ContentRobot

ContentRobot once had a favorite host that we recommended to all our clients: Pair Networks. They were reasonable … wonderfully responsive … easy to use … Then …

A client’s blog was partially down, meaning you could see the site content but not the theme or the CSS. What happened? Where was the warning email that we were promised last time? Did they turn off services? Who could help us during this crises? ACK!

Then after 3 separate phone calls to find out what was going on, came this stellar response from tech support:

Sorry we don’t support WordPress and we can’t help you to get your site working …

Then our (now irate) client contacted Pair himself. He had to escalate the call to finally get the answers and resolution needed to get him up and running. (Yes, your site’s services were throttled and, no, you were not contacted correctly during this process.)

While we continued to politely ignore the banner ad on the Pair Networks control panel touting another (in our eyes, sub-par) blog platform, this blatant statement became a (sore) tipping point for us that we can no longer ignore.

We believe that hosts should support multiple major blogging platforms where clients have a choice (like selecting between a Windows or Unix environment). Is platform/application neutrality more appropriate for a hosting company? Should WordPress try harder to create relationships with hosts so their blogging software can easily be installed and supported?

Dana twittered this morning: I have a dream that someday IE6 will just vanish.

This led to an interesting discussion, as ContentRobot contemplated what life would be like without having to deal with the most horrible browser on the planet!

This aging Microsoft mess (Internet Explorer 6 was launched six years ago!) causes much woe during development time. What do we deal with?

• IE6 is the absolute worst browser when it comes to supporting web standards
• We have to develop code just for this browser alone, so it will display a site correctly

This all seems like such as waste of time and effort (not to mention the loss of hair and the spouting of much foul language).

Don’t agree? Check this out:

• Remy Sharp offered a great analysis about when we should stop caring about IE6 (unfortunately he predicted 2010).
• We hadn’t realized that developers, including major companies like 37signals and Apple, have decided to just drop IE6 support.

C’mon all you IE6 users, it’s time to update to a modern browser (Firefox, Safari, or even IE7 if you must). Millions of developers will thank you.

Our regular readers might notice that a new look is starting to come to ContentRobot.com.

What’s new?

• the shell is getting poured in
• our tagline was tweaked
• the blue gets darker and more techy
• the navigation buttons are stylized
• a textured background anchors the design

While there is much to be done (the internal pages still look wonky!) we are pleased with this iteration. What do you think?

ContentRobot is pleased to offer our first ebook, which is an excerpt of our collaboration on  The Secret Power of Blogging.

You’ll see:

• Karen’s foreword of the book
• ContentRobot case studies featuring our clients (BazaarVoice, Beneath the Cover / Push the Key, Bite of the Best, GrokDotCom, New School Selling, Shop.org, and Team Timex)
• Outsourcing Versus In-House Blog Development (including design, technical, and marketing issues)
• Benefits of working with a blog development company
• Finding a reputable blogging vendor

We hope you enjoy the ebook - your’s free for the taking! Click here for your copy.

PSST! Did you know that up until recently that ContentRobot’s company website had been running atop of *gasp* Drupal? Yes “the WordPress experts” finally converted to this superior platform when we launched our “naked theme” site last month.

While we were hoping to be farther along and show off parts of our new look, we decided to continue to work on the blog-powered website’s underpinnings first. So, we have bitten the bullet and upgraded our site to version 2.5 (and found that the conversion was rather painless).

We are ready to offer upgrades to our clients and feel confident working within the new environment. It does have its foibles, but we are pleased overall with this latest effort from Automattic.

As the weather warms here in the Northern Hemisphere, we hope you are also warming up to WP 2.5. Let us know your experiences so far. We hope our lack of design doesn’t leave you cold - the melt comes soon!

Seth Godin wrote a post today about “managing urgencies.” In ContentRobot’s world, if a client site goes down, it’s our urgent responsibility to stop whatever we are doing to get their site fixed and back online.

Yesterday, a highly trafficked, highly customized blog-powered website, was hacked. We tracked it down to a malicious script that has been making its way across the Internet and exploiting holes in older WordPress installs.

