ireckon blog http://www.ireckon.com/blog/ our team offer up their best tips and words of wisdom Mon, 15 Mar 2010 09:26:51 +1000 http://www.ireckon.com/ en 60 Seven Steps to Creating Your Own Small Business PPC Campaign http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1291-seven-steps-to-creating-your-own-small-business-ppc-campaign/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1291-seven-steps-to-creating-your-own-small-business-ppc-campaign/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:06:26 +1000 Andy http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1291-seven-steps-to-creating-your-own-small-business-ppc-campaign/ Whether or not they actually sell things online, many Australian Business Owners, are becoming increasingly dependent on the internet as a source of referrals, enquiries or leads, for the products or services that they offer.

Most Small Businesses have already "bitten the bullet" and have by now created at least a basic website, but for many, the anticipated "flood" of enquiries has just not happened.  

Small Business website owners are generally aware of the importance of being found in the search engines, and most also realise that achieving good Organic Rankings is not an overnight thing.  Achieving page one rankings on the search engines takes time, effort and good Search Engine Optimisation strategies.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

The promise of "quick and easy" traffic is very tempting for small business owners, and there are certainly opportunities available through Sponsored Listings on the Search Engines (commonly known as Pay per Click or PPC).

In many ways, PPC levels the playing field for small business owners - allowing them to realistically compete in, and even win the traffic war against much larger, more established and "cashed up" competitors.

But PPC can be a scary prospect for small business.  Large Pay per Click campaigns can be complicated to setup and even more complex to manage effectively.  PPC is a specialist activity and has spawned a whole industry of professionals who live and breathe Pay Per Click setup and management -  that's all they do, and they are (in the most part) very good at it.

However, it doesn't necessarily have to be a large, expensive or complicated process.  Setting up a small PPC Campaign can be relatively simple, and within the realms of the capabilities of most small business owners.

This post provides some basic guidelines to help business owners understand the steps behind creating a simple but effective PPC Campaign.  It does not attempt to provide a step by step "How To" Guide, but should give you with a good grounding in the principles behind setting up a good PPC Campaign.   
   

1. Look at your website

Write down your core business offerings - what are the main products/services that you offer.  Don’t worry too much about detail at this stage, keep it high-level.  

Once you have this list – take a look at your website and check that the information on the site actually reflects the products or services that you are offering.  If your site does not already guide visitors to the specific services they may be interested in, and encourage them to buy (or enquire further)  then you may be better off looking at Conversion Optimisation rather than Pay per Click.  PPC (and SEO) can certainly drive traffic to your site – but if there is not enough incentive once they get there, you may be wasting your time and money.

In reviewing your site, also try to identify “Key” pages for each of the major products or services that you offer.  These pages are probably going to be used as the Landing page for your PPC Ads (rather than the Home page).  

If you are satisfied that your site is actually capable of making sales, or generating leads - move on to the next step, otherwise, save yourself some time and money, and go talk to your web designer first.   


2. PPC Account Structure

Once you are satisfied in the quality of your website and have a list of the main products or services that you wish to promote, review the list and discard any that are low volume or low profit items  (note: low volume but high profit is OK, but be careful of high volume and low profit items).

This revised list will form the basis for your PPC Campaign's structure and will help guide your keyword research. The relative importance of the items in this list, can also be useful in determining budget allocations.

3. Keywords

Once you have your high level structure in place, you can start to look at the keywords you will use. This involves employing keyword research tools to take your initial list of products or services and turn it into a list of hundreds or even thousands of relevant keywords.

The aim of this process is to discover as many terms, variations, synonyms, misspellings and other related terms as you can. With PPC, you would typically start with a big list of keywords and then whittle down your list as a part of the ongoing management process as you find out which ones are working and which are not.

In undertaking your keyword research (try a Google search for “Keyword tools” if you are not sure how to do this) tackle each main theme or topic individually and capture the output of that research on individual worksheets in a spreadsheet.

4. Keyword Groups

By this stage you should have long lists of keywords under each high level content area. You now need to group these lists into narrow categories of similar keywords called "ad groups."  Use the spreadsheet to move related keywords into separate lists – and give each group a title so you know what each group relates to.

