Cool new email alert feature on the myCairnApps platform!
Apr 4, 2012 by: Moser, James

The NH Web Developer just built a cool piece of functionality for the myCairnApps platform. 

In response to customer requests, we built a simple Ajax component that collects email addresses for the client mailing lists.  That happened a couple clients ago.  Today, however, we put into production a tool that integrates  that email list with the myBlog tool on the myCairnApps platform   Now clients can push an email to their subscribers every time they publish a new blog entry.

This is a completely self service system that users self subscribe and unsubscribe to on their own.

Call Cairn Applications today at (603) 966 6851 to see our site integrated tools can benefit your web site.

Twitter Integrattion
Mar 9, 2012 by: Moser, James

The New Hampshire Web Developer has just done our first Twitter Feed Integration.  Check it out at:

http://www.jeremysbootcamp.com/blog/

The client's Tweets will show up on his site automatically!

Google AdSense Integration
Mar 8, 2012 by: Moser, James

The New Hampshire Web Developer has just completed our first Google AdSense integrattion.  Check it out on :

http://www.jeremysbootcamp.com/blog/

It was pretty easy to integrate directly into the web site and customize for consistency.  You can chose from text ads only, or rich ads or a combinitaion.  Obviously the rich ads stand are more likely to clash graphically with the site. 

The text only ads integrate better site which might make them more likely to recieve clicks from visitors.  We'll see in the months ahead.

If you are interested in monetizing your high volume site, contact Cairn Applications, and we'll show you how!

Value of Back Links
Nov 15, 2011 by: Moser, James

It's funny, I must get a dozen comments,and twice that many emails every week telling me that I would have more traffic if I would just let xrumerservice place spam back links on a million other blogs every week.  Let's look at what they are really selling. 

A back link is a link on another site that  points "back" to your site. A back link extends the credibility of one site to another.  If the search engine views a site as an authoritative source on a given subject and your site related to that subject, then a link from the first site to back your site extends their credibility to you. That's a win!

If, for example, you own a business as a web developer in Nashua, NH then it makes good sense to have a back link on all of your clients indicating that you are the web developer for that site.  Additionally it would make good sense to have a link on the Nashua Chamber of Commerce ( if you are a member, which Cairn Applications is ).  The link  on the COC makes sense because you are a business that is associated with that  chamber.

But these are not what xrummer is selling.  What xrummer sells is a link on an enormous number of blog sites that are in no way related to your site.  They have written a program that trolls the internet looking for sites that accept random comments. They are hoping to ( and do ) find sites that accept comments without moderation and dump spam comments on them that include links to your site.   Ask yourself, are the readers of piglust.com ( some cyber-squatter actually owns that - unreal ) really the customers that you are trying to connect with?  Of course not. 

For xrummer, it's simply a numbers game.  Will a certain number of readers on piglust.com click any link they see n their endless pursuit of naughty entertainment?  Of course.  Will this behaviour increase the traffic on your site.  Sure.  Will it increase your sales?  Not a chance. What it will do is burn up your bandwidth and increase your bounce rate. I'll pass on that.

Back links are only valuable if they come from a reputable site that has authority and credibility in a subject area that is related to your site.

So, xrumer ( and colleagues of which there are many ) go ahead and send the emails, they go right to the trash folder.  Keep posting comments, they all get deleted.

myBulletin is here!
Oct 10, 2011 by: Moser, James

The New Hampshire Web Developer is pleased to announce the first release of myBulletin, a site integrated bulletin board exclusively for Cairn Applications' clients. 

Great for short term announcements, or for promoting specials  or special events, myBulletin posts feature an expiration date that automatically removes each bulletin at a pre-set time!  You don't even have to remember to go back in and remove the bulletins.

Like the entire suite of Cairn Applications tools, myBulletin is managed from the web and integrates seamlessly into your web site.  Call today to find out more about myBulletin and all of the Cairn Applications site integrated tools

About PayPal
Sep 14, 2011 by: Moser, James

About PayPal....

A customer called me yesterday requesting that I remove all references to his home address from his web site. Apparently, his wife had just opened the front door of their suburban home to find a large man demanding a cash refund for a product he had purchased but not used.

I was in the car car when the call came in, and promised to remove all reference to the home address as soon as I got back to an internet connection. (30 minutes tops).

When I got back to an internet connection, I was extremely relieved to confirm that I had not put the client's home address on their web site.  But that did answer the question of how the man found their home address. 

