It seems that there is still some confusion about what this whole Websitetology seminar is about. Please note- we used to call the seminar Blogosopher.
Simply put: you will leave the seminar with the knowledge you need to have a site that you can update and maintain yourself- that is optimized for results!
This isn’t a course on blogging- which is often written off as whining online. The blog technology is actually an actively served (meaning your content is pulled out of a database instead of from static pages) website that can be instantly searched or reformatted with just a click of a mouse.
We use the tools of the Blog software to build a better business website. What used to cost a lot of money in custom development, is now available as a pre-packaged open source solution.
You should take this course if your current site:

• Requires someone with coding knowledge to edit content or add content
• Hasn’t been updated in the last 7 days (that’s right- 7 days)
• If your site doesn’t have an RSS feed (if you don’t know what it is- you should come too)
• Doesn’t meet ADA standards for accessibility (Search engines are a lot like blind people)
• If you go to google and type in: “site:yourdomainname.com” and get back less hits than number of pages in your site (or no listing what so ever)
• If you’ve never looked at your web stats before
• If you are paying more than $12 a month for hosting
• If you are paying monthly for an e-mail list management service
• If you have multiple url’s and variations on a url
• If you have no website at all
• If your e-mail isn’t [email protected] ie [email protected] or @sbcglobal.net
• If your employees are using private e-mail addresses for business
• If you are still using Internet Explorer as your primary browser instead of Firefox
• If you are paying for clicks- or are considering it (from Google or Yahoo etc.)
• If your site traffic isn’t growing consistently
• If you aren’t on the first page of Google if you are a specialized local business

Past attendees have taken back their sites from the web geek that was charging them too much to do too little.

Do you have employees that use their own e-mail for company business? Or a Yahoo or Gmail account? If so- listen up- you are putting your business at risk.
While this probably doesn’t apply to big corporations- who should have IT managers that know better (some companies and the US Military block access to yahoo mail accounts and others)- many small and medium sized companies let their employees use any e-mail account- and even sometimes print their personal e-mail address on business cards.
One of my clients- a group of really smart guys- who use computers all day- allow their salesperson to answer all e-mail with his AOL account.
Why is this a recipe for disaster?
Suppose your star salesman has been working on the big deal- the one that will make or break you- and he’s a single guy, who works 24/7/365- you trust him with your life, and he would never go anywhere else- but, one night after he gets home at 3am after pulling together the last part of the bid- he falls over dead.
And all the correspondence that he had with the client- is now locked in his AOL account- with a password you don’t know, and can’t change.
Don’t think it can happen: the class of 1979 had a great guy doing their website for the reunion on geocities- a free site that was great for them. Three months after the 20th reunion, their webmaster died of a heart attack- the site will stay locked in place forever as far as geocities cares- and even his wife wasn’t granted the password.
While that may seem like a worse case- how about the employee who you have to fire? He can continue pretending he is still doing business with you- and will still be in contact with your clients- even after he has gone to work for your competition.
As part of any hosting account with a domain name that belongs to you (www.yourdomainname.com – not yourcompany.yahoo.com or yourcompany.wordpress.com or some other subdomain system) you will have the ability to have e-mails for each employee at your domain name. This not only allows you control over the mailboxes- and where mail is routed, but also helps market your company website with every e-mail sent. Afterall if I get an e-mail from [email protected] I know there is probably something at www.wilderwidgets.com.
If Joe decides to leave- you can then forward all Joe’s mail to his replacement- or to you. You can also add domains for specific job postings- so you know where the e-mail came from. By creating an e-mail address for a specific ad- you have a way of tracking it’s effectiveness- or to find out who is turning your e-mail address over to spammers.
There are all kinds of other tools offered with your own e-mail server like block lists, auto-replies, etc- that are not available from personal e-mail accounts.
With all that being said- I still recommend everyone have an alternative e-mail account from gmail or yahoo, just to be able to double check when e-mail isn’t coming through- or attachment size or type seems to be an issue- but these should only be used when the normal company e-mail isn’t doing it’s job.

Today’s paper had an opinion piece by nationally syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman questioning bloggers credibility.
This showcases a common misconception about what a “blog” is and isn’t- and the failure to understand the difference is really important.
Suppose I picked up a copy of the National Enquirer– and judged all newspapers by it’s content? Would it bode well for the New York Times? Could I say that anyone with a printing press producing a newspaper is an idiot? Of course not.
The same is true for blogs. A blog is nothing different than a printing press- only it doesn’t print to newsprint (dead trees and ink) but to the world wide web. It puts the power to distribute any content to the world- in everyone’s hands. This scares the traditional media- because the barriers to entry are almost nil, and the audience is much larger.
The word “Blog” is a technology- for managing content easily on the web- much like a printing press is a technology for putting ink on paper- it really should mean nothing about the content. If I said “Book”- you wouldn’t automatically assume I was talking about any specific type of book- unless I said “thriller” or “business self help”- so why is “blog” so quickly associated with ranting by the disenfranchised- or kids journaling? Is it because big media is interested in buying time to figure out a new revenue stream as theirs dries up?
A blog is nothing more than a content management and web publishing system rolled into one. It’s the easiest way to build and maintain a website. What you put on that site is up to you- just don’t get caught up in the semantics posed by the soon to be unemployed columnists like Ellen Goodman.