Should you use a CMS...or a "content management system" to power your company's website? This question is finding it way thru cocktail hours, board meetings, and conferences across the globe. It is an important one, because wither or not you use a content management system is essential in terms of the bottom line of a company and/or a project. So the short answer as with anything is of course, maybe. Surprised? No? As with anything you have to know what your resources, goals, and requirements are. CMS can be can quite the money savers, but can also gobble up time as a SUV gobbles up gas. First of all, what is a CMS?

A CMS is a system designed to keep track of your/your teams website assets, (files, such as music, pictures, and videos) enable a coding interface for advanced users while having a WYSIWYG (visual editor) for those with limited coding knowledge, and provide a consistency in theme and branding throughout the website via templates, widgets, and plug-ins.

My first official, company website was built on a Wordpress platform, one of the many free CMS platforms available. It was quite the challenge. I spent weeks trying to figure out the difference in between "posts" and "pages" and additional weeks trying to figure out how to install a simple plug-in. Lol, yes, it took that long. Eventually, I figured it out, but I'm assuming that you don't that kind of time. So content management systems can streamline the process of starting a website, including the joy of not having to deal with php, html, css, or any kind of coding. But the catch here is that when it comes to customization, you need to know not only what web developers know, but specific knowledge about the CMS you're using. So if you have more time than money and a resilient thirst for learning, jump on in!

There are a lot of CMS out there which seek to fulfill different needs. For small businesses, I definitely suggest using one of the free WordPress, Joomla, etc CMS. But as your company grows the option to have a CMS becomes more mandatory. Different departments would have different assets, needs, and reasons to log on to the company site, therefore making the CMS the only viable option for managing a robust web presence. Also, at this level CMS like WordPress become a little to confining. I have personally worked with Cascade and software developed by Oracle, no problems. However, here's a comprehensive list of large scale CMS Platforms. Good Luck, and I hope this helps a little!

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Just finished reading an old article, The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet, by Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff. I get it...but I can't seem to agree. The fact that I had to read this article, online, via a web browser is just one example of how the useful the web still is. I liken his argument to those who said that mailing packages would be dead with the prevalence of e-mail, yet Fedex, UPS, and others are still pulling in huge profits AND growing. He also fails to take into account that everyone owns an iphone. Iphones are poplar and the smartphone industry is one of the fastest growing industries in technology, but not everyone has one.

The actions that he uses to back up his argument do not take into account the majority. The majority of individuals do not live life with the constant convenience of apps, nor do they wish too. The use of apps is not only a non-essential; it is also limited in its scope. I believe a lot of the things he mentions to back up this argument have truth to them, such as the fact that more people are using the internet for more than just browsing or the fact that people want things now because of a lack of time. His analogy of the industrial age in comparison to the information age also has truth to it.

The use of the traditional "web" may losing out to more sophisticated, closed systems when it comes to regular users, but it is still being extended and  introduced to others outside of the US, educational institutions, and large corporations. Apps only allow for such closed ended actions such as a direct and final purchase from a specific company. Studies have shown that most people research products before they buy...most of that research is done via the web, an open source collection of information.

On the contrary, I believe the prevalence of apps will soon die out just with the opportunity costs of having soo many. Only the few..popular apps he mentioned in this article will survive and any others that come afterwards will have to go thru the doors of the worldwide web to gain any traction. I agree with the humor behind the comment of one of the readers: "I'd like to see how long Wired lasts if it goes from web to app."

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Since I've been an SEO, I have always wondered about other SEO's approaches to keyword research. Sure there are a lot of blogs out there that claim to get you started, but what really is their process? Keyword research is one of my favorite things about SEO and I get excited looking at search data and plotting a strategy based on what's trending. With that being said, I'm going to give a full step by step breakdown of how I conduct keyword research. I'll use my most resent keyword research for the company NorthCoast CGI as an example.

1. I start the keyword research by going to Google Adwords Keyword tool and entering in "northcoastcgi.com" for Google's suggested keywords that could be used to market the site. When I conducted this search I used the setting "Broad" on the left hand side of the screen. The keywords that I received from that search do not have a bracket around them. When using the setting "Broad" the search volume results for each keyword are for that keyword, synonyms and strongly related grammar. Now you have a list. From here I downloaded the list into an excel file.

