Importance of Pointing To New Pages If Upgrading To New Site

One of the most bitter lessons anyone who owns a website or blog can learn is to lose visitors when upgrading to a new site or domain.

If proper planning is not done within the first week, the drop in visitors can get quite bad. In fact, within hours of moving, site visits can go down as much as 95 per cent, and may never pick up to more than 25 per cent over the next seven days as search engines try to index your site. This experience was shared by a fellow website owner recently - despite my having cautioned him not to ignore the need to point to the new site, he did just that. Lucky for him, his website was small, about 300 pages in total. But because it was a company website dealing with travel products, his statistics suffered.

I am writing about this - although I cannot reveal the site owner's domain for professional courtesy - to perhaps give you some tips how to avoid the same mistake.

1. Before moving to a new site, after having transferred your old content to the new server, make sure you have clearly and accurately point the relevant pages to the corresponding ones at the new site. If the content is similar, I propose you delete all the old content on that old page and insert a courtesy note and the hyperlink. You may do this manually or using a software. Generally, software redirects after the visitors encounter an error page and this pointing is done server-wide. I find doing it manually better since you point individually to the new corresponding page.
2. At the new page, put a note to get your visitors to renew his bookmark to overide the old. Most people forget this and a reminder will be good.
3. Get the search engine to re-index your site and have a sitemap inserted in your server. Overide the old sidemap as well.
4. Dont forget to have to have a ROBOTS.TXT file inserted at the old server pages instructing bots not to index them. Better, in each old page, have a NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW snippet inserted.
5. How long should you keep your old pages in the server? Well, have a look at your server logs and see if a majority of your new traffic comes from the new site URLs. If it is, say 90 per cent, then you can safely delete the older files. This can be any where from 1 week to a month. My friend was lucky, he did his in matter of 8 days.
6. Be polite and personal when writing redirection instructions. You can be witty, but be personal. Standard Error Page redirections are cold because they are automated. You can change all that message to suit your needs - just as the webmaster or host how to change the Error 404 message. Again as in my friend, he requested visitors to his old pages to please click on the new link. In a few short lines, he told them why he had to move, and asked for their cooperation to bookmark and was even brave enough to have a share button on the new site. Within matter of 8 days, not only had the site recovered, his traffic grew beyond what was recorded at the old site. (At the moment of writing, he has gained back the dip but still wondered if he should leave the old pages intact - and I advised him to leave it for another 8 days).
7. Once the new site is up, if the domain had been changed, make sure all your physically attached marketing tools reflect the same. This include domain names on your office stationery and advertisements.

If you have done the above well, there should not be any reason why your traffic will drop even after you moved sites. As a site owner, it is important you learnt to read server logs and site meter reports.

Google now allows third party ads!

There are good news and there are excellent news. This one below is definitely excellently good for web publishers:

Greetings from Google!
We're happy to announce that the Google content network nowaccepts display ads served from qualified third-party vendors.During this initial release, only ads in English are eligible,although we look forward to offering more options in the future.
By accepting third-party ads, we can attract a greater variety ofadvertising on the Google content network, which we believe willresult over time in increased revenue for publishers and morerelevant advertising for end users.
If you're currently opted in to image ads, you're already able to receive third-party ads. ...

Designing Your Contact Page

I found this of the BBC Wales website. This is an excellent example of how a simply designed Contact Page that give you lots of food for thought and ease of use. Take a look:

BBC Wales specialist correspondents
To contact via
E-mail all can be found at BBC.CO.UK- add this onto the end of their
name.
Correspondents coordinator
Steve Duffy - 02920 322099 Email:
steve.duffy@ Fax: 02920555960
Arts and media correspondent
Jon Gower -
02920 322306 Email: jon.gower@
Education correspondent
Louise Elliott/Julie Barton - 02920 323283 Email: louise.elliott@

This was found at a newsgathering site and I think it is pretty well-done simply because the editors name and emails and phone numbers were listed. The reason readers are asked to insert bbc.co.uk after the @ after their names is to reduce spam, which is wise.

