This is a follow up on a Tweet I just sent out. It’s about domain names. Everyone can have a domain name, whether it be a business or personal. I own a couple for myself, and one for each of my kids!

As life, and business grow in the digital world, it is more and more important to take care of your “virtual assets”.

Using the same analogy I used before, would you let someone else, like a real-estate agent, put your house in their name? Or the car salesman to put the automobile ownership in his own name? I’m guessing the answer to both of these questions would be a resounding “NO”.

Then why do it with your online real-estate, your online vehicle?

As a rule, kitestring WILL NOT purchase your domain under our own name. It’s a very simple process to register with a domain name registration company (there are many out there), purchase the domain (I’m assuming you have a credit card – or you can steal your parents’), and then Bob’s your uncle, you are the owner of a brand spankin’ new domain name! From there, if you don’t know what to do, you can hopefully work with your friendly neighbourhood web developer to get things started! Easy as pie.

There are a few things wrong with letting someone else register for you:

1. Who says they will be around next year, at the same company, or e-mail address? The registration and reminders will go to a specified e-mail address, and if that address no longer exists, then the renewal reminders will just float around, laughing at you until your domain expires and you frantically scramble to get things back up and running.
2. Who says the company who registered it will be around next year?
3. What if things go sour between you and the person/company who registered the domain name? They not only hold the deed, but the keys to get in and do anything about it.
4. You may not be warned that your domain will expire, so you won’t know to renew, and inevitably, your website will go down. The reminder will go to whoever registered, then it’s up to them to either let you know, renew themselves, or let it expire. Too often, we see them just expire.
5. It’s cheap and easy to register a domain name, and you’re most likely paying twice that to get someone else to do it for you, which may lead to other problems (see points 1 through 4 above).

Do you actually own your domain name? If not, you really should. Send me an e-mail at brandon@kitestring.ca and we can go over how you can transfer your domain into your own name, and avoid any of the pitfalls we encounter every day.

As a web developer who likes to study and focus on usability, readability, and overall user experience, it pains me to see what people insist on including on their websites. With web users now having the attention span of a goldfish, you have to be very careful, and very specific as to what you put up on your site.

Some people like the good old “let’s throw it all on the wall and see what sticks” approach, including their life stories, complete history, and in-depth essays on why you should choose them. That may have worked 10 years ago, but the times they are a changin’.

Here is my personal list of things that I don’t think belong on a website. Keep in mind that this is a general list, and there is sometimes a specific need for some of these things.

The holiday season is just around the corner. Have you started your shopping yet? Jenn was telling me today, on the way to a client meeting in TO, that she is almost done all her shopping for her little guy Jack. I haven’t even started to think about it yet. Maybe I better.

What about you? Have you started your Holiday shopping yet? We’ll I have a few links for you to help find just the right thing for that little person in your life. And they are all my clients!

Hit the read more button to get-a-shoppin’!

As a web developer, part of my job is to test each and every website in multiple browsers. With so many browsers out there, that task is becoming more and more difficult. I generally test in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and the troublesome Microsoft Internet Explorer.

This is where it gets tricky. It seems that most people who use a browser other than IE tend to actually update their browser more than once every 5 years. This helps keep up with the momentum and progression of web technologies and techniques. This would be kind of like renting a Blue-Ray, slapping it into your VCR, and wondering why things aren’t working properly.

What is SEO? It’s Search Engine Optimization. Now, I bet that’s as clear as mud.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about SEO lately, so I thought I would post something about the topic. SEO is a way to OPTIMIZE your site so that search engines can find it properly. Search engines send “robots” out, and if they actually like your site enough to list it where you want them to, they will. Now, the reason I highlighted the word optimize is because there are good and bad ways to do this.

When I think of optimize, I think of making improvements to a site, however, some people take it in a totally different direction and try to trick, or take advantage of the search engine robots that scour your site. This is what we call Black Hat SEO. The reason this is bad is that, let’s face it, none of us are as smart as the people at Google; they are constantly changing their algorithm to look for these types of things, and if they do spot any black hat techniques, your rank can drop dramatically.

So, my advice to you is to avoid anyone who claims that they will get you to the #1 spot on Google for a generic keyword or search. Unless that search is for your exact company name and location, there are no guarantees (and even that can be iffy!).

What you should look for:

1. Make sure your site is optimized on a basic level. There are certain things on a programming level that should be done in order to help your chances at getting ranked higher. Have someone take a look at your site, these things are very easy to spot. Most good web designers will automatically add these by habit.

2. Look for an honest firm to implement an SEO Plan. Again, there is no silver bullet here, and a good SEO plan will take time and tweaking in order to get any true, lasting results. The plan should be monitored, changed, and tested at regular intervals.

3. Pick a couple of terms to start with, and don’t shoot for the stars. A good SEO Plan will be able to help you raise your rank for your industry in your location, but may not be able to get too much traction as just a generic term. If I sold bikes, I highly doubt that I could rank #1 for a search for “Bikes” on Google. Not with all the bike manufacturers that take up the first three pages. However, if I was to focus on “Hamilton Bikes”, there is a much better chance.

4. Don’t rush. This will take time, and more importantly patience, but once you get there, it will all be worth it.

Hope that helped. If there are any questions, make them on this post, or email me at: brandon(at)kitestring(dot)ca.