Each of these groups should now contain highly focused keywords that are closely related  to each other.

5. Match Type

Once you have your keyword groups, it’s time to assign match types - which define the rules around which queries your ads will be shown for.

By default your keywords will be a "broad match" – which means that your ad may be shown on any queries that contain your keyword/s – in any order.

You may want your ads to only show up  for very specific searches of your keywords.  This can be achieved by assigning more narrow match type such as "phrase match" or "exact match".  (see : Adwords Match Types for more info).

You should also consider related keywords and phrases that you do NOT want your ad to be displayed for – these are known as “negative" matches.  For example if you provide premium, high end,  or luxury products – you may like to include “Free” or “Cheap” as negative match keywords – which would prevent your Ads from showing up for search queries that included these terms.

6 Choosing Landing Pages

As  part of defining each Ad, you will need to choose where the user is directed to when it is clicked – this page is known as a Landing Page.   For each Ad Group identify one or more landing pages which are relevant to the keywords within that group

It is important that the Landing Page is closely related to the keywords.  Ideally the landing page would also contain a strong Call to Action – making it obvious (and easy) for the user to carry out the action that you would like them to take.  You may like to consider creating specific pages on your site just for your PPC Campaigns, which are not necessarily linked to or accessible from the rest of your site.

As a part of the campaign management process, you should monitor the success of different landing pages, and consider changing these to improve your conversion rates.


7. Writing your Ad

You should plan to write several different Ads for each group of keywords.  Some Ads are likely to perform significantly better than others (you may be surprised how much difference even subtle changes can make).

In writing your Ads, ensure that they are relevant to the Keywords in the Group and to the planned landing page.  You should also try to ensure that the Ads contain your major keyword phrases and that they are “enticing”.

Over time, you will be able to see which Ads produce higher conversion rates, and can drop off low performing ads, and create new (and hopefully better performing) variations of the higher performing Ads.

 

Setting up your own PPC Campaign doesn't necessarily have to be a complex activity, but there are many intricacies involved in monitoring and managing PPC that you should be aware of in order to get the most benefit from it.  If you've any queries or comments about this post, please leave a comment.  If you  would like advice or assistance in setting up or managing Pay per Click, please feel free to contact us.  

]]> It's All In The Timing http://www.ireckon.com/blog/programming-and-coding-for-the-web/1285-it%27s-all-in-the-timing/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/programming-and-coding-for-the-web/1285-it%27s-all-in-the-timing/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:46:13 +1000 Blair http://www.ireckon.com/blog/programming-and-coding-for-the-web/1285-it%27s-all-in-the-timing/
I was integrating a purchase form which requires the user to enter a billing address as well as a shipping address. Now obviously, for a lot of people, their shipping and billing addresses are the same so we provide a checkbox that they can check rather than entering the address a second time. What usually happens when the user checks this checkbox is that the shipping address fields are automatically filled in with values from the billing address and then the fields are disabled so that the user knows they don't have to fill them in. This is a fairly simple process and we have been doing it for as many years as I can remember, even before AJAX became popular.

However, there is always a catch. You see, the form included a country field which is a drop-down box and, once the user has selected their country, there is also a state field in a drop-down box which is automatically populated with the appropriate states/provinces for the country that the user has selected.

This used to be accomplished by generating tons of JavaScript arrays within the page for each possible country and state that the user could select and when the country was selected it was a simple matter to look up the appropriate array for the list of states. But, of course, using this method means that the size of the initial page can get extremely large and bloated with a lot of information that the user will never use.

In order to get the page size down it make a lot more sense to skip the loading of massive arrays and to just load the array that you need via AJAX once you know which country the user has selected. This is also a much simpler process than generating all the arrays in the first place. You simply create a script which returns the array of states in JSON format for a given country and then add the following code to your page:

  $('select#bill_country_id').change(function(){
    $.getJSON('/scripts/select_state.php', {country_id: $(this).val()}, function(j){
      var options = '';
      for (var i = 0; i < j.length; i++) {
        options += '' + j[i].optionDisplay + ''
      } // end for
      $('select#bill_state_id').html(options)
    })
  })

This process seems to work extremely well and the script to retrieve the states for Australia takes only 85ms on the development server. Of course, this functionality is duplicated for the shipping address as well as the billing address and this is where the problem come in. Because, when the user checks the checkbox to signify that the billing address and shipping address are the same, the list of states for the billing address and shipping address do not necessarily match.

