Bengo's dashboard

Congratulations, Boomer. The post that started this thread was written when I was more naive and less experienced, but I wanted to share what I thought I knew. If I was to rewrite it, I'd correct some errors and talk about SEO or site optimization as I call it. It took about three months of serious effort, but when I learned the essentials, it helped drive all three of my main SynthaSite sites to number one.

Want to see? Enter these site names, as they appear, in Google:

lil nyet
scratchin post
psychedelic treehouse

The first two are comics and the third is about making comics.

The third site relies much more on search, and pops up in good ranking or top position for many appropriate results.

If you want to visit any directly, you are most welcome. Just squeeze the words together (add comics to make ScratchinPostComics.com) and .com.

Here's a nice article from Google about title and description tags, which are one of the "big three" when it comes to optimization. (The other two are your text content and richness with keywords without making it overloaded) and your URL, which may or may not be descriptive of your site. Consider upgrading to an owned URL from SynthaSite.

http://www.google.com/support/webmast...

Different search topics are more competitive than others of course.

@Graham, @Antoil,

Hi, Graham, Good business concept. If you can communicate to customers all the maintenance points in a home where an annual check-up can save big money, that might make a great page 2.

Some feel ads on a business site like yours diminish the professionalism. Something to consider. Make sure you learn how to optimize your site for search on an on-going basis.

Hi, Antoil,

Wow, what a nifty product. Points for stating the purpose clearly in the first sentence. Do fix the typo in the second sentence though.

To help people while they are in "Wow! This could help me!" mode, you might consider something like an "Order Below" message up top. Small purchases like this are often impulsive and people should learn quickly on your site that it's EASY.

Bengo
LilNyet.com

Excellent point. The HTML widgets really are intended for inserted material and tiny adjustments, aren't they?

Aiee! Suddenly a new, disruptive technology requires some design re-thinking. I didn't try it yet, but I read every bit and I'll mention it to friends. Very good find.

@Rich - You've got the look that many professional blogs have obtained through more involved techniques. Thanks for sharing.

@Boomer is always there to help. This is a new one on me, I'll check it out. Sounds fun.

That's great news. Thanks for letting me know.

We can all help each other by identifying ourselves as users, not staff, and offering what we know, rather than guessing, as least as a way to help nudge things along until staff can reply. – Bengo, on January 17, 2009 21:06

Hi Franc,

(I'm a SynthaSite user)

Entering a site map is a fine plan, but keep in mind: passing verification is your gateway to the Webmaster Tools tools. They may seem a little unclear on use at first, but as you grow, study them and practice they begin to yield essential data. Using Links to see incoming links (who links to you) is very good, and diagnostics will help you refine you title and description tags, for example. You don't need to enter a site map to use them, either.

It can be useful to track your incoming links over time by keeping a monthly count.

Bengo

No pain. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't ignorant of any alternatives. With all the hours SynthaSite has saved me, I can bear doing one thing in a slow way. By the time I need it again, perhaps it will be resolved by pending improvements. Thanks for the reply.

That is valuable information. Thank you.

It got me to thinking about republishing the subdomain with a redirect, or at least redirect guidance, as there are still some sites linking to the sub which are slow to update it.

Was there any downside to your strategy? – Bengo, on January 14, 2009 23:47

Thank you. I have become sensitized to the suffering of friends and acquaintances with WP, and I am tired of all the sites that use WP defaults and end up with impaired design features. For many people, WP means relying on other people for help, and they may not be dependable.

I seem to be much more productive working with a SynthaSite platform than anything else I have tried.

I'm sorry for making people feel unappreciated and unsuccessful. I appreciate the direct and honest truth, and will try to be more aware of this. I'm sorry I let my stresses target your great staff. That was unfair, and I will try to make it up. – Bengo, on January 09, 2009 00:41

That makes sense, and I wouldn't intentionally do it. Sometimes I get too many windows open at once and may have done it by accident. I'll be more careful. – Bengo, on January 09, 2009 00:35

I received the comments elsewhere regarding the problems on this thread. I agree that people barging in and disrupting questions such that they go awry is rare, but I think it is a flaw that other people can keep clicking "This Answers the Question," so your question is less likely to receive attention.

In the interest of learning from problems rather than dwelling on them, I am offering, below, some thoughts regarding making help interactions flow better, making life easier on those of us who have to wait for an engineering solution, and reducing the number of problems coming here through some user education about things to beware.

I also make the point that most dedicated users try very hard not to bother you, and though we sometimes arrive anyway with dumb, irritating questions, it makes us feel rotten if we come away with a sense that we have become an annoyance. We don't need fake happiness or coddling, just the information we need so that we don't feel a need to keep following up and being pests.

