December 23rd, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
The concept of a teaser
A teaser is a perfect way of presenting your information without giving away all of it. With the rise of interactive marketing the concept of teasers has become more and more utilized. With the amount of information that you can find online it’s difficult to prove your value to anybody these days. With a teaser people learn about your products and at the same time allow you an opportunity to explain why should they care. But wait, can the wrong teaser harm your business? Read the rest of this entry »
November 14th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.” Henry Ford.
As an internet marketing consultant, I get the same question over and over again: how can I rank in the top 10 in Google for a very broad term? The answer is probably going to sound simple, but it is truth in my experience.
November 14th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
One thing every online marketing specialist has to understand is that no matter what he does he always is dealing with individual persons. Once you get involved with analytics the first problem is to start thinking that since you can track behavior as a group of users, all of them are the same. It is very important to understand that in the marketing business you assume that a market has similar needs and desires, and that they want to fill them with great intensity. The more they wait to fill their desires the more stress they receive, until they release the tension by fulfilling the desires. Read the rest of this entry »
September 14th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Hi again everybody. This link is probably the most important of links for people out there doing more than the basics with Google Analytics. In other words, if you are just installing the code and then looking at reports and interpreting the information, this link is of little to no value for you. However, if you are looking into trying some custom segmentation, adding search engines, linking domains and sub-domains and advanced profiling Read the rest of this entry »
May 15th, 2011 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Problem
Ok, so if you decide to use Drush (4) and decide to upgrade your installation of Drupal (6.2x) then perhaps you’ll experience a little problem. This problem has happened to me quite a few times now and that is why I am writing this post. I don’t want this to happen either to me or to anybody in the future. If it happens, then here are the instructions on how to fix it.
Let’s start by saying what doesn’t work:
1. My first thought was to check for the error log to see if it gave me better clues at what was happening with the Drupal site after the drush update command (drush up). Now, before we continue, remember that before you hit ENTER on that command, make a copy of your htaccess file and of your robots.txt. Believe me, this will make it easier on you.
2. I checked the error log and it basically told me the following:
“[Date [crit] [client 200.111.222.111(ip address)] (13)Permission denied: /home/user/public_html/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable”.
3. I thought then that it had to do with the permissions of the htaccess file (chmod). However that is not what causes the problem.
4. When I tried that it didn’t work.
5. Then I changed the ownership of the files recursively on the entire root and sure enough it didn’t work either. Simply because the problem happens because the public_html folder alone has to have the group ownership set to “nobody”. Can you believe that? How do you do that? With the command “chown” (Change Ownership) the first parameter is the username, the second one is the group. So for example if you say chown alex:nobody myfolder/ , then you are assigning the ownership of myfolder/ to user alex and group “nobody”.
Why does it happen in the first place?
First the problem happens because you are logged it with a different user with SSH into your server. That alone is going to make the Drush calls from that user. So if you call the drush commands without changing your user, of course you are going to end you changing your ownership of the files.
Merkados’ Recommended Solution
So here are the changes that need to happen:
/*Comment of Code*/
#chown -R ftp_username:ftp_username path_to_drupal_home_folder
#chown ftp_username:nobody path_to_drupal_home_folder
/*End of Code*/
Notes:
1. The chown command is used to change the ownership of the files. In the first line you are changing ownership recursively of all the drupal files and assigning it to the user with ftp access and group with the same name.
2. The second line makes the change to the home folder. Please note that the group is set to “nobody” and please also note that it is not recursive so don’t use the -R!
That’s it. If you follow this instructions you will be avoiding those 403 forbidden notices and doing more work. Don’t worry about the fact that the error logs instruct you about lack of read-access to .htaccess. Obviously this problem is generated by the ownership problem described here. Once you fix the problem with the ownership, then you won’t have the error with your htaccess file.
Please don’t hesitate to contact Merkados for your strategic interactive media needs.
November 5th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Oh yeah. So let’s say that you want to backup your mailman’s email addresses. Here is how:
Log into your account via SSH.
Navigate to your Mailman folder with command:
(cd /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/mailman/bin)
Execute command:
./list_members NAMELIST_DOMAIN.tld > ./list.txt
// (NAMELIST is the name of your subscriber list, DOMAIN is the domain, and TLD is the top level domain).