This talented fellow has made a short career of being able to silently penetrate deeply into the server to leave the site with blank home pages, turn off critical plugins, and not allow posts to be written and/or saved.

Thank you, hacker, for diverting the energies of three companies from being able to do what they had planned for that day.

But one of the things Godin asked was: Do you have a plan? Determined to learn from this frustrating event, ContentRobot has actually developed a plan to combat hacks along. This three-pronged approach encompasses:

1. Keep WordPress updated to the latest software release as feasible.
2. Be aware of what theme customizations / plugins might be affected.
3. Lock down the install.

Read the Entire Post >

Earlier this week, we met Newt Barrett of Succeeding Today, and publisher of Content Marketing Today to discuss the concept of blog-powered websites.

Newt is in the discipline of content marketing. He urges marketers to think like publishers by delivering essential, relevant, and timely information that makes customers smarter and wiser–and much more likely to become buyers. He realized that one of the best ways to do that is to encourage his clients to launch business blogs.
Read the Entire Post >

As some of you may already know, ContentRobot is heading to Las Vegas next in February to speak at Affiliate Summit.

Today we’d like to announce a month-long experiment: the development of our own affiliate-centric blog. But here’s the fun part, we’ll let you in on what we’ve learned along the way, including:

• our approach to creating an affiliate program on a blog that we will be developing
• who we think some of the better affiliate companies to work with
• affiliate success stories and models
• our technical challenges
• the fun during development
• and more …

Read the Entire Post >

This is the final post in our series about building the Timex athlete blog. Today we want to focus on the blog’s design.

Business blogs should strive to have their own look-and-feel, yet they should be obviously branded (with the company logo, colors, etc.) and integrated into the rest of the company’s marketing materials.

For the Timex athlete blog, the goals were this:

• Sport the new company logo.
• To match the corporate web site’s color scheme: red, black, and grey.
• Take cues (for fonts, buttons, and other widgets) from the new marketing online and print campaigns.
• Show off the triathlon lifestyle using lots of pictures.
• Create a texture and splash that exhibits the sport and its particular attitude.

While there are several ready-made templates out there, it will become apparent that your company’s blog design should be created from scratch to ensure that it meets all your goals. Check out more design ideas here.

In this series, ContentRobot revealed the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, blog design, business blogging

Today we step back from the actual blog building and concentrate on developing a Blogging Policy Document for Timex’s athlete blog. ContentRobot discusssed the importance of developing such policies in a previous post. While, we won’t reveal its actual contents here, we’ll share some of the thought behind creating the policies.

Open Communication
Company management must clearly state that they are behind the project and indicate how open they will allow the bloggers to communicate. Companies should get comfortable with people outside the public relations team writing about them. For those companies who are still squeamish, they can consider implementing a moderation plan where posts get approved before getting published live.

Legal Implications
Bloggers should be aware that certain posts can get them (and the company) in hot water. The policies should define what is not acceptable blogging. This can including posting content that could embarrass or otherwise harm the company and its executives, employees, clients, and suppliers.

Going beyond harm, bloggers need to be aware of the the rules and laws that govern defamation and obscenities, copyrights, logos and trademarks, and financial rules, for example.

Blogging Creed
By signing such a document, bloggers should do their utmost to be respectful to the company, its employees, partners, customers, and competitors. Bloggers should think about the consquences while blogging and should be encouraged to not hit that publish button if their is something the least bit offensive.

Writing Rules
This part of the document should encourage great writing. For the Timex bloggers, it offered guidelines so they will write what they know, write often, add value, get their facts straight, and that quality matters.

The Blogging Policy document can be as formal or informal as the company culture dictates. Strike a comfortable balance that appreciates the creative aspect of blogging along with the need for defining the rules that can keep your bloggers out of trouble.

Follow ContentRobot as we reveal the strategies and best practices we used when developing the Timex athlete blog and how we’d approach your business blog project.

Tags: ContentRobot, Timex, blog, blogging policies, business blogging