I recently came across an article that really made me think. We all know you can find just about anything on the Internet (whether it’s true or not, malicious or not, etc.). But have you ever stopped to wonder how many Web pages actually exist out there?

Well, as is the case with most curiosity-minded people, someone’s ponying up the capital to find out.  Apparently a group named the World Wide Web Foundation is getting a $1 million grant from Google to find out.  The article can be found here.

The results are supposed to come out early next year.  I’m very interested to see the final number.  Apparently the founder of Wired magazine estimated that there are approximately a trillion pages.  The problem as I see it is, the Internet is growing at an exponential rate, right?  Doesn’t that mean that the second that they finish counting, their data will be severely out-of-date?  It’s like buying a new smartphone, and the next day, they come out with a new version of it.  Blast!

Keep in mind that Google and other search engines are indexing most of these pages.  Given the sheer number of pages out there, it has to make you wonder, “Are my pages getting lost out there?”  This is another reason why web marketing grows in importance every single day.

Whatever the number may be, I’m proud to be part of a company that has contributed a large number of good-looking Web pages to the Internet mass.  Fortunately, content management tools like Cascade Server have allowed our clients to also easily contribute to that number.

Come to think of it, we have a tool here that will tell us how many pages exist on a particular Web site (also number of images, PDFs, etc.). Maybe I can start a scan of the Internet with it to count pages. It’ll probably finish scanning in 2016.

The Cascade Server User Conference is something that Beacon has been attending since 2006.  (I personally have been to four of the 5, missing 2007′s conference to move into our new house…believe me, I would have rather been at the conference.)  It’s a great conference put on by Hannon Hill in Atlanta, where we get to mingle with Hannon Hill employees (and make absurd product development suggestions to them in-person), some of Beacon’s clients, and collaborate with other users.  And we get to see how others are using Cascade for their university or business, which is very interesting.

The conference began in 2006, and was small enough to fit in Hannon Hill’s very nice offices in Buckhead.  Given the ever-increasing popularity of Cascade, the conference has since moved to hotels, and this year will be at Georgia Tech’s Global Learning Center and Hotel & Conference Center.  Besides being a top-notch facility, they have a pool table, where I can demonstrate why I only play pool once a year.  Hannon Hill also hosts a reception on the first night, full of food, drinks, and mingling.  Overall, it’s a jam-packed, but awesome, two-day experience.

At the first conference in 2006, I was asked (10 minutes beforehand, I might add) to be a participant in a round table discussion, where Cascade users fired questions at my two fellow participants and me about how we use Cascade in our business.  (Little did I know that one of the participants would become a client of ours one day!)  I’ll never forget it because as part of the introductions, we had to say name our alma mater, and when I said “Virginia Tech”, I got booed by someone.  It turns out they were a bitter Clemson fan/employee, still upset about VT thumping them in the 2001 Gator Bowl.

Hannon Hill asked me to speak (by myself this time) at the 2007 conference, but I had to decline for reasons already mentioned.  However, I did speak in 2008 and 2009 on “Tips & Tricks for End Users”, where I gave some insider information on how we effectively use Cascade for a variety of clients.  For last year’s conference, I took the year off, and while I still attended the conference, I gladly let Brad Henry and Mark Dirks speak, titled “Web Marketing w/ Cascade Server CMS + Live SEO Reviews“.  This talk emphasized how Web Marketing is so vital to your business, and how Cascade aids in that effort.  It was a fantastic talk.

This year, I am speaking at the conference again, though the exact topic is TBD.  Why do I want to speak at these conferences?  Because I enjoy standing in front of a bunch of people at a lectern?  Hardly.  It’s a great way for me to share with others the innovative way we use Cascade to meet our clients’ content management needs.  Any CMS can let you edit your content.  But what else can it do for you?  That’s where we step in:  to push the envelope and make Cascade do what you need and want it to do.

If you’re a Cascade Server client of ours, come on down to Atlanta, September 19-20, 2011 for the 2011 Cascade Server User Conference.  We would love to see you there!

