Great, I get a new phone that I can peruse the Internet with, but I can’t seem to log into WordPress with it. Odd…actually, what is more odd is that I can log in to WordPress from the Comment/Frontend…but when I go to the backend/Admin…no go.
Anyone else experience this annoyance?
Yes, I can hardly contain my excitement. The hardest part about launching a new site is when you are in the last tune-up stages. By then, the entire site is basically ready to go, but there are just some pesky house cleaning things to do. We were feverishly updating today, hoping to get the site up by the weekend.
Oh, we still have some advancements to do to the site, but for now…it is complete enough to launch and is so much better than our last site.
It has actually only been six months since our last website overhaul, but that was really the precursor to this launch. Back then, we concentrated more on search engine techniques and experimenting with some others. Most of those techniques we adapted in this latest version.
Basically, on the new site we decided it was finally time to have a website that reflected our brand as well as our skills. We wanted the site to feel clean, easy-to-navigate, concise, and we wanted each of our customer segments to have their very own view of how our services could assist their special needs.
In addition, we wanted the blog and our support desk to have more emphasis and feel like part of the entire experience. We also decided that while Evolve Your Search.com is still an unintimidating way for other web developers and marketing companies to utilize our search engine tools, it was cheating our own audience not to share our Web 2.0 and SEO experience with them as part of our solutions as well.
We also added our new partnership program with Marketing Agencies to our dialogue. I feel strongly that we can give smaller marketing firms a deeper portfolio of solutions by offering our services. With the great advantage of our on-time delivery and our ability to be leveraged seamlessly and completely incognito, if the firm so desires.
We are still building our concepts and will be adding and trimming copy from the website over the next few months. We will also return to giving our customers and followers frequent updates on the blogs and now through Twitter and Facebook.
We are looking forward to our quest to convert the masses to Web 2.0…and our website is the first step in showing some of what we can do. Thanks for checking us out…and feel free to subscribe to our blog. We’d love to have you along.
Well, if you haven’t heard already, once again Yahoo! has given up on search again.
Quite a few years ago, Yahoo! gave away their search power to Google, using them as a major part of their search results. Then management decided to break from Google and do it on their own.
They had some success but could never touch the 60%+ market share that Google has enjoyed in the search engine race.
For the last year or so, Microsoft has made serious bids to buy the search feature, but Yahoo! wouldn’t sell. Then Microsoft introduced Bing and the power dynamic changed. Soon Bing was passing Yahoo! by. The ultimate result…Yahoo! cuts their losses and doesn’t really get anything out of the agreement other than 88% of ad revenue from its ads placed on Bing.
Microsoft becomes the undisputed #2 in the search market with approximately 28% share (this of course will adjust depending on how the change is implemented and how much Yahoo! users like the idea or decide to jump ship for giant Google.
So for us in the web design and SEO market, its time to take a deep long look at our search engine strategies and make a bigger place for Bing…its not just another marketing play by Microsoft, this looks serious.
We will follow this story and will move our focus in discussions from Yahoo! to Bing and Google in the future. Stay Tuned. Meanwhile, check out latest articles on the merger.
One of the toughest things for anyone to do is to admit that something they have been doing for years has been wrong. Except for me.
After years of paying more attention to my client’s brand than my own, I finally said to myself “what am I doing?” And my answer was…so far, nothing.
So that all is now changing. My clients and friends have probably noticed a subtle change in how they receive emails from Hannush Enterprises. Gone are the days of the mile long signature, featuring any method of communication including instructions on how to contact support.
No one was paying any attention. And why should they? We were doing the same thing we had been doing for years…basically following the status quo on our communications.
For those of you who are clients of Hannush Enterprises, you know that we provide periodic backups. Depending on the frequency of updates that you make to your blog and other features like news, you might be interested in some extra protection.
While I’d love to sell you on more on-going services, there are some things you can do yourself to backup your blog. Here is an interesting article with some good tips and a guide:
Yes, its true. Your little Mom and Pop web store may be facing fines from the very companies that provide the process for you to receive your customer payments. If you haven’t heard about it yet, it is called PCI Compliance and while it is not a law, it is real and something to be concerned about. One year from now your store could be facing fines from the credit card processing companies (Visa, MC, Amex, etc.).
But wait, don’t let me scare you completely. Big brother is not going to come crashing down upon everyone and there are a lot of good reasons for this program that benefit you and your customer.
So what is PCI Compliance?
In a nutshell, it is a program developed by the major credit card processing companies (Visa, MC…you know the drill) to help protect customer’s credit card information. In an ever increasing digital world, these companies have paid out major cash to customer’s due to stolen credit card information. The companies then started to enforce their own brand of penalties, but these disparate systems were very difficult for the merchants and banks to maintain. So the credit card processing companies got together and came up with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to ensure that all companies that transmit and receive customer data are doing so in a secure environment.
For some really dry reading…check out these articles on PCI Compliance:
Gone will be the days of small merchants setting up a website’s shopping cart to accept credit card information that you hand feed into your merchant machine. Think of all of the security holes in this process. You have to display a credit card number on your screen that anyone could look over your shoulder and see…and scary as it may seem, imaging as a consumer putting your credit card information into a website, only to have the merchant print out your credit card information and then throw it in the trash when they are through punching it in. Yes, these standards might be a little annoying to some, but as a consumer, you should be happy to know these standards are moving into effect.
So, when does PCI Compliance take effect? Its actually already in effect. Level 4 merchants (stores with less that 20,000 transactions per year) were to be in compliance by January 1, 2008. But no worries. You still have a year to get your merchant act together. Fines do not start until July 1st, 2010.
Each website’s needs will be different. Set up a meeting with your web developer and ask him to give you a review of your website’s compliance. Many may already be compliant or may just need to make some tweaks in the process. Just having PayPal as your only means of processing does not necessarily make you compliant. You will need to make sure you are not storing any sensitive information on your server at all. Your web developer can tell you if your sites software is in or out of compliance.
Now is the time to get started.
Okay, so there is a lot of 2009 left, but this is the first commercial to make me truly smile.
Hannush Twitter
Hannush Web Design and Programming : 345 Prado Way : Greenville, SC 29607 : Sales (864) 918-5992 : Support (828) 551-2114![[ ]](/images/stories/top-links-bullet.jpg)
Search Engines