The problem I was experiencing was that, when the shipping country was updated, the list of states was not being updated correctly, or, if it was, the correct state was not being selected. I spent quite some time looking into the problem and trying to work out what was going on before it finally hit me that it was all a matter of timing. The problem was that, when the shipping country changed, it tried to do an AJAX call to get the list of states. Meanwhile, without waiting for that look-up to finish, it had already gone ahead and set the values of all the fields, including the state, and disabled the fields.

Because the lookup hadn't completed yet, the correct state was not being selected. Even though it only takes 85ms to look up the states, this is a lot longer than the time it takes to copy the field values from the billing address to the shipping address and disable the fields.

Of course, there is a very simple solution in this particular situation because there is no need to perform the AJAX call at all. You already have the list of states that you need in the billing address and you can just copy it across as follows:

  $('select#ship_state_id').html($('select#bill_state_id').html())
But this won't necessarily work in all scenarios so what is the solution? The solution that I came up with is not to rely on an AJAX call being finished or not if you need to manipulate an object being updated by that AJAX call. Instead, what you need to do is to do any manipulation of the object in the callback function itself. This will ensure that the manipulation only occurs once the AJAX call has been completed and you can be sure of the state of the object. Following is an example of how the above problem could be solved in this way:

  $.getJSON('/scripts/select_state.php', {country_id: $("[name='bill_country_id']").val()}, function(j){
    var options = '';
    for (var i = 0; i < j.length; i++) {
      options += '' + j[i].optionDisplay + ''
    } // end for
    $('select#ship_state_id').html(options)
    // As this function may not complete before the instructions below are executed we should set the state here just in case
    $('select#ship_state_id').val($('select#bill_state_id').val())
  })
 
Of course, you can then do the updating of all the other fields in the usual way outside of the callback function:

  $("[name^='ship_']").each(function(idx, field) {
    $("[name='" + field.name + "']").val($("[name='" + field.name.replace('ship_', 'bill_') + "']").val())
  })
  // Disable all shipping fields...
  $("[name^='ship_']").attr('disabled', $('input#ship_same').attr('checked'))
  // ...except itself
  $('input#ship_same').attr('disabled', false)

]]> 5 fundamentals of Search Engine Optimisation http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1265-5-fundamentals-of-search-engine-optimisation/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1265-5-fundamentals-of-search-engine-optimisation/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:56:49 +1000 Andy http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1265-5-fundamentals-of-search-engine-optimisation/ The overall aim of optimising your website through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), is to raise its profile in the search engines - to improve rankings and traffic.  However, you should never lose sight of the primary goal - to actually increase sales and/or enquiries.  Fundamental to effective SEO (but often overlooked by site owners) should be the setting of realistic goals - and monitoring those goals to see what impact your optimisation activities are actually having. Defining these goals, and setting realistic expectations on how they can be achieved is an important first step in any optimisation strategy.

I've outlined below 5 fundamental elements that every site owner should consider before they embark on an optimisation campaign for their website.

1. It will take time

SEO is rarely a quick solution - it takes time to put in place optimisation strategies,  and time for the search engines to pick up on and react to those activities.  Depending on the strategy, and the current status of your site, it is possible that you will see some change relatively quickly - sometimes within days.  However, quick improvements may also only last short term.  More substantial improvements, in rankings and traffic, which tend to "stick" will usually take weeks or even months to show up. Of course while you’re waiting, and if you want some quick short term gains, you could always spend money on PPC.  However, obviously once you stop paying for PPC the traffic will also stop.  This is not necessarily a bad thing - and as long as the returns generated by PPC outweigh the cost, there are valid reasons to keep PPC as an ongoing strategy. SEO could be considered as an investment while PPC is just like paying rent - they both drive traffic, but SEO is far more sustainable than PPC (providing less risk and often greater long term reward).