The subject of HTML5 has been the buzz amongst Beacon’s Web Designers, who are anxious to try it out.  It’s been called “the future of the web” (see one of my developer’s articles about this).  The problem is that we support such a wide variety of browsers that it’s hard to jump on the HTML5 bandwagon because none of the older browsers (IE 7/8, Firefox 3.0, etc.) fully support HTML5.  However, now that IE 6 is out of our collective hair, IE 7′s grave plot is being dug, and Firefox 3.0 seems to be gone, so we’re slowly moving towards only supporting browsers that comply with HTML5 standards.

Another reason it’s hard to jump on the HTML5 bandwagon is that the W3C / WHATWG team hasn’t finished the standards for it yet, and likely won’t do so until 2014.  I found all of this in an interesting article on CNET, “W3C officially opens HTML5 to scrutiny“.  Essentially, the article says that the W3C thinks that the standards for HTML5 are solid enough to have organizations review them and see if they can garner support, so they put it out for “last call”.  In other words, we’re a long way from having finalized standards.

Bits and pieces of HTML5 are supported in a lot of browsers (some browsers support more bits than others), but it’s hard as a Web development company with such a wide user base to code stuff that a good number of people couldn’t even see.

With that being said, as more browsers support HTML5 code, Beacon will be keeping a close eye on the progress of browser acceptance of new tags.  Our CMS of choice, Cascade Server, now has limited support of  HTML5 with its latest release (6.8), taking an important step towards becoming more compliant.  Hopefully soon, I can turn my developers loose on HTML5…they’re all anxious to take on a new challenge.

I just got back from a meeting in New Jersey with one of our long-term client (going on 11 years).  We launched their site in 2000, and did a full redesign and Cascade Server implementation for them in 2006. Now, in addition to online billing and account management enhancements, they want to do a redesign of their five Web sites.

One of my tasks was to present ideas for improvements to their sites in order to bring them into this decade. Admittedly, I had a hard time finding things that needed fixing since in 2006, Beacon did really great job on the redesign, and this client has done a fantastic job of keeping the site looking very professional and modern. While they’re not looking for a start-from-scratch redesign (just a “face lift”), it got me thinking about ways that the Web has evolved in the last five years. Below is a comparison chart that, in my opinion, is what Web development was like “back then”, and the way it is now.

Again, this is my perception of how it was, and how it is. Your opinion may differ. But the one thing I’m certain of is that Web sites need a refresh every so often to keep up with rapidly-changing browsers and standards, user demands, and the ever-evolving mobile world. And if you have a beautiful site now, it doesn’t have to take a complete re-do…just a face lift can fast forward your site to today.

We have a lot of projects going on right now, but I always like to stop and highlight projects that we have completed for our customers.  Recently, we completed two projects that our development team produced using ASP.NET and Cascade Server.

News Application: Cascade Server

This project was the first for this new higher education client that was referred to us by Hannon Hill.  The entire university’s site is in Cascade Server, and they contracted with us to enhance the News Releases function to include the following:

• Ability to add images with captions to the news detail pages;
• Addition of article categories and authors;
• Redesign the main news listing page to list stories by year and month using a collapsible function.  A new search feature was also installed, integrated with their Google Mini search appliance;
• New category listing pages that allows users to create a page that only displays stories tagged with certain categories;
• Modification to the display of the news stories on the homepage;
• Addition of RSS feeds, including a full listing and an RSS listing for each category;

This was a very complicated implementation that one of my CMS developers handled like a pro.  Many thanks to her for patience during development!

Dealer Locator:  ASP.NET and Cascade Server

Beacon teamed up with G-Force Marketing (here in Greensboro) and a client of theirs (a well-known retailer) to build a product promotion site, where potential customers can go use a dealer locator that we created using ASP.NET and AJAX.  The user can search by zip code or city to find a dealer nearest them, and thanks to AJAX, can easily sort the search results.  The client can log into an Administration section to maintain the list of dealers.  They can also use Cascade Server to maintain other content across the site.

