| LED Digest 2601: Facebook Groups for Traffic |
|
|
|
==================================================
The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.WillMaster.com/Master : the LED's Key Sponsor Master Series Software - Get Connected with Your WebSite http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== Guest Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. March 5, 2008 Issue no. 2601 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> --== Success with Facebook Groups? ==-- ~ Anthony Kirlew "...what strategy do you think worked to build the group?" --== Adwords Accelerator ==-- ~ Marty R. Milette "...it is well worth visiting the site just to watch the videos." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Lurkers ==-- ~ Salem Kashou "I used to look forward to reading. Personally, the digest got too personal. Bad vibes." --== Negative Publicity: Caught Stealing ==-- ~ Phil Chave "...Ebay is a counterfeiters paradise." ~ Shel Horowitz "You have 60 days to contest a charge on your card." --== CSS & Web Standards ==-- ~ Tom Aman "...consider using HTML 4.01 Transitional or Strict..." --== Dreamweaver & Valid Code [was: Standards] ==-- ~ Peter D'Aprix "...any other LEDers out there who have used Dreamweaver CS3 with happy or unhappy CSS results?" ========= NEW ===================================== From: Anthony Kirlew Subject: Success With Facebook Groups? Has anyone here had success using Facebook groups to build traffic? If so, what strategy do you think worked to build the group? For those that have groups, do you favor open or moderated groups? If open, have you had any trouble for people posting spam or obscenities? I was going to do a poll from my blog, but I figured I ask here first. Thanks, Anthony Kirlew http://www.OldSchoolSEO.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Marty R. Milette Subject: Excellent Product - Adwords Accelerator If anyone doing AdWords hasn't seen "Adword Accelerator", it is well worth visiting the site just to watch the videos. Version 3 was just released today and when I upgraded my copy was blown away with all the new features and improvements. http://www.adwordaccelerator.com Technical support is quick and personal - probably because the number of customers was strictly limited with the earlier version - don't know about this one. Previously, I generated keyword lists (over 10,000 at a time) using a rather geeky method of creating a Cartesian result set first with Excel and later with Access and SQL Server. This new tool really makes that method obsolete and gives a great deal of useful information - of great interest is the list of web sites that are your competitors for each keyword phrase. (Note: I am not affiliated with the company, just a delighted customer.) Marty R. Milette http://hotel-club.net ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Salem Kashou Subject: Lurker > Oh you're out there. Lurking lurkers hiding > in the shadows of the LED... reading every > issue, or just bits and pieces. Sampling > the wares. But never putting a coin in the > box before you leave. Now's your chance to > repay that karmic debt you owe the LED > regulars, and POST something dammit. - Adam Audette, LED 2600 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2015/190/ This subject line grabbed me, since I've abstained from daily reading. However, I cannot bring myself to unsubscribe, been here a while, and I used to look forward to reading. Personally, the digest got too personal. Bad vibes. Further, the ideas are far too scattered. Too many posts seemed selfish (insert my link here) or dominated. Lurker is a serious subject and I suspect Adam is not just out of ideas, but reaching out to address the aforementioned concerns. Puzzle: Atip tae? Salem Kashou Marketing Manager KangarooBrands.com http://www.kangaroobrands.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Inexpensive Content Rotator Rotate any part of a page. Or even the whole page. ~ Image ~ Headline ~ Leading paragraph ~ Special pricing Content Carousel - http://www.willmaster.com/carousel ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Phil Chave Subject: Ethics > I hope to teach this petty crook a lesson > -- when you are caught stealing, caught > lying and refuse to refund the money or > admit guilt-- better think about the > consequences -- negative publicity isn't > necessarily good just because it is free. - Marty R. Milette, LED 2600 Hi Marty Presumably you will be making all of your data available to the original business plan owners for them to take the appropriate action. It may even be them that offers you a refund for bringing it to their attention. As in court, they will be beneficiaries of any profits made by the fraudulant company. It seems to be going on all over. I've seen my own material on Ebay, repackaged and sold as someone elses. To give them their due, if you can convince them of your rights in law by proving ownership, Ebay shuts these bogus operators down quite rapidly, but it would seem Ebay is a counterfeiters paradise. Good for you to bring it into the open. All the best Phil Chave www.distanthealer.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Shel Horowitz Subject: Ethics Well, I tout myself as an expert on business ethics as well as a consumer advocate, so let me jump in. 1. You have 60 days to contest a charge on your card. Contact your CC provider--in writing. Most of the time, there's a form to fill out on the back of the monthly bill. 2. You my want to contact Palo Alto or whoever the actual copyright owner is--they may have the resources to shut the crook down. Shel Horowitz http://www.frugalmarketing.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Standards This is in response to some of Brett Atkin's points/questions (LED 2598 http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2013/190/ ). But first, I would like to quote a couple of items from the W3C FAQ re XHTML since I feel these are appropriate to the discussion. (See http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq for the full FAQ) Quote: ----------------------- Why are browsers so fussy about XML? They were more accepting with HTML. This is deliberate. HTML browsers accept any input, correct or incorrect, and try to make something sensible of it. This error-correction makes browsers very hard to write, especially if all browsers are expected to do the same thing. It has also meant that huge numbers of HTML documents are incorrect, because since they display OK in the browser, the author isn't aware of the errors. This makes it incredibly difficult to write new web user agents since documents claiming to be HTML are often so poor. Why should I care if my document is in correct HTML? It displays all right on my browser. All browsers know how to deal with correct HTML. However, if it is incorrect, the browser has to repair the document, and since not all browsers repair documents in the same way, this introduces differences, so that your document may look and work differently on different browsers. Since there are hundreds of different browsers, and more coming all the time (not only on PCs, but also on PDAs, mobile phones, televisions, printers, even refrigerators), it is impossible to test your document on every browser. If you use incorrect HTML and your document doesn't work on a particular browser, it is