2. You will probably have to change some things

I love the saying "If you want to change something in your life - you need to change something in your life" - meaning that if you keep on doing the same things in life, then why should you expect anything to change?  This clearly applies to your website as well - if you want the search engines to start ranking your site better, you need to give them a good reason to do so, and this will involve change, which will probably include adding more content, changing the site structure, or building more links.

3. Monitor & measure

In order to monitor improvement, you need to know where you are at. But what statistics and metrics matter the most for your business? The answer is probably not simply rankings and traffic.  Your site's Conversion rate (the percentage of your site visitors which buy your product/make an enquiry/signup for your newsletter/take any desired action on your site) is also very important (and arguably more so).  Monitoring and measuring the behaviour of visitors to your website through analytics is VERY important and helps you gain an important insight into how your business operates (and can be improved).  

4. Keywords Research is Critical

There is no such thing as too much Keyword Research, keep in mind that what is relevant and hot today, may be yesterday’s news tomorrow. There is no such thing as too much keyword research, so dig deep into trends while improving traction for your market's root phrases and lucrative two and three word keyword combinations.

5. SEO is not Set and Forget

Once your site achieves good rankings/traffic/sales, you should not assume that it always will.  The internet is growing at a frightening pace, with more and more websites added daily, and some of these new sites will probably be in your own niche, competing directly against you. Your existing competitors, will also be striving to improve their own rankings, and probably getting smarter about SEO and optimisation for their own sites.  This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to continually evolve and improve your site - but don't get complacent, and make sure that you keep an eye on the competition.

Ireckon Web Marketing specialise in Search Engine Optimisation and Conversion Optimisation.  If you would like to discuss raising the online profile and optimisation of you own website, please feel free to contact us for a chat.

]]> Adding a nice navigation to your Drupal Gallery http://www.ireckon.com/blog/content-management-systems/1255-adding-a-nice-navigation-to-your-drupal-gallery/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/content-management-systems/1255-adding-a-nice-navigation-to-your-drupal-gallery/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:36:58 +1000 Jamie http://www.ireckon.com/blog/content-management-systems/1255-adding-a-nice-navigation-to-your-drupal-gallery/ This post is Part 2 in a series with my previous post, Creating a Drupal Photo Gallery. In this post I will run through how to show a thumbnail navigation of each of your galleries, which can be shown below each gallery and used for navigation. By the end of this tutorial, we should end up with something similar to the gallery on The Whitehouse website http://www.whitehouse.gov/photogallery.

 

Step 1. Make sure you have finished Part 1 of my post and it is working correctly :-)

 

Step 2. Download and install the following Contrib Modules

*Note: Check for additional required modules for any of the modules listed above to function, and download and install them also as instructed. Also, this Tutorial is based on Drupal 6 so you will need to download the latest stable 6x version of each module.

 

Step 3. Create an ImageCache preset for your navigation

  • Go to the ImageCache settings and create a new preset, setting the cropping, resizing etc.

Step 4. Create a View to show all your galleries

  • Go to the "Build Views" page and add a new View, give it a unique name and leave the view type as “node”.
  • Set Basic settings: Give it a name, leave Title to none. Style = HTML list (unordered), Row Style = Fields, Use AJAX = Yes, Use pager = Yes, Items per page = 5 (or however many you wish to show), the rest of the basic settings you can leave as default.
  • Set Fields: Add a new field and select the image field name that is used to upload your images in your gallery content type. For example, mine is called “Content: Image (field_image)". The only settings needed for this field is to check the “Group multiple values” box and in its settings set value to “1” starting from 0. (This is so it will show the first image in your gallery). Set Label = None and for the “Format” select the preset you created and link it to the node, and update.
  • Next field we want to add is the “Node: Title” to display your Gallery Name under each thumbnail, click the [+] icon again and select “Node: Title”, remove the label and check “Link this field to its node” and update.
  • Now we add some filters. Add a new filter “Node: Published = Yes”, add “Node: Type = Gallery” (this will be whatever the content type your gallery is)
  • Sort Criteria: This is optional, but you can add something like “Node: Post date = asc”, this will list them in the order they were created.
  • Save your View!
  • Next we want to add a Block display for your view, so select “Block” in the drop down to the left of the view settings and select “add display”.
  • All we need to do here is under “Block settings”, select “admin:” and give your block a name and hit “update".
  • Save your View!

