Don’t Fall For The AdWord Express Scam

AdWord Express is a scam

AdWord Express — not to be confused with Google’s AdWords Express — sent me a spam the other day touting their “exclusive top placement” service to put my site at the top of “ALL MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES.”

They actually guaranteeRead the rest »

Firefox 5/6 — No New Windows!

Firefox

I have Firefox 5 and Firefox 6 installed on my Mac. Nice browser, still my favorite, but it’s got a bug that’s making me batty!

If I have the focused Firefox window on my secondary monitor, I can’t open a … Read the rest »

Lion: The King of All Operating Systems?

Lion: First Impressions

Read my account of my initial Lion impressions.

StudioPress Themes

TwentyFifty uses the StudioPress Freelance theme.

I broke down not long ago and bought the StudioPress Pro Plus All-Theme Package — a collection of themes that are all based on StudioPress’s Genesis framework. I have not previously been a WordPress power-user, and I hadn’t previously used … Read the rest »

Do Ugly Sites Perform Better?

MacGregor has a content-rich, incredibly useful, but butt-ugly site.

In my opinion, ugly sites can perform very well, and there are a number of factors that can contribute to that:

First, ugly sites are often sites that were originally built back in the 1990s by some business owner who … Read the rest »

Client Shoots Self in Foot

So I have — er, had — this client. Let’s call him Mr. X. I didn’t design his website originally; I inherited him from a colleague who had designed it and was hosting it, and who wanted to get out … Read the rest »

Your Domain is a Valuable Business Asset — Treat It Like One

Once again, I’m trying to help a client track down and gain control of their domain. A couple of years ago, they hired someone to develop their web site for them. He registered their domain in his name, and he … Read the rest »

Links, Google and Advertising

One of my clients (who has a very successful and busy site) recently asked me about selling text links on his site. He had been approached by someone (apparently a link broker) who was wanting to place a collection of … Read the rest »

Copyright and Copywrong

Copyright law seems to be poorly misunderstood by a great many people. I’m not an attorney, and I’m particularly not a copyright or intellectual property attorney, but I believe I have an informed layman’s understanding of copyright matters. Knowing the … Read the rest »

Watch Out for Domain Registrar Phishing Attacks

Phishing warning posted on Network Solutions home page

Official-looking e-mails appear to be from prominent registrars — they’re really attempts to steal your domains

Both eNom and Network Solutions, two very large registrars that handle millions of domain registrations, are the target of a major phishing attack. It … Read the rest »

Maximize Your Return in Your Pay-Per-Click Real Estate Advertising

A good many of my clients are Realtors, and a good many Realtors throw away money on ineffective pay-per-click advertising because they haven’t taken the time to educate themselves on the tremendous opportunity afforded by this type of advertising. Pay-per-click … Read the rest »

Didjoo Vote?

voted

I voted. Had to hold my nose on some of my choices, but I did it. This would have been a good year to have NOTA as a choice.

Unbeknownst to me, my precinct moved since the last time I … Read the rest »

NetBiz sez: “Get onto the first page of Google….”

Just in the past few days I’ve responded to several e-mails from clients asking my advice regarding e-mails that they’ve received from NetBiz. Here’s my take on NetBiz:

I’m not a fan of NetBiz. They’re not necessarily a scam, but … Read the rest »

The Web: The Rules Are Different Here

Tonight we’re enjoying our first fire of the season in our fireplace. It’s quite a cheery little blaze.

The only thing is, since we live in south Florida, it’s really not cool enough yet for a fire. We had to … Read the rest »

Search vs. Direct Navigation

So I have a client I’m developing a website for. The client has been great to work with, and we’ve made good progress on the new site. But there was a problem: The client kept complaining that he couldn’t reach … Read the rest »

A Face Lift in Cape Coral?

I received a well-written, but completely absurd, spam e-mail yesterday. It started out by saying:

“I was looking at websites under the keyword face lift cape coral and came across your site tropicalwebworks.com. I see that you’re ranked #1 on

Read the rest »

WordPress Upgrade

WordPress version 2.6 just came out. I installed it from scratch on a new blog (Fix My Knee, a chronicle of my many knee surgeries). The installation went beautifully, and I liked the new Admin interface. … Read the rest »

Ebay and Linkbaiting

This month I, along with thousands of other eBay affiliates, have been busy little bees converting all of our eBay affiliate links to use the new eBay IDs and format, thanks to eBay’s announcement that they were leaving Commission Junction … Read the rest »

Minor SEO Changes, Major SEO Effect on a Minor Site

It’s very satisfying to spend a great deal of time developing a new site from scratch for a client, taking pains to ensure that the site is search-engine friendly, and then to see that site do well in the search … Read the rest »

Ethics and Web Design – The Professional Responsibility of the Web Designer

Apparently I’m part of a small minority of web developers who believe that the developer has a level of professional responsibility toward the client, regardless of whether the client knows, understands, or requests same. … Read the rest »