EP:002 – The Cotton Club Podcast
I am still continuing to get my audio settings tweaked for these shows so please bear with me on this, hopefully in the next few episodes I can get this all ironed out. I wanted to release another edition of The Cotton Club this week before heading out of town so I asked my good friend Bill Wheeler of SWScripts to be on the show, Bill is also @swscripts on Twitter.
Some of the topics that Bill and I discussed on this weeks show include:
- On-Air Bids (PHP based software application written by Bill and used by radio stations and media outlets to manage live auctions).
- MODx CMS / PHP Framework
- Pleth’s new entry-level CMS solution for Non-Profits, Churches.
- PHP IDE’s / Programming Environments
- Iphone Applications (Active Sonar, Waze, and News Stand)
Advantages to Outsourcing Business Class Email
This past weekend my business partners and I went away on our annual corporate retreat to discuss our existing business model and to evaluate each of our products and services. We each agreed that our most popular solution is one that we don’t spend a lot of time promoting, our premium email solution. There are several advantages to businesses that chose to outsource their email to us, in this post I plan to cover a few of these bullet points.
I am also including a presentation that I put together regarding our solution, click on the play button below to start the presentation. If you would like to learn more about business class email solutions, please feel free to drop me a note and I will be glad to schedule a time w/ you to discuss your needs in more detail…
- You Get Our Team of Experts - When you turn to a hosted solution, it’s as though you suddenly have an entire staff of experts working for you—serving as an extension of your IT department and allowing your in-house team to focus on the other critical aspects of your infrastructure.
- Our Cutting Edge Technology - Since hosted solutions, like ours, focus on their specific area of expertise, we can stay on top of the latest advances in their industry. We also have the resources to implement and maintain a variety of technologies.
- Reliable Access - We guarantee 100% satisfaction. If you’re not satisfied, we’re not satisfied. This is why we won’t force you into long-term contracts. If we fail you, we’ll give you your money back and help you take your business elsewhere.
- No Setup or Maintenance Concerns - When you turn to a hosted solution like ours, you immediately have a fully equipped, top-of-the-line system that will be continually updated and maintained. This saves you thousands of dollars in server hardware, software, upgrades, and the expertise to run it all.
- Reduced Costs - You can take these system deployment and maintenance expenses out of the budget. You will always benefit from the latest in hardware and software technology, managed by experienced engineers, with no additional costs and no unexpected fees.
- Scalability - When your company grows, your infrastructure must also grow even faster. Since hosting providers, like Pleth, have extensive hardware and software resources, we can scale smoothly and easily. Cloud hosting, in particular, is especially designed for scalability—since you use only the infrastructure resources you need.
- Scalability: Cloud Computing Advantage - We’re always ready for your growth. Thanks to the elastic nature of cloud computing, we can automatically add hardware and adjust settings from the cloud so that you don’t miss a beat—and you only pay for what you need, and nothing you don’t.
- Automatic Backups & Data Recovery – As Hosting Providers we know that you have entrusted us with your invaluable data—so we design their systems to protect that data. We have the resources to implement exhaustive backup and data recovery systems. We back up your data every night, in multiple geographic locations, in our top-tier data centers. And if a user accidentally deletes an email or email folder, you can restore it easily through our control panel at no cost—even up to 14 days after the data was deleted.
- Storage & Transmission Security - Businesses can spend thousands of dollars to protect their data—or they can save thousands by turning to a hosted system like ours. We integrate extensive security measures to protect your data from physical threats—such as theft, overheating, power outages, and fire—as well as technical threats from hackers or prying eyes. Our data centers are designed to protect your data from all physical and technical threats. And to secure your data during its journey through cyberspace, our system uses DoD standards-based protocols, as well as extended SSL encryption, and we meet all PCI DSS data security requirements for information security.
- Automatic Software Upgrades - When you choose hosted apps like ours, you don’t need to worry about downloading and installing software upgrades or security patches. Your system will always be up-to-date. We stay on top of upgrades and security patches around the clock, so you’ll always be using the latest versions of all system software. And we partner with leaders in the security industry, to give you the strongest level of protection available.