Step 5. If not done already, we want to Drupal to automatically generate a path alias for your image galleries.

  • Go to the Automated Alias Settings (/admin/build/path/pathauto)
  • Under “Node Path Settings” find the field for your Gallery node type.
  • Add the pattern we want Drupal to generate for us, eg, “photo-galleries/[title-raw]”. This pattern will generate all my galleries to be “mydomain.com.au/photo-galleries/thegalleryname”.
  • Check “Bulk generate aliases for nodes that are not aliased”
  • Save configuration

Finally Step 6. Add your custom block view to the bottom of our galleries

  • Go to blocks settings page (/admin/build/blocks)
  • Locate your custom block view and hit configure.
  • Under “Page specific visibility settings”, select “show on only....” and add the first section of the alias pattern we used for your galleries and add the wildcard after it. eg. photo-galleries/*
    This will enable the block to be viewed on any gallery we create, as all galleries will be aliased under “photo-galleries/” (or whatever alias you used).
  • Save the block
  • Set the region of the block so it will display below your nodes. This will depend on the template you are using. In my case, it is a region called “content bottom”.
  • Save the blocks page.

Hopefully now, you should have a few image galleries, each image gallery is viewed at the alias pattern we added, when viewing a gallery it has a large image with small thumbnails in jCarousel below to scroll through each images and your custom block view that will display each of your galleries with a thumbnail and title which you can click on to navigate through all your galleries. It probably all doesn't look too pretty at the moment, but with a little bit of CSS and modifying some the the image cache presets, you should get it looking the way you need it too and maybe a little bit like The Whitehouse's Gallery – http://www.whitehouse.gov/photogallery.

Thanks for reading my post! Let me know if you have any questions or get stuck and I will be glad to help you how I can.

]]> Optimising for Universal Search http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1251-optimising-for-universal-search/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1251-optimising-for-universal-search/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:28:13 +1000 Andy http://www.ireckon.com/blog/search-engine-optimisation/1251-optimising-for-universal-search/ You have probably noticed that over the last couple of years the results you get for a search query (particularly under Google) has started to include different types of listings other than just the traditional Page Title and Snippet information. These days, search results often include a variety of other elements such as video, images, local search, news, shopping or other rich content.

The inclusion of these non-traditional elements in the search results has become known as Universal (or blended) Search.

Because there are generally fewer (often significantly fewer) options for the search engines to choose from when displaying some of these non-traditional elements in their results, competition can be much lower, and it can become much easier for you to achieve high rankings.  But first you need to create "content" that will get picked up for Universal Search.  Don't panic - it's not as difficult as you may think.  This post provides some tips on how you can go about achieving high rankings for some of these Universal Search elements.

Image Search Optimisation

We all know that "a "picture paints a thousand words" right ?  If your website is content rich, but text heavy, choosing the right images can help provide a better user experience. Images can also help to create an emotional attachment to the products or services that you offer.

To optimise images on your site for universal or blended search (and increase them appearing in SERPs): 

  • Include ALT text for each image by describing the image using targeted keywords
  • Include keywords in the image file names
  • Ensure that the text that surrounds the image is highly relevant

Video Search Optimisation

Video has become a fantastic tool for optimisation because it serves a variety of purposes. It helps engage visitors, offers a more interactive means of providing information, reduces bounce rates, and can keep visitors on your site longer.

A great idea for developing video content is to add instructional or how-to videos.  These don't have to involve complicated or expensive production, and could simply be screen captures or slide presentations with a voice over or sound track.

  • Try keeping videos to between two to three minutes in length
  • Ensure that you tag your video with the right keywords
  • Upload your video to popular video sites like YouTube to help get more exposure and increase popularity (this can also reduce your bandwidth usage - which could be a factor if your video goes viral)

Local Search Optimisation

You should optimise your site for Local search Whether your business has a single or multiple locations.   

