In which Gary explains his new found appreciation for anyone who calls themselves a sysadmin.

I’m not a sysadmin. I like to make websites. It’s what I do, what I’ve always done.
Dealing with servers is the un-planned love child of my long term affair with website development. A horrid child that demands constant attention and gives nothing back in return.

In the past, I would point clients in the direction of a decent web host and let them get on with it, but as it turns out these clients would still phone me as the first point of contact when their servers went down, making me a mediator between them and their hosts. Frankly, I figured if I’m spending my time doing this anyway, I may as well get paid into the bargain.

Well, after four years of hosting client’s websites I can quite categorically state that sysadmins have one of the most difficult jobs imaginable. Anything can go wrong, at any time. Running a tight system involves research, dedication, and genuine enjoyment of high level tinkering.

If I’m ever in a position to employ a sysadmin, they will be treated well. I will make them tea. And cake. And give them sympathy.
Recently, after a long and gruelling battle with the most unreliable hosting company I’ve ever used, I finally took the plunge and set up my own Windows VPS using IIS7 & Railo.

The decision making process:

In which Gary explains and attempts to defend, his reasoning.

“Why use IIS?!” I hear you scream at your monitors, which proves that I do in fact possess super-human hearing abilities… Well, as I’ve taken great pains to explain, I am not a sysadmin. Years ago I ran a linux server that was hacked to pieces because I didn’t know enough about securing said system.

Windows and IIS, for all its faults - and there are a great many – is a GUI based system. What this means in the real world is that there’s an icon for everything. So, as a non sysadmin trying to setup and run a server, having an icon for every conceivable thing I’d want to do, serves to actually indicate what I might want to do in a way that a collection of config files simply doesn’t.

Also, having used it for a while now, I have to say that IIS7 isn’t half bad. It’s a damn sight better than IIS5 and IIS6, both of which I’ve had the dubious pleasure of using during the course of my career. Also, Server 2008 is a lot nicer than previous incarnations. Sitting here typing this post in Word 2007, on Windows 7, talking about Server 2008, I have to say that Microsoft seem to be taking an interest in user experience. They’re a long way off Apple, but they’re finally doing something half decent. Well done them.

“So why Railo?”
Well, initially this was an issue of cost. Frankly I can’t afford to shell out for an enterprise CF licence. I’m not a big company, I’m one man making awesome websites for very small companies. So I thought I’d give open source a go, and see how it compares.

I have to say I tried Railo about a year ago and found that it was lacking in too many places to be a viable solution. There were a few tags missing, a few things it just seemed to handle differently, and given that my sites generally like to nudge a few boundaries, it just wasn’t up to the task.

Well, all that has changed. Railo this time around was an absolute pleasure. A steeper learning curve to set up compared to Adobe ColdFusion, granted, but what you’re rewarded with is a blisteringly fast ColdFusion experience, a much higher level of control over your environment, entry into a knowledgeable and welcoming community and a general feeling of wellbeing that can only be gained from not giving Adobe three grand of your hard earned cash.

Hacking my server 101:

In which Gary, in an attempt to offer help to others in a similar situation, provides a step by step guide to the setup of his production server, and hopes that malicious people don’t use it to bring the thing crashing to its knees.

In the beginning, there was the welcome screen and the server was without services.

So, let’s assume that you’ve got yourself a nice sparkling new Windows 2008 server/vps set up.
Depending on how your hosting company has set this up, you may need to install various Windows updates, so it’s best you do this before anything else. Go to Windows update. Go directly to Windows update. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Usually I’d advocate installing Anti-Virus software next, but bitter experience tells me it’s best to install that at the end, after installing the various components we’ll need to get the server working.

And the sysadmin said, “Let there be services, and let the server use them to serve pages to the masses”.

Roles:

Firstly you’ll need to install IIS and various roles. I’m not any kind of an expert on this, so I won’t suggest which roles are right for you. Best practice as I understand it, is to only install what you need for the task at hand, thus minimising the chance of attack.

I’m using Windows 2008 Web Edition, which comes with literally nothing but IIS. If you’ve got a better version of 2008, you may want to install the DNS role, email, any number of others. Go wild, have fun.

One way or another you’ll need to install all the IIS6 roles, as well as the IIS management role.

Email:

I’m using MailEnable, basically because it’s free and does the job. When I spoke to my new hosting company about this, they strongly suggested trying ‘SmarterMail’ as a better alternative. Give them a look and make a decision.
Guides to install MailEnable are here:
http://www.mailenable.com/support/MailEnable_Installation_Guide.pdf
http://www.mailenable.com/support/MailEnable_Quick_Start_Guide.pdf

You’ll need to open ports on your firewall to enable… umm… MailEnable… so don’t forget. This includes Windows Firewall as well as any hardware firewall you may have set up.
Incoming: 110 & 25
Outgoing: 25

DNS:

If you want to use your server as a nameserver, (and frankly, if you need to read this tutorial to set up a production server, you’re unlikely to be the kind of person who’ll have a separate DNS server, so I’m talking to you!) you’ll need some kind of DNS service.

