WeBlogged

Ok, first question, you own the domain right? Before you consider setting up your e-mail addresses, make sure you own your domain. If you have any questions about domains and how email relates to your domain, etc, read the Take Control of Your Domain series in this blog.

Using Google Apps for your Domains (GAFYD) to manage your medium to small organization’s e-mail is fairly easy and low-maintenance when everything is working as it should.

1. Google Apps for your domains is free. There is a paid version, but we have found that the free version is featuresque and more than sufficient for our email needs. If you don’t have a good techie on staff in your organization, you might consider using the paid version as it comes with … you guessed it … timely tech support. The paid version is currently $50 per year per address, which can be a cumbersome cost if you are just starting your organization or business, but compared to other services (you’re looking at around $10/mo per address) it is actually an economical alternative and you get a lot for your money.

2. E-mail account set-up is easy. The GAFYD Dashboard is easy to navigate and easy to understand. The instructions are excellent, and if you run into trouble, the extensive GAFYD forum system has the answers to pretty much any question you can come up with. Usually it takes about an hour and a half to set up the google apps email — a little more or a little less depending on how long it takes for the system to grab the changes. Much of this time is spent setting up your “partnerpage” just how you want it to look. This is the page people in your organization can use to access all the google services associated with your GAFYD account. Our vanilla partner page is: http://partnerpage.google.com/xprtcreative.com — you can totally customize your page with your organizational / business colors and logo to further your organizational branding internally.

3. The online help is well put together and pretty extensive. The help area has tutorials, walk throughs and instructions that show how to do everything from e-mail lists to switching from your old email to gmail.

4. It’s easy to tie in with Google Analytics and all the other cool Google tools (such as Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc) - so if you ever want to track your site stats or even use adwords at some point, you’re already in the system and everything is connected. … very helpful to lay the foundation for organizational growth.

5. You can easily set up email lists. Basically you can say — ok, here’s this new address, info@mybusiness.com — and it’s not a real address, but basically a forwarding mechanism. You add any e-mail you want to this email list, and then whatever email(s) you put in the list — those are the e-mails that actually get the stuff that comes to info@mybusiness.com. The only drawback to this is that you can’t reply from info@mybusiness.com, so that’s something to keep in mind if it matters to you.

Some people like to use their old email addys and forward the new ones, and some people like to use the new e-mail addresses and forward old addys to the new address. Just a matter of preference for you and your business processes, and how it all fits together in your strategic plan.

6. Gmail is independent of your hosting. Another bonus is when you decide to get your website going, it makes it easier for your future web developers to have an email system that is not associated with your host server. So you can change nameservers easily (change hosting companies) and keep gmail as your email without the fuss of transferring to a new email system. That may be more geek than you probably need to know at this point.

That’s enough novel for one post, or maybe it is just a novel idea?!! Ahh, I think I need some sleep.  Time flies when you’re having fun.

Just my 2¢ anyway!

© 2008 XPRT Creative

Why Move?

Bad Neighborhood Links are Bad News
It is no secret that linking to and from a bad Internet neighborhood can seriously slow, halt or even reverse your SEO progress. However, now, I have first hand knowledge of what can happen when even a single source has cross links with a site in a good neighborhood.

We recently moved my personal blog to my company site - which is where you are reading this. Initially, we thought it might be a great way to get some inbound links with linking text being exactly what we wanted it to be.

We soon found that in actuality, cross links from XPRT Creative to http://jpoyer.wordpress.com began a slow descent of XPRT Creative ranking in Google, Yahoo and MSN SERPs. Read the rest of this entry »

I have read so many things over the years about why content is important. Why content is the most important. Why content is KING. I just have to disagree. I know, as a born copy-writer it’s blasphemous for me to speak in such a manner, but I would be remiss not to mention it.

Don’t get me wrong. Content matters. It really does. Words can change the world. But not without the man or woman or design behind them. Or the brand that makes the words credible. Or a myriad of other things that support good content.

But no matter how you slice it, content just not king. Here are the top three reasons this is true. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been selling DVDs on Ebay. I have found my experiences to be very thought-provoking and somewhat frustrating at times. I have so far mostly enjoyed the work, and I will probably continue this for a while if possible. I have learned things and also had some of my ideas about how I am running my business reinforced; things that will benefit me down the road.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pretty much every web page you look at falls into one of two very broad categories: Dynamic or Static.

What is a dynamic web page?

Dynamic refers to a page being created “on the fly.” This means that the content from that page doesn’t actually come together until someone clicks on a link to that page. When someone views a dynamic page, some or all of the information on that page is pulled into the page from another location, like a database. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever attempted to transfer your domain and it seems like there are so many hoops to jump through that it’s not even worth the effort? Does it seem like it’s a confusing ball of knotted string that you just can’t unravel? As a member of a web development team, I have had the opportunity to transfer many domains (and as a result have taken my fair share of Ibuprofin). When you are transferring your domain, having a good checklist will help tremendously to take the knots out of the process.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the third part in a short series about how to make sure you are master of your domain.

Take Control of Your Domain - Part I

Take Control of Your Domain - Part II

Your e-mail addresses associated with your domain (address@whatever.com) can be “hosted” wherever. Many people use their host provider to also provide e-mail services. It’s probably the easiest way. Some people use an outside service. Although your e-mail is tied to your domain name, it is not required to go through the same server for the host or domain.

Remember “back in the day” when everyone was circulating those e-mails about how people were trying to pass laws that would make e-mail not be free anymore? Well, that really happened … sort of.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you didn’t read Take Control of Your Domain Part I, it has important information you need to understand regarding your domain. Go read that first and then come back to this one. This post, Take Control of Your Domain Part II deals specifically with the hosting aspect of your website owner experience. Some of this can get pretty technical (so put your nerd cap on and pay attention - heh heh), but it is important to understand when taking control of your domain and your website. Read the rest of this entry »

When you have a website, there are actually three different major parts that you need to know about and understand. Especially if you are working with an awesome creative firm like XPRT Creative to develop a superb, problem solving, useful, effective and aesthetically pleasing website. (plug? what plug?) Your web developer will need you to understand these things, so if you are considering getting a new domain, or hiring a new company to host or build your site, this is important stuff. Read on, read on. Read the rest of this entry »

You know what would be so great? We could have a form on our site, and we’ll collect people’s information and then we’ll build up our contact lists and leads, because we’ll be sending out important information, specials and discounts through email, and people will come to our site from across the Internet to sign up and we’ll be able to email them regularly and keep in touch and increase our sales and customer interaction!

WON’T THAT BE GREAT?!!! Yes, it would be great IF:

… we didn’t get hundreds of bogus emails from random addresses that don’t exist.

… we get e-mails that contain characters we don’t recognize — like someone is submitting scripts or trying to hack our forms or something.

… people would fill out the information I really need, like mailing address or phone number.

… people would fill out the information in a useable format. Read the rest of this entry »