Technical Blog
Social Media Auto Publish plugin for WordPress
I am testing the Social Media Auto Publish plugin by XYZ Scripts to see if it will automatically post every blog post from this webpage to my business Facebook page. Sharing blog posts automatically from a Wordpress.com site is automatic, but not so simple for...
NoSQL Databases: Businesses’ Solution To Handling Big Data Online
Large-scale data is a fact of life for businesses today. While NoSQL provides several viable solutions to handling big data, they will not replace relational databases, but rather add to them. Each data model has its particular use, and businesses will benefit from choosing the type of database suited to the nature of the problem they are trying to solve, keeping in mind that they can have multiple types of databases in use in any one organization. Relational databases are familiar, and can be used for utility projects, whereas NoSQL is an immature technology–very new, so not many people know how to work with it, but it may be worth the risk for a business to use NoSQL if they are implementing something strategic that needs to handle big data or have fast access for a competitive advantage (such as with Amazon).
Final Project in Laravel, Graduation, and Onwards
For my Capstone project I chose to do a cookbook, as I’ve been accumulating recipes I’ve made on little pieces of paper in a huge stack in a bookshelf in my kitchen. I took the plunge and coded my project in PHP using the artisan framework Laravel. Laravel for PHP is like JQuery for Javascript–it’s not a language, per se, but a complex library of functions that one can hook into to create applications more quickly and securely–Laravel does some heavy lifting, but has a large learning curve, especially as it is all object-oriented. I could (and probably should) devote a whole blog to Laravel.
Adding APIs to your website
API stands for Application Programming Interface and is a set of protocols and functionality, implemented on an internet connected system, which allows other software (usually apps) to request information and calculations from it. Essentially, APIs help build applications, and function similarly to plugins or widgets for Wordpress–they add functionality, but without having to be in a CMS framework. you can plug code right into html–with some javascript and jquery to help, to install APIs into your website or application. They are often the go-betweens in the communication between people and services.
Facebook’s Business Pages Analytics
Facebook is tremendously popular, having over 1 billion users and 55% global penetration rate as of mid 2013.1 With that exposure and audience, your business can’t afford NOT to be on Facebook, if only to increase brand awareness in a popular medium. There are nearly 700 million users on Facebook every day, with an average of 645 million weekly local business page views. Once you build an audience, your impact increases.
How to Engage Your Customers Through Social Media
Face it, social media can feel like a bit of a blind date sometimes–there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a response, or what the response will be, positive or negative. But, rather than be discouraged, or stop before you start, consider that honing your message will help a great deal–putting goals in place before you start for what type of exposure, engagement, and interest you’d like to create, and defining measurable metrics that coincide with your business goals.
Social Media Campaigns
Whole Foods was largely established by John Mackey, CEO and co-founder, mainly because he was passionate about food and eating healthy, and wanted to offer healthy eating choices to people, for he, himself, had grown up largely on TV dinners. Now, that’s a great personal perspective to come from, and usually he would be a great proponent of his own store, except that when you combine his “hippie demeanor” with extreme, right-wing libertarianism (Ayn Rand is one of his role models) you have a complete disconnect with many of the potential market who would shop at Whole Foods, which has a largely liberal, left-wing customer base.
The Marketer’s Dilemma
Some companies have been resisting addition of social media for marketing, but change is inexorable, and it is better to get ahead on the emergent paradigm than to rest on laurels–trust me, I’m a print designer. I know all about letting change and technology progressing and turning a blind eye until suddenly, the market has changed. It’s not pretty. “It’s easier to keep up than catch up” the old adage goes, and all of the old marketing dogs are busy learning new tricks to keep up with the business.
WordPress User Manual
I’m excited to offer this Wordpress User Manual to my clients, to help them edit, add, and maintain content on their pages. It is geared towards the User role of “Editor” and not Admin, so is scaled down from what it takes to create a site–it is more geared towards helping customers keep up the content of the site.
Getty Images free for use on the web
Recently, the big news was that Getty Images–a huge stock photo company that has been around for many many years, and got really big doing print design photography–recently came out and gave permission (with certain strings attached) to use their vast library of images on blogs and non-commercial web use.