Sometimes when business owners first start investigating websites they get overwhelmed by the options and costs. They see huge content-driven sites with $10,000+ price tags and immediately decide they can’t afford a website.
In our latest video, I address the simple “brochure” type website that is a great starter site for most businesses. These sites are available for less than $1,000 and require no ongoing maintenance.
Check out the video for more details on brochure websites.
In a world that seems to be in a race for which major corporation can have the worst customer service, it’s ironic that Sprint is one company that has actually improved. Only last year Sprint ranked as having the worst customer service of any major cell phone carrier (2008 Consumer Reports, JD Powers, et al.) They used their India call centers and automated information withholding systems to drive away literally tens of thousands of customers.
Today thought, it seems that someone in the boardroom has figured out that keeping customers is cheaper than buying them from the competition.
My family has had Sprint cell phones for a few years — we love the phone service and the calling plan, but calling customer service has always been a nightmare.
A couple months ago my son’s Palm Pre was stolen. The thief immediately started downloading movies and subscribing to cartoons before we even knew the phone was gone. Since then I have had several calls with Sprint tech support to get the replacement phone, cancel the bogus subscriptions, and credit the fraudulent charges.
In each case I have spoken to a polite, educated person, based in the US (they actually say their name and what city they are based in when they answer the phone). Each time the rep quickly understood the situation and helped make the appropriate adjustments.
Sprint still has some archaic policies — it has taken two months to get all the recurring charges stopped — but in each case the rep has been polite, professional, and never accused me of trying to steal services from the company.
Good move Sprint. I hope you get a lot of new business from this effort.
PS. Any airline executives reading this blog?
Hosting contracts are sweet deals — for the vendor.
Since just about everything in technology gets cheaper every year (except labor costs), multi-year hosting contracts allow vendors to lock in long term revenue without having to remain competitive. Labor based service contracts can be a good deal for the customer, but hosting and any other software and technology will certainly get cheaper every year. Why sign a contract to guarantee today’s higher price?
Some vendors offer discounts for annual prepayment, which can be a good deal if you have the spare cash. But beware of contracts for more than one year.
If you are running an older version of WordPress, it’s time to upgrade. The current version is 2.8.4, which we have found to be very stable and include some great features not found in prior versions.
Personally, I don’t recommend you blindly upgrade every time a new version comes out – in any software. New software versions almost always bring new bugs with the new features. I like to sit back a while and let other people find the bugs on their sites.
But today we have a stable version in 2.8.4 and there are several security issues with many of the older WP versions. Bad guys have written worms to find sites running older versions and to do malicious things to them. Unfortunately, we regularly get calls to restore and secure hacked sites.
If your site (or your client’s sites) are not running 2.8.4 we would strongly recommend this is a good time to get “up to date” , before they get discovered by a malicious worm!
Before you update:
Remember to backup your site (and your databases) before updating and always check your plugins before updating a WordPress site. A plugin that is not compatible with the current version can crash your site.
Main Street is available to help you with upgrades or to do an audit of your plugins before you install the update.
WordPress version 2.9 is expected to be released this year. The beta is expected to be available at the end of October, and if everything cleans up well, the final release is expected around early December.
What to expect in 2.9? Some pretty cool stuff is being promised:
Fun stuff! As usual, we don’t recommend our clients (or their clients) rush out and upgrade as soon as 2.9.0 is released. Let other people find the hidden bugs, and keep your site stable until 2.9 has been patched a couple of times.
After that, we think 2.9 will have some great new features that both WP developers and WP users will enjoy.