Another good contact page belongs to one of the top papers in the UK - The Guardian. Here is how it looks like:



Things to consider when designing your Contact Page:

a) What is the make-up of your readers/clientele - do they use emails a lot or phone and faxes are preferred. You may put all three in, or limit to just phone calls, if emails are a problem with your end of the line.

b) If setting up emails and spam is your concern, then have Captcha Code activated forms to keep spammers at bay. If this is not possible, perhaps do what the BBC contact list did. Either give just partial address, ie. "name@" and instruct your readers/clientele to insert the "com[any.com", or add a no-spam line before each name and instruct your email writer to delete it before sending. Such as: no_spam(removethis)_name@mediahouse.com

c) Keep hyperlinks out of emails to stop spams at the gate. Mail harvesters love these hyperlinks.

d) Only give desk info if your editor is particularly susceptible to voilent calls. For instance, your crime editor may be put at risk if his name and contact is out, so you might like to just name the contact as Crime Desk, with appropriate fax, phone or email.

e) Many media houses think they are so well known that they do not need a map. I think otherwise. Giving a map of your headquarters and branch offices, including advertisement placement offices is good public relations.

Importance Of The Contact Page - Tip For Newspaper Owners

If in the past, space constraints in print restrict putting in all your desks editors' names and their phone/fax numbers, web now affords you more freedom.

However, I still find editors who frown on putting your contact page on your website, despite its advantaged. Why this is so beats me but I am sure there are personal reasons to this, oft thinly veiled as professional reservations.

I think with the expansion of media houses in the age of converging technologies and information dissemination through a plethora of media platforms, to give a general line and expect the phone receptionist to direct calls to the appropriate department or person is suicidal - especially since every call is a potential news lead which will undoubtedly find its way to your rival if frustrated in its attempt to reach the correct desk or editor.

Media owners and news managers who continue to ignore this fact do so at the own peril, perhaps even put their jobs at stake - never mind the ill-will that could be generated where public relations is concerned.

Where the contact list is positioned is not nearly as important but as a matter of good public relations, it should be at the top right hand corner, prominently displayed.

If, positioning is a problem, then the footer is just as good provided the contact link can be seen clearly and not just linked to a general form email.
Unless your media has a highly technology conversant clientele, form and hyperlinked emails do not nearly draw as many feedback as you would like it. Besides, the chore of having to log in, checking mails and replying takes plenty of time.

In the next installment, I shall discuss what should go up in the contacts page and show you some well-designed ones.

MPI - Workshop Examining Role of Media in Era of Convergence

I am now attending the Workshop on Media in the new Era of Convergence organised by the Malaysian Press Institute Gerry Thurston of the Thomson Foundation of the UK.

The senior media man who claims to have 30 years of experience in journalism started the day's session on the look of things to come and the challenges facing traditional print media.

Among these, he examined the challenges facing the media organisation, the traditional editorial department and the journalist himself.

Seeking feedback on the Malaysian media scene, Thurston asked what is the greatest hurdle faced by Malaysian news organisation. I feel that the biggest is the skills a journalist facing media convergence should have. As it is, many journalists in the business today are not multi-tasking journalists and even as you read this, I am not sure if the institutions of higher learning training journalists have subjects related to multimedia on their syllabuses.

Google Sticks Malware Warning On Tourism Malaysia Website

Guess what? I was searching for the term: Visit Malaysia Year 2008. (See accompanying graphic.)

The second item on the list which turned up was a reference to Tourism Malaysia - but wait a minute! Google has highlighted it as a SITE NOT SAFE TO VISIT!

If I was the Tourism Minister, I would have called up Google and asked what the world's most intelligent search engine meant by sending out a Malware Warning?

Is it trying to sabotage the Nation's effort in promoting tourism? Conspiracy theories abound if you want to put your idle mind to work...

In any case, I clicked the link - despite the Malware Warning and was duly brought to this page (see below).





I was particularly attracted to this message:

Or you can continue to http://www.tourismmalaysia.gov.my/ at your own risk. For detailed information about the problems we found, visit Google's Safe Browsing diagnostic page for this site.

I decided not to risk it but visit the diagnostic page instead. Guess what I found?

What is the current listing status for www.tourismmalaysia.gov.my/?

Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 1 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 1 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 1 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 05/01/2008, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 04/27/2008.

Malicious software includes 1 scripting exploit(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 4 new processes on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including 852599.cn.