  • Create a Google Local Business Listing
  • Register your site with Search Eengines and directories that are specific to your locality or business
  • Include location specific content on your site
  • Consider including address and contact details in the footer of each page.  

If you have a number of locations you should have a page on your site that includes all of your local information - e.g. listings of all of your branches or store locations with current addresses. If you have moved location, try to track down (and get corrected) any listings online that contain your old address details.   

News and Blog Optimisation

If you have any newsworthy content about your business or organisation, publishing Press Releases and other newsworthy information is a great way to get listed in blended results, especially if the news is timely and relevant.

Posting articles on your blog (you do have a blog don't you ?) or even commentary on topical issues can also be very effective.  Search Engines just love established Blogs, and blog posts can often be indexed within hours (or even minutes) of posting.

If you are stuck on ideas for Press Releases or Blog Posts - try setting up a number of Google Alerts on keywords that are relevant to your industry.  You'll be surprised on what pops up and sparks an idea.

Shopping Optimisation

These days more and more people rely on the web to research products online, even if they plan to purchase from a traditional shop. They like to collate and compare features and pricing online and this helps to form a decision on what (and where) to go ahead and make a purchase.

If you sell products (whether online or not), you could consider registering them with Google Base.

As with standard SEO best practices, you should also make sure that you have relevant and targeted keywords in your product title and description.

To make the most of the advantages (and relatively limited competition) offered by Universal Search you should consider re-purposing your content into one or more of the above media types. Each of these are extensions to your site and its content, and will help you to raise the profile of your products or services online, which in turn will increase traffic and sales. 

]]> Avoiding "Spaghetti Code" http://www.ireckon.com/blog/programming-and-coding-for-the-web/1235-avoiding-%22spaghetti-code%22/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/programming-and-coding-for-the-web/1235-avoiding-%22spaghetti-code%22/#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:06:02 +1000 Blair http://www.ireckon.com/blog/programming-and-coding-for-the-web/1235-avoiding-%22spaghetti-code%22/ When I started my Information Processing and Technology (IPT) subject in Year 11 at school way back in 1991 one of the first concepts that the teacher, Mr Whitehouse, impressed upon us was to avoid writing what he called "spaghetti code". What he meant by that term is the kind of code you end up with if you just sit down and start hacking away without giving any real thought to the best way to address the issue.

Of course, in the real world, you are faced with time constraints and sometimes you need to get something created or fixed in a hurry so it can be very tempting to just hack out a solution and move on to the next problem. Where this can become a problem is if someone has to go back to your fix and improve on it or add to it. If the fix is not a logical solution or does not lend itself to being easily modified or maintained then you have just created more work with your fix in the long run.

I have been reminded of this recently when working with a site and code we've been asked to fix and found code that has been prefaced with comments saying things like:

  // HACKHACK - We should probably use a named keyword instead of a magic numbers

I have always tried to approach such issues by doing it the right way in the first place rather than coding a "hack" and then pointing out to subsequent programmers that it is a hack. The problem, in this example, will arise when someone goes back to the code and has no idea what the magic number is supposed to represent whereas, if a constant was used instead, the name of the constant would provide a clue.

Another situation where I have encountered this hacking mentality is in situations where raw SQL queries have been included in scripts. We always use object oriented programming structures and part of this includes abstracting the raw data access away from the high level requirements such as "I want the member with name John". I think it is important to do this not least of all because it makes it a lot easier to make structural changes to database tables if all references directly to the table are stored in one place.

This is where the maintainability of your code becomes an issue. Obviously, there is a larger overhead in doing things correctly in the first place. It takes more time to create a constant rather than using a magic number or to create or modify an object to allow for a new function or method of accessing the data. However, I think it is preferable to do thing the right way the first time because it might be you coming back six months later and looking at the code and trying to figure out what the hell you were thinking about when you did that hack or why has changing this property in the database suddenly broken the whole site?