- Data Access - With hosted apps like ours, you benefit from having a wide range of data access options. This flexibility helps your employees to be more productive, compared to employees who are limited to using only a specific computer or specific software. Location is no longer an issue. You can access and manage data from any Internet-connected computer or mobile device. And your data transmissions are secured, to avoid any possibility of data leakage.
- Federal Regulations & Compliance – We stay on top of the regulations so you don’t have to. We provide the storage, compliance, and retrieval features needed for audits, legal requests, and other business needs. Our optional archiving service is designed to meet e-discovery, regulatory, and industry guidelines for data retention, and is ideal even for companies that need to adhere to the highest levels of compliance.
New Plethware Email Password Security Measures
To ensure that all of our users have the best security possible, we are changing the password requirements for our business class email solutions from Pleth. While we are not forcing everyone to update their passwords immediately, we are encouraging our users to update their passwords for better security. If you’d like to change your credentials now you can, simply login to www.plethware.com, click settings, click change password…
As of September 26th, 2009, all of our users will be held to the following standards when changing their passwords: (Passwords cannot contain:)
- Less than 6 characters.
- 3 or more consecutive numerals (e.g. 567, 9876).
- The word "password".
- The mailbox user name.
- The mailbox domain name.
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- If you are still managing your email in-house and fighting the battle day to day, and all of the frustrations that go along with managing email, users, security, etc., take a look at our email outsourcing solutions…
Focusing on MODx Hosting Solutions
I recently did a blog post for our corporate website about our MODx hosting solutions. As I have said in the past, we aren’t your typical hosting company, we very easily could be though given our advanced infrastructure, but for us that’s just not where our heart is. We tend to take more of a developmental approach to hosting, this is probably because we are developers first and foremost. The fact that we don’t spend as much time promoting our hosting solutions as we do our development services could probably be viewed as an injustice to those that are familiar with our infrastructure.
When it comes to our hosting solutions, the fact is that we probably have one of the most secure infrastructures on the market, with possibly the most value added services you will find anywhere else. We also rank very high when it comes to bandwidth and our storage rates are quite comparable to those offered on a national level. We can even provide developers and small agencies that are not interested in managing their own hosting infrastructure a viable and affordable alternative with our VPS (virtual private server) solutions.
Even though we don’t typically pursue hosting clients, we will occasionally notice a segment of the landscape that we would really like to reach, one of those segments is the MODx developer community. Here’s an excerpt from the post I did on MODx hosting solutions that we provide. (you can read the entire post here…) Given the fact that we know the software relatively well, possibly better than a lot of the larger, bargain basement providers out there, we feel as if we can do a better job hosting it for our clients.
One service that we have gotten very good at over time is hosting particular software, primarily Wordpress and MODx. My partner Greg and I almost work exclusively with these two products and we know the inner workings of these applications and can pretty much troubleshoot any problems that may arise with little cause for concern. Also, Matt Critcher has devoted a lot of time toward securing these applications and making sure that they run at optimal performance. In the case of wordpress, there are a lot of hosting providers out there that can provide one click wordpress installations through their control panels (us included), but with MODx, there aren’t a lot of hosting providers out there that have worked with MODx in comparison to some other CMS solutions that are out there such as Joomla or Drupal. This sort of is a good thing for us, it gives us an advantage over a vast majority of the hosting companies out there because we already have a good working knowledge of the software, and can provide straight to the point support on any issues our clients should have running the software. In fact, this site runs on MODx.
With this in mind, my partners and I are going to focus a lot of our attention toward the niche MODx managed hosting crowd that just wants to deploy their website from a developmental and management perspective and not have to be bothered with the actual hosting itself. We can provide one of the best hosting environments on the planet for MODx CMS as well as some of the most knowledgeable technical support for the software you will find. Again, we know this because we also deploy MODx solutions for our clients and manage them on a daily basis.
If you are interested in discussing your MODx hosting needs, please don’t hesitate to contact us and we will be glad to provide you with a free quote for managed or dedicated hosting.
If you have a need for MODx hosting, whether it’s 1 or 300 installations, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you think we can be of any assistance. We enjoy speaking with other developers who utilize this platform.
