the sephone blog

Technology and the Web are constantly evolving and changing. It seems like every day there’s something new to learn. We know it can be tough to keep up with, and while we try to make our products easy to use, we know some of you might need a helping hand to step into Geekdom.

Sephone Resource Center - for people who feel like this when editing their website. (Photo from http://lolcatz.wordpress.com)

And so the Sephone Resource Center was born! We often have similar questions about the “how-to’s” for the person that is just learning, or if there is a new person doing the job.

The Resource Center is a collection of tutorials for how to do common (and some uncommon) tasks in services like our content management system, datAvenger and datAvenger pro. This list of tutorials will continue to grow with new text and video tutorials and will continue to cover even more Sephone services.

Here are some examples of tutorials that are currently available:

• Adding links
• Adding images
• Uploading images and documents
• Managing User Accounts
• Reordering navigation

Check it out! Visit sephone.com and click on ‘help’.

Here at Sephone we’ve had two content management products for quite a while: datAvenger and datAvenger lite. datAvenger lite has always been our basic content manager, and datAvenger provided more options for companies that need more control and flexibility. (We have a product comparison of the two products available on our site.)

With some of the latest additions to these products, we’ve realized that the names of these applications don’t reflect the companies aren’t as accurate as they could be. If you’ve visited the admin area for a datAvenger/datAvenger lite site today, you may have noticed that we’ve rolled out a name change to both applications. Here’s what you’ll see:

• If you’ve been working in datAvenger, your content management application is now called datAvenger Pro.
• If you currently use the latest version of datAvenger lite (the one with the blue header bar), your application is now simply called datAvenger.

You’ll see these changes in the text of the application, the logo, and references to the applications on our sites.

There are a few key points to keep in mind for this transition.

• The people who visit your site won’t be affected by this change at all. The only changes you’ll see are in the administration area of your site.
• The administration area will remain the same other than references to your application’s name. This change does not affect any functionality.
• Your invoices from us will reflect the name change, but the amount you are billed will not change. This is only a name change, not a pricing change.

Thank you for your understanding during this transition. Please contact us if you have any questions.

So let’s face it, that isn’t exactly what John F. Kennedy said on that cold day in January during his inaugural speech, but it is the season and we couldn’t resist to take advantage of a compelling statement and adapt it to today’s digital age.

More and more when you call companies you get hung up in voice mail someplace only to find if you DO get to a HUMAN, often it is not the HUMAN you were looking for.  When you send an email to a company you get an “auto response”  that reads “Thank you for…” again no HUMAN.

How does that make you feel?  Does it make you feel like anyone cares if you spend your hard earned money to do business with that particular company?

Or if you ARE getting a HUMAN, are THEY telling YOU what the rules are in order to do business with them?

Especially when I am “out of my element” and not in my area of expertise, I feel very uneasy without SOME sort of personal contact.  I like to know I can trust the person and the company I am dealing with. I also like to know that this HUMAN listens to what I need and I am not getting talked down to, because they are smarter than me.  They may be smarter than me, but I have the money, right?

With Sephone being located in Bangor, Maine, we have a clientele of what is categorized as small business.  Even though our market reaches nationally we still work with primarily small to medium-sized businesses. Many of our customers don’t have dedicated IT personnel and even those that do, these folks are stretched thin.  Our customers come to us for our expertise in web design, hosting questions or online applications that allow them to work more efficiently as well as to save money.

This is not a process that can be handled by a website with an “auto-responder”, a voice mail tree, or a form that you fill out that has fields determined by a faceless company that never has actually listened to learn which problems you are trying to solve and what priority they may be in.

We are just like you. HUMANS. And we don’t tell you how it is, we ask you what your goals are and together we work through a process to get there.  Sometimes being a bit on the “geeky” side we don’t always understand things the way you say them. Sometimes we have to ask questions again, we want to make sure we are all on the same page.

That is not to say we don’t use automation, obviously we are in the web business and we use the tools that we build as well as reach out to those services that we don’t build when that makes sense.

