I’ve been a Web Designer for over ten years now, and boy-oh-boy, have I seen some doozies on the web, especially sites belonging to small- to medium-sized firms. I’ve written this somewhat tongue-in-cheek list of reasons to think about a new website. Do any of these situations fit your site?

It was created in the Twentieth Century. If your site was built in a four-digit year starting with 19, it’s time for a replacement. A great deal has changed in the near-decade that has passed since, and a number of these changes directly impact your search engine rankings. Not to mention that styles have changed on the web, and your site probably looks like it was created back in the 1990s.

It contains headache-inducing background colors or textures. Like the burnt orange and avacado green appliances from the seventies, the treatment of color and texture is a delicate thing, and popular colors come and go. Similarly, textures can easily become too busy and conflict with the text on the page.

When your customers ask if you have a website, you hesitate to tell them about it. Why is that? Is it ugly? Does it contain inaccurate information? You can’t remember its address? All good reasons to re-think the site and get it up to date.

Ugh. Background music. This is one of the most irritating things (next to blinking text) that you can put on a webpage. I absolutely never like the music, ever, ever, ever. I’ve been startled more than once by background music that suddenly springs forth from my speakers at ear-shattering volume into the peaceful quiet of my office.

The site is little more than a tri-fold brochure on the web. I’ve seen this type of ineffective website numerous times in the past. Brochures make the worst websites. Because a brochure is such a different medium than the web, it doesn’t translate well to the web. Websites made from brochures are typically too wordy, badly organized, not up to date, and very static (never gets updated).

Your main competitor’s site is much better than yours. No, you can’t really topple the likes of Amazon.com, but you can do better than your typical competitor. Spend some time on their site so you can learn how to distinguish your site from theirs, and so you can also learn what you like and dislike about the site. Ask friends, family, neighbors, customers, whoever, what they think of your site versus your competitors. From this information can come a new website that professionally reflects your business.

You’ve changed your logo, now the site doesn’t match it anymore. This applies to changes to business name, slogan, marketing plans, product packaging, etc. The most professional image is created when all of your customer-facing imagery, be it business cards, letterhead, brochures, flyers, and website all appear to tie together and represent the same company.

The 1965 telephone book is more up-to-date. Is your website hopelessly antiquated (even if it was made in this century)? In this day and age, depending upon the business you’re in, your website’s appearance and content is just as important as that of your bricks-and-mortar facility.

You hired ”some kid” to put it together for you cheap—and it shows! I can understand when a budget just doesn’t allow for a hundred hours of a professional designer’s time to lovingly slave over ever last pixel on your site. However, very inexpensive site templates exist out there that can give your site a professional, if not custom, appearance. No excuses.

It costs you a fortune every time you want to update your site. You invested in your site big time! Now, every time you want to update it, you must schedule time with a very expensive firm. One of my clients switched to us because with their previous web hosting firm, it cost them over $3000 every time they wanted to change anything  on their site (no matter how minor, even simple text edits). So, the client used to save up a year’s worth of edits and send them to that firm all at once so they only had to pay $3000 once a year for updates. Holey moley. You should update your site frequently, and it shouldn’t cost a bazillion dollars to do it.

Does your site have any of the problems listed above? If so, it’s time to take a closer look at your site and consider what to do about it. A few things wrong may only demand an update, but you should consider replacing your site. I know we’re in the IT business, but we update our site weekly, if not daily. And we’ve replaced it nearly every 18 months since I’ve been with the company (hopefully to make it better each time).

Ready for a new site? Always hire a professional web designer or learn how to do it right yourself. If you refuse or can’t do either, then at least find a site template out there that will get you started on the right track.

Of course, you can always call us.

Craig Samson

Speaking of a windowed interface, there’s one tool in my arsenal that is essential for both single monitor systems and multiple monitor systems: a utility called PowerMenu. 

This very small application adds a few menu options to the Windows Control Menu (hidden under the little icon on the left side of most windows’ title bars). The options included are Transparency, Always On Top, and Minimize to Tray.

The Transparency option makes the window semi-transparent (to a degree you specify as shown in the illustration). Always On Top is my absolute favorite; this makes the window stay in front of all your other windows (so useful!). And Minimize to Tray sends your window down into the System Tray on the right side of your Taskbar (the application’s icon appears in the System Tray and can be clicked to bring the program back).

I’ve used this program for years and on numerous systems, without a single problem. It’s easy to install and you won’t regret it. Click to find it! 

Craig Samson

If you have a home network with a Windows computer, you can operate it from just about any other computer from anywhere on the network.

Microsoft offers a free program called “Remote Desktop Connection” that comes bundled with Windows, or can be downloaded for Mac users. Simply run the program from the computer you’re using… type in the local IP address or the Name of the Windows PC you want to take over, and type your user name and password. Your other PC or Mac will open a window with the PC working inside. Depending on your connection, you can access the full functionality of your PC, including desktop pictures and full audio. It’s as if your second computer were the monitor for the remote PC.

