Years ago Dad came home from his business and informed us, "They took away my calculator and replaced it with a computer." Like so many others during this time, he was pushed into accepting technology change.
Just last month, Dad-in-law announced something similar. "I got a computer so I could look up specs on our website. It's quicker and easier than the paper catalog." Slightly different from the above case, he was responding to the reality that technology makes a lot of things easier.
Do you know the word Luddite? Today its most-used form is to refer to a slow adopter of technology. But historically the term's roots are a reference to the anti-industrial revolution movement in the early 1800's. British textile artisans rebelled against wide-framed looms, fearing for their livelihoods in the face of technological advancement. They took their name from the fictional textile rebel Ned Ludd, and acted out by destroying mills and factory equipment.
Everyone resists change. Answer Guy Central is a whole business devoted to addressing this.
Evolution made us naturally conservative. But with virtually all of our evolving happening before technology we're stuck with this cool but hard-to-understand stuff and a fast-moving economy— and we have built-in aversions to both.
This aversion is no illusion. An interview with the authors of TechnoStress reveals that EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT of the population feels uncomfortable with technology. And there are real and measurable physiological stress responses to technology: sweating, increased blood pressure, elevated heart rate, and dry mouth!
Why is an internet company talking about Luddites and TechnoStress? Because we can help. There are all sorts of stress coping mechanisms, but let's take a lesson from the industrial revolution—outsource difficult change to the specialists (that's us).
Both of the Dads above had the same great reason for being late technology adopters, personally. They each run highly specialized businesses . . . so why be an expert in something else when you can rely on outsourced expert IT support to take care of everything for you?
That's what we do with websites, search engines, e-commerce, back-end business/database systems, document management, forms, online payment... whatever you need chances are we do it.
Anything that makes money, saves money, and/or increases efficiency . . . call us.
-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC
-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President
Answer Guy Central Business Support Services
Showing posts with label database. Show all posts
Showing posts with label database. Show all posts
Monday, February 22, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
"Never trouble another for what you can do yourself." -Thomas Jefferson and Web Design
In his letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith in 1825, Thomas Jefferson included the following two items in his Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life:
- "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today."
- "Never trouble another for what you can do yourself."
Just as with our friend Confucius, TJ's wisdom applies to your business web presence.
In web context the translation is this: Eliminate the bottlenecks that slow down and reduce efficiency in your web content publishing process. i.e. : reduce unneeded expenses of both time and resources.
Everyone is a content contributor—or needs to be. Why send word processor documents to a webmaster for translation to "Internet language," when you can handle most of the work yourself in your content management system (CMS) , having authors self publish? Yes, there are times when you might want the kind of relationship with your webmaster where he does certain things for you that you could do yourself. However, if someone's time is more valuable spent programming and working on databases and web servers than acting as an administrative assistant, shouldn't you strive to work that way?
With CMS, you can often publish web information as easily as you can write it on a word processor. That's the kind of process CDLLC implements, and you should ask us how simple it would be for us to do it for you.
Save time. Increase efficiency. Save money. Make your life and those of the people you work with easier and more satisfying.
Or just keep throwing away money instead; your choice.
-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC
-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President
Answer Guy Central Business Support Services
Monday, February 8, 2010
CMS is a Beautiful Thing, or Confucianism Part IV
"Good people distinguish things in terms of categories and groups."
In prior Confucianism-inspired posts, we talked about the benefits of using Content Management (CMS) at your website. We've made the case for organizing, ordering, and arranging web pages, so now onto breaking bottlenecks in controlling costs and maintaining efficiency while moving forward with today's standards. With navigation management addressed, here are some other bottlenecks that we eliminate by using a CMS:
1) Without CMS, each time you redesign the website look-and-feel you create a need for extensive programming. This becomes both a people management and a cost issue.
2) Now add the need for multiple contributing editors/authors having to get their content to a "webmaster," and costs explode. Again.