Blogging is a way that we try to leverage “community intelligence” to solve a problem, get answers or just plain learn.  And this is a way that the world is going when it comes to Customer Service.  The Sephone Blog (where you are now reading this), is to share information with you, when it is convenient for you to view it.  Have a question about an application, datAvenger or SPAM, you may find it here in the blog.  If you DON’T see it here, please let us know as we are always working to give you the tools you need, when you need them.  (For me I need them at 3am and I am trying to update something!)  Email me personally at kelly.cotaux@sephone.com

Blogging maybe something that may make sense for your company, Blogs are FREE to set up and are very easy to use, let us know if we can help you with one that can help you give more accessible customer service to your customers.  I have a couple I read often that talk about customer service and how to effectively use the tools that are being used.  I liked this one at first because it is called The Church of the Customer!  The amusing title grabbed my attention and the content of the blog keeps me coming back.  Another blogger I like is Guy Kawasaki, his blog title, “How to Change the World” also has some good reading. Here is a post on his views on blogging and Customer Service. I also have a blog called Techno-Trapped In My 40’s that focuses on dealing with today’s technology with a 46 year old brain!

Please never think for one minute that any of the tools that we use are instead of great HUMAN TO HUMAN customer service, or that we think we are smarter than you.  We are in this together.  Thank you for trusting  us, because this IS what we do to support you so you can concentrate on your core competency and together we can help you meet your goals.

If any of these online solutions frustrate you, pick up the phone and we will answer it.

Happy July! Today we’re happy to announce datAvenger 4.3, the latest version of our full-featured content management system datAvenger. In this latest release we’ve focused our efforts on text page editing (known as Standard Content to dA users). We wanted to incorporate some of the feedback we’d received from our clients and make editing as straight-forward as possible.

Although there are are dozens of enhancements and fixes throughout the entire datAvenger application, I just wanted to run through some of the biggest changes.

Auto-drafts

Has this situation ever happened to you? You’ve got a lot to do on a Standard Content page. You sit down, finish all your work, and hit the Save button. All of a sudden, you’re redirected back to the login page… and your changes didn’t save! datAvenger’s login security features occasionally made large edits difficult to do.

Starting in datAvenger 4.3, a copy of your Standard Content changes are saved automatically every two minutes. Though you still need to press the Save button to confirm your changes to a page, datAvenger saves auto-drafts within the version listing of every Standard Content page. To access these drafts, click on the icon of the file cabinet in a Standard Content page’s article list.

While you’re in the version list, you now can click on the Preview icon next to any version to bring up a full preview of that version’s content.

If you have a lot to do on a page, we still highly recommend that you use the Save and Continue Editing button in Standard Content to save your work every few minutes. In any case, datAvenger’s Standard Content auto-drafts are your backup!

Spell checking

That’s right – Standard Content page editors now have a spell check built right in. When you’re done with a page, click on the new ABC checkmark in the toolbar to make sure everything is spelled correctly. Don’t forget to save your changes!

A new, but familiar, toolbar

You may notice that the toolbar in the Standard Content editor looks a bit different. Don’t worry… all of your buttons are still there. We’ve reorganized the toolbar so that most formatting functions are on the top row and more advanced functions are on the bottom.

From the top

We’ve tightened up the editor in a lot of ways for this version. That makes it a lot easier for us to work with the editor code for the future, but it’s also great for you. If you ever had a sticky popup window that wouldn’t close or a style that took a few tries to apply, you’ll notice that these quirks have disappeared in this version.

We upgrade datAvenger installations regularly (for free) to keep sites up-to-date the latest features and bug fixes, and we’ll start updating existing dA sites very soon. We’ve been testing this latest version for months and are excited to get it out the door.

These latest editor updates will make it even easier for us to give you the best editor possible in the future. As always, if you have any questions or issues, give us a call at (207) 262-5040 or e-mail support@datavenger.com!

In the world of the Web, tools known as WYSIWYGs are used to edit large or complex areas of content. A WYSIWYG – a What You See Is What You Get editor – is useful when you need to insert text formatting (like boldface or italics), links, pictures, or other types of special text into whatever you’re writing.

Every so often, though, you may find that a WYSIWYG editor doesn’t live up to its name, and some content from the editor may look different when you look at it on the site that you’re editing. We find that this happens most often when content is pasted into the editor from desktop editing programs like Microsoft Word.

