Practice Safe Site: Avoid Being Cheated By Developers

by Erik Wolf and Stephanie Frost

Horror stories of entrepreneurs being ripped off by web developers and online marketing scams are everywhere. Some business owners have been burned so badly, they hesitate to invest anything in the web despite the fact that it plays such an important role in our increasingly digital society. But there’s no need to fear – while there may never be a means to ensure overwhelming success in a website or blog design project, there are a LOT of simple ways you can reduce your risk. Making sure that the right things are in the contract, protecting your down payment, and asking the right questions are just a few examples. In this session, we’ll discuss how to hire the RIGHT web partner/consultant/designer/developer/agency, how businesses can protect their web and online media interests and how to avoid being disappointed, scammed, robbed or otherwise taken advantage of. This presentation is designed to help attendees make the most of a limited web budget and steer clear of common pitfalls that will cost weeks or months of time and thousands of dollars.

WordPress: The Small Business Swiss Army Knife

by Stephanie Frost, Erik Wolf, Adria Richards and Jamie Turner

WordPress has been steadily growing in popularity as a CMS over the last two years because it’s free and relatively easy to learn–especially when compared with other packages like Joomla and Drupal. But WordPress is more than just a convenient choice — in many cases it’s the only web tool a small business owner is ever likely to need. WordPress isn’t just for blogs anymore, seamlessly handling media content, ecommerce, membership sites, search engine optimization, mobile sites, lead generation and much much more. Our panel of experts will describe the many uses and strengths of WordPress and demonstrate how WordPress is adaptable into just about any small business use.

The first 10 people to purchase their tickets online using the promo code “zerogcreative” at checkout will get a $75 discount! And, for an added bonus, The Business of WordPress Conference organizers will be making a $50 donation to North Fulton Community Charities — Zero-G Creative’s charity of choice — for every ticket purchased with the zerogcreative code.

We hope to see you there!

I will be presenting “How to Select a Consultant or Agency” on Wednesday, June 23rd in Room B and will also be a participating as a panelist in the following sessions:

• Achieving World-Class Web Design (June 23, 9:30-10:30AM, Boardroom)
• Adapting a Visual Design to your Budget (June 23, 10:40-11:50AM, Auditorium)

I’ll also be available for an “Ask the Expert” Q&A session at 3:30.

Tickets are still available and you can purchase them here.

I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

Well, Memorial Day Weekend is almost upon us which means many things… For me, it’s the 10th anniversary of the barbecue where a friend introduced me to my future wife, the fourth anniversary of my delivering notice to my former employers that I would be leaving to start my own firm and the beginning of a really unique adventure.

This summer, my family and I are leaving Atlanta for two months to experience life in another part of the country. I have always had a romantic attraction to the west… And with family, a few clients, mountains and desert all within driving distance, Denver, Colorado is a great place for me and the family to explore that. So on Saturday morning we’re going to pack up our Winnebago and head west.

So what will change at Zero-G while I’m gone? Not much to be honest. This is not a vacation or a sabbatical for me by any means — I will be working full time virtually from Denver. My wife will also be working full-time from her company’s Denver office and my kids are already enrolled in full-time summer camp. I’ll be doing just about everything I do here, just two hours later thanks to the time change. As an added unique twist to all this, I’ve made arrangements to cowork with a local design firm while I’m there. I’ll provide more details on that next week, but there will be some real life agency odd-couple stuff going on which will make for an interesting learning experience for all of us.

But what happens to all the Zero-G clients here? Very few of our clients demand face-to-face meetings and regardless of where the client is located (we’ve done work in 15+ states) most of our business is conducted via email/phone/web already and this will not represent a big change for anyone we are currently working with. Plus with Stephanie and the rest of the team staying exactly where they are, none of our clients will experience a change in service.

So more importantly, what should you do if you miss me?

• Keep in touch! I’m ridiculously easy to find… All my contact info is right here. And I’m sure I’ll still be over-sharing on Twitter and Facebook as is my custom.
• I’ll also be available for office hours via phone/Skype. Want to chat? Schedule some time with me.
• I’ll be in Atlanta June 21st-24th and will be speaking at The Business of WordPress conference which I encourage small business people to attend.
• Go to GravityFreeRadio.com and wrap yourself in the comfort of my voice. If you must.
• Grab my book on Amazon.com (shameless plug)
• Head up to Roam and order my sandwich. Just ask for the Wolfensteak. And don’t do this because you miss me, do it because it’s delicious.

Seriously though, I am working and I am available and I want to keep in touch with everyone over the summer. Don’t be strangers! And I’ll see you all in August if not sooner

Probably the number one criteria for choosing a Web hosting company is whether it provides good, fast, reliable customer service, 24/7, via email, telephone and live chat.

“All hosting companies are pretty much the same — until something goes wrong. And you’ll want to know who has your back when that happens,” stated Erik Wolf, the president of Zero-G Creative, an Atlanta-based small business marketing and Web design company.

“In our experience building Web sites for small businesses, the most important quality you can find in any hosting company is timely, responsive and competent customer service,” he said.

While hosting companies might say they offer fast, reliable, 24/7 phone and email support, Wolf advised business owners to “test drive” the help desk during the free trial. For Wolf that means seeing how long he is kept on hold or waiting for help over the phone, how good the online chat is (if the company offers it), and assessing the knowledge level of the support staff.

Although I enjoyed my contribution to the story, the other page and a half is definitely worth reading and a terrific resource for anyone trying to figure out what they should be looking for in a hosting company.

For those of you that don’t read the same news sites that I do (I’m a geek — it’s what I do — don’t judge), the Open Graph API is a software interface that allows websites to integrate Facebook functionality directly into their pages. So while “social media” has been big for quite some time as we all know, this is  a major step towards a truly social web experience. Now you can “like” things without logging into Facebook and you can see what your friends think about a particular website while you’re browsing it.

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore even believes that this technology may even grow up to threaten Google.

It’s a little premature to say where this is all heading, but we at Zero-G know that we want to go along for the ride and see for ourselves. Today, Zero-G Creative is unveiling our new “social” homepage, equipped with a “like” button and seamless integration with our new Facebook fan page.

Within the next month we expect to be doing Open Graph API integrations for our clients and we’ll make those details available soon. But in the meantime, we hope you like us. We hope you really like us.

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Here is my answer below. This was a blast and I want to give a BIG thanks to the folks who put this event together for inviting me.

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Come learn more about the topics we covered in the book. It will be very interactive and hopefully very informative. Bring lots of questions for us!

Please RSVP here so we have an idea of how much food/drinks to have on hand.

See you on the 18th!