3) Adding functionality, like forms, e-commerce, and online payment? More programming and webmaster skills get added, too. A CMS reduces the costs associated with these—tremendously.
CMS makes life easier by separating/disentangling content editing, copy writing, and navigational elements of your web site, design, and functionality.
1) Design becomes a separate module- a wrapper for the web pages. With CMS you change this design wrapper in one place, and the changes take effect globally throughout every page of the website.
2) As many content editors as you need can login, protect pages, and change just the content they're responsible for without the risk of breaking the design.
3) Applications that "do stuff" are programmed and arranged independently, so modification and re-programming creates no risk to the rest of the website.
4) And while we've already mentioned this, it bears repeating for the cost savings it brings you: changing the order and hierarchy of the navigational links becomes as simple as making a few clicks with a mouse.
Sounds almost like magic, right? With a CMS, the magic comes from putting all your stuff inside a database, grouped and categorized with an eye toward Internet presentation as needed to suit your company's needs relative to customers, vendors, employees, and whomever else stumbles upon it. The pieces are stored separately so they don't get entangled with one another, and "global site elements", like search engine META tags, polls, online payment, and sign-up forms are all grouped separately so changes to them only have to be made once!
And with a database, EVERYTHING is easier to categorize and group. For example, if you set up and write an FAQ section and it grows unwieldy, it's stored in the database so modification of the Q&A is a snap.
CMS is all about simplicity. How much so? Let's take our buddy's words, and summarize them as though he was hosting a radio program, circa 2010:
Confucius, out. (thanks, Ryan Seacrest!)
-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC
-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President, Answer Guy Central Business Support Services
In prior Confucianism-inspired posts, we talked about the benefits of using Content Management (CMS) at your website. We've made the case for organizing, ordering, and arranging web pages, so now onto breaking bottlenecks in controlling costs and maintaining efficiency while moving forward with today's standards. With navigation management addressed, here are some other bottlenecks that we eliminate by using a CMS:
1) Without CMS, each time you redesign the website look-and-feel you create a need for extensive programming. This becomes both a people management and a cost issue.
2) Now add the need for multiple contributing editors/authors having to get their content to a "webmaster," and costs explode. Again.
3) Adding functionality, like forms, e-commerce, and online payment? More programming and webmaster skills get added, too. A CMS reduces the costs associated with these—tremendously.
CMS makes life easier by separating/disentangling content editing, copy writing, and navigational elements of your web site, design, and functionality.
1) Design becomes a separate module- a wrapper for the web pages. With CMS you change this design wrapper in one place, and the changes take effect globally throughout every page of the website.
2) As many content editors as you need can login, protect pages, and change just the content they're responsible for without the risk of breaking the design.
3) Applications that "do stuff" are programmed and arranged independently, so modification and re-programming creates no risk to the rest of the website.
4) And while we've already mentioned this, it bears repeating for the cost savings it brings you: changing the order and hierarchy of the navigational links becomes as simple as making a few clicks with a mouse.
Sounds almost like magic, right? With a CMS, the magic comes from putting all your stuff inside a database, grouped and categorized with an eye toward Internet presentation as needed to suit your company's needs relative to customers, vendors, employees, and whomever else stumbles upon it. The pieces are stored separately so they don't get entangled with one another, and "global site elements", like search engine META tags, polls, online payment, and sign-up forms are all grouped separately so changes to them only have to be made once!
And with a database, EVERYTHING is easier to categorize and group. For example, if you set up and write an FAQ section and it grows unwieldy, it's stored in the database so modification of the Q&A is a snap.
CMS is all about simplicity. How much so? Let's take our buddy's words, and summarize them as though he was hosting a radio program, circa 2010:
Confucius, out. (thanks, Ryan Seacrest!)
-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC
-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President, Answer Guy Central Business Support Services
Friday, February 5, 2010
From Web Pages to Web Sites, or Confuciansim Part III
"Good people order and arrange"
Had enough Confucius yet? 'Cause that old dude had the Internet pegged!