I’m using the cut down cheap-ass ‘Web Server Edition’ of 2008 server for which Microsoft have deemed fit to not include DNS services. So, like most of the planet, I’m using Bind.
It’s fiddly to get your head around if you’re unfamiliar with the concepts of DNS, but once you get the hang of what’s happening it’s all very straight forward.
Take a look at this tutorial: http://alex.charrett.com/bind-on-windows-mainmenu-3

You’ll also need to register your domain with the nameserver authority – or more accurately you’ll need to get your domain registrar to do this. A lot of registrars have an automated section in their control panels where you can do this. Others you’ll have to email. But basically, you need to have a domain name pointing to your IP address on the main database of nameservers. This usually takes about 24 hours.

You’ll also need to open your firewall up for BIND services:
Port 53, inbound and outbound, both TCP and UDP

FTP:

Initially, I thought it best to use the IIS built in FTP 7.5… However, after much messing about I decided it wasn’t up to the task.
If, like me, you like to have a ‘private’ folder outside the webroot to keep cfcs and the like, I’d recommend ditching it for FileZilla server.
I’ve left instructions for FTP 7.5 here for posterity.

FTP 7.5
Windows server 2008 has a new FTP module, FTP 7.5. It’s supposedly better for a million reasons, but what I like about it is you no longer have to create windows users to authenticate an FTP session. I’ve never much liked windows user permissions, gimme a username and a password and I’m happy.

It does take a bit of messing about to get the new user system working though. A very handy tutorial exists here:
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/321/configure-ftp-with-iis-7-manager-authentication

FileZilla
The FileZilla server is a much nicer solution in my opinion, it works much as I’d expect an FTP server to work, and doesn’t require as much messing about with IIS users and the like.
There’s not much in the way of tutorials out there, but it’s so simple to set up I’d be surprised if you need one. Nevertheless, here’s a link to one for good measure:
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2007/10/19/how-to-setup-ftp-server-on-windows/

Once you’ve set that up, you’ll want to set up the firewall for FTP.
That means opening up port 21, as well as enabling PASV mode with the following command:
netsh advfirewall set global StatefulFtp enable.

PHP:

Yeah, even though we’re coding awesomeness in CFML, there’s always going to be some client who wants to use PHP for something or other. Usually it’ll be a Wordpress installation, which, I’m sorry, is just a better blogging platform than the CF offerings. There, I said it. I feel better.

This tutorial should guide you through the pain:
http://www.trainsignaltraining.com/iis-7-install-fastcgi-php/2008-09-04

IIS modules:

Personally, I found that I needed the IIS7 Administration Pack. I can’t for the life of me remember why, but I’d suggest you just install it and stop asking questions. ‘k? ‘k.
http://www.iis.net/download/AdministrationPack

The URL Rewrite module is a bit more obvious – you want this. It allows us IIS users to do what Apache bods have been doing happily - and somewhat smugly I’ll add – for years… Rewrite URLs using RegEx. Again, if you’re slapping Wordpress on any of your domains, you’ll need this for friendly URLs.
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/460/using-url-rewrite-module
http://www.iis.net/download/URLRewrite

Perl:

Well sure, no-one uses Perl anymore, but it comes in handy having it on your server. Especially if you intend to install a stats package like AWStats. As it happens, AWStats is such a bitch to get working correctly that I wouldn’t bother, but still… Perl = good.
http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/downloads/
There are a few different things you may have to do to get this running on IIS7, including enabling a 32-bit application pool if your server is 64bit. Check out the instructions here:
http://blogs.iis.net/wadeh/archive/2009/04/13/running-perl-on-iis-7.aspx

AWStats:

Initially I had detailed instructions on installing AWStats here, but basically… just don’t bother. Get all your clients’ sites on Google Analytics. It’s a better package anyway. Honestly, you’ll thank me for that advice.

MySQL:

MySQL is fairly straightforward to install, but if you need a hand explaining the various options, there’s a tutorial here:
http://www.trainsignaltraining.com/install-mysql-on-iis7/2008-09-10/

phpMyAdmin:

If you need it, now would be the time to install phpMyAdmin.
http://www.trainsignaltraining.com/install-phpmyadmin-on-iis7-and-server-2008/2008-09-16/

One thing this tutorial isn’t clear on, is setting up the linked-tables feature. Several comments note the error, but none show how to fix it. You need to create a database specifically for these features. Instructions here:
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/documentation/#linked-tables

And the sysadmin looked at the server, and saw that it was good. And the sysadmin said “Let CFML pages be served, that web developers may rapidly develop and deploy applications”.