 

]]> Australia Day Cockroach Races http://www.ireckon.com/blog/recent-stuff/1221-australia-day-cockroach-races/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/recent-stuff/1221-australia-day-cockroach-races/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:01:35 +1000 Rebecca http://www.ireckon.com/blog/recent-stuff/1221-australia-day-cockroach-races/ It was 32 degrees, a typical Summer Day… perfect Australian heat for a fantastic celebration at the Story Bridge Hotel.

It was the 29th Annual Cockroach Races.  Keen racegoers came in packs of green and gold, draped in the flag and its colours.  Today, it was our country that would unite us all.  The birthday of our Great Nation.

 

There were 14 Cockroach races throughout the day, the judging of the Miss Cocky competition, and the Best Dressed Stable!  Jabba played covers of some of Australia’s most iconic rock songs, and the ever patriotic patrons drank VB and Bundy Rum with their group of mates, soaking up the sun and the atmosphere.

Raising money for Variety, the Story Bridge Hotel have become known for their Oz Day Celebrations and its festive antics such as the dunking machine and corporate boxes.

The cockroach races provided the main entertainment for the day, and with names such as Ricky Cocking, and Well Hung, how could it not?

Each race started with the Irish Marching Band, before the cockys were released to run for their owners with the top three gaining places and prizes.

The winner of Miss Cocky 2010, Arnika was crowned on the main stage after beating 18 others to the throne.  The judges had a tough time culling the first heat down to 8, before having to choose the top three.  The crowd favourite, Number 1 was overturned by the judges, giving the Miss Cocky Sash to the much deserving Arnika.

The Best Dressed stable had 8 entries, with the top three easy to choose. There was the Beer O’Clock trio, the Convicts and the Oz Map Girls… and with controversy, the Beer O’Clock trio took out the main prize.  The crowd favourite from the Miss Cocky competition, managed to win herself something with her and her friends taking out the $2000 Story Bridge Hotel Party Voucher!

It was a day which displayed the spirit of Australia, the beliefs and values that make each of us unique, and united.

If I had to choose a place to celebrate next years Australia Day, the Story Bridge Hotel is where I would be!

Check out all the pics and video at www.cockroachraces.com.au

]]> WordPress - more than just a blogging tool? http://www.ireckon.com/blog/web-design/1215-wordpress---more-than-just-a-blogging-tool%3F/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/web-design/1215-wordpress---more-than-just-a-blogging-tool%3F/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:39:33 +1000 Erin http://www.ireckon.com/blog/web-design/1215-wordpress---more-than-just-a-blogging-tool%3F/ WordPress is commonly known as a blogging tool, but it is being used more and more as a Content Management System. Because it is primarily a blogging tool the install is fairly basic, but there are many plug-ins that can be added that can make WordPress customised to suit your needs.

Below is a list of essential and useful plug-ins that I have come across. At the moment the list is only small, but it will grow as I continue to work more and more with WordPress.

 

Essential:


Useful:

 

]]> My first day learning a new language http://www.ireckon.com/blog/inside-ireckon/1205-my-first-day-learning-a-new-language/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/inside-ireckon/1205-my-first-day-learning-a-new-language/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:33:05 +1000 Rebecca http://www.ireckon.com/blog/inside-ireckon/1205-my-first-day-learning-a-new-language/ Today was the first day at my new job with ireckon, and it was like entering a new world, sort of like arriving at Pandora (if you have been under a rock I’m referring to the blockbuster movie AVATAR) and being greeted by blue people with weird hair/tail things.

It was a world I have been waiting to arrive at for a number of weeks, and I was soo happy the day finally came.

Ireckon is a company I think everybody wishes they could work for.  They understand the way life should be lived.  They ‘get’ their clients, as well as their staff, and I can see a whole world ahead of me that I’m excited to be a part of, but with any new world, comes a new language… and learning what Drupal and FBML means is going to be somewhat interesting.

I’m sure there will be times when I get blown away by the way ‘pixel pushers’ and ‘code weavers’ speak to each other… If only I had a ‘Lonely Planet’ guide to get me through the first few weeks of my lack of ‘computer speak’… but I guess that’s what Google is for!

