Thrise

[thrise-blog]

Soccer Balls and Caxirolas

Who would send a soccer ball and a few caxirolas? Google, of course. Google enjoys sending their advertising partners fun stuff, and this time is no different. The inflatable palm tree (still sitting next to my desk) has been my favorite so far, but the caxirolas might take the title. Thanks Google!

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Responsive Web Design Presentation for User Experience Group

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the Connecticut User Experience Professionals Association about Responsive Web Design. There was great interest in this topic and it was a lot of fun discussing RWD with so many knowledgable web professionals.

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A Google Beach Party Without The Beach

I couldn’t join the 11,000 creatives in the South of France for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, so Google brought the beachy vibe to Connecticut. As usual the Google Engage for Agencies team sent something fun. This time it was a beach party pack (including a palm tree). After the Cannes Lions Festival viewing party this party pack will be reused for a local presentation I’m giving on Search Engine Marketing. Thanks Google!

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Presentation on New Tools For Modern Web Design

I am a huge fan of responsive web design, and I'm always looking to learn more about new and updated tools to make the process more efficient. Many of the Adobe Edge tools help designing for a modern browser much easier with better results. I gave a 2 hour presentation to a Hartford, CT design group on Edge Animate, Edge Code, Edge Inspect, Edge Reflow, Edge Web Fonts, and Business Catalyst. There is a lot of interest in the design community to learn more about these tools, but it's often difficult to take the time to figure out where to begin. Hopefully I helped clear up some of the confusion.

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Video Series On Responsive Web Design

My video series on Responsive Web Design is now live on BC Gurus. The first video (5 W's of Responsive Web Design) is available for free.

Enjoy: Responsive Web Design Video Series

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Thrise at Adobe Boston Camp 2013

I was honored when invited to present at the Adobe Boston Camp this year. I was asked to give a presentation on Adobe Business Catalyst and what it can offer designers and web professionals. It was a challenge fitting everything in the time I was given - I could talk Business Catalyst all day. Fortunately I was given an area after the presentation where attendees could ask me specific questions. I pleasantly surprised at how many attendees wanted to learn more. Many didn't realize what Business Catalyst was capable of accomplishing for a freelancer, web agency, or business owner.

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BC Gurus Interview at Adobe MAX 2013

Adobe MAX 2013 was an amazing experience, and probably my favorite Adobe MAX yet. One of the highlights was being interviewed by Brent Weaver of BC Gurus. We discuss Business Catalyst, BC Sandpile, and other random stuff. You can watch the full interview here: Scott Reynolds of Thrise at Adobe MAX 2013

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Google Engage Catalyst NYC 2013

Because Thrise is a Google Adwords Certified Partner I was invited to spend the day at the New York City Google office learning about new features in Adwords, Analytics, YouTube, Google Trends, and more. Google is always looking to share tips and best practices with their partners, and today was no exception. I never walk away from Google Engage events disappointed. 

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Business Catalyst's Most Underrated Feature

I had the pleasure of presenting at the BC Sandpile to offer my opinion on why I think the Customer Service Ticketing feature in Business Catalyst has been overlooked. I explain what it is, how to use it, and give some tips on how to enhance it.

You can watch the recording here: http://thri.se/13jJPw3

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Presentation On Adobe Business Catalyst

I'm originally from Framingham Massachusetts, so presenting for a group of web professionals at the Staples Headquarters in Framingham was a trip down memory lane. There was a great response to the Business Catalyst presentation and at least one person signed up to be a BC Partner that night.

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Responsive Web Design with Business Catalyst

I recently had the pleasure of presenting to the Business Catalyst Sandpile (a weekly online BC group) about Responsive Web Design. We talked about how Responsive Web Design impacts web professionals using Adobe Business Catalyst, and the various tools that can help speed up the responsive workflow, including Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Inspect, and Adobe Reflow.

Recording: Responsive Web Design with Scott B Reynolds

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Google Engage Success Story Interview

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Google as a Google Engage Success Story. I was very happy to see it highlighted on the Adobe Business Catalyst blog to encourage others to join the program. Being a Google AdWords Certified Partner has allowed me to increase the value I bring to my clients, and Google's interview was a fantastic way for me to share the story.

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Thrise + Business Catalyst Holiday Party 2012

Thrise and Adobe Business Catalyst partnered up to throw a holiday party packed with food, drink, and very generous prizes. Thanks to everyone who attended.

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How To Grant Access To Facebook Ads Without Becoming Friends

So you have finally decided to step up your Facebook advertising, but then realized that it is too complicated and time consuming to manage yourself. After a bit of research, you found someone knowledgeable to manage it for you. But now, how do you grant them access to do their job?

Since you created the original ad campaigns using your personal account, should you give the person handling the advertising account your Facebook password? -- Absolutely not. Never give out your Facebook password!

There is no need, as you can grant permission to people to access just your ads; they won’t have access to your personal Facebook profile - only the advertising account.

Do you have to become Facebook friends with them to give access? You could, but you don’t need to become Facebook friends to have them be an administrator your Facebook advertising account. You can add someone as an admin using just their email!