Installing Railo on Tomcat on IIS7 with multiple sites… I could write out step by step instructions, but why re-invent the wheel? I followed an excellent tutorial by Doug Boude, and you should too:
http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2009/09/Railo-31-on-Windows-Server-2008-and-IIS7–Part-2-of-3.cfm

At some point, this guide will ask you to download a DLL file to connect Tomcat to Railo – the URL in the guide is out of date, but I found the DLL here: http://www.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-connectors/jk/binaries/

It’s also worth noting that the guide expects you to be using version 1.2.28 of the ISAPI Redirect URL, however there is a newer version, 1.2.30 available. Do NOT use this version! It took me a while to figure out, but 1.2.30 makes everything run incredibly slowly. Don’t ask me why! I moved back down to 1.2.28 and everything worked fine.

One thing that this guide doesn’t mention, is how to handle default documents. You can see in the comments, a suggestion that adding ‘/*=wlb’ to the worker properties file will push all files through to Tomcat, which will indeed handle default documents. However, this will also put all static files, images, js and the like, through to Tomcat. Not only is this overkill (although I didn’t notice a performance hit), but also in my experience Tomcat has difficulty returning static files 100% of the time. I noticed certain images and JS returned as 404 errors, even though they existed.
Cue a helpful bit of info supplied by the Google Railo group.
http://groups.google.com/group/railo/browse_thread/thread/8706a5a4b025f393
This will allow you to set up default documents the *correct* way, leaving your static files to be handled by IIS as they should be. Don’t skip this step, it’s important!

And the server was able to serve CFML and the sysadmin saw that it was good. And the sysadmin said “Let there be protection, that viri may not penetrate the goodness of the server”

Finally, you can install Anti Virus. I’m using McAfee, since I happen to have a copy I’m not using.
Be careful to edit your preferences to ensure that not all files are being scanned – otherwise it’ll kill the server very quickly. Choose to scan files on writing to disk, and only the ‘default files plus additional’ option.
You’ll also want to stop McAfee from blocking any emails sent by the server. In the access protection settings, under the rule for blocking mass email worms, add ‘Tomcat6.exe’ to the list of excluded services.

And the sysadmin saw that McAfee was using way too many system resources on boot, but that it settled down after a few minutes, and the sysadmin saw that it was good enough. And the sysadmin said “Let’s make sure I don’t have to do this shit again!”.

A backup system is a good idea. If you’re smart, you’re using online version control and so losing the files and files of code you’ve carefully crafted, simply isn’t an issue. If not, check out Kiln or Git. I use Kiln and it’s an absolute pleasure. Don’t use SVN, because it’ll cause no end of hassle in the long run… and who needs a VCS subfolder in every single folder in their app anyway?

For MySQL, I’m using a batch script that exports every database, once a day. I built on top of the script in this guide: http://www.iis-aid.com/articles/how_to_guides/backing_mysql_automatically_using_batch_file
My version only holds one backup of each database on the server per day, but FTPs them down to my dev server which holds multiple copies. Have a look here: MySQL Backup Script

And the sysadmin looked at the server and saw that it was good. That it served CFML pages extrodinarily fast, and the sysadmin was pleased. The sysadmin rested. And was rewarded with cake.

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Well, Chris came to the rescue and created a simple program to do exactly that. So here’s Chris to explain the program and how it works:
Download links are at the bottom of the page.

Hi,

My name is Chris Brown and I am a big fan of FogBugz so when FogCreek announced Kiln (a mercurial client) I immediately jumped on the bandwagon moved to Kiln and have never looked back. The Kiln Mercurial solution solved all the issues I had with merging and speed in Subversion and I was a very happy man indeed.

Then one day whilst chatting to my good friend Gary @ Simian Enterprises (who has kindly let me blog via his site on this occasion) I mentioned Kiln to him and proceeded to wax lyrical about how great it was until his ears were bleeding and to my surprise I had convinced him to give Kiln a try.

Now Gary was at first very happy and was as thrilled as me at the beautiful Kiln web experience and TortoiseHg integration, however there was one nagging feature he used a lot in Subversion which does not exist within the Mercurial system, and after doing a bit of googling it seems a few other people hit the same snag.

It is not possible with TortoiseHg to export a copy of all files changed since a specified revision. Now to most this would not cause much of an issue, I myself have never had this need, and do not think I will, but for those working on big complex websites like Gary does this is a big issue.

When uploading the new version of a site (usually by FTP) this can take some time, and I am sure most people will agree that uploading files with no changes is nothing but a waste of time. Being able to export just the files changed since the last update and only updating these makes a lot more sense and will result in far fewer files being transferred and as mentioned TortoiseSVN has this capability as standard.

With any luck one day the TortoiseHg system can also have this command, until then I have written a small application in Visual Studio 2010 which does what Gary needed and hopefully it will be of use to other Kiln/Mercurial users too.

