Our Blog Has Moved To SundogMedia.com/Blog

To keep things simple we have moved our blog home. Since our newly designed and launched website has been built with WordPress it just made sense to keep our blog at our main company domain name.

Please continue to visit our blog at http://sundogmedia.com/blog

Cross Browser Testing

If you have ever developed a website you realize very quickly that it can be difficult to make the site work well across all the major browsers and operating systems.  At Sundog Media one tool we use to ensure that our clients sites are as compatible as possible with the modern browsers is http://crossbrowsertesting.com/.

Add your business to Google, Yahoo and Bing’s local listing maps

• Google Local Business Center
• Yahoo Business Listing
• Bing Local Listing Center (MSN)

Using Gmail as an Email Backup

I am a nut about backing up data and one challenge has been finding a good way to archive all my email.  Several years ago I setup an email address account with google and have found this to be a great way to keep a backup of my email.

STEPS:

1. I have my email automatically forwarded to my gmail account as well as come to my regular mail account.

2. I have my mail client set to automatically BCC to my gmail account when I send messages

I do occasionally manage to delete or lose an email and I can always log into my Gmail account and retrieve it there.

Note: It would be just as easy to do this with your favorite Yahoo or any other web based email you might prefer.

Cheers,

Joe Law

Wufoo? What is That?

Any website designer will tell you, forms are tricky to build and tricky to code. I almost always groan internally when I hear someone ask for one. But not any longer. The folks over at Wufoo have changed all of that. They’ve created a system that, “helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.” Isn’t that nice of them?

Plus, they’ve included some cool features, like PayPal payment integration, basic order forms, reporting, and quite a bit more. When you have a moment, you should check them out.

Let us know if we can help you integrate their solutions into your website. Feel free to use our Get Started Form (built using Wufoo actually), or send us an email.

Mom Always Said to Share!

Share your website content without lifting a finger! It’s fast, it’s easy, and the best part is, it’s almost free!

When we incorporate “Social Networking” software directly into your website, your visitors can easily “share” your content on their own personal social networking sites, sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and sooooo many others.

Every page of your website will have this cool little button. Click to see how it looks and works on our site.

Imagine…your content being freely shared by your visitors all over the Internet! It’s just like word of mouth advertising, and the only thing you have to do to get started is contact the Sundog Media team today and tell them, “Heck yeah, I wanna share my website, sign me up!”

You’ll be sharing in no time!

Haven’t a clue about “Social Networking”? Find out more by reading our Sundog Blog article: “It’s the Latest Trend!“

It’s the Latest Trend!

…Don’t be afraid, it’s not the return of Chia Pets.

Ugh. I don’t know about you, but every time I hear the phrase, “it’s the latest trend!” I tend to cringe, avert my eyes and move on to something else. I’ve never been a trend-setter, I’ve never followed the latest trends, and if someone ever called me “trendy” I’d probably get arrested for verbal assault.

However. I have to admit, sometimes trends can turn into the ordinary and commonplace, and prove to be a benefit over time.

Back in the mid-80s when I was in high school/college (yeah, I know I’m old, shud up and get back to reading) a lot of my more affluent, i.e., spoiled, friends had Apple IIe’s or Atari 800 computers. It was pretty trendy to have your own computer (I still had my faithful Royal manual typewriter.) and we all wanted one of our very own. Who knew that one day those trendy and expensive things would become so ordinary and commonplace that they’d reshape the world as we know it.

Well, there is a trend I wanna write about and it’s called, Social Networking. Undoubtedly you’ve heard of it. Perhaps you haven’t heard that exact phrase, but I’m sure you’ve heard of, “Blogging,” “MySpace,” “Twitter,” “Facebook,” “Delicious” and tons of others. These sites and their social networking abilities are now a daily way of life for millions of people to share and connect with each other on-line. And, this “trend” is growing rapidly! Which is great news for you and your website, because you too can be a part of it with very little effort! All you need to do is allow your website and its content to be “shared”.

