Storm Code

Many people wonder what a Blog can really do for their business. The answer to this question depends on what your website needs. A well written blog gives your website a more professional feel. An informative blog can drive hits to your website. A blog that is updated often will keep people coming back to your website and offer new visitors fresh, up to date content. A properly integrated blog can help save money by allowing you to control the content on your site without needing to pay for the services of a web developer. Keyword rich blog posts can dramatically help your search engine optimization.

A Blog gives your site dynamic content. Content that you, the owner of the website, can control. There are many different kinds of blogging software that can be integrated into your existing website. Wordpress is our Blogging software of choice. It has an easy to use interface, numerous plug-ins and is constantly being updated and extended.

Armed with a Blog powered by Wordpress you no longer need to pay a web developer when you want to add content to your website. If you need to update information, fix a spelling mistake, add new content, change a picture, or any other situation in which information on your website needs to be added, updated or deleted, the power is in your hands.

Once you have your Blog integrated with your website you can begin to write the content. Informative and up to date information in your blog posts is a great way to get people coming back to your website over and over. They may even send the link to your website to friends, or others they know would be interested in the information posted on your blog. This gives you even more chances to convert these visitors into leads and clients.

Most Blogging software (such as Wordpress) is designed to be very search engine friendly, and easily installed and configured plug-ins can be added to make it even more so. Links to your blog posts can be submitted to Digg.com and LotText.com, further increasing traffic to your website as well as your Search Engine Optimization.

There are some pitfalls to having a blog as well. If the blog is not setup properly, or properly integrated with your existing website, it can be hard to find, hurt your Search Engine Optimization, or appear unprofessional to potential clients visiting your site. The initial installation of Blogging software can be very difficult for anyone who is not tech-savvy.

If you do not already have a website and are looking for set one up around a blog, then Wordpress can be used not only as a peice of Blogging software, but as a fully configurable content management system that can run your website. Each page, post, category, link and image, fully editable by you.

At Storm Code we install, setup, design and host numerous Blogs. If you have any questions, or would like to get a quote. Please contact us.

No one likes waiting.  Not in line, not on hold, and certinaly not for a webpage to load.  That’s why optimizing your website for speed is so important.  Many things go into website optimization.  In this article we will focus on how database queries can slow down your website if they are not done properly.

Bulky queries to your database can drastically slow down the speed of your website.  This isn’t specific to MySQL, this problem is present in any website that is backed by a database.  Normally when you go to a website, the web server serves you a page of HTML.  That’s simple, small and quick.  When you have a dynamic page done in PHP, ASP or JSP an extra step is added (this article assumes that PHP is the language being used).  The web server must compile the code on the server and then serve the resulting page.  When you have a dynamic page that queries a database, the server must compile the code, stop to query the database server, wait for a response, continue compiling the code, and then serve the page.  Another added step.

The time it takes the server to serve up a page that requires one or more queries to the database server is negligible most of the time.  Especially if the database server is hosted locally on your web server.  However, with large, complicated queries, the time the web server must wait for the database server to run the query and return the result can go from negligible to intolerable.

This is mostly caused by poor structure in the queries made on the database.  As a rule a query should never return more results then is needed, and should never return information that is not needed.  This might seem like common sense, and indeed it is, but never the less, some developers do not take care when writing their SQL queries.  The result is extended load times for the pages that use them.

Page load times can have a negative effect many things.  First and foremost the patience of  your visitor.  Second and less well known is search engine optimization.  Long load times can result in lower page ranks.  Third and possibly even less well known is the effectiveness of your CPC (Cost per Click) advertisement campaigns.   Google Adwords as well as many other online marketing tools take the load time of your landing page into account.  Longer page load time can result in lower quality scores for your keywords.

Let us examine an example.  You have a table in your database that holds information about various books.  That information is as follows: Author Name, Purchase Price, Sale Price,  Number of Copies in Stock, ISBN, Date Published, Publishing Company, Number of Pages, Blurb about the book.

On your home page you want to display a random book.  The information about the book you want to display is: Author Name, Date Published, Blurb.

Some developers will take a shortcut when writing the query to the database and simply ask for all information about all the books that are stored in the table.  Then they’ll pick a random book and the information they want about that book in their PHP code.   This causes several things to happen.  First, the query takes MUCH longer to execute because it has to return all the information about every book in the database.  Second, the PHP code has to deal with the massive amount of information.  Third,  significant strain is put on both your web server and your database server.  Fourth, the page takes much longer to load then it should.  That is the fast way, not the right way.