Please note: this is one of those programs I knocked up very quickly, it does not have much error handling and the code is not that tidy, however it does work and I have provided both an installer for the app and the original Source Code, please feel free to amend as needed or build on this to meet your needs.

Below are details of each input and what it is used for and what the buttons do, this currently checks for changes between a revision and tip and assumes the current working folder is updated to Tip.

Root Directory of mercurial repository: should point to the path of the root of your repo (where .hg lives)
From Revision #: the revision number to check from
Export target folder: the folder to copy changed files to (must be blank)
List Changed Files: lists the files in the list box that will be copied based on current settings.
Export Changed Files: same as above but also copied to the target folder/
Close: does what it says on the tin.

If you like this little utiity and would like to make any comments you can find me on Twitter (@CB46)
Thanks
Chris Brown

Download: Windows Installer | Source

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Frankly, I think it’s astounding that any SEO company could make such an assertion, anyone in the industry would immediately understand just how ridiculous this statement is - but unfortunaty our clients are not experts and can only make their decisions based on the advice they receive from the people who claim to be. My clients in this case have made an informed choice, based on patently false information…

So I’d like to state definitively: ColdFusion has nothing whatsoever to do with SEO… Neither does php, asp, ruby, python, perl, or in fact any back end language at all…

Search engines read the ‘mark-up’ of a website, that is to say the HTML that anyone can see by clicking ‘view source’ in the browser… A back end language such as ColdFusion, php or asp, will generate HTML mark-up according to the templates that have been coded by a developer. It is entirely possible for any of these back end languages to generate identical mark-up.
My clients in this case have paid to have their website recoded, but the HTML produced will be exactly the same as their existing website and so their search engine results will be completely unaffected… In fact, since the file extensions will change on every page, many incoming links will no longer work, so unless their new developer puts 301 redirects in place, they will most likely drop in the rankings.

As a developer working primarily with ColdFusion, it’s easy to feel angry that my clients have been mislead into believing that the work I have done for them is somehow inferior because of the language used, and indeed if I knew the name of the SEO company involved I would be in contact with them directly to argue the issue as well as naming them here… But what’s worrying is that it’s really the clients that are suffering. Through ignorance of how the Internet works, they have been led down a route that is both costly and futile, by a company that either has no knowledge of their own industry, or even more worrying, is ruthless enough to take advantage of the ignorance of their clients.

I only want what’s best for the people I work for. I want their sites to work well, to become popular, to generate revenue - and I try to give the best advice I can to help clients understand what can be
gained from their web presence. I’m sure we all do… But in a technical industry such as ours, one that combines so many different disciplines, one that every virtually every business needs to interact
with and yet very few understand, how can we combat misinformation like this?

The average client doesn’t need or want to understand how the Internet works. Mention CSS, JavaScript, back end software, web standards, etc. to the average client and they will at best, stare at
you blankly… At worst pretend they know what you’re talking about when in fact they haven’t a clue. In my experience, the best clients to work with are those that have enough knowledge of the web to understand that user experience is key, that copy is important, and that their website is an ongoing project. They don’t need to know the intricacies of code, servers and the like, but they need to trust
us to make certain decisions on their behalf.

Perhaps it’s time we tried to educate our clients. I don’t know how much information is out there to explain the basics. Maybe we should have a simple guide explaining how websites are put together that we can give to clients at the beginning of new projects… Either that or perhaps SEO companies should be licensed and regulated!!!

As I write, I’m not entirely sure what the point of this post is, but I feel it’s an issue not generally discussed and I’d be interested to know what others think. Perhaps the larger agencies don’t run into
this problem due to their reputation as experts or their tendency to work with bigger clients; but at my level, developing for small companies with little or no online strategy, half the battle is guiding them in the right direction.

So how do we compete with liars???

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The Problem:

You have a fresh install of Windows 2008 server running Plesk Control Panel.
You innocently download and install a copy of ColdFusion 8. The installation goes fine and you can access the ColdFusion administrator with no problems…
However, when you try to access a .cfm page on any other site, you’re greeted with a login prompt asking for authentication details. You’ll also find that your Plesk URL does the same thing.
In fact, any page on any site other than the default (which is where your ColdFusion Administrator is installed) is now asking for authentication, and of course returning a 401 error when you are unable to supply the correct login details.

The Solution:

My best guess about what’s happening here is that the ColdFusion installation is messing with the IIS handler mappings that have been set up by Plesk. If you don’t have Plesk installed, you probably won’t run into this issue.

After what seemed like forever messing around and failing to resolve the problem I found a utility installed with Plesk called ‘Plesk Reconfigurator’.

The reconfigurator offers several options, but the one we’re after is ‘Check Componant and Folder Permissions.

Run this little godsend and select 'Check Component and Folder Permissions'

You’re then presented with a wealth of options, dependant on the software installed on your server. Click the ColdFusion option and away we go!

