Why Mobilize Your Website ?

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Do you remember the days when WEB2.0 took off and people were sort of hesitant to making the change ? Well, the its the same now with MOBILE industry. People are still hesitant to making the switch and mobilize their websites to be mobile friendly. Why? It could be cost or it could just be that people dont think its that important yet. Research data tells us otherwise:

As you can see from the image above there is a 192.5% increase since 2010-2012 in mobile usage. That enough should make anyone think about mobile and its potential. You can start small and then expand. For example you can have a simple 5 page mobile website that you can re-direct users when they view your website from a mobile device. Having your most important pages such as: About, Services, Contact, Directions, Products – gives the user a sense of what you are all about but in a mobile friendly way. Believe it or not people don’t like desktop version websites as they have to zoom out/in to view something very simple like your phone number. So why not make it easy for them by offering a very simple but yet very informative mobile friendly website that keeps them coming back. We had a client who did not want to spend too much on creating a mobile website but at the same time wanted to have mobile presence. Our approach was to offer them a simple mobile website that only listed their top pages. Simple yet effective strategy for a business who just wants to keep it simple.
If you have any questions feel free to let us know or shoot us an email at sean@tripleroi.com

Click To Call Mobile Link Code – How To Do It

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Ever been on a mobile site that lets you click on the phone number and it automatically dials the number for you ?
The idea behind it is very obvious which is to make it easy for the user to call the phone number without the need to copy and paste it or write it down.
So how do you implement the click to call link on your mobile weibsite ? Very easy.
Note: this is just click to call example with Boston area code: 

 <a href=”tel:617-000-0000″>617-000-0000</a>

The above would output this: 617-000-0000

If you are viewing this page with a smartphone you will be able to click on the phone link and make a call.

So its basically the same tag as an anchor link text but instead of using a URL you would replace that with a phone number and add “tel:” in front.

Mobile industry is growing so fast and its crucial to know at least the basics of mobile.  

How to fix WordPress “500 Internal Server error” page

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How to fix WordPress "500 Internal Server error" page
How to fix WordPress “500 Internal Server error” 

You maybe getting this error page due to a server issue rather than WordPress configuration. So do not change or delete anything in your WordPress yet as it may not be related to your WP installation at all.

In order to solve this issue lets first look at what the “500 Errors” actually mean. Basically the 500 Internal Server Error is quite a common HTTP status code that indicates something is not working properly on the web-site’s server but the server itself could not tell you what the exact problem is. The WordPress 500 internal server error its just like any other web page that shows up in your browser window.

Now that we know know what the “500 Internal Server Error” is we can look at WordPress in relation to this error.

1. Try deleting your .htaccess as your permalinks might not work, but you’ll at least know whether this is being caused by an error in htaccess.

2. I deletion of .htaccess did not work the re-upload it and add the following:
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off

3. Increase the server memory in php.ini file for example from 64m to 128m

4. If you have changed the prefix of your MySQL database tables manually this can also affect it so revert back to your previous tables.

5. If you have just moved to another server/hosting and your php version is old try adding this to your .htaccess file: AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

6. Disable your brower-cache then quit tour browser then open it again and see what happens. This one is pretty straight forward.

7. Check your file permissions as some server will behave better if you set your permissions to chmod 777 instead of chmod 755 – as strange as it sounds.

8. Some people have had issues with GoDaddy WP-Cache plugin so my suggestion is to remove WP-Cache and install another plugin like WP-SuperCache or Hyper Cache.

Solution to error “wp-includes template-loader.php on line ..”

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Ever gotten this type of error ?
wp-includes template-loader.php on line 26 or 43

Regardless of the number after the “on line” its a very common issue with WordPress due to template or plugin installations.

Here are some simple solutions to this error:

Firstly, deactivate all of your active/inactive plugins (and yes, all) just temporarily to narrow down the issue list. After having done this and the error goes away, re-activate them individually (one-by-one) to find the buggy plugin(s). If you are not able to login into your admin dashboard, try re-setting the plugins folder with your favorite FTP client or phpMyAdmin. Every now and then, an allegedly inactive plugin can still cause errors-problems because the php hooks remain unless plugins have been completely uninstalled/removed or some plugins hang around in cached folder. So when you rename the plugin the folder, you break them and force them to become inactive). If applicable, also remember to deactivate any other plugins in the old-plugins folder. Probably, the easiest and simplest way is to rename that folder to inactive-plugins-old, however its totally up to you the name as it wont make any difference.

Secondly, switching to the un-changed default theme (e.g Twenty Eleven template) for a moment by renaming your current theme’s folder in wp-content/themes. The idea is to force WordPress to go back to the default theme to exclude any theme-related issue. This basically check to see if anything is wrong with your custom theme. If you still don’t have access to your admin dashboard, then access your server via FTP or shell connection or whatever file management application your hosting company provides.