Credit for the front-end development goes to our summer intern, who churned out a great-looking site.  One of our transactional developers did all of the ASP.NET and AJAX development to make the whole thing work, and our Graphic Artist helped out with some of the graphics.

Thanks to everyone for their hard work on both projects!  Being able to tell success stories like these is what we’re all about.

I’ve been with Beacon for almost 11 years.  That makes me feel really old (or dedicated, one of the two).  Thus, it’s really hard for me to fathom that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 has been with me almost my entire career.  IE6 was released on August 27, 2001.  That was a glorious day back then.  Think about how much IE6 revolutionized how we experience the Web, and how us coders could now start that revolution.  Who knew almost 9 years later, IE6 would be defying our death wishes.

Whenever I think about IE6 and how it should have been long gone from our minds years ago (like Netscape), I think about that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  You know, the scene where the “Dead Collector” encounters someone trying to put a man onto the dead cart.  Problem is, the man isn’t dead.  He pleads not to be cast off with the forgotten, but his carrier insists that he’s pretty much a goner.  Eventually after a lot of pleading, the man is hit over the head and wheeled away. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out the video below.)

I can’t believe IE6 is still around. And whenever I try to admit that it has to be dead, someone calls and says, “This site doesn’t look right in IE6.”  In fact, according to the W3C Schools browser statistics, 7.9% of users are still on IE6 (April 2010).

Why haven’t those 7.9% users upgraded yet?  I have a few theories, one of which I came up with all on my own, the other I’m quoting from one of our university clients:

• Many home users don’t know how to upgrade, so they leave well enough alone and continue to use IE6.  I always wondered why we move along so quickly in dropping all other browsers (Netscape, for example).  My theory is that all other browsers do not come pre-installed with Windows,  so it takes know-how and desire to go out and download that browser.  Those users are more apt to keep up with browser versions.
• At many institutions (such as universities), desktop support personnel lock down machines so that people can’t install other software.  Even if this doesn’t include disabling Windows Update, this feature only downloads & installs critical patches…IE upgrades are considered optional.  Thus, the machine never gets upgraded to the next version of IE.

So what’s a Web Designer to do?  The way I see it, we have two options:

1. Drop IE6 support altogether.  Give IE6 users a message stating that this site will not work properly in IE6, and they should upgrade.  (Translation:  Join us in this decade.)
2. Live with it.  Continue to code for IE6, and enjoy the daily challenge.

The good news?  IE6′s market share has been dropping about 1% every month.  If this trend continues, by the end of 2010, IE6 will be gone!  We developers will get to do all of that fancy XHTML/DHTML/CSS 2.0/JavaScript programming without having to worry about IE6′s attitude.

IE6 isn’t dead yet.  But IE6, enjoy your time left:  “You’ll be stone dead in a moment.”

Will we have this same discussion in a few years for IE7?

Recently, I was asked by one of our project managers to take an online survey.  The subject:  evaluate a new client’s current site in terms of design and functionality, and then compare it to a few of their competitors.

The survey asked me to browse the site in question for approximately five minutes, and then come back to answer some questions about it.  I had never seen these sites before, so everything was new to me.  When I came back to the survey, the first question was:

With regard to the *insert name here* web site, what unique word would you use to describe this site (i.e. “friendly”, “professional”, etc.)?

That really got me thinking about a user’s first impression of a Web site.  We’ve all done it…typed in that Web site address, the site comes up, and…what?  What unique word pops into your head first?

• “Wow” (good)
• “Wow” (bad)
• “Professional”
• “Old”
• “1990s”
• “Cute”
• “Colorful”
• “Informative”
• “Busy”
• “Loud”
• “Ouch”

What’s your Web site’s unique “word”?  That’s probably an unfair question to ask you, since you’ve seen it, you helped design it, and, let’s be honest, you may not want to criticize your own work.  So ask a family member or friend.  Send out a survey to your customers (Survey Monkey is a great survey service, and it’s free).  Customers will usually be straightforward and honest (unless you’re offering them a percentage discount for every positive response).

