A good web professional should be asking you questions like these as part of their service. But frankly, I would advise you to consider these questions ahead of time for the following reasons:

• Become a more knowledgeable consumer (saving yourself money)
• Make your provider’s job easier (saving yourself money)
• Reduce the risk of your website project failing (saving yourself money)

Is saving yourself money important to you? Well here you go then.

1. What is your web site going to do for you?
Tip: Try to identify specific sales, marketing and customer service challenges or goals.

2. What is your web site going to do for your users?
Tip: Think like a customer, a very impatient and critical customer with many alternatives.

3. What is the value of successfully accomplishing the goals from #1 and #2?
Reality Check: Your web site project should makes fiscal sense.

4. What is required (internally and externally) of your web site to deliver on those goals?
Warning: A common pitfall is to start listing features before defining goals, leading to a bloated feature list.

5. List the top 3 things you want users to do. List the top 3 things users want to do. How do these lists compare?
Reality Check: Its a red flag if these two lists don’t look very similar.

6. How will you identify and measure success on first day your site is live?
Example: Data entry is automated and the manual entry process is eliminated saving 10 hours each month.

7. How will you identify and measure success 1 year after your site is live?
Example: We currently receive an average of 17 new product ideas each month from customers via the web.

8. Why will your customers and users tell their friends about your web site?
Reality Check: Faerie dust and hope are not reliable.

9. Why will your customers and users repeatedly return to your web site?
Tip: Regularly deliver something new and valuable to your customers and users.

10. Does your investment support #4 (requirements) and make sense with #3 (value).
Reality Check: Make sure your aren’t strangling your web site before it even has a chance.

Are these questions helpful to you? Do they make sense? For my fellow web professionals, do you have any suggestions or additions that are valuable to you and your clients?

The only bummer after getting the blogs and site set up was that the new cool blogging dashboard page didn’t support multiple blogs. It would just blog to the first blog it found.

What I wanted was something like this:

Unfortunately, the current blog package just looks for the first blog it can find in the content tree and posts to it. So I downloaded the source code and started poking around to see if I could make blog selection happen.

The key control was the CreatePost.ascx control.

First, lets get a ComboBox to select the parent blog to post to…

In CreatePost.ascx add these lines at the top of the “blogpostCreator” panel:

Now to hook up the control we go to the code behind.

There is a method called SetBlogRoot() that controls where the blog is posted to. Its call OnInit() and on createPost_Click(). We can leverage the call in the init code to build the list of blogs in the new ComboBox / DropDownList we just added to the front-end.

To fill the DropDownList in SetBlogRoot() simply add the “text” column to the list of fields returned in the SQL at the top, create a while loop and fill the new control we created, and select the initial blog to show (the first one). Here’s the code:

One more edit to createPost_Click() and were done. Comment out the SetBlogRoot() function call and the line below to get the blog ID selected from the ComboBox / DropDownList.

Build and copy over the new DLL to the bin directory and the new CreatePost.ascx to the usercontrols directory and you’re ready to rock!

I’ll submit this as a patch soon with another modification to allow future and past published dates (watch for another blog in the coming weeks!)

Thanks, and any questions add to the comments below!

NOTES FROM SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TODAY:

“Merit credibility” and “Invite feedback” where the two most selected reasons for a business to blog.

“Make someone say ‘Wow’” and “Grow online presence” where the next most selected reasons.

There was some discussion on tribes, communities and audiences. I personally dislike the concept of an audience for blogs. As an audience member, I have fallen asleep too many times. I think a tribe or community infers more investment and interaction from members.

Addressing questions asked by customers came up a few times as a good source for blog post topics.

Here is the handout from todays Social Media for Business session.

Wondering what to write about in your blog? Here are 13 Blog Post Topic Ideas.