This can be helpful in a small office environment, when you need to access another computer while working on your laptop. Signing on to the PC will make it unusable for someone else while you’re logged in. But this is an ideal solution for a one-person, two computer and two platform home office.  And best of all, it’s free. The Mac download is at Microsoft.com/mac. 

Rob Ljunggren

Recently I watched Saturday Night Live lampoon the government for not being able to rapidly catch and control the wild oscillations of the economy. The opening monolog asked for people to phone in and offer suggestions to understand what is going on – the Treasury Secretary had no clue.

So here’s my solution.

The economy until the late 1970s was a dull softball. It was properly muted with oversized regulation that prevented big business (Fannie/Freddie) and conglomerates (AIG) from bouncing the economy wildly and hitting it out of the park…the game continued, but it was not very exciting.

Then economists, bankers and regulators began to forget the wisdom of depression era thinkers, who took a long time to control that economy with regulation, and decided to re-engineer the ball and take away the softening effects of SEC Regulation for Utilities, Banks, Securities Traders and Mortgages. They invented the economic equivalent of the “Super ball.” It out-performed the Softball economy and it gave everyone some excitement.

Excitement that is, until that kid showed up! You know that kid, the one that could not contain himself as he grabbed the super ball economy and slammed it down with more force than anyone had before. Now the ball bounces wildly and everywhere. No one can catch it. Each time it hit a hard surface and we think we can catch the carom, we miss. You see, the super ball has a very sticky surface and the spin applied before the impact has unpredictable effects on the direction of each bounce.

So this is our economy now. A global economy that was supercharged and uncontrollable by the single brute (global governments and super-sized corporations) who allowed this to happen.

So what is the solution?

If we wait long enough, the wild oscillations of this economy will be dampened. Most probably at the cost of breaking the fine china on the credenza, the fresh cut flowers on the table, and shattering the picture window. Not a suitable outcome.

If we are to dampen the effects of this out-of-control economic super ball quickly, the solution is the same as it was when we were kids; we have to all act together, circle the area around the ball as it bounces at us, and together we deftly smother and individually bat it down reflexively with the soft hands of a skilled receiver.

To smother the oscillation of this economy quickly, it is now up to the millions of small business owners, employers and tax payers. We are the band that will form the circle around this economy to be the shock absorbers of the incessant effects of the wild oscillations and use our soft hands to catch as much as we can of the energy that needs to be taken out of this supercharged event. How?

1. By stretching out our ability to hold jobs an extra week or month.
2. Making sure we’re able to pay everyone we owe, perhaps a little at a time, but we do not ignore anyone.
3. By continuing to invest in good ideas to be ready to emerge stronger.

The long term fix is for the governments to replace the super ball economy with the properly regulated softball game. That will take time.

The short fix is in our hands, but only if we all act responsibly and universally. Think globally, act locally.

John Boyd

So true! I was trying to hang a picture just last week. I had a sheetrock screw and a hammer, so I did what any red-blooded male working on the honey-do list would do … I hammered the screw into the wall, thus avoiding a “nuisance” trip to the hardware store for the proper picture frame hangers. The results were predictable. The hole was not firm so the picture wobbled and did not hang straight. Yet I declared the project complete.

My wife viewed it differently.

So, naturally I ended up having to patch the hole, paint the wall, go to the store for the right stuff and re-hang the frame properly.

In the IT industry we see this scenario over and over again. Our customers have individual business goals that require the right tools. Some businesses require an outsourced model, some require intensive internal support for their complex infrastructure and many require a blend of services somewhere on the sliding scale in between. IT Service organizations that only have a hammer in their product/support toolbox, often try to drive all the required business solutions for their customers in with that same hammer, that is to say, the same technician or skill set they happen to have available. In judging the results it becomes obvious you’re stuck with a “crooked picture”, a sliding schedule and an inflated budget.

Fandotech has a variety of tools, some new, available in our toolbox to manage project timelines, respect client budgets and deliver tailored solutions.

The Scenario: A company needs to replace or upgrade their network. Does it make sense to sell them servers to be stored at their location? Rarely. Yet that’s exactly what many IT Services companies are still hammering. Their solution is selling corporate America hardware, server replacements. Later they charge to dispatch a technician to fix the issues, which inevitably arise from placing high density servers in, what essentially amounts to a closet, at a client’s location. Such misapplication of a perfectly good “hammer” stems from not having the right tool at their disposal, a data center.

Typically it’s less expensive to rent the server from a data center equipped to bear the responsibilities associated with reliability, power, redundancy and backups. Such operations are managed by a team of certified professionals. That’s the tool this scenario calls for.

Fandotech has intentionally invested in expanding its service offerings to give our team the right tools for each business solution. Over the past year we have updated (1) our virtualization tools, (2) our network management and alerting tools, (3) our customer service ticketing and issue tracking tools, and (4) our available financing options.

We are seeing the benefits and so are our clients. We can now provision services from the data center to the desktop with the right tool for your business. With an expanded and purposeful tool bag, a 100% certified team, and the know-how to match the right tool to the right job Fandotech has positioned itself as the leader in IT solutions.

My wife would approve, the picture of our integrated data center to desktop support is solid and level.

John W. Boyd, Jr.