How?

Click www.sayyestobroadband.co.uk and click on the relevant buttons to ‘Say Yes’ to better broadband in Norfolk.

There will be no obligation to subscribe to the services when launched, but in registering your interest you will be helping Norfolk get better broadband.

And… spread the word. A poster is available for download from: http://www.sayyestobroadband.co.uk/shares/sitepdf_6.pdf

Tattersett Farm is a family run business which has been growing, harvesting, processing and packaging high quality vegetable produce, including parsnips and carrots, for over 25 years – Three generations of the Hammond family have worked the land and invested in new technology.

One of my main purchases was to be an Apple iPod Touch for our eldest daughter. Initially concerned when she asked for one for Christmas, I’ve realised that she always pinching my iPhone for watching TV, playing games and listening to music. So I have little doubt she’ll make very good use of it. Plus, the parental control settings should avoid any potential problems in that department. But, at £160, she won’t be getting too many others presents!

You can buy them from the Apple Store in Chapelfield (or their website) for £169 but I noticed from a TV advert that Currys are selling them £10 cheaper, with a free speaker dock thrown in.

So, first of all we marched into Currys on Gentlemans Walk, confident in being able to pick one up with minimal fuss. After all, it was a done deal.

But, it was hopeless. After finding the iPod (with no ticket underneath to show the price), we waited ages for an assistant to help us, only to be told that it was such a good offer, it had sold out. He checked and found that there were 8 units available at their Riverside store, down by the train station.

Off my daughter and I trotted down to Riverside, quite a distance from the centre of Norwich. Having traipsed around the city for most of the day already, it was an effort…

But then once we arrived at their Riverside store, my heart sank. The store was in disarray. There were customers wandering about all over the shop desperate to be served. There was a huge queue of customers trying to pay for goods. All in all, it was pretty rubbish…

Finally, an assistant was available to help us. We explained how we hoped they hadn’t sold the 8 units yet. And guess what? They never even had them! She explained that because it was such a great offer they’d sold out long ago. She couldn’t explain why we had been told there was stock down in their store…

If we wanted to we could ring in on a Tuesday (delivery day) and they could reserve us one for collection. What a bore…

Instead, back at home we ended up buying it on the Currys website. Within 10 minutes I found the item on their website, set up an account and ordered it online. Shipping was free but i paid £1.99 to choose the delivery day.

So as I said before, thank goodness for online shopping. If you live up here in the wilds of north Norfolk, it’s a blessing!

I think I’ll do most of my Christmas Shopping online from now on. It’s cheaper, easier and there isn’t the risk of being tempted to buy everything else in the shop! It’s still nice to have the experience of the city at Christmas but from now on, the bulk of my buying will be online and I’ll reserve my Norwich visits for more sociable activities with the family.

• Should I have a Links page and start a reciprocal links/link exchange campaign?
• I have been asked if I would like to exchange links with my website. Should I do this?

First of all, it’s important to understand that there are almost endless techniques which can be employed to assist your website to achieve higher positions on search engines.

Start with a strong foundation

This process begins by ensuring that your website is constructed professionally, taking advantage of the suggestions given by Google in their Webmaster Guidelines and other recommended industry techniques. For example, it’s always important that pages are given well composed titles and descriptions (read our previous post on this subject).

Page content (words) should be your focus

Of primary concern is page content. Put simply, if a website is packed full of quality content, other websites will naturally (organically) link to your pages. This is one of the reasons why blogging is such an effective tool. It provides website owners with the opportunity to add lots of good quality content on an ongoing basis. By sharing ideas, tips and opinions, this information can act as link bait.

What’s the big deal with back links?

So, let’s return to answering the 2 questions in hand. It’s widely known that Google measures the quantity and quality of incoming links to your website. It uses this information as an indicator of the importance of your pages. And, as a result, it can make a very big difference to your positioning on search engines.

Google will favour a website with lots of good quality incoming links as these effectively count as votes for the information offered on your website. Since this is the case, website owners therefore seek lots of good quality incoming links.

Where do these links come from?

Well, again, it’s really about having lots of exceptional content (combined with exposure and promotion). If a website can offer this, the incoming links should come naturally.

However, some website owners seek to exchange links with other websites in order to artificially benefit from incoming links (back links). It’s not unusual to receive cold call link exchange requests regularly. Some will be genuine, but many of them will be spam attempts.

Links/Resources pages

Websites often exchange links with other website owners. In some cases, three way exchanges take place (website A links to website B, website B links to website C, and website C links to website A). These are known as triangular or 3 way links.

Preferably, the links should be with good quality websites, with relevant content. There are various techniques for acquiring links and there are recommendations for their format on the page. The selection of anchor text (the words that form the link) is very important.

But be warned!

Google is quite clear that it frowns upon link pages which are set up with the sole purpose of exchanging links to achieve better search engine positioning. If there’s any doubt, read their page about Link Schemes.

If such a page is used as a genuine resource page, this is acceptable. However, if Google decides that it’s guidelines are being abused, the penalties can be very severe. Websites can even be delisted from appearing at all.

In conclusion

A genuine resources page, with links to good quality websites relating to your content (for the benefit of human visitors) is acceptable. Consult with your web designer about how to go about achieving this. And if you do decide to set up a links/resources page, your web designer should be able to assist you with the format required.

Alternatively there are dedicated specialists who can assist with link building campaigns, content development and social media opportunities. Reciprocal linking is beneficial if actioned using relevant, quality sites but a “links” page solely for the purpose of swapping links – whether good links or bad links – can send too many negative signals to Google (again, see Link Schemes).