This is a common practice for agencies who handle online advertising for their clients. The steps to do this are at the end of this post, BUT there is one possible problem (undocumented) that you may run into. You may get the following error:

This is somewhat of a lie. Facebook is probably not going to fixing it anytime soon. And, there also aren’t any instructions in the Facebook FAQ to guide you.

The solution is simple, though. You can add a ‘non-friend’ as an Admin to your ad account, as long as that person has their privacy setting for their email address set to "Public".

To make an email address public, the person you are giving Admin access to needs to go here and then click "How you connect", then "Who can look you up using the email address or phone number you provided?".

After the person has set their email to public, you can finally add them as an admin (using their email) by following these steps:

Log in to facebook.com

In the lefthand column click ‘Ads Manager’

In the lefthand column click ‘Settings’

Enter your password again (if necessary)

Scroll down to ‘Permissions’ and click ‘Add a User’

Add the email of the person you want to grant permission to access your account. The email must be a "public" email in their Facebook account.

Choose ‘General User’ or ‘Reports Only’

Again, this only applies to your ad account - not your personal Facebook profile. Good luck with your Facebook ads!

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Why Google Should Not Rank Websites Using Copyright Removal Notices

Companies are sick of people stealing their content. And, the US Justice Department wants bogus web content banned and is pushing for legislation.

So, Google is trying to be proactive. They recently announced a new algorithm change that uses copyright removal notices as a ranking signal. The intention is good, Google says:

"This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily..."

But what is a ‘copyright removal notice’ and how does the process work?

Basically, any copyright owner can fill out a simple Google online form to complain about a copyright infringement.  Google says it is now processing millions of these ‘copyright removal notices’ a month.

But what if someone makes a false claim against your website? Could a false claim lower your site’s ranking?

For a possible answer, let's look at YouTube as an example. To protect copyright owners, YouTube uses a system called ContentID:

Good idea? Sure, except when agencies falsely claim footage as their own:

Lon Seidman, a Connecticut technology writer shot his own footage of all the ways that Connecticut companies were involved in the recent Mars Rover landing.  He spliced in NASA footage into his YouTube video.  Within days, 6 big television news shows falsely claimed (using ContentID) that the Connecticut journalist’s video was their copyrighted content.

For Lon’s story please watch:

If videos can be blocked or revenue made by claiming ownership in YouTube, what happens to websites, when false ownership claims are made against them by competitors?  We anxiously await the fall out.

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The Business Catalyst Sitemap - for Search Engines

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell a search engine which pages in your website to index? Fortunately you can do exactly this - using XML Sitemaps. First, create an account with Google Webmaster Tools AND Bing Webmaster Tools. Then, submit your XML Sitemap. You don’t have an XML Sitemap? If you’re using Business Catalyst, then you do have one:

yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Business Catalyst automatically generates this XML file, and it lists every page you create. Business Catalyst is all about saving you time, and this is no exception. Business Catalyst automatically generates the Sitemap so you don’t need to.

“What if I don’t want specific pages to be listed in the Sitemap?”

If you have pages that you prefer not to be listed in search engines, the first step is remove those pages from the Sitemap. You can do that two ways:

1: In your site’s admin, go to the ‘More Options’ section within the page you’d like to remove. Check ‘Exclude From Search Results’ (see below). This will remove the page from the Sitemap within 24 hours.

Caution: By checking this you’ll also be excluding the page from showing up in the internal search results. If you want to EXCLUDE the page from the sitemap.xml, but INCLUDE the page in the site search results, use the next technique instead.

2: Override the Sitemap by uploading your own custom sitemap.xml file. This will replace the automatic Sitemap and you can include/exclude any pages you want. Be aware that you’ll need to manually add/remove new pages as needed.

If you have pages that you don’t want showing up in search engines, removing them from the Sitemap is a good first step, but you should also add the no index meta tag (see below) to each of the pages you don’t want indexed.

Sitemaps tell search engines what to include. The robots meta tag can tell search engines what to exclude. If there isn’t a robots meta tag, the search engine will assume it’s okay to index and crawl.

Add the following meta tag to the head section of each page you don’t want indexed or crawled:

<html> <head> <title></title> <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> </head>

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My Business Catalyst Site Isn’t Ready Yet

So, you just started building your new Business Catalyst site and when you login you notice there is already traffic reported in the analytics. You think: “oh no! someone’s been looking at my draft, but it isn't ready!”

You investigate further and discover the traffic is coming from Search Engines. A search engine found a link to your trial site, crawled it, indexed it, and is now showing it off like a Shitzu-Poodle at a Dog Show.

That is what was happening before Business Catalyst made a recent change: trial sites can no longer be indexed by search engines. Now, Business Catalyst automatically creates a text file (robots.txt) instructing search engines not to display pages from the trial site in the search results.

# This file is automatically generated as your site is on trial. To remove it and allow search engine indexing, please upgrade your site to a paid plan. User-agent: * Disallow: /

Once your site is upgraded from a trial site, Business Catalyst stops serving the robots.txt file and the search engines can crawl and index the site.