Microsoft have relaunched windowslive as a social networking platform. For some time they seemed to be desperately trying to buy Yahoo!, then [allegedly] tried AOL, they’ve got nowhere with Facebook, Bebo and the likes and seem to have given up hitting an existing, popular market. Even their most popular platform;  Hotmail has been falling behind as other webmail systems moved into the realms of AJAX programming (the ability to load web content without reloading the entire page), their Spam filter also leaves much to be desired, certainly compared to Gmail who’s spam filter is virtually flawless!

Microsoft have tried giving away free templated websites with Office Live (which they are still doing) but the uptake seems slow and promotion scarce (for which I’m certainly thankful for), the software itself is flexible but a little over-complicated. The bonus is that they provide the hosting and domain name for free which you can take with you if and when you upgrade. For small websites with few followers, this is an excellent solution.

So what are Microsoft doing now? They seem to have gone back to their corner muttering insanities under their breaths and started work on their own products again. I fear this is too little too late as they attempt to copy the best bits from other sites rather than being inspired and moving the web forward.

Microsoft should ideally stick to offline software and continue developing it’s own products rather than trying to hit the online market. As their web efforts increase, their software side seems to be diminishing, allowing open source equivilents and indeed Apple to take the limelight. Windows is, and always has been a great product, most complainers are complaining using this platform so they must be doing something right even though it’s not quite perfect for everyone. The online side of Microsoft, that is their email exchange software and various others should be opened up to avoid the need for specific Microsoft exchange servers. This way they can compete with Google documents (which is not 100% Word compatible, and certainly far from perfect) then they will continue to dominate the office and avoid loss of marketshare to these free services. Unfortunately as more and more people are storing documents online and slowly coming to terms with editing them online, Microsoft are losing out to online office solutions.

The moral of this story is really to stick to what you’re good at. In a previous employment, I worked initially on design, development, hosting, web, print, seo, stationary, and promotional products. Between two people it became impossible to do anything with 100% quality. We attempted to project manage printers etc. but this too impacted on what we were best at. Only when we removed these ’sidelines’ were we able to concentrate entirely on web design and development and spend time making things run efficiently with the quality we, and the clients were happy with. External products we could work with but were not seen as supplied by us, so once we sent clients out to a printer, we didn’t have to worry about how things were moving. This is a lesson I’ve brought into Zako Media and until we have the skillset and staff to offer a particular product or service, we won’t offer it. I only want Zako Media to give out work which we and the client are happy with, we will not dilute our efforts, attention, knowledge, time, or profits on external activities just to try and help make a sale.

With the ever growing online communities and reliance on the internet, it might make sense to say ‘Yes! You need a website’. Ask a web designer/developer for a website and that’s exactly what you’ll get. But do you really need it?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say ‘Yes, everyone needs an online presence‘ but this does not have to be in the form of a whole website. So what are the alternatives?

Blogs:- A blog (short for WebLog) is a great content building site. You can get these for free from wordpress, blogger among others. A blog allows you to post articles like the one you’re reading now. They’re great if you’re a consultant with lots of advice like time-management, marketing etc, or in a constantly changing industry like accountancy or technology.

Network Stores:- If you sell products online, have a look at trading on eBay stores or Amazon. Both of these provide seller services for a small transaction fee. One of my clients receives about £2/3000 per month turnover through an eBay store.

Network Profiles:- Many people make do with networking profiles like Ecademy, Facebook, Xing, LinkedIn, Workology, and these work great, particularly for B2B and some B2C businesses. Spend the time making your profile stand out from the croud and socialise with the other members.

Directory listings:- These are a good quick-fix particularly for B2C’s, Plumbers, electricians, Taxi companies. They provide a good geographical listing and helpe people compare you to your competitors.

There are others but I feel these allow you to stay focussed on the business rather than the social aspect. If you feel I’ve missed any, feel free to add them into the comments below.

I’ve taken on another client this week, yet another who’s web designer has just disappeared. When you are a new business or just want to save money, often one is tempted to hire a school leaver or someone without much experience to create your brand and/or website for you. It certainly saves money on the initial design, but what when they get a job, or just give up on web design entirely? It’s hard to reject people who have put all their time and energy into you and for a young man or woman, disappearing can be much easier than helping a client out of that mess.