Remember the days of the coal-and-steam-powered internet, when you had to walk miles in the snow to a university to make changes to your website, and ration your disk space usage because there wasn't enough to go around?
Ah, sweet memories. Your personal "Home Page." Your Corporate "Home Page." Build it once and it'll last years . . . just like a when-the-heck-did-they-last-change-that-thing old billboard!
Guess what? They don't make 'em like they used to, and you can't build 'em the way you used to.
That shoddy billboard became the cover page for a leaflet, as you created specialized pages with unique information to grab peoples' interest. And yep: that Web PAGE became . . . a Web SITE!
Content multiplies. Suddenly there are more pages, more information, more content that needs to be grouped and arranged according to context.
Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? It can be. Without site management tools, or a Content Management System, whenever the hierarchy of the web pages changes, a new navigational menu needs to be programmed. And today a good website has to change fast. Monthly, weekly, even daily, depending on your objective and audience.
This is not your father's shoddy old billboard.
One (huge) benefit of building your site on a Content Management System is the automation of menu creation. Manually programming a navigational menu on every one of those pages becomes a thing of the past. And you can even make the changes yourself, easily, using a method that feels just like using a word processor.
Ordering, arranging, re-ordering, re-arranging, it's all simple.
So why aren't you using a CMS ? It probably comes down to inertia. Your old, billboard-style web site is good enough for your needs.
Maybe, but that's becoming a less-and-less valid way to look at doing business on the Internet. No, you may not need an e-commerce system, because not everybody "sells stuff" online. But if your web site is to be worth any more than your "when-the-heck-did-I-last-use-one, anyway?" business cards, you need more. And without a CMS in place, you're making your job harder, and more expensive.
And that old billboard? You know how you laugh every time you pass it and wonder why its owner doesn't update it? Case closed.
-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC
-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President, Answer Guy Central Business Support Services
Had enough Confucius yet? 'Cause that old dude had the Internet pegged!
Remember the days of the coal-and-steam-powered internet, when you had to walk miles in the snow to a university to make changes to your website, and ration your disk space usage because there wasn't enough to go around?
Ah, sweet memories. Your personal "Home Page." Your Corporate "Home Page." Build it once and it'll last years . . . just like a when-the-heck-did-they-last-change-that-thing old billboard!
Guess what? They don't make 'em like they used to, and you can't build 'em the way you used to.
That shoddy billboard became the cover page for a leaflet, as you created specialized pages with unique information to grab peoples' interest. And yep: that Web PAGE became . . . a Web SITE!
Content multiplies. Suddenly there are more pages, more information, more content that needs to be grouped and arranged according to context.
Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? It can be. Without site management tools, or a Content Management System, whenever the hierarchy of the web pages changes, a new navigational menu needs to be programmed. And today a good website has to change fast. Monthly, weekly, even daily, depending on your objective and audience.
This is not your father's shoddy old billboard.
One (huge) benefit of building your site on a Content Management System is the automation of menu creation. Manually programming a navigational menu on every one of those pages becomes a thing of the past. And you can even make the changes yourself, easily, using a method that feels just like using a word processor.
Ordering, arranging, re-ordering, re-arranging, it's all simple.
So why aren't you using a CMS ? It probably comes down to inertia. Your old, billboard-style web site is good enough for your needs.
Maybe, but that's becoming a less-and-less valid way to look at doing business on the Internet. No, you may not need an e-commerce system, because not everybody "sells stuff" online. But if your web site is to be worth any more than your "when-the-heck-did-I-last-use-one, anyway?" business cards, you need more. And without a CMS in place, you're making your job harder, and more expensive.
And that old billboard? You know how you laugh every time you pass it and wonder why its owner doesn't update it? Case closed.
-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC
-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President, Answer Guy Central Business Support Services
Monday, January 25, 2010
A History of Web Content & Confucianism
"Study the Past if You Would Divine the Future"
Confucius would say: The Internet is a Big Deal. And Big Deals Change, but then return to whence they came.