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?
Over the past 90 days, www.tourismmalaysia.gov.my/ appeared to function as an intermediary for the infection of 1 site(s) including skmethodist.edu.my.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?

In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

Boy, was I relieved. But how many people have browsed to Tourism Malaysia's website through their bookmarks? I wonder.

This is probably an anomaly - maybe some virus infection of sort. Afterall not all sites are virus-free.

However, with the Tourism Malaysia being the authority for travel to Malaysia, I hope its webmasters and the Minister in charge are aware of the current quagmire it is in and take remedial steps.

Otherwise, it may be on the receiving end of bad public relations and broken goodwill.

Will someone alert the good minister?

Video is Going To Take Over? - Now You Can Post Video Comments on Blogs!

I was alerted to this: video comments for video blogs. Until now, it is almost impossible to stream video comments to blogs, and some video blogs - many of which use YouTube. However, I was informed of this plugin - disqus

Basically, the blogowner signs up with Disqus and installs the plugin. When video blogs are posted, other Disqus users reading the comment can post their video comments. It's just as simple as uploading your video content to the web and embedding the script onto the comment box - if only you were allowed to, but now can.

This development is interesting in that now, people can talk to each other - albeit the interval between the debut of the first and current comment could be anywhere between seconds to weeks or even month. Listening and watching is certainly more believeable and interactive. It also offers a more personal experience and certainly more engaging - except for the commentator when moments of awkwardness can be quite debilitating unless you have gotten use to talking to your monitor.

Be that as it may, I am certainly looking forward to see how this develops. I am sure the people at Google in Blogger would have thought of it and somewhat restrained themselves for reasons best known to them. I will be looking forward to see if video commenting will drive the traditional write-and-post off the internet superhighway.

Right now, the plugin has been created for Wordpress, Typepad, Blogger, Movable Type, and Tumblr. This is a fair amount of support it has given itself too, considering Wordpress and Blogger controlling at least two-thirds of the blogosphere where content management is concerned.

However, within disqus itself is a social networking system, and this makes it quite attractive. Nothing drives a device as quickly as its own community. Now, if only Facebook will want to integrate it into its system.

What I am worried about is how now spamming can and most certainly will be taken to a new level. Imagine spams in the form of video ads plonked onto your websites or blogs. And what about pornography - how can it be prevented?

Where web advertising is concerned, now, will someone create video ads that you can insert between your video comment? That is most certainly an interesting thing to think about!

Google Search Applications Launched In Malaysia

It's about time. Three years ago, when searching for a good search engine for websites, I wrote to Google Inc asking if it was available for the Asia Pacific. I was a bit disappointed when told that the search applications were only available for Europe and the US then.

Yesterday, Google's PR agency wrote to me saying that they had launched the products in Malaysia - the Google Search Appliance™ and Google Mini™ in Malaysia.


The Mini



Google Appliance

Local firms can now benefit from Google's search technology to plough their database and websites. According to what I am told, Ingram Micro (Malaysia) has been appointed sole distributor for Google Enterprise for Malaysia. Indeed, this will be interesting to see, how we are moving to the next level.

At the moment, there are no price lists yet - and I am wondering why the PR firm appointed by Google did not put it in the release.

Local Varsity-College To Offer Course In Blog Writing

HAS Malaysian academicians gone bananas? I just found out that a prominent institution of higher learning is planning to hold a course in blog writing.

I have heard of all sorts of writing courses and this is the first time about a varsity-college wanting to hold a blog writing course.


VC Ibrahim

Quoting the vice-chancellor Dr Ibrahim Abu Shah:

UiTM Willing To Offer Course On Blog Writing, Says VC

SHAH ALAM, May 12 (Bernama) -- Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) is willing to offer a course in blog writing in an effort to produce more professional and ethical blog writers, its Vice Chancellor Datuk Seri Profesor Ibrahim Abu Shah said.

He said the move would also be in keeping with current developments, where a majority of the society were being drawn to the alternative media.

"Currently, we do have blogging studies in our curriculum and this will be enhanced further by introducing a course on blog writing.

