| LED Digest 2622: Alternatives to Exchange |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher Boutique Internet Marketing: SEO, SEM, Social Media http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. April 10, 2008 Issue no. 2622 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Online Backups ==-- ~ Barry Mills "...the only advice I can give is to contact your hosting company." ~ Mark Knowles "...there are two main items you would need to replicate." --== Alternatives to Exchange Server ==-- ~ Brett Atkin "Google Apps can do similar things." ~ Andreas Huttenrauch "Exchange is a great mail server for large companies." ~ Robert Marlbrough, Jr. "I had offered a combination of Linux hosting with Exchange email..." --== Site Architecture for Multiple Languages ==-- ~ Adam Audette "One workaround is setting up a root page with site and language information..." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Barry Mills Subject: Online backups > Just wondering if anyone has suggestions > for making a backup copy of a website (my > own, of course!) and storing it remotely on > another hosting server. - Jackie Monticup, LED 2621 Jackie - the only advice I can give is to contact your hosting company. It seems highly unlikely in the scenario you describe that you will be able to take a fully working back-up copy of your web site, as you are almost certainly using the hosting company's own software to make your site function, and they are most unlikely to release a copy of their code. You talk about creating a working copy, but that sounds like doing the job all over, which would negate any benefit to using their service. It's likely that if they host serious web sites they will have had the back-up question many times, and they should have some answers. They should certainly be able to provide you with data back-ups, and if they can't or won't do this I wouldn't deal with them even if their software built my web site in 2 minutes, ironed all my shirts and rubbed my shoulders at the end of a long day all for $5 a year!. But a data back-up isn't a working web site, and you will almost certainly suffer an interruption if you lose their services while you make other arrangements. At the end of the day, vulnerability to a company's continued existence is a price you are likely to have to pay to use their web-building tools. You need to ask them what reassurance they can offer, and check out their financial status as you would a major customer, because they probably present more risk to your business than any single debtor. Barry S Mills Chairman Netstep http://www.netstep.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark Knowles Subject: Online backups Jackie, There are a couple of things that will influence your available options here. Knowing a little more about your new site would be helpful. In the spirit of avoiding the "it depends" answer, I'll take a swing at answering your question. To do this I need to assume that the online editor and the eCommerce store are part of a system that brings valuable features to the table and makes site administration easier for you and that there parts of your site that are moving. i.e. A search feature, product sorting, user generated content, or a calendar. Any of these features bring with them a challenge from a backup perspective because there are two main items you would need to replicate. The first one is your content, and the second item is the system that you are running on; i.e. their online editor and all the functionality their eCommerce and content management system (CMS) brings to the table. Your new provider is either using a common product that can be obtained from it's creator or they are providing their own software to help you get your job done. In either case the Store, or CMS in the background is likely in an changing environment that is having features added to it to stay viable and respond to market demands. That's a good thing! So, the particular version that you are using is important to you from a backup perspective because in a disaster recovery scenario, you would need these versions of the systems up and ready to receive your content. I assume your content is changing too. New products, text, and images, etc. Your content is being stored inside a database or databases and you wil also need that to be backed up. The pages that visitors view at your site are rendered from the database as visitors request them so, there aren¹t any static HTML pages sitting on a server that you can simply copy. These systems can be wonderful time savers and enhance your visitor experience but, with them they bring some infrastructure complexity. Your simplest next steps are to speak with your new provider and press into the back up and disaster recovery options that they have in place and see if that will get you the protection your business needs. They are in the best position to provide this important service to your company. Kind regards, Mark Knowles Smart Solutions http://www.smartz.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Brett Atkin Subject: Exchange > ... a client of mine is migrating his mail > to a hosted exchange server because it > offers him collaborative tools and tricks > that he thinks will be worth the money. > > My question is - are there any alternatives > for this other than Exchange. - John Smart, LED 2621 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2036/190/ John, In general, a hosted Exchange solution takes the features of Outlook and provides that functionality from any machine with web access. It also allows for the sharing of calenders, contacts and tasks among those in the same account. If your client can't live without Outlook, it isn't a bad solution. Storage space might be a concern if you client never deletes an email though. The expense will be an issue as well if they need a lot of accounts and storage space. Google Apps can do similar things. You didn't mention what features are important, but Basecamp, Backpack and/or Highrise from 37 Signals might provide the desired functionality as well. The first step will be to determine what they want, why they want it and what their budget is. Those answers will help you decide if a combination of Gmail and Backpack (for example) will provide the best solution. The best solution may be hosted Exchange though. The decision shouldn't be based on emotion (but it will be...). I have a client that has toyed with the idea of hosted Exchange and speaks of Outlook like their life depends on it. At least two of the people in the office have pst files in the 4-6 gig range and have 1000's (I'm not joking) of messages in their inbox. If your client is like that, you might have better luck convincing them to have their wisdom teeth pulled without anesthetic. Good luck! Brett Atkin BrettAtkin.