Or something like that.
The Internet has been “around” now for several decades. We can trace its beginning to when Tim Berners-Lee “invented” it (and no, Al Gore was not in the room), but the Internet didn’t start doing anything until 1991.
That's when the first web page went live. Hardly anyone noticed, since if you were on-line at all it was through a company like Compuserve or America Online, but the Internet was starting. What went on line was simple, though: the pages all looked the same, with either left or center alignment throughout, and a single column of text formatted in one font with a few different sizes for emphasis.
A few years later, we had tables, which originally were designed for presenting data in rows of the same ugly text. But them something amazing happened: people commandeered the tables for formatting how you saw things in addition to what you saw, and then CSS (bye-bye tables) came along, and that idea for consistent presentation was adopted by the pretty police, too.
It was a short jump to limited interactivity. First we had Javascript, which when combined with CSS became Dynamic HTML. But at the same time there were problems between different browsers as we all started noticing that Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari didn't do quite the same thing.
Then e-Commerce came along. Site management tools. Software to make creating web pages easy. Everything was exploding by the year 2000, and over the last ten years all the tools, all the technologies, and huge changes in the way people do business evolved into what we have today:
Everyone is a web publisher.
But all the tools and all the ancillary ideas that the tools have created (or is it the other way around?) haven't made this any simpler. "Site Management" has become "Content Management", and while it's more precise, it's also more involved. Distribution of your information is important, too; not everyone who wants to hear what you have to say wants to take the step of coming to your web site, and many people who do so are using SmartPhones with tiny screens. We have blogging, Social Networking, and now the dreaded Search Engine Optimization. Yikes.
So the future is based on the past, and while we all might like to think that we're creating cool new stuff the point of all these tools remains getting your information in front of your clients. A simple task, made far more complicated by technology.
At CDLLC, we manage the technology for you. We know the past, and can future-proof your web/business needs. We use (for example—here's one more piece of "progress")—database-driven web sites separated from your content to make redesigns easy.
You become a content editor, not a programmer. We do everything else.
Because even as things get harder and harder, easy still matters.
-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC
-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President
Answer Guy Central Business Support Services
Confucius would say: The Internet is a Big Deal. And Big Deals Change, but then return to whence they came.
Or something like that.
The Internet has been “around” now for several decades. We can trace its beginning to when Tim Berners-Lee “invented” it (and no, Al Gore was not in the room), but the Internet didn’t start doing anything until 1991.
That's when the first web page went live. Hardly anyone noticed, since if you were on-line at all it was through a company like Compuserve or America Online, but the Internet was starting. What went on line was simple, though: the pages all looked the same, with either left or center alignment throughout, and a single column of text formatted in one font with a few different sizes for emphasis.
A few years later, we had tables, which originally were designed for presenting data in rows of the same ugly text. But them something amazing happened: people commandeered the tables for formatting how you saw things in addition to what you saw, and then CSS (bye-bye tables) came along, and that idea for consistent presentation was adopted by the pretty police, too.
It was a short jump to limited interactivity. First we had Javascript, which when combined with CSS became Dynamic HTML. But at the same time there were problems between different browsers as we all started noticing that Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari didn't do quite the same thing.
Then e-Commerce came along. Site management tools. Software to make creating web pages easy. Everything was exploding by the year 2000, and over the last ten years all the tools, all the technologies, and huge changes in the way people do business evolved into what we have today:
Everyone is a web publisher.
But all the tools and all the ancillary ideas that the tools have created (or is it the other way around?) haven't made this any simpler. "Site Management" has become "Content Management", and while it's more precise, it's also more involved. Distribution of your information is important, too; not everyone who wants to hear what you have to say wants to take the step of coming to your web site, and many people who do so are using SmartPhones with tiny screens. We have blogging, Social Networking, and now the dreaded Search Engine Optimization. Yikes.