Zako media has a number of options to spread payments or even cut costs, and we have backup systems in place. If we all died tomorrow, there are systems in place to ensure our clients are given an easy transition and don’t suffer because of it.

If you still want to use a cheaper alternative, please make sure the following are in place for your protection and to ensure things continue smoothly:

• Make sure your domain name is in your name and not that of your designer. Check on whois.net to find out. This means that your new designer/rescuer can easily walk you through the steps of regaining control.
• Make sure you know who your domain name is registered with. Even if your designer claims to host the site, often this is on reseller hosting and in his absence, we can go up the chain to the people who hold the actual hardware your website is stored on.
• Get control panel and/or FTP access to your site. This will enable your new web designer to get access to the code used on your site.
• If you can, backup your site regularly and store one each on and off-site for redundancy.

With these in place, it is usually much easier to regain control if the worse comes to the worse. Remember, your website is a business tool, a sales person and you should have control at all times.
If you do lose control of your site or your designer disappears, you can contact me directly on 0208 123 6609 or email me and we will go through the steps necessary to pull your site into somewhere you have access with or without the above information. We don’t usually charge for this process even if you don’t choose us to continue developing the site. This however depends on the size of the site and how easy it is to move. If it’s a large site and the details above are missing, it could take several hours to get something usable.

Alternatively, Derek Sorensen at Website Repairs can help, particularly if something on your site has stopped working.

What would happen if your web designer disappeared tomorrow? or if someone managed to hack into your web site? Things have been known to go wrong, and if they go, it can make your life agony.

Why would anyone want to hack my web site?

Chances are they don’t, however your website is probably on a server or network which holds tens, hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of other websites. If any of those become a target, yours could be affected.

… to make your life easier in any eventuality, you only need to take a few steps…

There are four parts to your site: Domain name, Hosting, Website files, and Database (optional).

You need to make sure that you and/or your future designer can take over quickly with the minimum of hassle.

Website files - When your website is complete, either ask your current designer for the files on CD or have them zipped and emailed to you for backup. If you know how to FTP, get the ftp details so you can do it yourself at regular intervals if necessary. Or there is sometimes a ‘backup’ option if you can gain access to the control panel for your site.

Database - Not all sites, but most now have databases. These need to be accessed separately. If you have access to your control panel, the ‘backup’ option usually backs up the database with the files so you should be OK. If not, use a MySQL or SQL export to do so. (Get your designer to walk you through the steps)

Hosting - Is your site hosting with a major company or directly with the web designer? If the latter, this could disappear with them if things go wrong. It’s easily replaceable however so don’t worry about keeping hold of it.

Domain name - If your domain name is a .co.uk, goto nic.uk (or nic.com for .com/.net/.org) Make sure that your name is listed by the registrant details and not your designer. This means if worse comes to the worse, you have easy access to moving it with you, if it’s not. Ask your web designer if it can be changed. (If you’ve opted out, it may look blank although you will still be assigned to it)

If you make regular updates to the site, make sure you keep regular backups of both the site files and database. If you run an online shop, just the database should suffice. Just double-check with your designer for specific information.

Ultimately you should now have a CD of files and database, control panel login and password and/or ftp login and password. This means if things go wrong, everything can be restored relatively quickly.

If necessary, this disk and password can go to your current designer or a new one and you should be back up and running with the minimum amount of data loss.

Remember, insurance can replace your equipment but it can’t replace your data.

Are you an audio or video production company?

We have a simple hosting solution for your client’s audio and video files. If you want to add audio and video to your client’s website, and they’re not looking to upgrade to our multimedia website package, we can offer a simple hosting solution to match your price range.

Not all clients like Youtube and Brightcove advertising throughout their commercial videos, so why not offer a customised solution?

Simply pay a small fee to host any number of flash videos and MP3 files, we’ll give you the code and you can embed videos in your client’s websites with ease. Don’t know how to convert to flash? We can provide you with easy to use conversion software to do so.

Contact me through my Ecademy profile, call 0208 123 6609 or email me directly.