Okay I’m back with part 2 of “This is not going to be a bashing session!”

Well before I actually realized I wasn’t going to ever talk to them again I started doing research. So now I have all this information stuffed in my head with no where to go. So I thinks to myself, how can I get rid of it and still feel like I have been of help to someone. That’s when I get the idea to write this post and unleash all that I had learned.

So here it is, the stuff that I learned:

I learned in the meeting that one of the clients top 4 competitors in our area is San Diego Magazine. Oh ya, I am not going to be the judge on this one as far as if the said client is actually really that much competition for San Diego Mag or not though, I will say, web site wise, SD Magazine is light years ahead.

I knew they were light years ahead and the client considered them competition so, I thought I would pull out my trusty firebug add-on for FireFox and go to work on San Diego Magazine’s website to see how much sleuthing I could get done before I talked with the client the following day (again, never happened.) I didn’t even have to open up firebug (darn!) to see right away that SD Magazine was using a online publishing system called Revista.

Revista is a product from a company that goes by the name of Godengo, Inc. Their system looks very robust and is specifically designed for clients who own magazines and want to take their magazines online. They have clients from all across the U.S. including Chicago Magazine, Palm Springs Life and, as I mentioned, San Diego Magazine.

So with this knowledge I decided to contact Godengo, Inc. to see if I could find anymore information out in regards to their product and whether or not it would be a good option for my client. Keep in mind I was going to recommend to the client to completely redo their website all together with a whole new CMS. That alone would have got them going in the right direction and would be the first step before any “SEO Experts” should be called in. In fact I think that in itself would have been a huge step in the right direction. You know, build your base first.

So like I said I contacted Godengo and spoke with Peter Stilsen who is the CEO of the company. Peter was very helpful and setup a nice demonstration via Adobe Connect so I could see how the admin side of things in Revista were handled. I thought the system looked very well built and would be a perfect option for the client.

Now I will say you could achieve something very similar using WordPress and a few other CMS out there today though, it would take quite sometime to accomplish and allot of times I find corporate companies want to have a good support system in place should they ever need it even if they have to pay extra for it. Now I am not going to go into all the details about Revista and what makes it a good system but I will say this; it’s not exactly cheap, though Peter was nice enough and offered to knock off a cool 2 grand from the total if I provided a project manager, which of course in this case would have been me. So I thought that was very nice of Peter to do especially with everyone talking about the economy being in the state that it’s in and what not.

Now that I knew all about Revista and was prepared to bring what I had learned to the client I decided to go on the hunt once more to see if I could find something similar to what Peter was offering, you know,  just as a backup in case it came down to price with the client and Revista. In which case I would offer the client a second (or even third) option for a fraction of the price. I guess I was just trying to cover as many bases as I could.

I also have to admit I was a bit worried the client was going to not want to hear the fact that I thought he should totally “can” the site he had and start over fresh and build it from the ground up the “correct way.” Though, that’s what I felt was the honest answer, plus deep down was what the client needed and was actually asking for. Whether the client knew it or even wanted to hear that, well we never got to that point so I can’t say.

Okay so far you’ve read my lead in and now option 1 which was Revista from Godengo, Inc. In the next post, part 3, I am going to give you my option 2 which is by no means a lesser option then 1, just different.

I want to tell you about a client who ended up not being a client after all. This is not going to be a bashing session so, for those drama lovers out there you can stop reading now. I do however want to talk about some of the things I learned while researching possible resources to help the client take their website up a notch and I will talk about the client’s competition too but, first a bit of a lead in so you know how the whole thing came about.

Okay maybe it seems like a bit of a bash, talking about their competition and even linking to that said competition’s website, but honestly I’m calling it part of the story, you will see why later.

Any-who, the lead in:

I was introduced to the client through a friend of mine and sold to the client as the “SEO Expert.” I know, I know, I almost laughed when I heard my friend say that but, it happened to be right in front of the client so I refrained and just smiled instead.

The client has a magazine which has been somewhat successful. They wanted their online version to also be a success, plus benefit their advertisers and be useful to their readers too.

The meeting went well and I gave them a few suggestions just to show I kind of knew what I was talking about. They had plans to redo their sites homepage and I suggested a few ways to help them do just that. Then after a few weeks of emails and voice mails not returned, come to find out they took a bit of my advice and redid there homepage with some of the suggestions I had made.

Now, I forgot to mention that I was told they were going hook me up with access to there Google Analytics account so I could better gauge where they actually stood at that point, although right off the bat I knew there wasn’t going to much info in their account that I needed to know about. Also, the client said they would wait for my proposal on how to bring them more traffic, you know all that “SEO Expert” stuff and that they would be in contact again right away.

So to make this part of the story not quite so long; they never sent me access to Google Analytics, they never returned my emails and or phone calls. I did however reach the owner once on a Friday and he acted busy and told me to call back on Monday to set up a time we could meet, which I did and well you know, voice mail again.

Okay, that’s all for the lead in part of this story. Part 2 will contain some good information for you in regards to what I actually learned while doing research for this client, plus some links that could possibly help you out in the future. So come on back for the second part!

Well, I am not one to go all political on you guys people but, I have to admit, the Barack Obama website took my breath away. If you haven’t seen the site in its entirty and don’t ever plan on seeing the site at all then cool, but if you have seen the site or don’t mind seeing it then you know, or shall know what I’m talking about.

For those who haven’t seen it, by all means run over there real quick, take a look, then come back: Barack Obama.

Barack Obama's website

Okay welcome back!

Now, I know there are allot of other web types like myself out there that were impressed too. So much so that I have been seeing other blog articles, tutorials and scripts popping up based on certain components of or all of the site itself. Which, I will list here for you to check out should you be so inclined:

1. The first component I stumbled upon was the BarackSlideshow. I found this slide show script over at Devthought. Let me know how it works out for you should you decided to use it.
2. Here is a very nice tutorial called “Obama’s Background On Fireworks” which shows you step by step how to create the background of the Obama site using, yup you guessed it, Adobe Fireworks.
3. Another nice tut and part two of the previous tutorial is “Obama’s Background On CSS” which will take the background you created and ready it for the web using CSS.
4. Here is an article talking about who were the creatives behind Mr. Obama’s site. If that interents you then head over to Zack Katz’s blog.
5. It’s kind of cool to see some of the changes that were made along the way with the site and the The Bivings Report (TBR) has done a pretty good job of that.
6. Ok this is really nice! All about the campaign logo and the company who created it. Videos and the whole kit and kaboodle.
7. The ‘O’ in Obama – a NY times article by Steve Heller.

There’s five six seven good leads on the Barack Obama website and how it was created. I will keep this post open ended and be updating it with more soon. If you know of any good articles, tutorials or scripts that are based on his site by all means leave us your comments.

While in pursuit of greatness, I thought I would head over to Browsershots.org and run my site through the wringer. For those who haven’t heard of Browsershots before:

“Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.”

This is a great way to see your site through the eyes of your users. Check out this shot of Natetronn.com in Flock 2.0 – The Social Web Browser:

Natetronn.com browsershot by browsershots.org

There are plenty of browsers and operating systems to test your site on and I recommend picking a group based on your user stats, if you have that information. If you want to get a bit more advanced you can also apply settings according to Screen size, Color depth, Javascript, Java and or Flash. I left all of these at the default of “Don’t Care.”

A browsershot of Browsershots

It took about 40 minutes for my 35 or so images to be ouputed and ready for download which is pretty fast. If that’s to slow for your needs then by all means pay for the option to beat the queue for around $15 (US).

Either way make sure you support Johann while your there.