So the future is based on the past, and while we all might like to think that we're creating cool new stuff the point of all these tools remains getting your information in front of your clients. A simple task, made far more complicated by technology.
At CDLLC, we manage the technology for you. We know the past, and can future-proof your web/business needs. We use (for example—here's one more piece of "progress")—database-driven web sites separated from your content to make redesigns easy.
You become a content editor, not a programmer. We do everything else.
Because even as things get harder and harder, easy still matters.
-Crockett Dunn
Owner CDLLC
-Jeff Yablon
Chief Operating Office, CDLLC
President
Answer Guy Central Business Support Services
Friday, November 21, 2008
Search Enginge Marketing (SEM) and Optimization (SEO)
Any of you remember when Yahoo was one single web page? Back then, everything was a web page- no "sites" or "portals." Just everyone and some companies had a nifty "Home Page."
Back then, I held the #1 Yahoo/Alta-Vista result for "Crockett," because my Duke University Home Page was entitled, "Crockett... Crockett? Crockett!" This apparently tipped me just over the edge to beat out Crockett, TX.
Now let's fast forward. Anybody out there remember what a Google Dance was? Google Dance was the industry nickname for the exciting day when Google revised its search algorithm and updated its index- your big shot at getting a higher ranking! The time to test the results of your latest search engine marketing efforts! Everyone races to the computer as their cell phone alerts go off. "Google Dance! Google Dance!"
Google used to dance its dance very 6 months or so. Then it was 3. Then it was 1. Then things were happening every few weeks. And bi-monthly. Then suddenly, Google started dancing one day and never stopped! A constant updating, it seems.
The funny thing is how quickly we accept, expect, then DEMAND such new, improved technology. Case and point:
CDLLC is in the process of an aggressive search engine marketing campaign for a major e-commerce site (1MM+ products). The scope of such a campaign is too extensive for this blog, so let's only focus on the Google part.
Back then, I held the #1 Yahoo/Alta-Vista result for "Crockett," because my Duke University Home Page was entitled, "Crockett... Crockett? Crockett!" This apparently tipped me just over the edge to beat out Crockett, TX.
Now let's fast forward. Anybody out there remember what a Google Dance was? Google Dance was the industry nickname for the exciting day when Google revised its search algorithm and updated its index- your big shot at getting a higher ranking! The time to test the results of your latest search engine marketing efforts! Everyone races to the computer as their cell phone alerts go off. "Google Dance! Google Dance!"
Google used to dance its dance very 6 months or so. Then it was 3. Then it was 1. Then things were happening every few weeks. And bi-monthly. Then suddenly, Google started dancing one day and never stopped! A constant updating, it seems.
The funny thing is how quickly we accept, expect, then DEMAND such new, improved technology. Case and point:
CDLLC is in the process of an aggressive search engine marketing campaign for a major e-commerce site (1MM+ products). The scope of such a campaign is too extensive for this blog, so let's only focus on the Google part.
- We optimize the page content for maximum relevance and therefore maximum rank in Google Search.
- All office and warehouse locations are entered into Google Maps with the maximum amount of relevant information.
- Google Local Business Center is utilized in a manner similar to Google Maps
- A standard-compliant XML site map is generated, and Google is notified
- And most important to this particular business's objectives, ALL products are entered into Google Products (formerly Froogle).
The way this works on the back-end is very similar to the site map. A standards-compliant XML file is generated, called a "Google Base Feed." An ftp account is procured from Google, and the base feed is and uploaded and registered. Smaller sites can enter one item at a time, or upload from their web browser, but once you get into the 100s of thousands, the FTP upload is required.
All of that said (hopefully some CDLLC clients benefited from that free tutorial), again, it is interesting how quickly we accept, expect, then DEMAND such new, improved technology. The aforementioned, promised case and point is as follows. Below is an excerpt from the Google Base Help Forum:
POST#1: Nov 17, 7:06 pm
Hello,
We've been
experiencing delays in the processing of your data feeds. As a result, items
remain in the 'Published...searchable soon'status for longer than normal and are
taking longer to appear inGoogle Baseand Google Product Search results.
