Was Your Installation Successful?

So, I hadn't yelled at the tech folks (and I use tech very, very loosely here) over at 1and1 in awhile. There is a weird glitch with 1and1 that doesn't allow you to automatically upgrade the WordPress. I decided to upgrade it manually causing all kinds of problem,s not the least of my own stupidity on not backing up first - yea, I know!

While I didn't have high expectations, I figured maybe I'd get lucky and they might be helpful. I called tech support, and lo behold I talking to a call center in the Philippines. I explained the compatibility issue with WordPress and the resulting errors. The agent then asked "Was the installation successful?"

Yes, the installation was successful - that's why I am calling tech support. And all that background info about incompatibility and error messages - that was just me kidding. "Was the installation successful?" Are you f*@!#ing kidding me? Normally, this is the point where my head explodes and I loose it. Instead, I hung up, uninstalled the upgrade, and the site was back. I also backed up the site for good measure.

I then called GoDaddy and reached an agent in Arizona. "I just wanted to tell you my intallation was succesful!" I figured if I am supposed to call and tell them when my installtion in successful, I'd call the one service provider who consistently gets it and who seamlessly integrate all my applications like WP and Joomla. Guess which providor will hosting all future web projects?

Can you match my business card?

ne of our clients - HLAW - came to us looking to update their website.  

They had two requests

1. Make it simple to update
2. Make it match their existing business cards.

OK, done.  We opted for a WordPress platform that they can manage through a hosted dashboard - no html skill needed.  And we selected a nice clean template consistent with their business cards.

http://hlawsf.com/ 

What can we do for you?

How can it be August already?

We've been busy. One of the projects was a new website for Barry-Hill Realtors. The client was looking to increase online visibility.

We opted for a Wordpress blog and iRealEstate theme.

We really liked the tabbed browsing for listings, tips and the blog.

Check it out and tell them Doherty sent you.

The Update . . .

About a month ago, I mentioned that I had been neglecting this site and it was time to for an update. At the time (9/22), Dohertyassoc.com has a traffic rank of: 3,740,178. Currently, it is 1,969,422, so we’ve moved passed not quite 2.0 million sites traffic wise. Not bad, but still a long way from #1, eh?

I’ve updated the look and feel of the site, and begun blogging more regularly. All good things when it comes to driving traffic. We went through our Google analytics tool (Make Google Happy) to clean up redundant meta tags and errors.

We are still in clean up mode. So, the next two items on the list are to update the blog software (we are going to move over to WordPress for greater flexibility and features) and look for errors using a Check Server Headers Tool.

SEO is not a quick fix (those promising it is are likely using black hat techniques); it is a long term strategy and a way of thinking when it comes to building your site.