Behind the scenes of your text: lost in translation

Underneath any document you make with a rich text editor (including Microsoft Word and online WYSIWYGs) is a markup language. The main duty of a markup language is to let the computer know how to display the text you write; it makes the computer able to understand the difference between 36-point text and words that are bold or blue.

But not all markup languages are the same. When a computer copies text from a program like Word into an online WYSIWYG, it does its best to play the role of translator between languages. Once in a while (especially when working with content with a lot of different formatting within it) it isn’t able to correctly figure out how to translate the text from one markup language to the other. Because online WYSIWYGs aren’t as complex as a program like Word, the online text may start to act funny as it finds formatting it doesn’t understand.

What can I do?

When copying text from a program like Word into an online WYSIWYG, we usually suggest two things: wiping and plain texting.

Style wiping (also known as “scrubbing” or “cleaning”) is the easiest way to clean your content of special formatting from external programs. Wipers usually have their own toolbar button (like one of the icons to the right) and will run through your text and remove any formatting the editor doesn’t understand. (Because of this, there is a chance you could lose some formatting in your text after wiping.) Wipers are usually only found in advanced WYSIWYGs that have a lot of formatting options.

The other option for pasting is to convert your text into plain text before pasting it into the online editor. To do this, paste the text into a program like Notepad. After you’ve pasted the text, select all of it and then copy it again. This middle step removes any special formatting and allows text to flow easily into the online editor.

Do you have any other tricks you’ve learned when pasting your content into online editors? Let us know!

The obvious and not so obvious things you can do to make your site more searchable without spending money on search engine marketing & How to apply to datAvenger and dALite.

The following may be basic, or obvious- but sometimes overlooked. People used to say computers were dumb. They can only spit out what they are given. So are Search Engines. They can only know so much about your website, but what your ‘tell’ them.

The responsibility falls with the site owner, because that is who knows the most about their business, but if the site isn’t built right or doesn’t support current methodologies, then that is our responsibility.

datAvenger 4.0 CMS and daLite both have META and content features that allow content editors the ability to manage and optimize what a Search Engine can see about a business or organization to assist in indexing and ranking a site when it gets crawled.

By no means are we stating that this is the end-all/save-all to having your site rank in the top 10; but not doing these basic things can almost guarantee that you will not be in the top 10.

OK-

Here are some OBVIOUS guidelines.

1. Have a somewhat recognizable URL. Abbreviations are not the best when dealing with the web. www.cooc.com is quick to say but www.coloradooutdoorcenter.com (if available) is better.
2. Find and arrange to have sites that are relevant to yours link to you. And link to them. By having this in place- you tell SE’s that your site is relevant in this category when they see that other sites related to yours link to you. SE’s actually find you through those links and then if you have a link back to that site- it is even more relevant. These links should be done with individual contact with each site owner.
3. Submit your site to DMOZ, Yahoo, Google, etc. and other industry sites if applicable.
4. Add a crawl-able site map to your site. The Google Site Map is great and is used by SE’s to learn about the sites architecture/navigation and adds exposure to all your pages.
5. Maintain the site content regularly. Doing this not only shows regular visitors that you maintain the site with current/timely information, but also demonstrates to SE’s that you are in fact still around.
6. Domain Registration- If you can- renew your domains for as long as you can. Domain names registered for a long time demonstrates legacy and longstanding meaning that adds to your ranking. Renewing a domain 1 year at a time for the last 8 years is less effective than renewing a domain for 5 or 10 years into the future at a time. Having an 8 year old domain name IS fantastic- but give it more value- renew it for longer periods if you can.

For datAvenger 4.x and daLite users-

We have already taken care of clear text page names and paths for SE’s to be able to index. Again, though, refrain from Cryptic abbreviations or extra long page names when creating them.