Lo and behold, there's an entry for ColdFusion in here...

Running this seems to reconnect the various handler settings and Coldfusion pages now work on other sites, as well as plesk. Hurrah!

And if someone had only written this post sooner, I’d have saved myself a lot of time.

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As a conscientious web developer, I aim to create clean & accessible code, using currently accepted best practices. Unfortunately no-one can seem to agree on what those best practices might be and in any case they keep changing, so it’s difficult to keep up.

In the 90’s
We all made websites using tables. They allowed for absolute positioning of elements and enabled us to create beautiful websites that looked exactly like the Photoshop mock ups we’d lovingly crafted. The world rejoiced and everything was fine for a while, until someone told us this was completely wrong.

Then came CSS…
Having been informed that actually, we should be separating style from content for a myriad of very good reasons, we all set about forgetting everything we knew about creating websites and started again from scratch.

But it didn’t stop there
Gradually, we came to understand that there are various ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to build sites even if we’re using CSS to style our content. Phrases such as ‘Semantic Markup’ and ‘Progressive Enhancement’ began to emerge and simultaneously excite and terrify.

Accessibility
Of course, there’s a genuine reason for all this mucking about behind the scenes - making our content accessible to the widest possible audience, on any device, under any condition. To that end, we were told that we should be using relative units for our text sizes, (and if the design calls for it, our layout as well) allowing users to zoom in and out at will. Helpful for those with high resolutions, with visual impairments, with small screens. Whatever.

A return to the Old Skool
Lately however, browser manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to create page zooming functionality that zooms the entire page, regardless of whether relative units have been used.

No sooner have we all got our heads around calculating Ems, and everyone’s talking about going back to pixels… because it’s easier.
Apparently we were only using Ems in the first place, to take advantage of the text zooming functionality of browsers.

I disagree, for a number of reasons
Ems are relative to the default font size of the browser. This is usually 16 pixels, but many people with visual impairments will have this default set higher. Possibly, they’ll have set the font size at the operating system level. Some people using high resolutions on small screens will have changed this setting also. I attended Jon Tan’s talk on typography a few months back and a member of the audience recounted his experience of using a laptop with the font size increased at the OS level. He was unable to click a button on a high profile website, because at his text size, the button was hidden underneath another element. Clearly if we disregard the possibility of text being resized, if we assume we have total control over the size of text in our layouts, we’ll come unstuck pretty quickly.

In any case, not everyone is a fan of the new style page zooming. Personally I find that many layouts break fairly quickly using page-zoom, and even if they don’t, it’s very quick to display the dreaded horizontal scroll bar. In Firefox, I’ve set my zooming to ‘text only’. I can’t be the only one, or the option wouldn’t be there.

Above all though, I won’t be changing back to pixel font sizes because Ems are better suited to the job. Pixel sizing may be easier, but a correctly executed complex Em layout gives me a zen-like feeling of satisfaction. I just like being a web-ninja.

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It’s not hard to see which people are at the forefront, making a difference and shaping the industry. Flick through any web magazine and the same names pop up again and again. These same people are to be found speaking at conferences, advising on panels, writing thought provoking articles on their own blogs and, in a great many cases, writing books to share their expertise with the world.

My question is this: Where do they find the time?!

The industry is so fast moving that it’s all most of us can do to keep up to date. Reading through blogs and magazines, digesting the daily onslaught of new ideas and techniques, taking the time to understand new technologies as they emerge, not to mention the ever moving goalposts of ‘Best Practice’… it’s a full time job in itself! Surely we’re supposed to be spending this time working on our projects for paying clients?

Perhaps these people, these industry leaders, perhaps they are so smart that they can digest information in a fraction of the time taken by us ‘normal’ human beings. Perhaps they’re really robots… it wouldn’t surprise me. I saw Jeremy Keith’s talk at dConstruct last year and I swear at least half of it was in binary.

Maybe these people don’t need paying clients anymore… perhaps after you’ve had a certain amount of articles published on ‘A List Apart‘, the internet automatically siphons off fractions of pennies from millions of e-commerce transactions into your bank account each month, allowing you to concentrate your time on R&D…. It probably kidnaps your kids too, just to make sure you comply. We’re only months away from Skynet… Mark my words.

What’s more likely, I’d imagine, is that most of these people work alongside other, incredibly intelligent and talented individuals, each with their own specialities and ideas… and they just bounce ideas off each other. As freelancers, we’re not often afforded this opportunity, which is why networking is so important. Conferences and social networking events are a great way to meet some very clever people; and twitter makes it easy to stay in touch…
But that’s not enough for me, I need a constant influx of information; a subconscious affinity with all things technical. I’m going to get a job as a cleaner in the offices of some big web agencies so that I can install bugs in their water coolers and pipe the tapes into my bedroom while I sleep.