Two things can be done right off the bat to optimize this query.  First, instead of returning the entire tables worth of books, have the database server pick a book randomly and return only the information about that specific book.  There is no need to use PHP to do something that the database server itself can do.  Second, structure your SQL query so that you are asking for only the information you want.  Author name,  Date Published, Blurb.  This significantly reduces the strain on your database server and increases the speed at which the query executes.  It also increases the speed at which your PHP code can execute, as it is dealing with much less information.  It also doesn’t have to randomize that information, or sift through it.  It simply displays the result of the database query.

The example above may seem unrealistic, but it’s something we see time and time again when we take on new clients.  Some developers charge such a small fee that if they took the time to develop your site properly they wouldn’t make any money.  That is the proverbial catch.

There are many things that must be taken into account when your site is being developed for it to be as optimized as possible.  Properly structured and thought out database queries are just the tip of the iceberg.

Some people hear the word Database and cringe at the complexity and cost of setting one up. There would have been cause for such a reaction ten, maybe even five years ago. Now however, in the age of MySQL, having Database support for a website is much less complex and time consuming.

MySQL was first released in 1995 and has since become one of the dominant web based database management systems (DMBS). PHP, Ruby on Rails, and ASP all support MySQL. Wikipedia runs on the MediaWiki software which is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database. MySQL is used for running many of the popular content management systems such as Joomla!, WordPress, and Drupal. For more information on MySQL history and documentation please visit Wikipedia

A database is integral for creating a dynamic website. Having a database supporting your website allows you to have features and functionality like user registration, blogs, statistics, content management, photo galleries, video galleries, searchable content, product tracking, e-commerce, and much more.

These days most web hosting providers (including Storm Code) offer MySQL as a standard feature of your web hosting package. Some providers offer unlimited MySQL databases, while others limit the number or size of the databases.

Creating a database is as simple as clicking a few buttons. The simplicity ends at that point though and the real work begins. Modeling out the Information Architecture of the Database takes both time and knowledge. A database must be normalized to prevent logical or structural problems, and normalization must be taken into account during the modeling phase of the database design. Normalization can be very tricky for an inexperienced designer and can cause severe problems and limitations in the future if not done correctly. For more information on Database Normalization read up at Wikipedia.

At Storm Code we have a team of experienced designers that understand the pitfalls and production delays caused by bad database design and we know how to avoid them. We have experience designing databases in many areas including but not limited to Real Esate and Automotive sales. If you are interested in speaking with one of our Project Managers about your existing database or a new project please refer to our Contact page.

Have you ever been to a website several times over a period of time and not noticed any changes in the content? What did you think about that website and the company or person(s) that it represents? Would you go into work everyday wearing the same clothes? Would you answer the same question in exactly the same way and carry on the same dialog with peers and potential clients regardless of the situation or present state of affairs? If you did, do you think that would make you more or less productive? More or less interesting? More or less likely to secure that client, close that deal, or gain repeat business?

A static website with nothing new gives the user no reason to return, aside from referencing data that they already know exists. It offers no insight into your business or life. In some minds it might even be seen as lazy or boring. Surely if you went into every business meeting with the same attitude and the same canned responses to questions, you would not be successful. Being adaptable and offering new, useful, or interesting information is something we all do on a daily basis. It’s what drives business through our doors.

In a world where more and more business is being conducted on the web, the same strategies that apply to real world business can be applied to the web presence of a business. A dynamic website gives the user, be it a client, employee, or potential sale a reason to keep coming back to visit with each visit being another potential sale.

A dynamic website does not need to be a drain on your time or your resources if it is setup properly. Content can be setup before hand and automatically made visible on a certain date. Features and functionality can be created that add a dynamic look and feel to your website without actually requiring you do any additional work.

As an example let me use a Real Estate Brokerage. Many Brokerages have found that storing their information in a web based database accessible through an easy to use back-end management system increases productivity as well as the availability of information. Instead of endless printouts of listing sheets and folders (virtual or physical) containing pictures of properties, you have a central point at which to enter and maintain the data. Any Agent can access the system and view compiled property information. Why stop with just allowing employees access to the information? What about the clients? By adding a search for properties page to the front-end of the website (the area of the website accessible by clients or potential clients) you create a dynamic website that requires nothing more then business as usual to keep it updated.

The information being made available to the web surfer is just a scaled down version of what is already available to Agents through the back-end system. Now the Brokerage has a dynamic website with properties that are updated at the same instant an Agent enters or updates them in the back-end database. It’s killing two birds with one stone and creating a website that users will want to come back to in the future.

This is just one example of how to take a static website and turn it into an ever changing marketing tool to drive in business.