1. Explain how a recent news event will affect your industry.
2. List essential resources related to your industry and summarize why.
3. List and debunk the most common myths in your industry.
4. Promptly deliver a report from an industry related event.
5. Compare something complex or misunderstood to something simple or commonly understood.
6. Deliver timely advice or news relevant to an upcoming holiday or event.
7. Share a list of changes you are considering for your business.
8. Make a list of valuable products or services that are complimentary to your business/industry.
9. Share a list of your favorite replies on Blog, Twitter and/or Facebook.
10. Share a list of your favorite photos or videos related to your business/industry.
11. Answer a list of the most commonly asked questions you receive.
12. Create simple step-by-step directions how to do something.
13. Invite someone interesting to write a post.

What do you think of the list? Please share any additions your have with us here.

Umbraco is an open source Content Management System that has grown to be one of the most popular open source .NET applications. It is certainly one our favorites here at ProWorks.

OK, its simple, but we needed to let a client insert Google Maps into content areas via the Rich Text Editor in Umbraco.   Macro to the rescue!

Package: Google_Map_Macro_for_the_Rich_Text_Editor__1.0.zip

After installing the package, you should be able to insert a new Google Map in the Rich Text Editor by doing this:

1. Find your location in Google Maps.

2. Copy the link from the “Link” button on the far right above the map to the clipboard:

3. Go to the Rich Text Editor in the Umbraco admin area where the Google Map should be inserted.

4. Click the “Insert Macro” toolbar button

5: Select the “Google Map” macro from the Insert Macro popup.

6. Set the width, height, and paste the link from step 2:

7. Save and publish and view the map in the web site.

If you’re looking for redirecting domains or www to non-www urls, please take a look at an article I wrote a few months back: How to 301 Redirect example.com to www.example.com in IIS.

Now that Google is pulling out key links to display with your search results, migrating a new site could be disaster if a user clicks one of those links and they get a 404 or an error page.

See the links under the Twitter search result to the right.  Those are key entry points to your site.

Now, what if you’re using ASP.NET and those links point to a .php or .htm extension?  No problem.  IIS can handle it.

How to do 301 redirects on a page by page basis in IIS:

1. Open the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

You may need to remote desktop to the server to open the IIS Manager.

2.  Find the web site under the “Web Sites” folder that is the new web site that will have the redirects.

OK, now we will come back to IIS in a sec, but first we need to create some files.

3. Browse to the new web site location on disk and create a file with the correct name and path from the old web site.

For example, if the old web site has an incoming link to http://www.mysite.com/about-us.htm then the file name to create would be “about-us.htm”.  The path is just in the root on the ASP.NET web site.

If the incoming link is pointing to http://www.mysite.com/trips/mt-hood.htm, then you would create a directory “trips” and then the file name would be “mt-hood.htm”.

Now that you have created the files that correspond to the old site links, we can set up the redirect.

4. Browse to the new file in the IIS Manager.

When you click on your new web site in IIS, you should see a file listing on the right side.

If you are using Windows Server 2008 your IIS may look a little different on the right side:

In this case, just click the “Content View” tab on the bottom.

You should now see the files that comprise your new web site.

5. Find the file you created and setup the re-direct.

NOTE: you may need to follow these steps in Windows Server 2008 to allow HTTP Redirection - Enabling 301 redirects on IIS 7 on Windows server 2008

Right-click on the new file and select “Properties”

Then in the Properties dialog on the “File” tab, select the “A redirection to a URL” radio selection.

Type or paste in the URL on the new site that contains that information.

Check the “The exact URL entered above” and “A permanent redirection for this resource”.

Click OK.

If you are using Server 2008 (IIS 7):

Right-click on the file in the “Content View” and select “Switch to Features View”

Select the “Http Redirect” item in the list of actions.

Click the “Redirect requests to the destination” checkbox.

Add the new URL location in the URL text box.

Check the “Redirect all requests to exact destination” check box.

Select the “Permanent (301)” item in the “Status code:” drop down box.

Apply the Changes

That’s it!  Now test that the redirect worked and continue with the rest of the inbound links to redirect.

We’ll have some snacks and drinks and may even announce something cool regarding Umbraco!

