How Do I Keep My Blog Private?

by

This is by far the number one funniest or just odd question to ask. The normal reply you’ll get is, “If you want to keep it private, get a diary.” I mean really, if you’re going to join the blogging foray you’ll at least have to understand that it’s not easy to keep your blog under wraps. And it’s not from prying human eyes but from the eyes of the search engines.

“If I don’t submit my blog website address to search engines then I’m safe from being picked up right?”

Well, that’s a no or just a maybe. Although you haven’t submitted your blog to any of the major search engines, they might still find you if you don’t own your own domain. I say this because search engines will scan from the Top Level Domain (TLD) which is your www.your-name.com then dig deeper into the depths of your domain.

Read more

Does Your Website Have The Flow?

by

The what?! you might say. The flow is an invisible guide that your unconscious mind interprets as a line for your eyes to follow on your website. Imagine you’re walking in your almost pitch black room with a dim light coming out from entrance. Because it’s a room you’re familiar with, you’re guided partly by your intuition or unconscious mind through the darkness.

The flow on a website is like being in this dark room. Though you’re familiar with the surrounding of the logo, the menu, the images and the content, it’s the flow that normally guides you to your intended goal on a website.

Read more

Farewell, Year 2006 – Hello, Year 2007

by

Happy New Year to everyone from us over here.

As usual the year had passed us quickly. The hours in the day seemed slow but each minute still made it through the day. Anyway, let’s not look back so much of what might have happened but what could happen in this year, 2007.

And there’s going to be something happening in 2007, on this website as well. An announcement of joint venture, maybe an update or even a change to this blog, new insight of the website industry in Malaysia and many more. So come back soon and hopefully it’ll all be revealed at the end of this month. :)

Read more

How really Safe are your Email Addresses?

by

Every time I’m having a discussion with a customer, the topic of email spam isn’t a rare item. It’s even more surprising learning that most small-medium business owners don’t really take into concern for the safety of their corporate emails. Imagine spending countless hours having to filter out your business email from junk email sent by spammers. How much business are you losing by spending time deleting useless emails than replying high priority emails from customers?

It’s advisable today to not list your emails on your website. Reason being is that we’ve heard countless stories of how spammers can ‘sniff’ out lone emails placed directly on websites. On the other hand, if you can’t help it and have invested in an up-to-date spam solution then there’s nothing much can be done.

Read more

A Dream User Interface

by

It was like every Monday today except for one difference. A visual came to me while struggling to get out of bed to start the day. An idea struck me and I started wondering, what if we actually had an interface to choose a dream of our choice.

What will it look like? How will it work?

Read more

Webmasters now Brands New Name

by

If you do a define search in Google for the word webmaster, you’ll find all the description rather similar in duties. The main tasks of a webmaster is maintain and administer a website. In actual employee talk it could really mean several things. It could be that you’re expected to handle tasks from design to programming to updating and maybe to even marketing or what you really do is update text and images on the website.

The humorous part about this is that instead of calling personnel who manage websites; webmasters, any more. We are now branding them as Web Managers instead. This instantly reminded me of Zeldman’s article; Web 2.0 Thinking Game.

So let me try this game here:

Web 1.0: Webmaster
Web 2.0: Web Manager

Read more

Unorthodox Registration Process

by

If it’s one thing I learned through experience and feedback, it’s to make the registration process easy enough that it doesn’t require much thinking. When a person starts having to think about the registration, perception kicks in followed by the ‘what if’ contradiction and that affects the flow of getting them to register as a member.

I’ve got one example here of an unorthodox registration process. It’s been debated about the alert boxes popping up on your monitor and what kind of effects it gives a user. One of it is that its sudden action creates a feeling of insecurity that the user might have done something wrong. But the cooling period later is when they read the alert message.

Read more

Marketing and Public Relations on a Website or Blog

by

Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations, & Branding for the quick-read crowd was really a quick read over at SmallBusinessBranding.com. The part I liked best was the graphical explanation of marketing, advertising, public relations and branding. For a visual person like me, these pictures did all the speaking.

But that’s just the introduction of what I’d like to share with you. When you have a blog or website like FlyingSolo with more than 11,500+ readers and with a probability that a client might be reading your article, it’s worth putting some marketing and public relations (pr) budget to such a website.

Read more

Flash Trends Make Clients Lose Foresight

by

Malaysia clients are suckers for the Flash trend. One look at competitor websites that have Flash and a chain reaction of jealousy (not envy) jumps in. They want something alike if not better without having foresight and care for their customers.

I even intentionally asked a prospective client if I’m looking to buy your product, what will I be doing on your website? It was easily answered; to find out more information about their product. The next scenario I follwed up with was if I was there to find more information, why will I be looking at the ‘moving element’ on the website?

Read more