The user experience for me has been unfolding like this:

1. I ask question, give details
2. Rep asks questions confirming details
3. Details confirmed; sometimes catch-all solutions (empty cache) which veteran users do, are offered.
4. Thread ends. Rep has referred problem internally, but this is mostly invisible and unclear to me. When sufficient time has passed without an update, I begin to doubt system is working, even though it might be.
or
Rep tells me of internal referral. Thread goes dormant.
5. If I ask for an update, it seems to cause irritation.

The ideal response would go like this, or something along these lines:

(taking up at step 4)

4. Rep says, darn, we need to consult engineering staff. My question goes into a sort of "My Questions" list for referred questions.
5. Someone who monitors such things says question has been received for action and the goal is "x" number of days or weeks.
6. When someone begins serious examination of my question, it is noted. They again state a time estimate, including "unknown."
7. I don't get concerned because I can see what is happening and if there is not action for well beyond the time proposed, I can follow up.
8. Throughout the process, it is recognized that I know the engineering team is busy, that I feel bad to have to insert a question while they are trying to improve the site, and that the time estimates, while rough, allow me at least to plan. This is especially important for contingencies for a site that is down for the public, if one is.

Simultaneously, because some of my biggest problems have been caused by rare but known actions that would have been prevented if I knew about them, there could be a cautions list to prevent more such events. Items on it might include:

- If you use a style with a changeable header banner, don't switch styles expecting to change back, because your header banner will return to default. This is not so important for a site with few pages, but for jumbo sites like I have, restoring the banner page by page is a huge chore.
- If part of your site won't work in one browser and you have to use a second browser, be aware that saving one site while another site is open in the second browser can corrupt either site. (Why and how would be nice to know.)
- Occasionally a page reports an HTML error. A frequent cause is accidental modification of a snippet of Google Analytics code. Often, the GA HTML widget can still be opened, the code compared to functional code, and repairs made without bothering staff. Alternately, VIEW SOURCE can be used to inspect the code, and if it is faulty, the widget can be deleted and replaced. The same goes for newly installed widgets that require code insertion: note the code, and if it is deviant, delete the widget and install with fresh code.
- Image tags used in HTML require composing in a style different than W3 guidance in that the source must start with the web site name, including http://. Give examples of common tags and how they should be written for SynthaSite. Mention that title tags appear on site visitor browser windows (on many browsers) at the top, so don't use non-public words.
- Explain the highlights of Webmaster Tools in a bulleted list and link to pages like this Google help page for Webmaster Tools: http://www.google.com/support/webmast...
This will spare you many questions about how best to fill in the sidebar boxes for tags. I am getting off topic and will stop there.

These are items that have forced me to bother the engineering teem. No one, myself included, wants to bother them, so I dread stepping into another problem like these in the future.

Also, for intermediate or advanced users, there may be certain repairs that could be explained so we can do them ourselves. If there is a way to draw a replacement page from a cache, for example, and if there is no server cache, how we can create one.

It is because we value how hard you work to help us that we don't want to bother you if we can avoid it.

For Get Satisfaction, it's a pretty good way to manage user service, but there are weaknesses:

- I think only the Asker and SynthaSite staff should be able to decide when a question is answered.
- SynthaSite staff occasionally mark a question answered prematurely. Perhaps they need to be credited for working on questions so that there is less likelihood on a premature shut-off. I don't know how the system works on your end, so you'll have to note the phenomenon, which may be purely accidental, and see if it needs improvements.
- At the current time, while I have multiple Get Satisfaction threads open, it would be great if there was a "My Questions" spot. I would not be surprised if there is, but I haven't found it.

I think fairly highly of Get Satisfaction -- even voted for them for a Crunchie Award -- but I think feedback from user companies may carry more weight than feedback from some guy.

Enough meddling in your affairs. I hope this is useful. I might be creating the Webmaster Tools overview for my readers' uses soon, so if you want to see it for possible use or reference, inquire.

What system are you using on your test Macs? If it's 10.5 I could try an upgrade and see if it makes a difference, but I would think you'd have heard from a bunch of Mac people on 10.4.

FYI The image tags work in Firefox, but I have to go by so many "missing HTML ####" windows, and that browser is so slow to load them compared to Safari, that there is no way I can move ahead by using FF.

The fact that I was forced to use two browsers is the reason psychedelictreehouse.com is down. I made it clear I was limping by with two browsers, and no one cautioned me that multiple sites could cross-pollinate. I considered the possibility on my own, but it didn't seem possible. Still, I was careful for weeks while I have been waiting for the shoe to drop. This goes back to Xmas.

No. Your code is the same as my code, which doesn't work either. I have swapped out file names and types, added the ALT attribute, taken it out, checked it against tags elsewhere, etc.

May I underscore: The image library never worked in Safari for me. I have made multiple inquiries on this with no relief. I have requested the OS, Safari and Flash editions used on the SynthaSite computers that do work, but it has not been provided.

When I say the image library never worked, I mean it doesn't even load fully, has limited interactive abilities with the mouse and ceases all functions quickly. It does work on Firefox on my machine, which is OSX 10.4, latest Safari and Flash.