First impressions of a Web site are more important than you might think.  Our Search Engine Marketing team monitors all sorts of statistics about Web site visitors.  One of those stats that I’m most interested in is called “bounce rate”, which is defined by Wikipedia as “…a term…(that) represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who ‘bounce’ away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.”  If your homepage has a high bounce rate (meaning, more people leave immediately than those who stick around), it could be due to that “word”.

You’ve heard the phrase, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”.  You could apply that thought to a Web site, but everyone judges a site immediately.  A user brings up your site, says “Ouch”, then hits the “back” button to get to their search results, and picks the next site.  There are probably hundreds of Web sites out there that do what you do.

Does your site’s “word” make a user run away to those competitors?  You know what they say:  “You only get one chance to make a good first impression”.  The great thing about the Web is, if your site isn’t making a good first impression, a redesign can start a whole new string of first impressions.  A redesign can help you start from scratch and do things right.  This time, you can grab a user’s interest and get their business.

What is your Web site’s unique “word”?

We work with a lot of universities, assisting them with consulting and more complex development within their Cascade Server instances.  My team and I have recently wrapped up a very challenging project for one of our best customers, and I’m very pleased with the results.  We greatly enhanced their basic Cascade Server calendaring system in order to create a centralized repository of the entire university’s events.

The site in this example contains multiple listings of the events, including:

• Today’s Events
• Seven-day View
• Listing by Category
• Homepage Listing
• RSS Feeds
• Top Stories by Category displayed on a department’s homepage

The most important requirement for our developers was to make it simple for the end user to maintain, while creating a robust solution that met the client’s requirements.  The events are displayed in multiple places across the entire site; thus, we wanted the user to enter the event details in one place, and have it automatically be displayed in the appropriate listings.  Thus, the user doesn’t have to worry about finding all places where an event needs to be listed…it’s all done for them.  All they have to worry about is keeping up with the large number of events that come their way every day!

To add an event, the user simply fills out a form inside Cascade Server.  Among other fields, the user fills out:

• Event Title
• Start & End Date/Time
• Category
• Is this event able to be displayed on the homepage?  Yes/No
• Is this a featured event?  Yes/No
• Details about the event

That’s it.  They save it, and the publish it.  Cascade Server takes care of the rest.  The added story displays in the appropriate listings at the right time.  Some of the noteworthy features of this product are:

• A story only shows in the Today’s Events listing if the start and end date span today’s date.  This allows the user to enter one event that spans multiple days.
• Category listing pages were set up to display all stories tagged with a certain category (such as Athletics, Libraries, etc.).  With this solution, users from any section of the Web site can link to their category’s stories.
• The story is displayed on the homepage (if it was tagged to do so).  Also, if the story was tagged as a “featured” story, it will display first on the homepage to give it prominence.
• The RSS feeds of events are automatically populated as well.
• If an event’s end time has passed, the event no longer displays on any listing pages.

This was definitely a team effort involving analysis, system design, and skilled coding…something all of my colleagues excel at.  This is just one of the many custom applications we have written in Cascade Server.  For example, we’ve also written an advanced News application.  But that’s for another posting.

Think about all of the ways you viewed Web sites earlier this century.  There was your Web browser of choice…either Netscape or Internet Explorer…and, well, that’s it.  Things were a lot simpler back then, believe me.  Starting out in Web Design in 1999, we had two browsers to code for, and one output:  plain old HTML.

Fast forward to today.  How many Web browsers do you have installed on your computer?  Maybe you have one, maybe you have 8 like me.  OK, I don’t use all eight on a daily basis, but they all come in handy when working with cross-browser compliance.

Now, how many ways do you view a Web site today?  If you answered “one”, you may want to think again.  Ever clicked on the “Low Bandwidth” link because you’re on a slower connection?  Ever clicked “Print this Page” and gotten a print-friendly version of the page?  Do you have a PDA that you use to surf the Web?  Have you ever subscribed to an RSS feed?

Now, let’s turn our attention to your Web site.  Today, it’s becoming the norm to offer your Web site’s content in all of the above ways, and more.  The more versions (or “formats”) you offer your site in, the wider the audience you reach.