Let’s look at an example…which coincidentally appears right at the bottom left of this blog article. It’s that little graphic with the word “Share” on it. Just click on it and see what pops up. Notice that you can add it into a ton of the most popular social networking sites - just with the click of a button.

Now, think about your website’s content, and its potential for connecting not only with your visitors, but with their friends, families and colleagues. For example, say you’ve written an important news article or an event for your website. Well, all you need on your site is this same “Sharing” system I’m using here. A visitor comes along to your site, reads the article, clicks on the sharing graphic and places it into their own personal social network. Voilà! You’re article or event has just been shared! It’s instant word-of-mouth.

Yep, I hear ya…”I wanna start sharing NOW! How do I get this system into my website?” Well, it’s really easy, just contact your Sundog Media Account Manager or Sales Rep, and they’ll tell ya all about it, and you’ll be sharing in no time.

Who knew it would be so trendy to share? Makes me feel warm all over…

Everybody wants some Validation…

…including your website. During your Internet travels you may have come across articles or comments about validating your website. I’m sure most of them said there was a need for it, and I’m sure a lot of them said “You’d better have that done, or it’s the end of the World as we know it!” kinda thing.

But what is website Validation and how does it work?

Well, a few years back a consortium of Über-geeks got together and formed the W3C, or “The World Wide Web Consortium” (cue Darth Vader theme) and their mission has been, and I quote, “To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.” Which in and of itself is a really cool thing. You see, there are no real laws or standards governing the creation and implementation of a website, people can just create sites willy-nilly and hope they work…there’s no one to stop them. Hence the need for an organization like the W3C, because over the years they have been instrumental in creating a set of guidelines that almost all web developers follow. And these same W3C folks created Validation Tools that web developers use to test and “validate” the sites they build. So now, everyone can sleep easy at night knowing that there is some “control” and that the majority of websites are all adhering to a set of guidelines and protocols.

As I mentioned before, the W3C are Über-geeks, but they are also very very STRICT Über-geeks. Remember back in the day, that teacher you had in school who wouldn’t let you get away with anything? At the first sign of trouble, they would either discipline you themselves with a short, sharp shock, or send you crying down to the principal’s office (it couldn’t have just happened to me, I’m sure.)? Well, the W3C are even stricter than that! For instance, they absolutely hate it when a web developer uses an ampersand symbol like this ‘&’ when they are simply writing out text. “Oh no,” says the W3C (cue Darth Vader music again) “…you have to write that out as ASCII code, we’ll have none of that easy-to-use ampersand business in here, thank you very much!” Does it ultimately matter whether or not a web developer uses an ampersand instead of code when writing out simple text? Nope. Not one little bit. But that’s okay. Because companies like ours use a little known but more powerful tool called, “common sense”.

Every website we create goes through two validation processes: Using the W3C’s protocols and standards, we validate all of our HTML code, as well as all of our CSS code. This helps us ensure that the website is being built properly, and will not have any errors in it when we launch it.

If we come up against the STRICT guidelines of the W3C during our validation process, we simply evaluate the “error” and turn our common sense on. If it’s a valid error, we fix it, if it’s not, we don’t. Simple as that. It’s good to know that we’re safe in the knowledge that the website is working perfectly, thanks to the W3C and the fact that we can’t get sent to the principal’s office any longer when we “misbehave.”

You Only Need 1 Password!

Sometimes a web application comes along that is just so great you have to share all about it.  1Password - http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password - created by Agile Web Solutions certainly has created a winner for mac users and I live by this application.  I cannot tell you how great it is to only have to remember 1 password.

Features:

• Enters online usernames and passwords so that you don’t have to remember them.

• Strong Password Generator automatically creates and fills passwords.

• Built-in Anti-Phishing and Keylogger Protection provides security and peace of mind.

• Take your information anywhere on your iPhone/iPod touch or Palm.

• Goes far beyond Safari’s AutoFill.

Watch the video: http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password/videos

I hope you mac users take advantage of this application.  I also hope that someone will post a message about a PC application that is similar.

Cheers,

Joe Law
www.sundogmedia.com