Not that I ever sleep… I’m too busy working.

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In recent years, the web industry has begun to wander down a similar path. With the scope of the average web project being so much greater than a decade ago, the most successful web agencies are those housing multiple specialists.
These days a web project needs information architecture, copy writing, user experience & interface design, database design and development, back end coding, front end coding, user testing, a dash of marketing and some project management to tie it all together.

So where does this leave the ‘Jack of all trades’? With the recent economic ‘apocalypse’, a lot of people and especially freelancers, are wondering where their next paycheck may be coming from… How do we weather the storm?

In a recent interview, Andy Budd suggested that in today’s climate we all need to specialise or die. He makes a compelling argument, but I don’t entirely agree. I think it depends what you’re looking to achieve.
Sure, specialising in one aspect of the industry is essential if you want to get picked up by a large agency, or if you want to talk on the conference circuit, publish a book or work for one of the big players… But I think there’s still room in this industry for the multi-skilled ‘website creators’. Our target market is the small business. Not everyone can afford to hire a big agency and in my experience they wouldn’t see the value of the investment even if they could.

There are quite literally millions of businesses out there that have no idea how much a good web presence would benefit them. This is where we step in, the small-time heroes of the internet. We come armed with ideas and with passion, with experience and vision. We know that our website project can revolutionise their business. It will generate enquiries, or a new revenue stream. It will save them time and money. It will exceed their expectations and all will be right in the world.

It probably seems over the top, but this is the level of enthusiasm I have at the start of every new project. I think that at this, the smaller end of the scale, we have an opportunity to create things of real value to our clients.

I may never do work for the BBC or Google. I may not invent the next Facebook or be revered amongst my peers as the best in my field… But I’ll change the life of Jason, the locksmith who lives around the corner.

That’s rewarding… Hell, that’s exciting…
When Jason calls to tell me that I’ve saved him five man-hours a day in admin time with an invoicing system I built him for a few grand… that’s the best damned feeling in the world.
It might not make it onto an awards site and be featured in .NET magazine - but Jason spends more time with his kids and tells all his friends what a wonderful job I’ve done.

Jason, of course, had no idea this was possible - he was just looking for a website to advertise his business. He didn’t have an online strategy or a marketing budget, and he didn’t invite several high profile web agencies to tender for his business. He asked his friend who’d created their website and he gave me a call.

There are plenty of Jasons out there.
Find them, make their lives better and get paid for it… and keep smiling… life is awesome.

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1. Combatting misinformation in web design I received an email from a client recently, informing me...

As you may know, when I’m not busy making websites, I make t-shirts inspired by retro video games. Recently some of our designs were shamelessly ripped off by an ex-supplier of ours, who then, (astoundingly) tried to wholesale them back to us!

I spoke to several law firms and organisations and thought I would share the advice I received.
Please note that while I am paraphrasing advice I received, you should in no way assume this information to be legally sound - I would ALWAYS advise you to speak to a copyright lawyer in these matters. This said, here follows my top copyright tips:

1. Your work is automatically copyrighted

According to UK copyright law, the act of creating original work automatically gives you copyright over that work for 75 years after your death.
Of course the burden of proof is on you, but assuming you are able to assert yourself as the author of the work (drafts, layered PSDs, etc. should suffice) the law is very much on your side.

2. Register your work with A©ID

A©ID - which stands for ‘Anti Copying in Design’ are an organisation set up for individuals and small businesses to copyright their original works. For a moderate yearly fee, you are able to register your work on their database. Essentially all this does is help you assert yourself as the copyright holder. An entry into the A©ID database would look good in court if your case ever got that far. A©ID also has deals with copyright lawyers across the country, which can offer advice and in some cases, discounted litigation.

3. Even though the law is on your side, you’ll still have to find the money to litigate

Litigation is expensive. Lawyers cost a ridiculous amount of money, and you’ll have to pay them to take anyone to court. In the likely case that you win, whoever copied your work will usually be liable for your legal fees, but you’ll still have to pay up front and recover the cost later - which is usually way too expensive.
It’s not all bad though…

4. Write a letter

Most half-friendly copyright lawyers will write a letter for you for around £75. This is a fairly standard ‘cease and desist’ letter, which notifies of copyright infringement and requests the immediate discontinuation of said infringement. Essentially, you’re telling company X to stop using your design immediately.

In most cases, this is as far as it goes. A scary looking letter from a lawyer is usually enough to stop most people copying your work. You can try to get some compensation for any items they’ve sold too, but don’t hold your breath.
If you can’t afford to pay the lawyer, there’s nothing stopping you from sending a strongly worded letter yourself - it’s just as valid, but obviously more likely to be ignored. If company X ignores your letter, the next step is expensive litigation.

