• As a result, I was thinking a cool little invention would be to idependently power one of those tiny bluetooth usb dongles and attach it to a set of keys so a person could use their phone to find their keys, or the remote control or their dog. It only takes 5v to power a USB dongle.
• It would also be cool to be able to power down a blue tooth earpiece using the phone.

I get such great use from my bluetooth earpiece. I highly recommend the new Jawbone II. My mobile only gets reception in certain places here so I leave the phone on the windowsill and use the earpiece for the calls.

All I have to do now is find a land line desk phone that can connect to the earpiece and I’ll never have to touch a phone again.

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While working on the clients newsletter I decided to start from scratch to do everything I could to ensure the software and server were as valid and as transparent as possible to ensure no emails were being labelled as spam. This kicked my ass for a few days and I had some frustrations along the way. Bizarre bugs cropped up with every single test email sent. Sometimes the content displayed the HTML rather than rendering it, other times the ‘to’ name and ‘from’ name didn’t bother displaying.

Rather than more ranting about the problems, Here is a list in no particular order of the actions I took in the hopes that they will help some other company get their emails into inboxes or improve their own software.

Hosting

I Set up a new Virtual Private Server (VPS) with Blacknight - http://www.blacknightvps.com/. This provided me with a static IP address and allowed me to set up reverse DNS.

SPF Record

I Set up an SPF record for our domain name using http://www.openspf.org/.

White Lists

Requested to get our domain name listed on abuse.net

Reporting Tools

Signed up to and paid dnsstuff.com to access to their DNS testing tools. I was able to solve all problems that the reports pointed out.

Signed up to Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Services to receive data about the traffic seen originating from my IP address, such as mail volume and complaint rates.

Email headers

Added new (to me) headers to the out going emails.

Precedence: bulk
List-Id: xxxxx <yyyyy>
List-Owner: <mailto:owner@example.com>
List-Subscribe: <http://www.example.com/path/to/subscribe.php>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.example.com/path/to/unsubscribe.php>
List-Help: <http://www.example.com/path/to/help>

Thank you to the staff of blacknight for recommending these headers.

Existing Headers

Date: $date
To: Recipient-Name <Recipient-Email-Address>
From: Recipient-Name <Recipient-Email-Address>
Reply-To: Recipient-Name <Recipient-Email-Address>
Return-Path: Recipient-Name <Recipient-Email-Address>
Message-ID: <".time()."-Recipient-Email-Address>
X-Mailer: PHP v".phpversion()."
MIME-Version: 1.0

The position of ‘MIME-Version: 1.0′ is important. There was an excellent page about this on a site but I can’t find it now unfortunately. Some emails may not display correctly in Microsoft products such as Outlook if this header is the first header.

Reading

I read many forum posts with others also experiencing similar email marketing problems.

Referred to the SpamAssassin tests when encountering any failed tests http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_2_x.html

A older blog post from Michele Neylon regarding the Do’s and Don’ts of mass emailing.

Spam assassin - tips for legitimate senders.

Spamhaus Frequently Asked Questions.

Testing

Sent test after test after test after test to myself and several other email addresses on various domains to test being labelled as false positives and layout issues.

When sending a HTML email, I was getting the PHP code to create a nice and neat text-only version. This would strip the HTML tags and then strip out all the spaces left behind. In my mind I was creating a nice and neat text version. I learned however that leaving the spaces there after trimming the HTML is best, SpamAssassin thinks the content is too different to the HTML if its trimmed back.

Sent test emails to auth-results@verifier.port25.com which provide a free automatic response. In their own words : “The service allows email senders to perform a simple check of various sender authentication mechanisms. It is provided free of charge, in the hope that it is useful to the email community.”

Wrote several custom functions to alter the layout of the emails slightly to allow the email to be displayed properly in some email domains’ web based email interfaces such as the eircom webmail interface.

When defining email headers, use ‘\n’ for line breaks on *nix servers and use ‘\r\n’ on Microsoft servers. When using the incorrect type the email headers may not display at all for some recipients.

Updated our software to send large numbers of emails in smaller chucks so as not to overwhelm anything.

Also added some helpful alerts to let a user know if they are using words or phrases that SpamAssassin doesn’t like and may lead to their email being labelled as spam.