October 12th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
New versus Old Gap Logo
Ok, so I just wanted to give my two cents on this entire New Gap Logo thing. First of all one of the things that I think is pretty bad is the fact that the company pulls the logo and throws it to the trash can. I mean, if you have done your homework, then either it works or it doesn’t. You don’t go live and then realize this is a mistake. It is too late. Some decisions in marketing need to be very carefully planned. Logo design is one of them. A big company with a big brand like Gap, can’t take the redesign of their brand lightly. It is somewhat apparent that they did. Or at least it looks like it, and now the entire brand suffers because of this perception.
Having said that, lets talk about the logo a bit. The new logo utilizes a sans-serif font as opposed to the traditional logo using a serif font. Also notice the point size is larger, the width of the font is much larger in the new logo and the kerning is much tighter in the new logo. So having said all that “technical” stuff, what does it mean? Well, naturally the new logo is going to look younger and less sophisticated. It is going to look more relaxed but also it is going to look more corporate because of the kerning. The letters are so close together that they are read as a whole, as opposed to each one separately. This is also reinforced by the fact that the font-color is a dominant 100% black as opposed to a 100% white. Now, why does that matter? Well, the moment that you enter a Gap store you’ll notice that there is almost nothing 100% black in the store. Everything in the branding of the store and the experience is about comfort, about freedom, about space, about wrinkles and about pastels – certainly not 100% black.
Two more observations: The square at the top of the new logo is an attempt to marry the old with the new, however it just doesn’t work. because the font type utilized creates round negative spaces.
Negative Spaces
If you notice, you can see that every single letter creates a rounded negative space. This gets intensified by the high contrast (black on white) and also the width of the font. So why would you break that roundness with a blue square? Well, I guess you could, however in this case it doesn’t work because it doesn’t create enough contrast or similarity.
I guess it is way easier to critique a logo than it is to create one, so for me to sit here and to talk about it is much easier than for the designer to do it.
This logo is ineffective for the Gap brand because of corporate decisions, not so much because of designer decisions. The business (strategic) aspect of the logo is wrong and therefore not well appreciated by the fans.
Next time:
Next time Gap needs to do the following:
1. Make sure that if you are going to change your brand you are so sure that you push through no matter what. Hesitation is worse than a bad logo.
2. Take care of the process and the logo will be great. Hire a professional designer or group of designers and then let them do their jobs. Don’t have critique sessions with corporate leaders that know nothing about design.
3. Ask your fans first, then change it. Ultimately your fans are the ones who want that logo in their bags. Personally I like the old logo in the bag not the new one.
4. Don’t change something that is not broken. Change what’s broken.
5. Don’t ever change a serif font with a non-serif font in a logo that has been successfully marketed for more than 5 years (20 years in this case!)
6. Don’t mix rounded negative spaces with sharp edge unless they are clearly different in contrast, size and hue.
7. Look at the clothes of everybody walking out of the store and choose your colors based on the colors you see them buying – not the ones you want them to buy.
8. Market research is a must for a company with more than 100 employees (period).
9. Now that you have made the mistake, don’t try to hide it. Accept it and move on. People don’t want bs, simply move on. Don’t deny it, but give it the importance that it has now, it is in the trashcan; so should your time devoted to it.
10. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS AGAIN IN THE NEAR FUTURE! Let the waters settle down. Perhaps reconsider changing the logo in 5 – 7 years if neeeded.
September 27th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
If you are like me you are always looking for ways to optimize your online time and make your work more efficient. This video is one of hopefully many about one of my favorite topics lately: automation. How to make your repetitive online tasks a breeze. Small business owners have one thing in common: no time. In other words, if I can show you something that would save you 2 minutes a year you would certainly thank me. Well, how about something that could save you 10 minutes per day? That is more than 50 hours per year! In other words, this little secret could save you two full days a year! Come on, take at least another two days of vacation and nobody would notice.
In this video, I simply show you one of my examples for saving time online with Fake for Mac OS X.
September 18th, 2010 admin Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
I love Google updates. Every time they introduce a new feature is something valuable that brings something new to the table. This time the update is on Google Webmaster Tools (Google Sitemaps service).
The new feature is called: “Crawl Rate”. It gives information in three specific areas: Read the rest of this entry »
