V battery as a UPS. The batteries look like the ones you find in emergency lighting units above EXIT signs, so they probably come pretty cheap. I am a bit wary of their water cooling system, as it seems there should be a much better way to dissipate heat than running it through chillers (which use massive amounts of energy). Heat exchangers and ground water feedback loops come to mind, but then I don’t know the specifics of the volume and temperature. Very interesting stuff for geeks though!

Google Datacenter Tour

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Everyone knows that YouTube has a bazillion servers. CNN has an army of them. Amazon’s AWS cloud hosting pops up on tons of sites, and boasts an array of thousands of PCs linked together as database servers. What’s a small website operator to do when there’s no budget for fancy but there’s a need for speed? The answer is CacheFly, incredibly fast file hosting for the rest of us. Officially called a CDN, for Content Delivery Network, CacheFly gives you an FTP account and provides a static link that will deliver your content from one of their very fast servers around the globe. There’s a 30 day trial to get you started, and then the basic plan gives you 300MB of storage for $15 a month. That’s enough storage to host all the images and videos on most blogs and e-commerce sites, and they’re dynamically load balanced across the globe. If you have a lot of customers in Australia, they’ll get the Australian server for your media, and so forth. Other companies like Akamai, EdgeCast, and Limelight won’t even give you pricing on their pages, and are geared toward the large sites with big budgets.

But how do you test how fast your website actually was or is? That’s where Pingdom comes in. They have free tools that will create reports with your website load time down to a tenth of a second, and break it down into each individual element of your page. (There’s also paid services for monitoring your uptime if you’re a sysadmin.) Run a Pingdom load time test before you remap your images to CacheFly, and then run it after. I cut page load times by a third as soon as I switched the image links to CacheFly. In the e-commerce game, load times can make or break a customer’s experience. Even if your site isn’t mission critical, it’s worth a look to see how easy it is to make your site faster, for a small pile of cash.

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It’s been a busy few weeks so I haven’t had time to write up comprehensive evaluations of some of the tools I’ve been using, but here’s a quick rundown of some useful resources for independent contractors and work-from-home computer folks.

Button Generator – This flash-based button generator makes shiny buttons that you can export as PNGs in a jiffy. Great for prototyping quick projects, or sprucing up a graphic.

The Invoice Machine – This is a great web based invoice generator that allows you to create professional invoices quickly, and even generates PDFs and billing notifications for you. The basic level is free; heavy users pay nominal monthly fees.

Survey Monkey – Create free surveys instantly with this very intuitive tool. Design web forms that are radio buttons, checkboxes, comment forms…you name it. Get better feedback from clients with specific questions.

Google Chat Badge – Use Gmail for business? Set up a chat badge and put LiveSupport-type chat on your website whenever you’re online for free. There is a lag if you sign off (generally I’ve found 10-15 minutes) but the price can’t be beat, and there’s no server-side coding.

Noupe’s Handy Design Tools List – A great rundown on 40 different web tools to help design sites, graphics, and even some AJAX and Javascript code.

DigiVendor – Have digital content that you want to sell but can’t figure out a good, easy way how? DigiVendor is a low cost way to sell music, PDFs, graphics, software or anything that is downloadable. It uses the PayPal shopping cart (which has no monthly fee) and can be tied into any web hosting account that has PHP and MySQL installed.

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I recently had to set up a VPN for a client who needed to access files from home that were locally shared at work. Setting up a VPN for a non-power user and getting it through Windows Firewall software and multiple cable modem firewalls is not an easy feat. That’s where Hamachi comes in.

Hamachi is great for quick setups and P2P encryption. Created by the folks that run LogMeIn, Hamachi lets you create mini private networks that use unique IPs from a IPv4 unassigned namespace. This is pretty unorthodox, but until some international organization steps in and attempts regulation, there’s a fast free way to get a unique, static IP for free. Hamachi uses this IP to track the various networks in its own server, even though the actual file sharing connection is P2P.

The client installs in a few minutes and can run on Windows, Linux, or OS X, so your VPN network can easily be cross-platform. It’s hands down the simplest, fastest way to set up a VPN out there, though the IP namespace may not be available forever. Did I mention that personal use is free, and commercial use is $5 a month? It’s certainly not an enterprise solution, but for small businesses it’s the way to go, and makes working from home possible. But don’t just take my word for it–read their security whitepaper to get an idea of how their system works before you decide that it’s best for you.

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Internet access isn’t what it used to be, thankfully. Even cumbersome and slow public WiFi hotspots are readily available in many places, but are being replaced or augmented by paid WiFi aggregator services like Boingo and Fon. If you’ve ever wanted to share your connection but have been wary because of security concerns, then ZoneCD is for you.

ZoneCD is a great piece of free software which enables a PC to become a dedicated wireless internet sharing router. It’s actually a boot CD which allows the host PC to remain secure as an internet access point paired up to a WiFi antenna for transmission. Cafes, parks, restaurants, schools, and community spaces can securely share their internet connections with a variety of options. You can display a TOS upon every login session, require login authentication, prioritize traffic, block ports and filesharing, and provide an awesome service for free with little hassle. I’ve been using it for over a year, and the code base is stable, only requiring a reboot a few times a year when used 24/7. Highly recommended for anyone looking to provide free WiFi service for customers or clients.

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Setting up a one or two person business to sell online often seems like a daunting task to people. It really shouldn’t be, as there are lots of micro e-commerce solutions available, allowing for low cost of entry and quick setup. Here’s a brief rundown of what’s out there.

E-junkie – E-junkie is the somewhat unfortunately named service that provides a Flash-based shopping cart for a low monthly fee. You can sell digital content, process through Paypal, and host images on their site. The interface is fast and clean, but does require Flash Player, which may be a hindrance to older computers or inexperienced users.

Foxycart – Foxycart is a PHP/AJAX solution that fully supports standards-compliant XHTML and CSS for $15 a month. What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s a bit too much to go into here, but your web designer will love it. Use your own payments gateway, and use an existing non-eCommerce website to just add a line of code to each link you want to turn into a product. It’s a stripped down, clean looking cart that lets power users spend time on designing what they know instead of being pushed into the limits of antiquated and non-standard shopping cart code.

BigCartel – BigCartel provides quick, good looking web stores, mostly for tee shirt companies and boutiques. The ease of use for the catalog and the speed of setup is really hard to beat. I think of it as a mini Shopify.

Etsy – Etsy is an online community and mini shopping destination for handcrafted goods. If you knit, make clothing or stationery, do art or photography, you can make a nice store that is also interactive in a more personal way. There are no monthly fees and listing fees are low, but you have to pay them a percentage of sale on top of transaction fees.

Mintd – Mintd is another hybrid social networking-meets-shopping site based in Australia that has a unique interface to buying and selling that is either going be unusable, or really awesome, depending on your point of view! Worth a look to think outside the box of what is possible.

PayPal – PayPal is the elephant in the room, used for everything from eBay to buying things off of forums. What most people don’t know is that a free business account allows you to set up a free shopping cart with Buy Now links that link directly into your account. While limited, the best part is that there’s no monthly fees, only the standard PayPal transaction fees. If you have a low volume store, or just want to experiment with a few items and options, you can do it with no financial risk or commitment.

That rounds out the contenders for today. Remember, finding a web store solution for your small business doesn’t have to hard or expensive!

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