I had problems with my ISP too, the DNS wasn’t refreshing after several days to I began using OpenDNS.org DNS details. Sadly I only found out about this close to the end of my problems but they certainly helped. At one point I couldn’t FTP into the site to make any changes at all.

Result

Our software now sends out a mean email. Unfortunately too late to convince a lost customer. Confidence is low at the moment but I will be working to continue improving the software in any way I can. I will be stricter in what the software allows a user to send out. If anyone has anything else that would help in sending emails or reporting errors, please let me know.

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Despite a great track record with our existing customers and a lot of work on my part to resolve the situation our software failed this company. They had ended a contract with a leading email marketing company and began to use eWrite Messenger.

From the outset there were problems across the board. Layout of the email was the first problem. I recreated the email ensuring it looked identical but with far less HTML. The next problem was that many people didn’t seem to be getting the emails despite being received in all the tests. I started from scratch with the programming and procedures to send emails too, relearning all what I thought I already knew about sending emails the proper way and not being labelled as spam. I took many steps to make sure the email got into the recipients inboxes and when I did the formatting of the email was fecked once again. This formatting problem was caused by something very very small, line breaks in the email headers.  This was very frustrating considering all the tests to my toolbox of hotmail, gmail, eircom, yahoo and more email addresses all landed and displayed fine.

I recorded the measures I took to ensure the emails were received and I will post them up in my next post, hopefully they may be of use to others in a similar situation. I received plenty of great help and tips from a few people, especially some of the Blacknight staff.

I learned many things from this experience. Im writing about it here because I set up this blog with the intention of writing about the good stuff and the bad stuff as I develop eWrite. Losing a customer like this is not a good feeling and all the worse because not only are they a great business, the kind of customers everyone wants to have, but they are also a family led business which were neighbours growing up.

I’ve gone through embarrassment and plenty of anger with myself over this.  Much of the anger was directed at the customers hosting company who were nowhere to be found when I needed answers and assistance, their online support was fecked too.

The email from the company today to end our service wasn’t out of the blue, I could see it coming.  I know one thing for sure after this, when all tests are done and work, test some more, it could save you losing a valued customer. I won’t be losing any customers again.

I’ve never been so acutely aware of the value of great customer service. When I needed answers or expertise the expected avenues weren’t available. I’ve decided that with our own software the work is not only in creating great software that fulfils a need or solves a problem for the user but also to be there in spades any time they need support.

The title of the talk was ‘Take Control of your website’. Originally I intended talking about Content Management Systems (CMS), to describe what a CMS is, why a business should consider using a CMS for their own website and to show popular CMS’s available on the web including our own CMS called ‘eWrite Lite‘.

A colleague, Pat Hough from World Class Solutions gave me plenty of great advise on the structure and the focus for giving a presentation. Without this advise I would most likely have jumped right in to the technical aspects of CMSs, talking about programming and databases and I would have lost the interest of the audience and provided no real value for their time.

Giving a broader overview of how useful a website can be to a business, I focused on my experiences with many businesses this year. Below are the notes I used to guide myself through out the presentation. They are brief bullet points to myself to ensure I stayed on the right track.

I am posting the notes here so that they might be of further use to the members of Soho Solo. I hope the notes can be used as a reminder of the talk, the questions and the discussions that followed regarding the benefits and opportunities of a website powered by a content management system.

As always, feedback is definitely welcome!

- - - - -

Take Control of your Website.
Soho Solo, Celtic Ross hotel, November 12th 2008.

Section 1 : Introduction (1 Minute)

• Hello. My name is Gordon Murray, I am the software developer for eWrite. We are a web development company based in Cork.
• I am responsible for developing our software, support and promoting our eWrite products wherever I can.
• I will be talking today about how a business can get value from its website.