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Andreas Huttenrauch Subject: Exchange John Smart mentioned that a client of his is moving to hosted Exchange and asked for alternatives. Exchange is a great mail server for large companies. It is not cheap, and requires technical know-how on site to maintain this properly. Hosted Exchange outsources the hardware and maintenance, so you don't need to have all the know-how and maintain the server on-site. However, hosted Exchange can get VERY expensive. I've seen companies offer this at $35 / mailbox / month, and each mailbox only included 250MB of space (need to pay extra for more). One solution that we found and now use internally is Kerio Mail Server. It does most of the things Exchange does, and it way cheaper. It's perfect for smaller companies, and has some great features. Although I haven't seen a hosted version yet, I would never recommend hosted mail anyway as backups and archive retrieval can become troublesome if not done in-house. We're not affiliated with Kerio - just a happy customer. Check out http://www.kerio.com/kms_home.html Andreas Huttenrauch Globi Web Solutions www.globi.ca -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Rob Marlbrough Subject: Exchange I have a unique perspective on this, as I not only own a web hosting company that runs qmail on Linux, but I am also a Windows guy from the corporate world managing multiple Exchange servers, hundreds of users, corresponding mobile devices, etc. Exchange has some fairly unique features that I've yet to see anyone pull off as well. It supports server-side storage of a user's email (including server-side processing of rules), calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, as well as corporate collaboration features (sometimes called groupware) like public folders, meeting invites where you can accept, accept tentatively, or decline outright, even propose new times ,sharing of calendars (allowing others to view and even add to or edit appointments), resource scheduling (things like meeting rooms, projectors, etc), and assigning tasks to others (and tracking status of tasks you've assigned to others). Imagine now taking all of the above, and syncing it all to any number of PCs using Outlook, as well as offline Laptops using cached mode, and make it accessible from any web browser via Outlook Web Access, via any cell phone browser via Outlook Mobile Access, as well as syncing over the air in real time to specific mobile devices using ActiveSync, which is built in to all Windows Mobile PDAs, Smartphones, and Pocket PCs, plus some Treos, and was just released for the iPhone as well. I've seen some mail servers try and do some of the above, but none have a clean end-user friendly interface, are as reliable, have the enterprise support, or depth of features. IMAP, the Internet standard if you will, does some of this for email, but so much is missing in terms of syncing calendars, contacts, and tasks, and is no where near as comprehensive as Exchange. Lotus Notes may have been a competitor in this area years ago, but not any longer in my opinion. There have been other attempts, like SuSE OpenExchange (now Novell, and is now 404 Not Found), IceWarp.com, Visnetic Mail Server, Instant OGo, MDaemon, Kerio, and others, but many rely on Outlook still, using plug-ins, have weak clients, no mobile syncing, cost almost the same as Exchange (without the equivalent support, user base, etc) - all are good attempts, but none in my opinion come close. Exchange 2007 is even better, with new unified messaging (managing voicemails and faxes), Outlook Voice Access (call in to access not only voicemails, but email and calendar items), and lots more. Yes, even though I have my own web hosting company, with multiple Linux mail servers processing thousands of emails an hour, I still have my own mailbox forwarding all email out to an Exchange server, where my PCs and AT&T Tilt access everything instantly, with it all kept in sync, all the time. At one time, I had offered a combination of Linux hosting combined with Exchange email, and I got very little interest, but maybe that's finally starting to change. :-) Thanks, Robert Marlbrough, Jr. Web Wizards, http://www.WebWizards.Net/ High-Speed Web Site Hosting, Reseller Solutions, Domain Names -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Adam Audette Subject: Site Architecture - bilingual site > I have a question about site architecture > for a bilingual site. - Magnus Brattemark Magnus, thanks for you post. This is a really great question, and since no one's responded I thought I'd tackle it. First, there's lots of information about site architecture online from usability professionals, from information architects, but not much from search marketers. Second, there's really no "right way" to do it since the implementation is dependent on so many factors governed by business and site goals. So that said, let's dive in: > ... someone was claiming that Google only > uses pages from the first and second level > to choose links for the snippets. From my experience, this is false. However, good site architecture will absolutely aid crawlers in correctly identifying your site's topics and structure, and can help when sitelinks (the proper term for the extra links in Google SERPs - "snippets" are the description summaries under the titles) are being created for a site. If you want to see an example of what NOT to do with site architecture, just take a gander at the www.led-digest.com site. This is built on the Joomla CMS (an old version) and has horrible organization, many duplicated URLs and content, all sorts of ugly issues. But Google has given the domain sitelinks because it's a trusted domain. As you can see by the result in Google, the sitelinks are not pretty! http://www.google.com/search?&q=led+digest That's a result of poor information architecture on the LED site. But those sitelinks are all multiple levels deep (4+) beneath the root domain. > My conclusion was (of course) that I will > never get any snippets since I have very > little useful information on those levels. > (I know that it takes more than a good > site architecture to get the snippets). One workaround is setting up a root page with site and language information (really a landing page), with the language-specific directories beneath it: www.alfatravelguide.com www.alfatravelguide.com/english/index.htm www.alfatravelguide.com/svenska/index.htm www.alfatravelguide.com/espanol/index.htm Note how I'm using the language-specific term for each of the specific sections of the site - this is good. Do this. The landing page greets the visitor, tells them about the various versions of the site and so forth. This should allow search engines to index your main landing page and each of the language versions (hopefully). And it does away with the 302 you're using now with the browser detection script. But the best possible solution is to register separate domains with the country TLD for each language. Then, authenticate each of your sites in Google's webmaster console and specify them for the geo-location. In this scenario you'd also maintain a global site presence to tie it all together. > Then I found an article by Shari Thurow > clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3438481 where > she explains that she generally keeps 100 > to 200 of the most important pages in the > root directory. It's an old article, but Shari's points are still very much on target. Shari's one of the foremost experts on IA for search marketing. The idea of placing most of your valuable pages in the root directory makes perfect sense for SEO, since you're telling search engines (generally) that they're the most important documents on the site. Hopefully this helps a bit. It's a huge topic and we're only scratching the surface. It's also very hard to speak in specifics since this sort of process demands creativity for the specific site in question. No easy answers, always challenging, always changing. Some reasons why I love my job! All the best, Adam Audette http://www.audettemedia.com (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one." - Elbert Hubbard |