]]> Creating a Drupal Photo Gallery http://www.ireckon.com/blog/content-management-systems/1195-creating-a-drupal-photo-gallery/ http://www.ireckon.com/blog/content-management-systems/1195-creating-a-drupal-photo-gallery/#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:13:39 +1000 Jamie http://www.ireckon.com/blog/content-management-systems/1195-creating-a-drupal-photo-gallery/ For an upcoming Drupal website project, the client requested that they would like a Photo Gallery on their site that would contain a number of Galleries in one section, with each gallery easy to navigate through an be accessible from each other, without having to get lost going back and forth between them.

Previous Drupal Photo Galleries I have done have been quite simple and look great. Usually with each image in a gallery shown as thumbnails on a page which open in a Lightbox or Thickbox window. But with this new project I needed something a little different, and after searching around I remembered a website that had recently launched using Drupal, which had a great Photo Gallery that would be perfect for what I needed.... The Whitehouse's new website http://www.whitehouse.gov/photogallery.

After checking out  their Photo Gallery, it didn't take long to realise the Photo Gallery could be easily replicated with just a few Drupal Contrib Modules. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not saying the the Whitehouse's Photo Gallery is simple and they just threw together a couple of modules and they had a Gallery. It looks like they have done some very nice work on it and added their own customisation to get it the way they wanted it. All I'm saying is that the basic functionality of the Gallery can be achieved with some Contrib Modules and a little bit of configuring and CSS.

I will split this Tutorial into two posts. This post I will go though how to setup the gallery, the next post I will run through how to display a listing of galleries with Ajax navigation and filters at the bottom of your Photo Gallery, similar to the Whitehouse's Gallery – http://www.whitehouse.gov/photogallery.


Step 1. Download and install the following Contrib Modules.

*Note: Check for additional required modules for any of the modules listed above to function, and download and install them also as instructed. Also, this Tutorial is based on Drupal 6 so you will need to download the 6x version of each module.

Step 2. Setting up the Galleria Module

  • Create or choose an existing content type that will display the Galleria.
  • Add an ImageField (called FileField in the "Data type" drop-down) to the content type in the "Manage fields" section.
  • Set your desired configuration as per standard ImageField settings.
  • Click the "Display fields" section for the content type.
  • Change the output formatter for "Full node" and/or "Teaser" to display "Galleria".
  • Create a node of the content type you used in the previous step, upload a few images (say 10 or so) and view your node. The node should load displaying a large image with thumbnails with navigation. As seen in the Demo here.


Step 2. Setting your Galleria Gallery to us ImageCache
Now we want to use ImageCache to set how we want to display the large image and the thumbnails in our Gallery.

  • Create a thumbnail preset to how you would like your thumbnails to look. Cropping, resizing etc.
  • Create a image preset for your large image. Cropping, resizing etc.
  • Go to the configuration settings for the Galleria Module at 'admin/settings/galleria'.
  • Under the section 'ImageCache integration', use the Dropdown to select the preset you created for the Large image and the thumbnails. Save.
  • View your Gallery, it should now be displaying the images as per your presets. You may need to tweak your presets so have a play until you are happy.


Step 3. jCarousel
Now that we have our Gallery set up displaying a main image with thumbnails underneath which we can click and navigate through, we want to change it so that all the thumbnails display in a carousel which will enable a large number of thumbnails to be easily visible, like the Whitehouse's Gallery – http://www.whitehouse.gov/photogallery.

  • Go to the configuration settings for the Galleria Module at 'admin/settings/galleria'.
  • Under the section 'jCarousel integration' we can configure how we want the jCarousel to work. Set it to 'enabled', the other settings you will need to play with as it will depend on how many thumbnails you will want to show in your gallery and how you've setup you thumbnail preset.
  • Save your changes.

Viewing your gallery - your thumbnails should now be using the jCarousel. If not, make sure you have added enough images to your gallery or check over your settings. You will most likely need to play around with the  'jCarousel integration' settings and also your thumbnail ImageCache presets and your CSS to get your gallery looking the way you need it to.

Hopefully, once you have finished playing with your settings etc. your gallery should now look similar to the Whitehouse's Gallery – http://www.whitehouse.gov/photogallery.

Let me know if you have any questions about this tutorial and keep an eye out for Part 2 which I will post soon.

]]>