Section 2 : Typical scenario I encounter (2 – 3 minutes)

• The usual scenario I come across when meeting with businesses is a business with an old website, designed by a friend, a friend of a friend or a relative
• Their website is online though performing no useful function for their business
• More than likely they have little or no control over their website to make any kind of changes at any time
• To make any changes they will need to contact the original developer who may have moved on to something else
• This developer is either unavailable or costly to make even the most basic change
• The website is either invisible to Google and other search engines, or is not displaying well on Google, MSN, Yahoo or other search engines
• The site may look old, unprofessional and may not display well in modern web browsers
• The owner is unaware of the traffic visiting the website, if any
• This website isn’t making money or performing any useful function for the business
• More than likely is it costing the business money to maintain even though its not doing anything for them

Section 3 : Things a website could do (3 minutes)

• A website can be a very valuable recourse to a business
• A website can present the details of your service or product
• A website can be a brochure to provide information to a person searching for your details such as contact information or pricing
• Provide ongoing information in the form of news or a blog
• Develop a community which provides your business with an avenue for feedback or customer support
• Become a resource to collect visitors contact details such as email addresses for email marketing
• And of course, Sell a product or service directly for money

Section 4 : Real world examples of Sections 2 & 3 (5 minutes)

In relation to functions a website can perform, some of our own clients are practical examples of these, for example:

• One of our clients is a Cork based company, a sole trader selling ornaments made from bog oak
  • They have an online catalogue of products to sell, mainly targeting the American market
  • They receives orders online several times a week
  • The process is almost fully automated, it makes money while the owner is asleep
  • The owner receives the order details by email and ships the product
• Another client of ours based in Dublin
  • It is a website for an official organisation magazine
  • They provide a public section of the site which is mainly contact information
  • The real function of the site is for its members
  • A private blog for announcements
  • A private forum for their members to discuss topics
  • Regular Polls and Surveys getting feedback from their members
• Another client based in Dublin is an charitable organisation spanning 11 countries
  • Their website contains reports and stories from these countries
  • They send a monthly newsletter to thousands or recipients all over the world
  • They have Public and private forums for active discussions both private and public
  • They have an online donations facility receiving several Euro, Sterling and US dollar donations each month

Section 5 : What eWrite does in relation to sections 2,3 & 4 (5 minutes)

• eWrite has provided the software and support for these businesses to perform these functions with their websites
• We keep the running costs down for essential purchases such as a domain name and web space for hosting
• We provide our Content Management System called eWrite Lite which allows you to update the content of your own site in your own time
• We provide Email Marketing Software called eWrite Messenger to allow you to email hundreds of users and record feedback
• We link your site with several useful free tools such as Google Analytics so you can clearly see the visitors to your site, where they are coming from, what pages they visit most and for how long
• Access to our graphic developers network to create a new website to fit YOUR budget
• We can provide customised development of a product or service
• Our software is designed to give you an easy to use interface to manage your site and services.

Section 6 : Conclusions (1 Minute)

• I hope that some of the points here are useful to your business and gives you an idea of what is possible
• I hope that I have given you some ideas as to how your website can be a useful resource for your business
• Thank you to Calvin for inviting me along to Soho Solo to talk
• Thank you all for listening to me.

Whats your favourite non techie product of the month?

The clients site is hosted with Register365.  One of the measures to make sure the email gets through is to add an SPF record. To do this I need to update the DNS settings on the clients site. I wanted to search Register365 support to see if I could do this.

Just when I need it most, the support section of Register365 was offline and still is.

Register365's "Support"

Using Google Cache, I can see what it should look like and that it was at least online on November 1^st when Google cached it. Luckily I have Yell if it changes, which is going to send me an email when the site is back online.

Register365 Support on Google's Cache

I ranted about this on Twitter on Friday evening and I was very impressed when I received a message from Stephen McCarron, managing director of Hosting365 asking if he could be of any assistance. Unfortunately Stephen couldn’t help, but I was reminded yet again how Twitter can be a valuable business resource. Thanks for contacting me Stephen.

Blacknight have been the complete opposite to Register365. I signed up to a VPS account allowing me to have a static IP address, set up reverse DNS and more. I talked to several members of Blacknight at different times using their Live Chat and email and every time I was answered promptly and came away a happy customer.

To further prevent me from doing any productive work the last few days, my ISP has been terribly slow to update their DNS records. I pointed a domain name to the new VPS account. Within hours the site was running for anyone I asked to look but when looking at the domain name from my office it still hadn’t updated for 4 days despite flushing my local DNS and resetting the router a couple of times.