2. After that I used the keyword search tool to search related words and words given to me by the client. Some of these were computer generated imagery, 3d animation, and CGI. When I conducted this search I used the setting "EXACT". This setting only returns search volumes for the keywords it suggests and not anything else. The resulting keywords suggested are returned with brackets around them. I have 3 more lists.

3. Now that I have 4 lists with keywords, I use the good ole fashion competition over volume ratio. This ratio gives me a broad idea of which keywords that have the lowest amount of competition with highest amount of search volume. I start by deleting all columns after the "appx cpc". I then write the simple formula =D2/(B2*100) in the "E" column. "D2" is the competition and "B2" is the local search volume (U.S.). The "B2" the local search volume is multiplied by 100 to give a more usable number. Once you have numbers for the entire "E" column you sort the column from largest to smallest numbers using a table.

4. Repeat the process with the other 3 lists. At this point I usually go though the lists and comb through them with my client to eliminate and/or add keywords. Keywords at the very bottom of the list are eliminated unless the client really wants to use them for an extreme niche market. After the elimination process I usually take a quarter or so of each list and combine them into one table. Next I examine each keyword individually in comparison to other keywords in Google Insights http://www.google.com/insights/search/# and Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends. I highlight keywords that are trending or show promise. This part is up to your personal discretion.

There you go...tell me what you think of the process!

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Why use ems?

I prefer using pixels...almost all the time. That's why I was naturally resistant to using ems when designing websites. But the more problems I ran into sizing websites for different browsers, especially for mobile devices, the more I began to contemplate the usefulness of using ems. So why use ems? The most primary reason to use ems is for universal resizing, Internet Explorer simply will not allow readers to resize text that has been sized in pixels. If your content is good enough, maybe someone will see the need to present your work, on perhaps an overhead projector. The most common problem that is presented nowadays is the problem of resizing for mobile devices. Using pixels works good, but using ems is a more responsive, flexible, and maintainable method.

The problem with ems still remains however...how do you use them? Luckily, there is a work around for the hard core pixel users. This simple line of code: BODY {font-size:62.5%}. This reduces all pixels on the page to a pixel size of 10px. Why 10px? Because it becomes almost elementary to think in terms of ems. For example, 1em is 10px, 5em becomes 5px, and 1.2em is 12px. There's a little math to do when it comes to inherited element sizes. There are two problem solvers when it comes to resizing the font-sizes in nested elements.  1. Child pixels /parent pixels = child ems. Example: If our BODY's pixels are resized at 10px and we want the main div's (the child element of "body") content to be at 12px. Then you would use the formula: 12px/10px = 1.2ems. Sprinkle your css file with a little css reset to make sure all deeply nested items all maintain an em size of 1em and you're good to go. For a better explanation of em usage try using Clagnut's Blog or a technical W3C explanation. Works like a charm :).

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So what is a CSS reset?...and should we use them? I found myself asking these questions when I was first introduced to CSS "resets". CSS resets are basically short, a short set of CSS selectors that set the attributes for a number of elements to zero. In a broader since they reset the default browser settings for each stated element to zero OR whatever the develop sees fit. CSS resets where first introduced by web developer Eric Meyer. As stated in his Reset Reasoning post, the direct reasoning behind a CSS reset is to obtain a more consistent look across browsers and within the actual web page itself. Usually they start with setting all element's margin, padding, and borders to "0".

Since it's inception, there has been a wide debate about wither these resets are necessary. And like most debates, the debate itself is unnecessary. CSS resets are simply tools available to the savvy web developer who understands when and where to use certain tools. Back when I was learning snippets of PHP, I just wanted to use them just because they were new to me...I quickly learned that you don't just use stuff "just because". There must be a purpose and/or reason behind it. Thats the only argument that makes sense.

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Everybody's talking about it. So I might as well address it here and now. Facebook is becoming the next MySpace. Yes, it's been a long time coming. We had our up's downs and good ole times, but Facebook is reaching a plateau, not a new plateau, but a plateau. It's the new age beast of information overload. I have the sense that everyone is tired of hearing how single you are, or where you've "checked into".