your fault; if you use correct HTML and it doesn't work, it is a bug in the browser. ----------------------- End of quote > I just completed my first site done > entirely in CSS. I have to say, it was > really a pain in the a#$. What would have > taken me about 3 hours total [the old way] > ... took me days to do with CSS. I totally agree - CSS can be a real pain to learn and to achieve the same or similar display in all browsers. It can be really frustrating at times since often the desired section of the layout can be created in minutes using tables, etc. CSS has a pretty steep learning curve to assimilate totally, including being aware of various browser shortcomings / differences (same kind of shortcomings that used to plague ordinary HTML). > I'm trying to do the right thing by > following standards and implementing sound > design and coding, but how do you justify > the cost to the client? Once learned, CSS based pages should be at least as fast to create as tbe old, non-CSS HTML. And they can certainly make it much easier and faster to change to whole appearance of a site. It is the learning curve that makes it slow. If you went back to school, took seminars, or whatever, to learn a new skill for your own improvement would you charge that cost directly to a client? I would suggest that at least part of the extra time spent learning the ins and outs of CSS while creating a site should be part of overhead, same as a course or seminar, and not charged directly to a client. As an interim step (and a suggestion for anyone, like myself, who is in the process of learning CSS), consider using HTML 4.01 Transitional or Strict so you can use much of the best of both worlds - old fashioned HTML with some or most of the old attributes for the elements along with the benefits of style sheets (try inline styles initially to keep it simpler). Then you can mix CSS layout with older methods such as tables. Don't try to get to 100% CSS layout initially. This should make it faster to create totally validatable pages fairly quickly and that will work as intended in all or almost all browsers. > Until the browsers all work the same from a > rendering perspective, does it really makes > sense to stay awake at night thinking > you're a bad developer because your site > fails validation? > > I agree 100% that we should strive for > standards compliant sites in theory, but in > practice, it just doesn't seem practical. > Once all the browser companies get on the > same page ... IMHO, part of the problem with browsers behaving differently is that too many sites have been created over the years that do not adhere to standards (and I am as guilty of that as the next guy using the old approach of "write what works, not what is correct" and ignoring standards). As a result, browser writers have been very creative in how they deal with the bad stuff and, as stated in the W3C FAQ, "not all browsers repair documents in the same way". One offshoot of this is that different browsers sometimes handle valid code enough differently to make page design something of a headache even with plain HTML. But I do not believe that is a good reason to continue to write invalid code. If all page creators wrote nothing but valid HTML/XHTML/CSS, then there might be some hope of convincing all browser creators to move to the same page. Also, bear in mind that, if search engine results are important, you must consider their spiders as well as potentially other programs. (I sell a link checker and it is almost unbelievable how much extra code it takes to allow for all the bad HTML - parsing a document could be done with 1/2 the code and in a fraction of the time if all pages were guaranteed to contain only valid code.) Instead of "browsers", think "user agents" since this covers any software that may access your pages and you may well be creating pages to be *read* by a variety of agents. The other reason for ensuring pages (and the supporting CSS) validate is to ensure that some hidden, possibly accidental, error (maybe as simple as a typo) does not cause some unexpected behavior in some browsers or cause future problems if something in the style sheet is changed. Consider a page that is almost perfect XHTML, using perfect CSS, but that contains one error that a validator would catch (hint, hint, Brett). Almost all of the elements on the page are identified with an "id". Each "id" is supposed to be unique, but on this page one "id" is duplicated. Probably an oversight or typo, but if CSS references this particular id and the CSS reference affects formatting and is ever changed, would this cause a problem? Even without this change, is the page presently displaying as intended? Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - related topic -------- From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Dreamweaver [was: Standards] > A short while ago, I posted some comments > re validating pages to standards. It didn't > generate much comment or discussion (as I > had hoped it would). Do LEDers not care > about standards? - Tom Aman RE CSS Web Pages Adam, I think Tom has been sneaking some of your 100% cacao. Can you email us all some squares as an attachment to the LED? Just use rubber gloves when handling it so my virus filter doesn't strip it off. But to point, intellectually, I can really see the advantage of making sites that fit all new and evolving standards. CSS sounds good but I have heard a lot of horror stories about it too from the standpoint of both learning it and applying it. I recently bought Dreamweaver CS3 and am slogging my way through learning it. Actually, I am still at the stage of trying to understand it, then I hope the learning and remembering will follow suit. For someone with my limited technial capabilities it is a little like learning Chinese. The application repeatedly makes the claim that Dreamweaver will write cross platform and cross browser compatability so that the CSS pages will show correctly on all browsers. Presumably if you use the various templates and modules that are provided by Dreamweaver. So now my question. Since I am not a programmer and never will be, I will be relying on Dreamweaver to deliver. Are there any other LEDers out there who have used Dreamweaver CS3 with happy or unhappy CSS results? Results that do indeed hold up across platforms and browsers? In addition, have they been able to design sites that are graphically interesting rather than cookie cutter layouts? AND make them work properly in CSS. I could easily sit back and allow my current sites all built in tables to just carry on since they all seem to display quite correctly with current browsers and I don't have the problems of one box over lapping the text in an other when the font is enlarged by the site visitor. But I also feel I have to be prepared for browsers that I understand are coming down the pike that will not disply the older tables sites and older font tags properly. But right now, I also believe I have to be prepared for older browsers still in use not displaying the CSS site correctly either. So all you technical gurus out there, help! Are we stuck in one of those transition states - damned if you do and damned if you don't? Will welcome experiences here. Peter D'Aprix (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent -- that is to triumph over old age." - Thomas Bailey Aldrich |