Related links

Here’s an excellent video from SEOMoz, discussing Sitewide, Reciprocal, and Directory Links. Part of their ‘Whiteboard Friday’ sessions which are often valuable and easy to digest. The part on Reciprocal Linking is relevant to this post (from 3 mins 20 seconds in, onwards).

All of these facilities demand a reasonably high level of complexity, and therefore time to develop and design. A high level of care and attention is needed to ensure that the user has the confidence to buy. Any inadequacy or slight scruffiness is enough to put the user off purchasing.

In comparison to the requirements of a brochure website, powered by a content management system (and often running a blog), there are usually many more complexities to be dealt with when it comes to e-commerce.

Whilst some web design companies use their own bespoke shopping carts (developed by themselves), the majority will usually choose from one of the many popular ‘off the shelf’ shopping cart systems available. These include popular systems like Magento, Zen Cart and PrestaShop.

But what if your website is powered by WordPress? Is there an option for integrating a shopping cart into WordPress? Our conclusion is no – well, not at the moment, unless the requirements of your shop are extremely basic (e.g. if you’re only selling a very small range of products).

Our opinion is that although there are plenty of WordPress plugins for e-commerce available, none of them yet offer the reliability and full feature set offered by the dedicated shopping cart software packages.

We recently road tested the WP e-Commerce from Instinct (GetShopped.org) plugin and were extremely disappointed with the results. WP e-Commerce wouldn’t allow us to present size options for products in the order of our choosing (e.g. small, medium, large). They had to be presented in the order that the options were added to the system. Despite paying for premium support, our support ticket went unanswered for 3 days, only to be then informed that the ability to sort variations was coming in a future version. This type of requirement isn’t a ‘nice to have’, its essential. This was a horrifying omission to discover from such an supposedly mature plugin. Added to this, their forum is peppered with complaints and problems, with users being flatly ignored.

This is not the reliability you require from a shopping cart, especially if it’s to form the back bone of your business model. It’s a great shame because it showed so much promise and is one of the oldest WordPress e-commerce plugins around.

Two other popular choices include Shopp and Cart66, but judging by the online reviews and experiences available, these also seem unlikely to meet expectations unless you have anything other than very basic requirements, especially if you’re not a ‘coder’.

So, in conclusion, for anything other than very simple e-commerce operations, a full shopping cart system seems to currently be a better choice than using a plug in for WordPress. Indeed, the requirements of a shopping cart exceed those of a CMS/blogging tool so this should hardly come as a surprise. And, maybe the best course of action is to ‘bridge’ a dedicated shopping cart with WordPress for the best of both worlds.

Although the many e-commerce plugins for WordPress demonstrate a lot of promise, they don’t yet match the functionality of a dedicated stand alone shopping cart, though this may change. With WordPress so popular nowadays, there’s a huge demand for a successful ecommerce plugin. But in our opinion, it doesn’t yet exist…

But his life should be celebrated as a great example of vision. innovation and love for life.

No ‘Apple fanboy’

I’m certainly not an Apple fanboy but have much admiration for all that Steve Jobs has achieved for the world of technology. Personally, I’ve always been a ‘PC person’, relishing the cost benefits and the ability to upgrade parts of my computer when required. Plus, in the past, using a PC invariably opened the doors to a much bigger range of software.

But it should be pointed out that until Windows 2000 was born, I had never seen a reliable operating system from Microsoft and the cursed blue screen of death was almost a daily expectation. Meanwhile, the Apple operating system bathed in reliability but at a premium price.

The iPhone – my favourite piece of computer technology to date

For me, the iPhone is the single device which has impressed me more than any other. Until a couple of years ago my love of mobile handsets was limited to the first month of ownership. A succession of mobiles from Motorola, Ericsson, Samsung and Nokia had all failed to woe me. And my experience of Windows Mobile 6.1 had left me quite distraught. Then my iPhone arrived…

For some, the Blackberry is their tool of choice, but I’m not keen on the small plastic buttons in terms of both easthetics and functionality. No, the iPhone is everything I need in a mobile phone.

And the iPad is amazing too…

Since recently owning an iPad 2, I’ve discovered that this product takes some beating too and is another revolutionary device. It won’t be long before pads become commonplace in our homes and the iPad has led the way.

But the iPhone still pips it to the post as my favourite piece of computer technology to date.

Some wise words from Steve

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.  Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.  You are already naked.  There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple (1955-2011), Commencement Speech at Stanford University, 12 June 2005

A short video summary (2:28) about Steve Jobs and Apple by Associated Press

Steve speaks some profound words at Stanford University in 2005

As well as putting the client firmly in control of their own content, they can take advantage of all the considerable marketing benefits a blog offers. And in addition to all of this, the new website provides a comprehensive online booking service, with the ability to handle everything – including availability, tariffs, offers, enquiries, bookings and online payments.

The new website boasts a new logo, colour scheme, an organic breakwater wooden background, first class photography and professionally written words. And, it’s tablet-friendly.

It’s easy to do this when setting a text link as below:

But, there’s no option to do this when inserting an image. Here’s the answer:

After inserting the image, click the image and press the Edit Image button (top left corner). Go to the Advanced Settings tab where you’ll find the option near the bottom (as below). Click update to complete.

We have suggested that the option to do this when inserting the image is added in a future version.

The Holt Youth Project serves young people across north Norfolk. The Project prides itself on their preventative programmes which allow young people to reach their full potential as well as meeting their own aspirations.

Visit their new website to see the achievements that young people can gain, given the opportunity. This is a Project that supports young people to work towards accredited qualifications, training opportunities and projects current and relevant to themselves.

The Project is youth led and their energy and commitment is amazing.

www.holtyouthproject.org.uk