And who is the new Facebook? Twitter. Suprised? Don't be. Turn on the news, CNN, ESPN, or MSNBC. You will start to notice the same patterns, news-makers, athletics, actors, industry-leaders, authors, business...anyone who is someone, breaking the news via Twitter. It's short simple, and to the point. No one cares about life, well, only the parts that they care about, and keep that to a minimum. Businesses are realizing that no one cares about their Facebook page and fans are realizing that in general, the people they adore, semi-care about their Facebook pages.

Twitter's atmosphere feels like it's alive, it feels like you can just tap Dwayne Wade on his shoulder and ask, "How are your kids?" and he just might reply. Facebook, like it's predecessor, is just asking for too much, there are too many friends,(remember the race to a 1000 friends, lol) personalities, settings, apps, feeds, and to deal with. We already have that in real life! So here's my analysis. I believe the problem with MySpace wasn't that it got tiring or bored. It tried to recreate life on a screen. But what about the success of Facebook? It came along at the right time and place.

Our IOS's and androids weren't quite able to complement our lifes like they do now. The way we communicate with each other is evolving, and at some point, it's my prediction, social media sites give way to more,responsive, social media apps. Apps such as Twitter which allow us to read, digest, and move on, either to the next conversation, or with our lives. Facebook has seen this and has been attempting to evolve...just with a little difficulty. The timeline feature is pretty much useless, we all know this. The new IM/msg feature is a little annoying and we're all tired of people we don't know inviting us to things we don't want to go too or games we don't to play. It's just routed in the MySpace way of doing things. This is not to say it won't be around, it simply won't be as important as we once thought it was.

Google Plus has a plan to stand out in the social media world and Pinterest is quickly gaining interest with the same minimalism inherent to Twitter. These are just my thoughts, yours?

Quincy Bingham

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In my research on HTML 5 I came across another important development came along with HTML 5 that will significantly impact SEO. This element is the canonical link element which is: rel="canonical". Although, it is unrelated to the development of HTML 5, it came along at the same time, around two years ago, and was created to improve the web development/SEO process.

This element was to handle the common SEO problem of "duplicate content". Duplicate content is content that appears on the internet more than once. This is a problem for three reasons. Search engines rarely show duplicated pieces of information, and are forced to display which one they reason as the best or most original content, thereby excluding the others. Search engines also cannot properly direct link metrics such as trust, authority, and anchor text. They may discount all metrics for all sites, give it to one, or none at all. This in turn leads to the core problem of SEO: lower search engine results.

There are known fixes for duplicate content such as 301 redirects, consistent internal linking, sitemaps, by using Google's webmaster tools, and others. But a lot of times these tools aren't enough, especially for more dynamic websites that may have very similar pages with a slightly different arrangement, but the same information. Or people who are linking to you simply use the wrong url such as www.site.com instead of site.com.

The duplicate content issue is solved by placing the rel="canonical" element in the header of the web page along with the "href" attribute and the preferred "canonical" url link. So if I wanted Google to redirect all traffic from www.site.com, I would place in the heading of www.site.com. This process is called canonicalization. It only works within a domain and Google reserves the right, as all other search engines to ignore it if they feel that it is being abused, much like meta keyword tags in the late nineties. Happy tagging :)

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Thank you Steve! You have created great products that creatives rely on every day in our careers in design & development.  

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The UIC College of Education strives to prepare the next generation of educators, educational leaders, and educational researchers to establish equity in Chicago public schools. Located in the heart of Chicago, one of the world’s most vibrant, diverse and exciting cities, UIC’s College of Education is one of top suppliers of teachers and school leaders for the Chicago Public School (CPS) system and one of the most affordable higher-education options available. The College has again been named as one of the top graduate schools of education by U.S. News & World Report, and is considered one of the top education-research institutions in the country. http://www.education.uic.edu/

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Congratulations to our client Mother Butter's Popcorn for receiving some great press from ABC News's Hungry Hound. Steve Dolinsky explained Mother Butter's culinary approach to making popcorn. Order some of Chicago's best popcorn! Watch the clip here! 

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