ProWorks Location: 1600 S.W. Western Blvd., Ste 230, Corvallis, Oregon 97333

RSVP on our Facebook event here: Umbraco 5th Birthday Meetup in Corvallis

Or, at the Umbraco event RSVP: Umbraco 5th Birthday Meetup in Corvallis

Who’s invited?

Anyone using, developing, or interested in the Umbraco Content Management System.  If you have questions for the devs, bring them!  Want a demo?  No problem!  Want to hang out and chat?  Perfect!

I created the tutorial in Adobe Illustrator CS3 and it’s over at my design blog alandesigns.com/blog if you’d like to give it a shot. This is my second ever tutorial and it’s becoming a fun hobby for me. Here’s the end result: (screen background and logo design aren’t covered. Maybe in a future tutorial…)

It covers a variety of tools including the Gradient Palette, the Pathfinder Palette, the Align Palette, the Direct Selection Tool, and the Transparency Palette. We really get to know the Gradient Palette in this one.

Let us know how yours turns out!

We hadn’t done this before on the ProWorks fan page so I set about trying to do it. Turns out, its not too hard.

Here are the steps to adding a left sidebar ad/button/image to your Facebook Page wall:

1. Click the “Edit Page” link on your Fan Page main page

2. Install the “Static FBML” Application from Facebook.

Look for the “More Applications” box at the bottom of the edit area.

If you see the “Static FBML” link as shown above, click it. If you don’t have that link click the “Browse More” link and search for “FBML”.

After you search you should see the “Static FBML” application in the search results.

Click on the “Static FBML” link.

3. Add the Static FBML application from Facebook to your Fan Page

Click the “Add to my Page” link on the Static FBML page.

After you click the “Add to my Page” link you may get a selection popup that asks which Facebook Page you want to add the application to. Just click the “Add to Page” button for the appropriate page.

4. Add content to the Static FBML application

Now you need to get back to your Facebook Page that you just added the Static FBML application to and click the “Edit Page” link again.

There should be a new box in the middle of the edit page that looks like this:

Click the “Edit” link.

Now you will see a very simple editing interface with “Box Title:” and “FBML:” fields.

The Box Title is just text, but the FBML field can take HTML or FBML.

Insert the following code into your FBML field:

<a href="#"><img src="http://www.proworks.com/images/photo.png" /></a>

This will insert this image into your Facebook Page with a link to your Fan Page.

Click “Save Changes” at the bottom.

5. Move the new FBML box to the Wall page

Go back to your main Facebook Page tab. Then go to the “Boxes” tab. You should see the above photo with the Title that you selected. It should look something like this:

Now click the little pencil icon in the upper right hand corner of the box. A new drop-down menu should appear:

Select the “Move to Wall tab” item.

Viola! You should now have the image with a link on the main tab of your Facebook Fan Page!

That’s it. You can add more boxes by going back to “Edit Page”, then editing the FBML and clicking the “Add another FBML box” link at the bottom.

For more information on HTML go to W3schools HTML Tutorial.

To learn more about Facebook’s special FBML go to the FBML Developer’s Wiki. It looks like there are some very cool things in there.

Thanks and get those Facebook Pages looking good!

We have two skins based on the same style:

ProWorks Lozenge White

This is sort of a simple, base skin that would be great to add photos or color to.

It is based on the K2 Lite for Sandbox theme so it should work for WordPress too.

Download: ProWorks_Lozenge_White.zip

ProWorks Lozenge Flowers

This is a variation of the White theme with some added flair.  This may not work in Wordpress because it relies on the ASP.NET form tag to add an extra wrapper for the flowers.  We will work on it and get it working with Wordpress at some point.  It is also based on the K2 Lite for Sandbox theme.

Download: ProWorks_Lozenge_Flowers.zip

Thanks Umbraco Team!

Thanks to Niels Hartvig, Per Ploug Hansen, and Tim Geyssens for such a great Christmas Present!  The blog package is key and was improved immensely over the last month.  Thanks to all the Umbraco developers and community members for making the Umbraco community so great!

Here are our skins in action as part of the new Umbraco Skin Browser.  Cool!