5. If you can’t afford to litigate, let them know that you intend to… at a later date

This is the important one. From the moment they receive your first letter notifying them of copyright infringement, they are liable. Send them another letter telling them that you can’t afford to take them to court right now, but that as soon as you can, you will. Even if you decide to take them to court 10 years down the line, they’re still liable; and if they kept using your design for those 10 years, they’ll have to pay for the lot.
Beautiful, that one.

6. There is more than one way to infringe on copyright

The act of copying your work is one infringement, but offering it for sale is another infringement in itself. What this means is if your work has been copied by a wholesaler, as mine had, then any customers of theirs that buy from them and offer your work for sale, are also liable - even if they have no knowledge that the work was yours originally. Again, send them a letter notifying them of copyright infringement. Usually these guys will immediately discontinue the product and send you a letter back.

The idea here isn’t to get the little guy - the idea is that they will go back to their suppliers complaining that the product they bought from them was yours… it’s a house of cards.

7. Don’t lose sleep over it… Really.

You can get yourself incredibly worked up over the copyright issue, but the fact remains that you can’t always stop it from happening. It’s a harsh world. Do what you can, and get on with your life.

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Having just had a conversation with yet another ‘SEO consultancy’, I’m simply amazed that there are still people out there disseminating these crackpot ideas of what SEO is. That clients of mine, unsuspecting business owners with little or no knowledge of the intricacies of SEO, are still parting with inordinate, over-inflated lumps of cash to these cowboy companies for a service they don’t understand, and are therefore unable to accurately gauge the effectiveness of, simply angers me.

So here, in an attempt to enlighten as well as entertain, is my compendium of uncomfortable truths about the world of SEO in 2009.

Google has got it right

(Or: ‘How your favourite search engine is smarter than your SEO company’.)

Google has been around for a long time. Since its inception in 1996, Google’s main goal has been to crawl and rank every website on the internet according to the relevance of its content. This is for the benefit of the public, not the owner of said website.

Google is very good at this, and has some of the brightest minds in the industry working hard at refining their ranking algorithm to do just that.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that being at the top of Google for any particular key-phrase would have a lot of money making potential, and so from very early on, lots of ‘non-genius’ people crawled out from under various rocks and offered their services doing just that - getting their clients to the top of Google.

For a while, they were fairly successful and their clients, on the whole, happy. But as more and more companies realised the potential of #1 rankings, and more SEO companies (often from Lancaster, ever notice that?) cropped up ready to take their money, a virtual arms race ensued with SEO companies trying more and more ingenious ways to trick poor Google into ranking their clients higher than their competitors.

Many techniques emerged over the years, including keyword stuffing, gateway pages, micro-sites, gateway domains, link triangulation, bombing, cloaking, etc.

Of course all of this was very much against the spirit of the whole thing and Google spent most of its time refining its algorithm to identify these ‘Black-Hat’ (read: cheating) tactics and penalise sites accordingly.

Google was always bound to triumph in the end and the turning point came around 2004, when they finally tipped the scales and managed to make the SEO industry implode in one fell swoop.
Many high profile businesses were wiped out from the listings overnight.

With the old black-hat techniques causing massive penalisation, a huge percentage of ‘have-a-go’ SEO companies went bust immediately. Those that were left were quick to claim they had never used those techniques in the first place. (They did… They all did.)

The bottom line is that Google doesn’t want SEO companies to dictate where your website ranks in their listings. They want to deliver the most relevant content to their users for any given search and that’s exactly what you should want too… Because your website is better than your competitor’s, right? So what good is it if after putting all that effort to create the perfect online resource for your target market, your inferior competitor can just simply hire a better SEO company to outrank you?

Where does it all end?!

Thankfully, Google has become very good at sorting out the wheat from the chaff and right now, the best way to rank well in their listings is to develop good quality, regularly updated content. Just look at the BBC…

There is no such thing as guaranteed rankings

That’s right, I said it.

If any SEO company offers you any kind of guarantee, including of the ever attractive ‘or your money back’ variety, politely (or impolitely depending on your demeanour and how pushy their salesperson is) decline and go about your day.

This seems obvious, yet people are taken in by it every day: If every SEO company offering ‘guaranteed top five rankings’ was actually able to deliver, tens if not hundreds of competing companies would have to share those top five positions. It’s clearly not possible.

The fact is that SEO is not an exact science, or indeed a science of any kind. It’s educated guesswork at best. There are so many factors that influence a site’s ranking that it is impossible to make any kind of guarantee… The fact that many SEO companies actually offer a guarantee is simply because this is what their clients want to hear. ANY SEO company that offers a guarantee is unscrupulous, and is to be avoided.

And while we’re on the subject, 20 top five rankings ‘across the major search engines’ is useless. Trust me - No-one is searching for ‘[your product's stock code] from [your company name] buy online from [your city] in [your country]‘ on Lycos. They’re searching for ‘[your product name]‘ or ‘[your industry name]‘ - possibly with an area modifyer - and that’s about it.