Pleth, LLC | MODx Hosting Solutions from Pleth
Current Projects: Xtreme Green Lawn Service
I was contacted a week or so ago on Facebook by Xtreme-Green Lawn Service about redesigning their website. I have known the owners of Xtreme Green for a long time and have worked on other projects for them over the years. The goal of this project was to take their website and to make it look more professional and to increase their rate of conversion on the website from visitors to actual customers. Xtreme Green operates in the Dallas / Fort Worth area so they have a pretty big focus area, as well as a lot of competitors from both a local and national level.
Content management is an important requirement for this project, they need the ability to post updates easily as well as publish content about their service offerings and specials. With this in mind I started the project with wordpress version 2.8 and have used woo theme as the basis for the design. The client is out of town on vacation this week so I don’t have a preview link for this project yet but I can share a screenshot of where I am at so far…
Current Projects: Judge Karen Baker
I was contacted by Judge Karen Baker a short time ago. She’s planning her campaign for Arkansas Supreme Court. She was needing a website for her campaign so I provided her with a quote. Once I got the go ahead from her I got started. Naturally, content management is one of the projects requirements so I have started with wordpress 2.8 on the backend. I was also telling her during our talks that establishing a political figures page on Facebook and an account on Twitter for the campaign would go a long way toward giving her campaign some exposure so I have created those for her as well. The project isn’t complete yet, we are still waiting on some content but for the most part I have nailed down the design elements.
I have been using Brian Gardner’s studiopress themes for a while now as a starter them for the vast majority of my wordpress designs but about a month or so ago I decided to checkout woo themes after a few developers recommended them to me. This project is built upon a woo theme that I have modified. It’s coming along pretty well so far. I don’t have a launch date for the project to share at this time but here’s a screengrab of what we have so far…
New Project: Crawford for Congress
This has been a pretty busy week for me, I had 3 projects in my lap that are all basically starting from scratch. One of these projects is for Rick Crawford, who is running for Congress in 2010. I have been working with Jonah, Rick’s campaign manager, to put together a game plan for the project. We have arrived at wordpress 2.8 as the base cms and I have already started the process of designing the theme.
I have a rough theme in the works right now that is built upon one of the more dynamic woo themes, but I am lacking some photography and artwork to finalize the design so no sneak peak on this one right now. I should however be able to post an update this next week sometime, stay tuned…
Recommendations for Political Campaign Websites
I guess it’s that time of year, the past few weeks we have had several exploratory committees and political candidates reach out to us to inquire about web development and social media consulting. After a few phone calls where I handed out the same advice I figured it would be a lot more efficient and much easier to just reference this blog post as opposed to covering all of these recommendations on a phone call, so here goes… Oh, and these are just a few basic recommendations, if you are interested in learning more or possibly contracting Pleth to handle your web development or social media management, please feel free to contact us to discuss your project in more detail.
Get Started on Your Website Early!
Assuming your campaign is just getting started, one of the first things you are going to want to do is to start the development process for your website. Depending on the scope of the project. the time required to design and develop a campaign website can be considerable. You definitely want your website online and functional prior to any fundraisers or media appearances because one of the first questions you will be asked is whether or not you have a website, and you don’t want to ask someone for their vote of confidence and look in any way unorganized or unprepared, of course this is coming from a web developer but I bet there are others from outside the industry that would share my point of view on this.
Another reason you will want to focus on your web presence early is for the purpose of accepting donations and campaign contributions online. I recommend PayPal a lot to candidates just because of it’s simplicity and because it’s a trusted name in e-commerce. There are other processing services out there and if you have the time to search these out to find the best deal for your campaign that’s great, but for the most part PayPal is a safe bet.
The Web Development Process (How to Speed Things Along)
One of the best ways to ensure that the development process for your website goes smoothly and is launched on schedule is provide your development firm with content, graphics, photography, and video as early as possible. If you have signage or campaign logos that you are going to use on print campaigns, it’s good to provide these files in a digital format to your web developer. Most developers are going to prefer higher resolution or vector formats for these files if possible.
The biggest priority for your campaign on the front end should be the creation of a PayPal account. An account can be setup in just a few minutes by visiting www.paypal.com but the account verification process can take a little longer. This process ties your online account into your banking account and requires action on your part to complete.
Content Development
Content creation, or copywriting, is probably the biggest challenge for political candidates during the development process. It’s important to take into consideration during this process that anything you publish to the web should be short and to the point. People lose interest quickly on the web, and your key points should be easy to find as well as carefully worded. It’s a known fact inside the industry that people don’t read a lot of written copy unless it’s absolutely necessary, they simply skim over the high points and move on. For this reason I recommend using bullet points and highlighting or bolding key points that you want to make.