After a little digging, I discovered that when the client set up his PayPal account for the ecommerce portion of his web site, he had input his home address as the home/business address.  This was completely appropriate as the customer associated a credit card wit the PayPal account and the credit card validation process requires an address.  My client's home address.  My client confirmed that his wife saw a return shipping label in the large man's hand.

It is completely reasonable for PayPal to associate an address with the credit card information.  This basic security measure is for the protection of the credit card holder.  But as this experience demonstrates, it is important to create a disassociation for public purposes. 

Solution!  Fortunately, PayPal provides a way around this issue.  You can create multiple addresses on PayPal.  In this case I left the suburban address for association with the credit card account and created new business and home addresses. For the time being, the business address is C/O Cairn Applications, One Chestnut St, Ste#322, Nashua, NH 03060.  This will change when my client gets a PO Box  tomorrow morning. 

Lesson:  Check your ecommerce accounts and make sure that they do not have your home address as a return shipping address.  This will help prevent large men from showing up at your door demanding cash.

RSS Feed Functionality Update
Aug 3, 2011 by: Moser, James

The RSS feed functionality on the myCairnApps platform has been updated.  Previously we were removing HTML from blog posts entirely which caused the RSS feeds to be completely without formatting, stripped images and merged paragraphs, etc.

Cairn Applications has updated the system to encode the HTML generated by the myBlog system instead of removing it.  Now your RSS audience will enjoy the same fully formated HTML experience that they get right on your blog page.

Click the RSS link above to subscribe to the NH  Web Developer blog via RSS!

Apache2 DirectoryIndex being ignored and images not being served by HTML::Mason
Jul 1, 2011 by: Moser, James

I am setting up a development environment on my laptop so that I can take it with me into the field.  I am using Apache2 with mod-perl2 and HTML::Mason. I just spent a long time trying to get this to work this out so I thought that I would share.

Symptoms: Apache2 would not serve images and it would not serve the index.html file despite the precence of the DirectoryIndex index.html  line in the sites-available/ file for the virtual host.

I figured out that I was attempting to set my response handler on the Document root directory when I should have setting it on the file type. Originally I had the following in my HTML::Mason Config file ( /etc/apache2/conf.d/MasonConfig.  The default name is "libhtml-mason-perl-examples.conf." This is the Apache2 File that hands control over the request off to HTML::Mason).

     
< Directory /path/to/doc/root >
     SetHandler perl-script
     PerlResponsehandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler 
     PerlSetVar MasonArgsMethod CGI
     # CGI was previously required for Mason to work in Apache2
< /Directory >

This was causing all files in the document root to be handed off to Mason, including images and directory calls ( I guess interupting DirectoryIndex directive).

When I changed it to the following, viola!

     
< FilesMatch \.(html|htm)$ >
     SetHandler perl-script
     PerlResponsehandler HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler
     PerlSetVar MasonArgsMethod CGI
     # CGI was previously required for Mason to work in Apache2
< /FilesMatch >

Now everything works!  I think what was happeneing was that all files in the document root were getting passed off to Mason, including stuff it doesn't know how to deal with, like directories and images!  By using the FilesMatch directive, I gained control over what was and was not being passed to Mason.

Apple iPad 2 review
Jun 23, 2011 by: Moser, James

Why I bought a tablet

I am working with a couple of clients on web based applications.  In our discussions, it has become evident that we will need to have a platform to demo the respective applications on. 

Taking a laptop into the market and passing it around seems clunky and the limited screen real estate offered by smart phones makes them inappropriate for demonstration.  The tablet concept seems to offer the right mix of usability, screen real estate, pass-ability ( I probably made that word up.  I mean that it is easy to pass to someone which helps to get the product into their hands).

Additionally, these devices are quickly becoming ubiquitous as they are smaller than a traditional laptop and provide a lot of te same functionality.

Choices

As with all things tech, there are a dizzying array of available choices.  These devices range in price from about $180 to well over $1000.  They come with or without access to the various 3g cell phone networks, blue tooth, cameras, and wide range of storage capacity.

One thing that I found surprising, is that most of these devices have their own proprietary operating system.  A few, like the new Hewlett Packard machines, come with a Windows derivative OS and the Apple devices come with the Apple OS.

A big factor in my choice was the intuitive nature of the interface.  The last thing I want in a sales situation is to spend time, or worse, have a user spend time fumbling to understand the machine.  I am a web developer, so I view the device as a conduit, not a product.  The first several devices left me asking the sales person how to perform this or that task.