“But I can’t keep up with that many formats of my Web site.”

What if you could?  What if you could write one set of content, and have it display in multiple outputs?  One of the great features of Cascade Server is “repurposing content”.  Simply put, you can maintain a single source of content, and publish that content to your Web site in multiple formats.  When you publish one page, multiple separate files publish out.

How is this done?  In Cascade Server, we set up a template for each of the desired formats:

• The Full HTML version is your normal Web site that your visitors are used to today, with full graphics, JavaScript, and Flash applications.
• The Lite HTML version would be a scaled-down version of the Full HTML version.  It may look like the Full HTML version, but may have less graphics, no JavaScript, and no Flash.  This helps the site load faster for users on slower computers or Internet connections.
• The WML version is used for PDA and other hand-held devices.  This format may have a logo, a simple navigation, and your page’s text with limited imagery.
• The Print version would have just your logo and your page’s content, formatted to fit on a standard 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper.
• Your Web page can instantly become a PDF brochure.  The page’s content can be pulled into a specialized template, and published as a PDF file.
• Your Press Releases can be published out in an RSS format, so followers of your Web site can subscribe to this feed and keep up-to-date with your news.
• Your site can even be published out in XML format for exporting your content to another system, such as a Google Site Map, or a database application.

With Cascade Server, we have the flexibility to output, or repurpose, your site in a variety of ways.  Remember, you want to reach the widest audience possible.  And now, you can reach out to those audiences by writing one source of content.

Your website looks great.  You have a spectacular graphic design, you spent weeks planning and building, and you’ve gotten tons of positive feedback from your colleagues.  One question:  have you looked at your Web site in all of those other Web browsers?  If you haven’t, you may want to.  And you may be shocked by what you find.

“I looked at my Web site in Internet Explorer, and it looks perfect.  Internet Explorer’s the only browser I ever use.  What other browsers could their be?  It can’t look different on another operating system, can it?  What are you talking about?”

Believe it or not, there are a ton of Web browsers out there…more than what comes installed with Windows.  And they all read and display a Web site differently.  Believe me, they do…I’ve fought with all of them for almost 10 years.  As a Web Designer, I’ve seen a Web site that I’ve built look perfect in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), but be completely broken in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6).  Even though they’re made by the same company (Microsoft), they act completely different.  Or it may look great in FF3 on a PC, but look terrible in FF3 on a Mac.  Even the exact same browser version can look different on different operating systems.

So how many browsers are we talking about?  Beacon Technologies supports nine different browsers spread across both PCs and Macs.  We code for all of them, and it’s challenging…just ask anybody on my team.  They’ll tell you how much easier our professional lives would be if we just coded Web sites for one browser.  But there is such a diverse user base out there, using all sorts of browsers.  Why should a Safari user on a Mac get short-changed when they visit your site?  We don’t believe they should.

How do we know what browsers are being used out there?  We closely monitor the W3Schools Browser Statistics site, which lists all current browsers in use and what percentage of Web surfers use them, updated monthly.  For example, you’ll notice that a total of 47.1% of users use IE, but within that, 26.9% use IE7 and 20.2% user IE6.  44% of users surf with Firefox (Fx).  Chrome, Safari (S) and Opera (O) have a small market share, but they still exist, and Chrome is coming on strong.

So what does this all mean?  At Beacon, we firmly believe in equal opportunity Web browsing:  you should have a perfect browsing experience on sites that we build, no matter what browser or operating system you’re using.  The technical term for it is “cross-browser compliance”.  So we strive to make your Web site look great in all current browsers.  We have servers dedicated to just testing Web sites in all of the browsers.  Our developers and testers can log into these servers, and they have all of the browsers installed on them.  If something doesn’t look right, we’ll fix it.  Yes, it takes extra time, but it’s worth it to Beacon to produce a quality product.

If you have any questions about cross-browser compliance, feel free to leave a comment for me below.

Just another way that Beacon goes the extra mile!