Probably the best tool for delivering content today though is by video. A lot of people get concerned when you mention video because they are concerned with the costs related, but video doesn’t have to be a huge campaign expense.
I recently recommended the Flip Mino on my blog, this camera is ultra portable and can fit in your shirt pocket. This makes it perfect for shooting video messages on the fly or during campaign events. The best part, the Flip Mino retails for under $200. I also recommend sharing video on two video sharing services, YouTube and Vimeo. Both of these video sharing services are easy to use and they can give your campaign wider exposure across the web, not to mention the videos can be added to your website or blog with just a few clicks.
While these portable video cameras provide a great way to post quick video content to the web, it’s also advisable to add in a few professionally edited videos as well. In my opinion this can go a long way. For example, you might consider having a professional videographer prepare a couple of videos in a studio with proper lighting, etc. for use as your welcome video (the first video your visitors see), as well as your platform video, where you state your positions on key issues. The remainder of your video content can be short, informal clips taken at campaign functions. Video endorsements have also become quite popular and I look for these to become more and more popular.
Website Management
Once the development process is complete and your website is launched, you will want to keep it fresh with content updates. This is more important today than it was in the past because of RSS (really simple syndication). Instead of making return trips to your website to check for updates, users now just subscribe to your RSS Feed and view your content either on their desktops or software applications called readers. Another way that RSS is utilized is email. Subscribers to your RSS Feed can receive email updates each time you post new content to your website. RSS also makes your content portable, meaning that it can be syndicated across social networks and embedded on other websites.
Social Networking
Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter are extremely important! For larger campaigns I recommend a full time staff person that just manages the social networking presence for the campaign. On a smaller scale the task isn’t near as daunting and can be handled with a lot less interaction, but it’s important to follow up with questions and discussions.
Pushing content onto the social landscape can be totally automated, again by using RSS. I recommend integrating RSS Feeds into both Facebook and Twitter. MySpace is a lot less relevant than it once was and I no longer recommend it to clients unless there are special circumstances, but if you have the time to devote to managing a MySpace account it certainly can’t hurt anything, but be sure to stay on top of it once it’s setup, and keep in mind that Facebook and Twitter are a lot more relevant.
Maximize Your Web Potential…
While on the campaign Trail, don’t forget to promote your website as much as possible. If you meet a person in passing and don’t have a lot of time to really connect with them, be sure to send them to your website for more information.
In closing, I hope that you have found this information to be useful. If you are considering a political run in the near future, or are already actively involved in one, and would like to discuss your campaign’s web presence or social media campaign with my partners and I, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We would love to discuss your project in detail with you. We can provide every tool needed to make your campaigns web presence a huge success!
Pleth Networks on Facebook
Are you on Facebook? If so, be sure to check out the Pleth Networks Facebook page. We have already posted some links to a few of our past projects that you can read about as well as some of our current projects. While you are there, be sure to become a fan, you will see the “become a fan” link at the top of the page.
Facebook has been an awesome tool for me to connect with old friends as well as make new ones, but something that might come as a surprise to a lot of people is that I have actually been contacted by several new clients via Facebook. This is what prompted me to go ahead and create a page for Pleth a few months back. Once our group grows we will likely be adding some discussion forums that will allow us to interact with our followers. A rough draft of the discussions area is already online if you want to try it out.