Third, if the above troubleshooting steps have been exhausted and do not resolve the issue, try manually re-uploading all files and folders EXCEPT the wp-config.php file and the /wp-content/ directory from a fresh download of WordPress. This method will replace your core files without changing your content and settings in wp-config.php file and the /wp-content/ directory. Note – make sure you do not overwrite the highlighted files as that will misconfigure the database settings and it will create more work than needed.
If all fail then feel free to contact us to do this for you !

SOLVED: Error establishing a database connection WordPress

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For anyone who is getting “Error establishing a database connection” the solution is very simple . If you know how to use a FTP client like Filezilla you can login in and check to see if the wp-config.php file exists (see Figure 1). Your server/hosting panel might also have a file browser editor you can use to check. This file will be in the root directory where your WordPress is installed in.

SOLVED: Error establishing a database connection WordPress
WordPress root directory in FileZilla – Figure 1 

Solution: 
If this is a new WordPress installation use the file wp-config-sample.php and add your database username and password credentials and save the file as wp-config.php.

If the file is there and you have already added your database credentials find the line:

define( ‘WP_DEBUG’, false); and change false to true then re-save it.

This will give you a more specific error telling you either your username or password is wrong or it can’t connect to the database host. This will determine the next steps that need to be taken.

Email Newsletter Marketing Tips

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Sending out newsletter and keeping your customers updated with new products is a great way to reach out by staying on their radar. However, some business overdo it by getting a little to excited and sending out a blast of emails few times a week. This is great but what this does it make you look spamish and decreases your product value. Think about this: if you send email newsletters three times a week with new hot deals or specials then people will automatically think that you are overselling them stuff they dont need. Its just a human instinct and there is no way around it. People want to value you as a merchant and you may very well offer great deals but its a delivery that may ruin it. Keep in mind that many companies do this repeatedly and people are so fed up with this type of marketing that it will just make it that easy for them to send your newsletter into the spam box. S

So whats the best frequency to send out email campaigns ?

It really depends on your industry, your target market but also on how big your company is in terms of customer base. For example if you only have 100 subscribers its tough to keep beating the dead horse. In my opinion the best thing to do is send out an email campaign no more than 4 times per month. Make it interesting with tips and issues. Its no different that a newspaper, if there is a great article people will pick up and read but if its jus the same old they will skip it.

Bottom line 
Keep short and sweet. Put yourself in their shoes and send out only stuff that you would also like to read. Again, do not over do it.

Solved: WordPress Website Is Loading Very Slow – What to do?

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If you ever had any issues with WordPress running very slow and people calling you to tell you they cant see your website, you may not be the only one. WordPress is a such a great frame work but its code complexity does not cooperate well with some servers.

We had a client come to us last week and asked us to analyze their WordPress based website as it was acting very slow. Our initial approach was to dig in and see the back-end first before making any changes. We did find some unnecessary plugins that were taking a tall on the load time but was not very significant however that always helps. After other tweaking and code optimization we decided to move their content, images, javascript, CSS files to content deliver network (CDN) for faster loading. And that did it, the site load decreased by 3.9 seconds. We also did some MySQL database optimization which had so many unused tables that were inserted by previous plugins even though they were un-installed the tables were still there. This happens quite a bit especially for sites that have had WordPress since the early days and the framework wasnt as advanced as it is today. If you need any help with speeding up your WordPress site please drop us a line and we will be happy to help you. 

Facebook Adds Page Admin Roles

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Facebook has finally added admin roles to manage pages. Not sure why it took them so long maybe it has to do with the IPO who know but its great to page management. Now business can set permissions on what users can post, view or interact. This is a long waited feature that almost any blog offers so for Facebook to add this new feature is a great addition. Below is a graph that shows the user/admin roles.

Facebook Adds Page Admin Roles

Pages admins can now have different roles, each with different capabilities — manager, content creator, moderator, advertiser and insights analyst, in order of descending permissions.

Top admins or Facebook Managers 
Who can create pages posts, respond to and delete comments and create ads. Each administrator must be tied to a different person’s Facebook page.

B2B Mobile Audience is Growing Quick

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According to emarketer , oracle and endeca business to business customers are largely relying on mobile for their initial research especially for ecommerce transactions.

B2B Mobile Audience is Growing Quick

On the other hand business to business executives also rely on their smartphones to research prior to making a final decision. This goes to show that mobile industry is growing rapidly and the need to have a mobile presence is greater than ever.

B2B Mobile Audience is Growing Quick