10 Helpful SitesJune 3rd, 2015

10-helpful-sitesHere are 10 sites I find particularly helpful in managing websites. I hope you find them valuable as well.

  1. Convert Case – If you manage website for a living as I do, you know people send you text in all sorts of weird ways.  You have the all-caps fanatic, or those who never use caps.  This site is a big help and time-saver.
    Website: http://convertcase.net/
  2. Down for Everyone – Clients sometimes call and tell you their sites are down when you can bring it up clear as day. This site will tell you if if the site is down for everyone or just you.
    Website: http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
  3. 301 Redirect Code Generator – Changing URLs is a necessary evil, but if you don’t redirect users, Google will penalize. This site easily create redirects for every type of server.
    Website: http://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.htm
  4. LastPass Password Generator – The days of having simple passwords are over, you need sophisticated random passwords. This site generates random passwords with different criteria. For instance, you can create a 20 character password with mixed case, characters and numbers.
    Website: https://lastpass.com/generatepassword.php
  5. WhatTheFont – Ever look at a graphic and wonder what font they use?  This site will help you to identify which fonts. The good thing is they give you close options which helps in case one is ultra-expensive.
    Website: http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
  6. Lorem Ipsum – If you design website, placeholder text is always needed.  This site generates placeholder text, by paragraphs, number of words or bytes.
    Website: http://www.lipsum.com/
  7. Character Counter – If you post to sites like Twitter, you need to know how may characters, this site offers an easy way to do that and counts characters, words, sentences, paragraphs and white-space.
    Website: http://www.charactercountonline.com/
  8. Alphabetizer – Ever need to alphabetize a list, this site is for you.  It also removes dupes and has other features for CSV files including adding line breaks.
    Website: http://www.textfixer.com/tools/alphabetize-text-words.php
  9. Google Translate – if you manage sites in languages not your own, Google Translate is a good site. Not perfect, but it does the trick most of the time. It is a good idea to run the translated text by a native speaker as sometime a word Google may come up may not always be the best choice.
    Website: https://translate.google.com/
  10. Sucuri Malware Scanner – If you manage a site at some point you will need to scan it for malware.  This site does a good cursory scan, though even they say: “Although we do our best to provide the best results, 100% accuracy is not realistic, and not guaranteed.
    Website: https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/

I’d love to hear what tools/sites you use every day, please comment below with sites and tools that make your life easier.

Answer emails or take down your website!!May 16th, 2015

You go through the trouble of building a website. For your health, right? NO. Because you want to increase business. So when someone emails you or fills out a form, you should answer as soon as possible. Seems elementary, right?

Yes, I agree. But my experiences indicate that people still don’t get this simple concept.

Here are a couple of examples:

  1. I had some trash, a couple of old TVs, an old desk and assorted junk. I emailed a couple of companies. No responses. So I went to a national company I knew would be more expensive. I went to their site, scheduled a pickup, they came and got paid. The other 2 morons? They got nothing, spit, zero, ugatz.
  2. My daughter’s car had a few dings.  I had just completed a site for a great company, Dent Bandit based in Florida that does paintless dent repair.  They are too far away so I emailed a couple of local companies.  No response.  UNREAL. I will keep trying, but giving someone money shouldn’t be this hard right?

I get a lot of my business at RooSites as companies get frustrated when companies managing their websites are unresponsive and slow.  As we turn around 99% of requests the same day people are thrilled.  Somehow companies manage to ignore potentials customers. The same people bitch how hard business is and that they can’t make money.

I wish I could say the 2 examples above were anomalies. But I find that most companies never respond or respond weeks later.  Not acceptable.

So I repeat the title of this article: Answer emails or take down your website!! You are wasting money having a site when it generates potential business you ignore.

 

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