My Choice

In the end, I chose the wi-fi enabled Apple iPad 2 with 64GB of solid state memory.  I am a developer, not a salesman, so I choose to forgo the 3g enabled model as my work will be done mostly under the umbrella of my wireless router. The machine was $700 at Best Buy and I got an 18 month same as deal through them.  Oh yea, every one keeps asking: I got the black one.

My Impressions

Aside from my Apple Airport Extreme wireless router, this is my first experience with an Apple product since the Apple 3c I got as a hand me down in college.  This is nothing like that.

This machine is unbelievably elegant and simple to use.  Navigation takes place on the touch screen with intuitive gestures and finger clicks. 

The operating system is extremely responsive.  There is no waiting for this machine because the memory is all solid state; no spinning platters.  The box starts from cold in about 10 seconds and applications load instantly. 

It seems to have access to the key office type applications.  I was extremely pleased to find an ssh application and a version of Drop Box.  I am thrilled to get my calendar off my telephone; I cant tell you awkward it is to try and make an appointment with the calendar next to your ear!

My wife does not like the on screen keyboard, because you cannot rest you fingers on it as you would a normal keyboard without firing a keystroke.  I don't touch type, so that's not an issue for me. 

It's sexy and fast.  So far, I love it!

Search on myBlog
Jun 9, 2011 by: Moser, James

The NH Web Developer is pleased to announce that we have implemented search on our client's blogs.  Now your visitors can search your blogs. Search results are ranked by relevance. 

Search tems are logged and emailed to our clients weekly so they can see what their vistors were looking for.

This opens the door for a new set of uses for the myBlog application.  Cairn Applications is starting an FAQ category on the blog to provide self service answers to our client's questions.  In the comming months, we will also be implementing the blog tool as a stand alone help system. 

Stay tuned for more great features on the myCairnApps platform!

RSS feed builder goes live!
May 17, 2011 by: Moser, James

The myCairnApps platform now has an aurtomated RSS ( Really Simple Syndication) feed tool.  It's completely hands free! When you create a new blog post using the site integrated tool, myBlog, the rss feed builder will rebuild your feed automatically within 10 minutes!  Now all those want to follow your blog in a reader.

Call us today at 603 966 6851 to find howto set up your RSS feed.

Automated Client Redirects
Apr 22, 2011 by: Moser, James

Don't you hate when you go to a web site and the piece of content that you were looking for has moved?  You were all excited because you thought you found what you were looking for, but you end up with a 'File Missing' page. This is especially a problem when web sites get redesigned and their directory structure changes.

Well, the NH Web Developer has added an application to the Cairn Applications platform that will interrupt requests for missing files, and attempt to redirect the request to the new content location!

It works like this:

Let's say that our visitor finds and clicks an outdated entry on Google (or any other site for that mater)  pointing to www.example.com/contact.htm.  Now say that the example.com site has been redesigned and the content has been moved to  www.example.com/content/index.html. 

Ordinarily, the web server would simply look for the originally requested file, not find it and serve up a missing page file (404). The Automated Client Redirects system will now interrupt that request, find the new location of the requested content and serve that instead.  The system also incorporates a communication piece that immediately notifies Cairn Applications developers when a requested file could not be redirected.  This allows our developers to update the Automated Client Redirects system to prevent further 404s.

As a whole this system enables Cairn Applications to stay on top of legacy inbound links to your web site making sure that your visitors reach the content they are looking for.

Cairn Applications...this is the way.

Custom Blogging tool for Cairn Applications clients
Mar 11, 2011 by: Moser, James

It's here!  The new blogging tool has arrived and this is the first post! 

It has been my experience that many web sites are built around blogging tools like Joomla or Word Press. These tools are great for the novice web developer, but they create huge issues when trying to integrate with other web sites.  This is because these tools use themes and templates that rigidly limit the structure of the site.  Additionally, since they are written for the broadest possible user-base, they are chocker-block full of tweaks and exceptions.  Attempting to make adjustments in style or server side code can lead to a cascade of unintended consequences.

Because of these difficulties, most people handle this by limiting their web design to the confines of the blogging tool.  I perceive that as a huge error and a significant negative for my clients who would prefer not to be bound by a theme generated by someone they will never meet.

In response I have build a web based blogging tool that enables my clients to blog to their heart's content and is sufficiently generalized that it can be integrate into any site in less than an hour.  The tool uses the tiny_mce JavaScript text editor which will behaves like a word processor but generates valid HTML.

Posts can be managed and comments can be moderated all on the myCairnApps Platform!  Also, because this is Cairn Applications design, it performs at near desk top speed.  this is Web 2.0.  this is the future.