While
we work on fixing this issue, you do not need to re-upload yourfeed. Once the
delays are resolved, your feed will process as usual.I'll be posting back to
this thread once I have status updates toreport.
Thank you guys so much for
your patience.
-The Google Base Guy
POST #2: Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:01:16 -0800
(PST)
Hi,
This is a quick update to let you know that the issue
regarding itemsremaining in the "Published...searchable soon" status has
beenresolved. However, the issue regarding feed processing delayscontinues to
affect larger feed files. On a positive note, smallerfeeds under 1 MB are no
longer affected by the current processingdelays and you should see your feeds
processing as usual.
Thanks again for your patience and I will get back to
you with moreupdates.
-The Google Base Guy
This has me seriously frustrated. "You mean I have to wait 24 HOURS to see whether my feed was successfully processed???"
Oh, how greedy we get, just years after we used to accept a 6 month delay to see the results of our updates.
I'm pretty sure there's a lesson in humanity in here somewhere.
Crockett
Thursday, May 22, 2008
What's SQL Injection? Some new drug or something?
In a nutshell, "SQL injection" is a way to hack into a website, break it, or otherwise make a big mess of it. SQL is a database language, that uses statements like INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE.
Think of SQL injection as analogous to Microsoft's buffer overflow problems (you know those windows updates that you get at 3AM every morning- a lot of 'em fix Microsoft's failure to properly handle buffer overflows) .
So both buffer overflow and SQLinjection happen when you put a bunch of extra stuff into a URL in your address bar, in such a way that it gets dumped onto the server and actually runs the words you put in the URL.
For example, http://crockettdunn.blogspot.com/?andDeleteAllOfCrockettsBlog
Obviously it's not that simple, but that's the idea.
"But Crockett," you ask, "why do I care about SQL injection?"
See below:
from the article, link to article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998271.aspx:
Think of SQL injection as analogous to Microsoft's buffer overflow problems (you know those windows updates that you get at 3AM every morning- a lot of 'em fix Microsoft's failure to properly handle buffer overflows) .
So both buffer overflow and SQLinjection happen when you put a bunch of extra stuff into a URL in your address bar, in such a way that it gets dumped onto the server and actually runs the words you put in the URL.
For example, http://crockettdunn.blogspot.com/?andDeleteAllOfCrockettsBlog
Obviously it's not that simple, but that's the idea.
"But Crockett," you ask, "why do I care about SQL injection?"
See below:
from the article, link to article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998271.aspx:
See SQL injection attacks on the rise During the past few months, SQL injection
attacks have been used to break into hundreds of thousands of Web sites powered
by Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) and SQL Server. The attacks
pass unauthorized SQL queries to backend database servers, where they perform
any of number of actions, such as deleting entire databases or tables and
modifying various types stored data, including text and HTML.Microsoft, SANS, Shadow
Server, Trend
Micro, F-Secure, and
numerous other organizations have written about the ongoing problem, which has
been occurring since at least last March. In a nutshell, the bad guys are
exploiting flaws in ASP.NET applications to inject unwanted HTML code into
database records. That HTML eventually winds up in Web pages. When you browse to
the page, the HTML code tries to exploit security vulnerabilities in browsers
and related tools to install a variety of malware onto your PC.These attacks are
possible because of security bugs in various ASP.NET-based applications.
Apparently, many developers have overlooked the need to properly sanitize input
supplied by Web users.For example, a Web form might ask people to enter their
name and e-mail address to sign up for a newsletter. Along with that
information, a hacker could add some special characters and a valid SQL query
statement. If that input isn't properly sanitized before it's sent to the SQL
server, the server might be tricked into executing the query supplied by the bad
guy.The solution is to audit your Web applications to make sure they sanitize
user-supplied input. Microsoft's article
entitled "How To: Protect From SQL Injection in ASP.NET" explains the required
steps.
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