"I feel that the Communication and Media Studies Faculty is ready to conduct the course and I fully support this move (to introduce blog writing course) as it is time for us to help produce bloggers who are not only professionals, but with ethics," he told a media conference after opening a seminar on Media and the 2008 General Election, here Monday. ...

And he adds:

although academic qualifications were not an asset for those wanting to become blog writers, there were certain ethics which they should adhere to in expressing their views to avoid them from writing on matters which were negative and seditious.

and

"Everybody can be a blogger but we cannot simply write as we like because there are certain rules to be observed, like whether the words used are ethical and the subject matter is true or otherwise" he added.

Come on, are you serious? Pardon my ignorance, has blog writing ever been held anywhere in a college or varsity? What are you going to teach these people? the mechanics of writing? The ethics of blogging? Or simply SEO techniques?

The part that says you cannot write anything and ethics is a really a tacit contract bloggers observe if they belong to a blogging commune, or use free bloghosts. Because if they don't, their blogs may be removed, the chances of removal highly dependent on the blog host's TOA.

I think the Prof's slip is showing when he mentioned about writing negative and seidious content. The internet is a free world, although unconditional freedom of speech is still frowned upon. However, if a blogger is bent on being unethical and raising issues bordering sedition or falsehood, how are you going to enforce your regulations or ethics on him/her? Do not for a moment forget that anonymity still reigns supreme where internet is concern and self-censorship is more likely the order of the day. trying to hope that varsity churned out bloggers would toe the ethical line is a big dream.

Having said all that, perhaps, what UiTM can probably teach, I feel, involved three areas:

a) Blog Writing - How to write in the best and more read language, and that's probably English.
b) Template Design - How to use basic coding to shape one's blog so that the elements will allow for easy reading.
c) Search Engine Optimisation - How to use tools to promote one's blog content.

- and with a heavy emphasis on SEO because that is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. SEO tuned blogsites are easily crawled than slam-bang-g'bye-maam firebrigade churned up sites. And I doubt if there was any UiTM academicians who can teach these, particularly the last item

ALternatively, institutes of higher learning like UiTM should stick to their core business - teaching the traditional academia. They should not be overly impressed by blogging just because everyone else thinks that it was responsible for the ruling coalition's defeat in the March 8 polls .

Blogging is merely a tool for informational exchange. The reason it has become popular is because blogwares have made it so much easier to write, present and manage content, and prompt interaction between the writer and his audience. Throw in audio and video as well as social bookmarking tools, you have yourself a successful business model.

For all we know, the blog's evolution could still be ongoing. The way I see it, writing blogs may even one day give way to video blogging when bandwidth becomes cheaper and broadband penetration reaches 100 per cent.

Who would want to read when they can sit back, switch on their computer, login and watch? Think about it!

Vinton Cerf is coming to Malaysia

Father of the internet, Vinton G. Cerf (64), is coming to Malaysia. I have just been notified. He will be giving a special press conference, in his capacity as vice-president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, some time next week for the WCIT2008.

I am hoping to meet this man, check out what makes him tick, and what he sees for the future of the Internet. Maybe we will learn something.

Meanwhile, if you are checking for the website (www.wcit2008.org) for information on WCIT2008, don't bother. The last time the site was fully functional was May 4. The website has been down since, returning error messages. At best you will be only accessing a cached version - thanks to Google.

It isn't funny of course, to be the organiser of the event and yet not have your website fully functional. I bet Vince will have something to say about this. I think whoever the organiser is, and hopefully not the Government, he/she will wise up before news breaks out. Even if the website has shifted, a reroute link should have been in place.

For the public relations officer in charge of this, or the PR company in charge of the WCIT account, please get your act together and tell your bosses what implication this non-functional website address does.

Now everybody wants to blog!

If you can identify collective silliness, I am sure you would have spotted it by now. It's this blog phenomenon that has taken the Malaysian cyberspace by storm. What used to be taboo is today worshipped upon.

The latest being the Information Ministry that wants to use blogs to disseminate information.

Excerpt:

Information Ministry Plans Blog To Disseminate Information


KUALA LUMPUR, May 6 (Bernama) -- The Information Ministry is planning to use blogs as a medium to disseminate information to the people, its Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek said.