Facebook | Pleth Networks, LLC
Application Development for Agriculture
I was reading on CNN this morning about a farmer in Nebraska that is using Twitter on the farm. This story peaked my interest because, as a lot of you may know, I grew up on my family’s farm in Eastern Arkansas, and they are still very much so involved with farming. I am not for sure of the size of the total operation now but I know it’s bigger now than when I was there and it seemed overwhelming then. For some reason I don’t see my dad ever using Twitter, and that’s cool with me, but I do see him eventually using his smartphone to record data and retrieve information. Here’s an excerpt from CNN about the farmer that is using Twitter on the farm:
Twittering From the Tractor:
(CNN) — As he rolls across the wheat fields of his Nebraska farm, Steve Tucker often has his hands not on the wheel of his tractor, but on a smartphone. Steve Tucker, a Twittering farmer, pauses in front of his tractor in Nebraska. He sometimes posts a dozen messages per day on Twitter, commenting on everything from the weather to the state of his crops to his son’s first tractor ride and even last night’s cheeseburger. Twittering from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the farm – CNN.com
I started telling my dad back in the 90’s that it wasn’t going to be long before computers became a necessity in their day to day management on the farm. I even devoted a lot of time developing some applications in Visual Basic to assist them in tracking various aspects of the business. We never really used it on a large scale, I did however input my own personal farm information into it and eventually sold it to a company in Washington who built onto it and marketed it to farmers across the country as an early form of farm management software. There are a lot of farm management applications on the market today, but I still think that Red Wing might be the leader when it comes to micro-managing a multi-million dollar operation, even smaller operations can benefit from it’s advanced accounting and payroll functionality.
CenterPoint from Redwing Software
CenterPoint is the most versatile Ag software product on the market, yet it’s easy to set up and use. By using CenterPoint, you can see which area of your operation is generating income, and which is not. By doing this, you can focus on the income generating enterprises, and increase your profits. The profitability of your operation depends on good financial management. CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture gives you everything you need to manage your operation’s finances. Get the answers you need to make important business decisions to increase profitability, become more efficient, and achieve your goals. (click here to learn more…)
It wasn’t long after this that we started seeing farm equipment such as combines and spray rigs that were shipped to us with GPS capabilities. We didn’t latch onto the new technology at the time but since I have left the farm it’s been funny to watch them gradually move into this realm. The equipment they use on the farm today would shock a lot of people. Most people wouldn’t expect to see air conditioned cabs w/ air-ride seating, computerized controls, GPS, 2-way radios, and high-definition stereos on farm equipment, but that’s pretty much the norm anymore. I have even seen a television mounted inside a combine before.
All of this to say that technology has found it’s way into Agriculture in a big way. This past winter I wrote some software for my dad to help him manage day to day operations like tracking chemical purchases, seed buys, planting dates, fertilizer costs, fuel consumption, etc. We sat down and outlined every possible piece of data that he wanted to capture and I setup a web-based application that allowed them to track these items and generate reports. We also setup some notebook pc’s that could connect to this database with cellular cards and shipped them out to the fields.
Our intentions were great but this year things were pretty hectic during the planting season that we didn’t capture as much data as we would have liked but I am hopeful that next year will be different, especially since everyone on the farm is getting more and more familiar with technology and the use of the internet.
There are some other advantages to being connected to the internet while working out in the field. For example, seed purchases and futures bookings can be made online now via email. Commodity markets can also be tracked closely via the web as well, but probably the most useful tool during planting and harvest season is online weather. The satellite and radar imagery provided by many news and weather websites today is phenomenal, and has evolved quite a bit from the DTN satellite systems we used to rely on to predict rain.
Another tool that has been on the farm for years is the mobile phone. When I was growing the first people I ever saw with cell phones were farmers. Of course they weren’t the small smartphones that everyone carries in their shirt pockets or clipped on their belts today, the earliest phones I remember were heavy truck mounted phones that had a cord attached to them. I can remember my uncle even having his setup so that if it would ring the horn on his truck would start honking so that if he was in the field or away from the truck he would know about it.
Fortunately mobile phones have evolved over time as well, and this past winter my dad got his first smartphone. We even tested the farm application that I mentioned earlier on the Blackberry so that it would be accessible and data could be entered from it.
I know that when most people think about farming they picture old, topless, 2-cylinder tractors sitting all alone in a 1000 acre field with the driver fully exposed to the elements but that’s just not how it is anymore. I am sure that in some smaller family operations that is still a way of life, but for the most part farmers have started embracing technology. I believe that over the next couple of years we are going to see a growing need for applications to be developed for use on large farming operations as well as smaller family operations.
If you own or operate a farm and are considering some form of application to track your day to day operations such as chemical applications, pesticide reporting, equipment maintenance logs, fuel consumption, seed purchases, yield tracking, and custom harvesting, please feel free to contact my partners and I to discuss your needs. We would love the opportunity to work with you and while we don’t have a specific product to sell you, we can develop a custom application for your operation to fit your needs.
