Writings from Force 5 Basecamp

05/07/10

Sitemap.xml What are Sitemaps and why are they important? Sitemaps are a tool for developers to inform search engines about the website content that is available to be indexed. The sitemap protocol is made up of XML that contains a list of URLs, last modified dates, and page priorities for your website. Here is a quick sample in simple form

04/29/10

I just finished an amazing book.  It really made me think. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, by Donald Miller. It was about the author working with two men, Ben and Steve, who wanted to make a movie of Miller’s life.  It was during the discussions of his “real life” he discovered

04/28/10

Move…That…Database Situation: Upgraded servers, so we needed to move database tables, views and stored procedures from a SQL Server 2005 machine to a SQL Server 2008 machine. We wanted to go through each table, view and stored procedure one by one in order to only move objects that are still in use. We needed a way to do that as

04/22/10

With spring time comes spring cleaning. Dusting off the shelves, cleaning out the garage (still need to do that!…), and just a general wash down and clean up – it’s work, but it really feels good when you are all done! Spring is a great time of year. Finally, FINALLY, the color green returns, flowers sprout, and everyone has a

04/14/10

You finally decide your company needs a new website, but you have no idea who to call. You check the yellow pages, Google web design, ask friends and family, and you’re still overwhelmed with all the choices. Who do you call when your brother-in-laws sisters boyfriend will do the job for $500. “We Are Web Sites”, the best web shop

04/05/10

Lately, we’ve been busy – busy ideating that is. Ideating – which is a fancier term for brainstorming – is a core necessity or foundational step within an advertising and marketing agency’s process of generating creative ideas. In almost every case, these creative ideas deliver a need or provide a solution to a client problem.  However, good ideas don’t have

03/26/10

More and more businesses are moving to Facebook as a platform to reach new customers and communicate with existing customers. It is becoming increasingly important to set yourself from the pack in the world of Facebook business pages. Make sure you are getting the most out of your Facebook business page by following Force 5’s Do’s and Don’ts of running

03/19/10

Robots.txt – Telling bots where to go and where not to What is the robots.txt and why is the robots.txt file important? The robots.txt file is placed in the root folder of your website. This file instructs search engine bots what can and cannot be indexed. All you need to do is to define some criteria of what can be

03/11/10

L.L. Bean is taking a leap into new territory! They are creating a brand extension called L.L. Bean Signature. The new line is a collection for men and women with updated styles and cuts. One of their new offerings is called the “Plain Weave Signature Suit,” and sells for just over $200.00. I have looked at the video preview on

03/05/10

We recently had a project that involved putting together a survey.  This survey was comprised of almost 150 questions.  As we brainstormed the best way to construct the data tables to store this information, the thought of a table with 150 columns made us cringe.  Time constraints also called for something we could put together relatively quickly.  We decided to

02/25/10

Unfortunately last year many business’s pulled back on their marketing and advertising efforts. “Well, something had to give”, a business owner told me. Unfortunately, marketing initiatives may have been the last thing he wanted to pull in a bad economy. Study after study has shown that during down times, the companies that continued marketing came back to “the black” quicker

02/15/10

Adobe’s Flash has had a successful run the past few years. While the latest usage statistics show a slight decline, it still employs an impressive 95.89% browser install base as of Jan, 2010. Some concerns have been raised lately with Apple’s decision not to include Flash support in it’s newly announced iPad (which runs a modified version of the iPhone