1. Title all your pages from within the Admin area look for the <M> icon for META data. Then review all pages for a good Page Title. Titles should be more than “Home” or “Contact US”. A better Page title contains your primary category for your business or Organization and the name of this page;
2. When including images, make sure they all have meaningful names AND you include alt-text for ADA assisted browsers. A typical photo from a digital camera may be given the name DSC0001.jpg. Only YOU know what it is and therefore you should rename it to “snowmobiling_in_maine_08.jpg before uploading it; and include an alt-tag for ‘Snowmobiling in the North Maine Woods, Maine – Colorado Outdoor Center- 2008″
3. Add links within content to other relevant sites
4. Add links to associations Rotary, Professional Associations, etc.
5. Have relevant, current and orginal content
6. Avoid tricks and other “Sure ways to get ranked”
   1. hidden links or text to attempt to trick SE’s
   2. unnecessary or duplicate content
   3. doorway pages created just for search engines
7. Fresh Home page content that includes links to your internal pages with in the context of the content- Whew- what does that mean – Try to have the pages linked within the actual text of the home page. This aids in showing SE’s that the site has relevance; re-using the navigation terms, which is also relevant, that is keyword density. The higher the relevance and density, the higher the rank. That’s why you dont place popular/trendy keywords on a site if they have nothing to do with the site. At one time this was a big trick. Placement of these terms almost guarenteed SE’s would rank the site- Now they know better.
8. Keywords placed in the Admin Area for <Meta data> should be ordered by the relevance to the actual services provided. IF you sometimes serve lunch- dont put it # 1.
9. Description should be detailed but NOT more than a sentence or two. A paragraph or marketing tagline is not what this should be.

Periodically- we will update this and share insight on the do’s and don’ts- If you have any questions please send them to support@sephone.com

Welcome to the first of many datAvenger tips & tricks from the gals in the front office! This week we’ll be going over how to re-order and re-organize navigation points (for datAvenger users only).

Start by clicking on the Architecture tab at the top of your screen. Your pages are organized in a hierarchy. Pages at the top level of the hierarchy are called “Parent pages”, and those one level lower are called “Children pages” or “Child pages”.

Click on a page title to select it, then on the pencil to edit.

To move a page above or below another page at the same level in the hierarchy, use the dropdown next to “Order”. To change the current page’s parent page (the page one level higher in the hierarchy), you’ll first need to click on the plus sign next to “Advanced Information”.

A new section will appear with a dropdown menu called “Parent Page”. Any page can be a parent page. This dropdown contains a list of every page on your website. The page that you select will become the current page’s parent, meaning that the current page will be one level beneath it.

Once you have selected the new parent page, you might need to revisit the “Order” dropdown at the top of the screen if there are multiple “children” pages. When you are done, don’t forget to click on “Save Changes”!

Was this topic helpful to you? Do you have any questions? Feel free to leave us a comment!

One of the easy ways to change how your site appears in search engine results is to change the metadata for your site’s pages. Sephone’s content management systems (datAvenger and datAvenger lite) allow you to change this information for any page on your site.

There are three main pieces of metadata for every page: the title, the description, and the keywords.

The page’s title is what appears in your browser’s title bar when you visit the page, and it also appears as the default title if you create a bookmark for the site. In the search engine world, the page’s title is what appears as the link to your site in the search results.

The page’s description is a short summary of what visitors would find on the page. This is often the text that appears underneath the page’s title in search engine results pages.

The keywords are a set of comma-separated words that describe the content of the page. Keywords used to play a major role in where your site appeared within search engine results, but now search engines rarely (if ever) look at keywords when visiting a page.

Setting meta data in datAvenger

datAvenger 4 gives you complete control over sitewide and page-specific metadata. To change the metadata on any page, edit the page in the Architecture tab and then click on the + button next to “Metadata”. datAvenger automatically generates a page title for you, but you’re free to change this if you like. You can also add keywords and a description in this space.

You also have the ability to specify sitewide meta data for any pages that do not have page-specific meta information. In the Globals tab, click on the blue META tab. Here you can specify a default title or a sitewide title prefix or suffix. datAvenger will show you a live preview of how your title will appear as you change these fields. You’re also able to change default keywords or the default description in this section.

Unless you’ve been given meta data from an external service, you can leave the “Custom Tags” field blank. This field is for advanced users who receive HTML meta data tags, and it can cause your page to display incorrectly if it is not entered in the right way!

Setting meta data in datAvenger lite

datAvenger lite 3.5 gives you the ability to edit meta data for any of your pages. Click on the <M> button after selecting any page in the Content tab. You’ll then have the option to specify a title, keywords, or a description. Like in datAvenger, leave the “Custom” box empty unless you’ve been given HTML meta data tags to enter!