Web Strategy

Web Standards-based Design & Development
Based on the desired interactivity and size of your web-site, content presentation can be static, template based (delivered via server-includes), or served by a Content Management System (Web CMS). To ensure compatibility with existing media and accessibility standards, as well as future compatibility, Web Standards and Accessibility are at the core of our Web Design and Development efforts Portfolio

Web Marketing, Brand Management, and SEO
The combination of well crafted Web Marketing campaigns, and web-site content that is optimized for human readers and search engines (SEO) attracts traffic to your web-site. Consistent reinforcement of the core charter, objectives, and image of your organization has a sustaining effect Portfolio

The quality, formating, and content of an email message is an integral part of an effective email marketing campaign that has the ability to generate interest in your products and services, cultivate existing prospects and  keep your subscribe list informed. This, along with the other channels of Web Marketing and Website design and production work together to form an effective web strategy for your organization.

Context

For a long time, email was the favourite and most efficient way for marketers to dessiminate their message. This popularity resulted in the nuisance of SPAM and the many software filters and applications that have been written to block the unwanted email. This document will outline the best and safest way to create an email message that will not fall prey to the first SPAM email filter.

To be able to reach all your prospects, it's recommended that you send a hybrid message that contains both an HTML and ASCII test message.

HTML Message

The common email readers vary in standards compliance; therefore the compatibility of web browsers to HTML 3, 4.x or XHTML is not representative how how email clients interpret HTML messages. Because of this, the lowest possible standard will be used. HTML 3.0 as it was created for Netscape 4.x is a good basis to go by.

1. Do not use CSS (either inline of in an external file *1)
2. Do not embed any external objects *1 such as CSS rel links, script files etc except JPEG or GIF images
3. Use the very basic HTML taks and attributes to define your content layout. Usr a table, font tags and image taks to accomplish your layout objectives
4. Use ALT attibutes for images ad well as TITLE attributes for HREF tags, these will make it easy/possible for people to understand the message even if the images do not display
5. Make the images as small as possible (file size) without overly compromising quality 

 

Permanently redirecting traffic using a 301 header is the proper and fail-safe way to ensure that your web-visitors continue to find content that has permanently moved to a new locations. Search engine ranking is crucial for any business. Web infrastructure changes and changes in best-practices can lead to a change in the URI of content items. Being that Search Engine indexes take time to update (10 days to 3 months), it is important to continue to maintain the old URLs until all the external referrers are updated.

Why there may be a need to use new paths

It is probable you have gained some knowledge and technologies have changed since you last overhauled your website and you may have a new naming system for your paths that's uniform and that hopefully embeds keywords in your document paths to maximize your ranking advantage. This situation makes it necessary for a web producer to create new URL paths for existing documents while keeping the old URLs active until everyone is updated.

How to implement

You cannot reliably depend on client technology to handle any tasks beyond the display of simple standards-compliant markup. Therefor you can employ a number of methods on the server to implement 301 Header redirects as follows:

Server-side Implementation

Windows IIS with Active Server Pages (ASP)
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://newpagelocation.com/path"
Response.End
%>

PHP
<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: /my-new-path");
exit();
?>

ColdFusion
<CFHEADER statuscode="301" statustext="Moved Permanently">
<CFHEADER name="Location" value="http://newpagelocation.com/path">
mod_rewrite (Apache Web Server)
rewriteEngine on
rewriteRule ^contact\.php$ http://newpagelocation.com/path [R=permanent,L]

Addendum for Web Content Management System

Placing this code in the template and testing for the requested URL to see if the page has been redirect can add a heavy overhead that could slow or even cause errors in your system. It is better to create placeholder pages with the URL of the removed pages and place the 301 redirect code for each case.

NB: If your CMS can schedule publishing and archival of pages, you can determine when to retire the redirect for a given page (estimate 6 months for all Search Engines to update their indexes)

For example, to implement this in Drupal:

• Create regular node of any node type
• Select the the PHP content type
• Place the following code in it and modify the destination URL to the new path alias (for engines to index the new name as opposed to the node ID)

• Create a path alias for this document bearing the URl of the OLD path Save and publish the document

 _________________________

How it works

Since you create a document with the same path as the old location, when the old URL is called, the redirecting node will 301 redirect it to the new location thereby enabling you to maintain your old URLs while promoting your new paths and indicating to Search Engines that your page has moved.

NB: Sending a 301 header redirect is the best and proper way to redirect permanently moved pages.

Client-side Redirection

As explained at the beginning of this document, the only reliable and proper way to redirect traffic from a non-existent page and properly signal the new location is to use the 301 Header redirect. In the absence of access to server technologies, the next best thing is to use client-side scripting and META REFRESH headers to redirect traffic. These methods do not indicate a permanent change or URI and bookmark and index driven agents such as search engines and link referrers will not know that your content has moved unless a human-being manually modified the path.

Javascript

<script type="text/javascript">
window.location.href='http://newpagelocation.com/path';
</script>

META REFRESH

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://newpagelocation.com/path">
</head>
<body>
This page has moved to <a xhref="http://newpagelocation.com/path"> The content has moved to http://newpagelocation.com/path</a>
</body>
</html> 

I first encountered Drupal (4.5) when it was availed to me by a hosting provider that I was using in early 2004. I had previously evaluated and used other GPL and commercial CMS applications, although it takes time to get up-to speed in Drupal in comparison with simpler CMS applications such as Mambo/Joomla and Magnolia which lack in flexibility, Drupal is easier to understand, and is more feature-complete when compared to more complex and 'bloated' CMS applications from the likes of Microsoft and Vignette. Drupal's flexibility, apparent complexity, and ability to be configured and tweaked for virtually unlimited uses have facilitated it's continued use in all my web projects.

As a web production manager by employment and a freelance CMS consultant, Drupal's flexibility, constantly growing toolkit of modules, and a vibrant user community are priceless in implementing CMS. The daily use and maintenance of Drupal-based websites has enabled me to regularly support new members of the Drupal community â?? My small way to say show appreciation for this valuable infrastructure - This is an excerpt of an entry submitted for the Drupal Newsletter (April 2006)