"The ministry is planning on using blogs as a bridge to provide information and solicit views on issues raised," he said in reply to a question by Datuk Seri Dr Fong Chan Onn (BN-Alor Gajah) during the Dewan Rakyat session, here today.

Ahmad Shabery said he already had discussions with several bloggers to get their views.

If in the 70s the ministry used Land Rovers with hailers mounted atop, today it wants to use blogs. But why blogs?

Doesn't a website serve a similar purpose? Can't website do the same work if you maintain it with regular content updates as you would blogs? Didn't you know that websites can have categories and RSS features like blogs? Just how difficult it is do disseminate information through websites than it is through blogs? Just ponder a moment.

Many websites can be run using content management softwares like Joomla or Drupal and these do allow blog-like features to be put out. Not only that - extend its reaches with other tools including video and audio embedding. Some of the features are much better than traditional blog engines and improved with sheer technical knowledge.

Blogs are for individuals to pen their thoughts and views, and at the worst extreme, ready to be criticised, and even sued and jailed. Some of these serve a purpose to organisations or groups, allowing collective views to be shared on a single platform manned by several like-minded bloggers.

For ministries, I think it is better to stick to the current websites. Just maintain them as you would blogs and add in the diseminative features such as Email, RSS, Categories, Tags, etc. Either send your traditional webmasters to courses on blogging and how to use the social media tools or employ tech savvy new ones out there - if you can do away with the red tape and get them on Government payroll.

Another reason is, your organisational URL is already well-known by the bots and mainstream search engines have already indexed most. In case you don't know, a new blog URL takes time to be discovered and taken out of the sandbox. You think it is easy to blog and diseminate informtion? Think again.

Watch Out World, Here Comes Dr M, the blogger

FORMER Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed, 82, has started blogging at his own domain name, http://www.chedet.com, using the Blogger platform.

He has put to shame many so-called political bloggers who don't even know how to connect with their own domain name, let alone use an independent blogware.

[I expected to see www.chedet.com run on Wordpress but with the Blogger-in-Draft being developed fast, I guess Dr M has made a good choice as Blogger-in-Draft's feature would rival Wordpress's any time.]

Western policymakers had better watch what they are saying now that their No 1 Critic is well-connected to cyberspace, courtesy of Blogspot. The site www.chedet.com will be eagerly followed by Malaysians, especially those who loved his wit and sharp tongue. His views should be equally interesting to read on cyberspace. Whether he will talk only about politics or world affairs or add his observations on life in general will be eagerly awaited on cyberspace.

Now, to digress, one wonders if Dr M is the oldest blogger in Malaysia - and in keeping with the record-pursuing habit of Malaysians, if his name should be entered as the Oldest Malaysian Blogger on Malaysia's Book of Records. And if it is, who then would nominate him. Afterall, if we can have the Tallest Sandwich or Longest Lemang, what's so strange about the Oldest Blogger?

It will also be interesting to see how the longest-reigning Prime Minister talks to his readers and if their views would be published on his blogsite if they are not - as he stated on his blogsite - "anonymous postings and those containing profanities and obscenities..."

XML sitemaps and your site's indexing success

A sitemap, simply, is a layout of your site, sort of guideposts or signboards show the way to the various sections. You think of them as signboards containing the URL pointing to each section down the road.

In the past, sitemaps were created for users to see an overview of a site, pick and choose the links, no matter how deep, easily with the click of a button.

However, as websites grow on the internet and become more complex, search engines look for better ways to crawl sites and index more efficiently.

In 2005, Google launched its own protocol to crawl sites via sitemaps that are written in XML. This allowed Google bots (search engine robots - (tiny programmes that visit your site and go back to report) to track changes on the websites more efficiently.

Note however that sitemap is not a SEO tool and has no effect on general site ranking. What it does is to allow search engine bots to index your site more efficiently. In the case of Google, sitemaps allow for better pageranks.

How to create XML sitemaps?

There are several ways but I am going to show you two easy ways out of this:

1. Use an online xml sitemap generator .


2. Download a sitemap generator here and do it on your PC. (This requires installation on your PC. I have not used it but from the reviews, it appears to be quite popular. Judge it for yourself. )

Once your sitemap is created, upload it into the root directory of your site, ie. www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml Then submit to to Google