So for a frustrating few days when I really needed things to work my own ISP and Register365 failed me. If it wasn’t for Blacknight, their services and staff I’d be completely fecked and I would have most likely lost a valued customer. Thank you Blacknight.

Image by Irish Typepad via Flickr

• It would be great if it was possible to tell Amazon what books I currently have so that it could recommend books to me that I might like based on what I already have, regardless or where I might have purchased it.
• I love reading and I’d love to get my hands on one of the Sony eBook readers. Instead of reading books on it though, It would be cool to have a blog plugin that could send me PDF versions of blog posts so that I could read them on the eBook reader. A service that makes PDF versions of websites might be cool too so one could have a PDF version of php.net or something similar to reference from time to time offline.
• I would love some sort of small intelligent programme in Windows XP that would prevent the window changing focus when I am mid typing. Some pop ups are important, like IM pop ups but I don’t want to auto focus on them when Im already typing somewhere.

The OpenCoffee Club was started in London to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow

I jumped (as much as one can via email) at the chance. Im not the only one who thinks Conor’s energy is amazing with his various involvments. It isn’t fair however to expect him to continually drive energy into Open Coffee every second week. He has asked if myself and Ciara Crossan could share the load with him, each of us taking responsibility for an Open Coffee every 3 sessions.

This week on Friday the 7th I’m the point man and Open Coffee is in Luigi Malones, Emmet place, Cork from roughly 10am to 12pm.

Hopefully Ciara and I will be able to match Conor’s energy and his ability to stand up and kick off the session each time. Im usually the quiet one so It’ll be good for me to be shoved in front of people to talk from time to time.

Thank you Conor.

Oh, if you have any groovy new technology or something interesting to demo to the group, let me know. I’ll be sending out the reminder email soon and I could mention it in the email. I could bring along the new Asus EEE desktop version but I don’t think it would go very well in Luigis.

There are going to be Massive changes around here… nah, only kidding. See you Friday.

Title : Take Control of your website

Venue : The Abbey Room, Celtic Ross Hotel, Rosscarbery.

Date / Time : Wednesday 12 November, 12:30pm – 14:00pm.

I will be talking about content management systems and what CMS’s are available to new and existing website owners. A business can effectively keep their website up to date without incurring the cost and potential lenghty waiting period for a developer to update their own site.

I will go through a couple of case studies of businesses eWrite has helped this year, allowing them to regain control of their websites and make changes in their own time.

I’ll be taking the opportunity to show off our own eWrite Lite software and showing how easy it is to use for any non technically minded people to manage their website.

Don’t forget to register using the Soho Solo contact form, its free for Soho Solo members and new members are always welcome.

Thank you to Calvin Jones for giving me this opportunity to talk to the members of Soho Solo.

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The Tuesday Push happens every second Tuesday. This particular Tuesday isn’t one of them but I wanted to promote on of my own projects and how it relates to another of Damien’s ideas, the SEO competition.

In short, the SEO competition aims to find out who is the best at search engine optimisation in Ireland. I think the competition is an excellent idea and several sites and blogs are already appearing to compete.

Im interested in the tools and techniques of SEO but I’m not participating myself, I don’t know enough. Im going to be watching the participants and their sites so that I might learn a thing or two to benefit our clients. Hopefully, when this competition ends in December, one or more people will blog about the techniques they used so we might all learn from it.

My own project that I wanted to talk about is ‘Yell if it changes‘. This site was originally started so that I could be notified automatically if some of our customers sites had changed. For a long time I planned to add the ability to monitor the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for changes in the results for specific keywords and URLs, This is now in place.

For the SEO competition, enter the magic words ‘Geansai Gorm‘ and the URL you would like to monitor. You will be notified of the current position(s) in the results page of Google and you will also be notified via email whenever the URL changes position(s). The history of changes in positions are recorded too so it should make for some very interesting data in time.

It isn’t limited to the SEO competition though, anyone can use it to monitor the positions of their own sites for their chosen keywords. Go on, its free and you can use it for as many sites or search terms as you like.

Yell if it changes is a small project I work on in my spare time. There are many many things I plan to add to it in the future to make it more useful to myself and the 200+ users so far. If you have any ideas or comments on Yell, I’d love to hear them.