If you’re not already ranking for ‘[your company name]‘ then you’ve got problems with your website that go way beyond the remit of your SEO company.

New sites are at a disadvantage

Sorry, but it’s true. The more popular a site is, the more people will link to it. Google loves to see lots of incoming links to your site. Now, that doesn’t mean you should immediately start signing up to link directories, banner farms and exchanging links with anyone and everyone - Google only really cares about ‘relevant links’ - that is to say, links from sites with content that is similar, or relevant to yours. If you run a site about bowling, Google isn’t going to be too interested in that link from your friend’s fishing site; but one from your bowling league would be rather handy.

The idea is simple: Google wants to know that your industry/community/peers ‘approve’ of your content and find it valuable to them. This is an organic process and usually takes time, effort and patience.

There are of course, exceptions. If for instance, your site offers a genuine cure for cancer, you can bet that as soon as one media outlet picks up on it, the news will spread like wildfire and you’ll find yourself with links from news sites, blogs & social networking sites all over the globe. The news sites especially are considered ‘authorative sources’ and will generally hold a lot of clout with Google.

But for the most part, you’ll have to wait around for your site to be found and linked to by the masses - for it to grow organically. It certainly can’t hurt to contact relevant sites to ask them to link to you, but the bottom line is that the competitor of yours that’s been online for five years is going to have many more links, reviews, and general ‘buzz’ about their site and it will take you a long time to gain that kind of a reputation.

The best thing you can do is the same as any offline business/venture: offer a better service, cheaper rates, better content and a website that people want to link to. Short of some very clever marketing tricks, there’s no shortcut for this - certainly chucking a couple of grand at an SEO company isn’t going to cut it.

There is no place for your SEO company in today’s web

A controversial statement, I’m sure - but one I believe is true.

The fact is that good rankings come from good content and well developed sites. What’s required is a fundamental shift in the way companies view their online offerings. Rather than spending money on competing for better positions for their content, companies should be spending money on developing better content for their sites.

An SEO company may be able to write copy laced with your key-phrases, but a good copywriter will create insightful, thought provoking content that people will link to and pass on.

An SEO company may add code to your site that is designed to be picked up by search engines, but a better web developer will create semantic, valid and accessible code that will be easily digested by the search engine spiders, and will be much better for your visitors.

Your company and search engines have one common factor: You both have human beings as customers. You should be creating sites for them, not for the search engines.

Dump your SEO company today, and make the web a better place.

SEO is not the same as marketing

(Or, ‘Gary does a bit of backtracking’)

A lot of people I’ve spoken to recently, consider these views to be something akin to heresy. To be fair, most of them run SEO companies… but still I think it’s worth pointing out that what I’m referring to here is specifically search engine optimisation - the art of getting your site to the top of the organic search listings for specific phrases using good meta data, content with a high keyword density, external links, and in many cases, hidden bits of code and whatnot. It’s my contention that you shouldn’t need a separate company to achieve this - a developer and a copywriter will do the trick nicely. The argument that developers don’t understand how to optimise a site for search engines is defunct: Hire better developers.

There are of course other avenues of marketing, and specifically search engine marketing, which are best left to professionals. Anyone can run a CPC advertising campaign, but you’ll find more success with an expert who can create multiple campaigns with individual landing pages, specifically aimed at niche areas of your target market - and more importantly, analyse the results.

The evils of marketing as a concept are way beyond the scope of this post, but it’s important to note that there is a difference and I don’t want to undermine the job done by people who know far more about it than I.

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1. Combatting misinformation in web design I received an email from a client recently, informing me...

I know as a ColdFusion developer, I should probably be using Mango Blog or BlogCFC - Both of which are pretty awesome in their own right - but at the end of the day Wordpress is simply a better tool for the job.
I’ve heard it said before, but I’ll chuck my opinion out there too: The new Wordpress UI is absolutely fantastic, and I have to say it’s that more than anything else that made me choose it over the other two.

Of course, integrating Wordpress with the rest of my ColdFusion site proved interesting. Several things in the site template are achieved through ColdFusion and had to be replicated in PHP. I ended up writing a CFC to pull data from a Wordpress blog, which has proved enormously helpful. If I get the chance, I’ll clean that up a bit and put it up as a download - I can’t be the only one wanting to use Wordpress on a ColdFusion powered site.

Props go to Anthony at Afovea.com for the lovely new design.
Also, due largely to two fantastic talks by Jon Tan and Richard Rutter at Skillswap Brighton, I have lovingly embraced typography and this site adheres strictly to a vertical rhythm. The math excites me. Really. It’s actually quite worrying.

That’s all for now. I’ve a few articles in the pipeline that I’ll be posting up here fairly soon. Until then, I’d love to hear any feedback on the new site.
Use the lovely comments box below.

Awesomage.

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