If you’re not familiar with what a link shortening service does, essentially they make a long link short…so if I’m using Twurl as my link shortening service, it will change my long link like this:

http://www.craftedweb.com/website-marketing/email-marketing-are-you-collecting-email-addressses-offline/

Into a shortened link like this:

http://twurl.nl/vd68h3

And person that clicks on the link will end up in the same place.

Links shortening services are great if you’re using a tool like Twitter where character count and space are at a premium. They’re also good if you have to send long links around in emails. Very long links often get broken up in emails so that when your recipient receives their email, the link is no longer usable. This is especially handy if you’re sending out newsletters that have links to your blog which have notoriously long links or links to your website.

So if link shorteners are so great, why did I title this post, “Why Link Shorteners Stink”? Well, it’s because as great as link shorteners are, they’re only great if they stick around. If the service you use to shorten your links suddenly decides to fold up shop or change things around then there goes your link. That’s a problem if you’ve emailed that link to someone or have that link in archives of your newsletters or someone runs across an old tweet of yours. Because when they click on that link…it goes to nowhere.

This has happened to me….recently. This week as a matter of fact.

I suddenly started getting emails from people who subscribed to my newsletter or requested one of my free ebooks complaining that download links and the links to resources and websites I’ve included aren’t working anymore. When I went to investigate, I found that SnipURL the service that I have been using to shorten links for my newsletters and emails has suddenly changed up their domain name…without warning…without a “Hey we’re changing things around and it might disable your links…so just a head up in case this matters to you” alert. So now all of those links I have in my emails are suddenly broken.

Sigh

So now, I’m chasing dead links and dealing with email from confused subscribers. And I’m temporarily switching my links over to a new service…not a quick task. I’m also seriously considering doing my own link shortening directly from my website so that something like this won’t happen again. Another benefit to doing this is that my links will get all of the link love from Goggle as opposed to it going to the linking service…which is great for SEO. Plus, my shortened links will reference my website domain instead of Owly or Bitly or whatever, which is always cool. They’ll look like this:

http://www.craftedweb.com/shortenedlink

Instead of

http://wkelk.li/shortenlink

So what can you do to avoid a scenario like this? Well, if you want to go the completely geeky route like I’m thinking about doing and running your shortened links through your own website, this post by Lifehacker can get you started. I realize that this route is probably way too geeky or time consuming for most of you, but if you or someone you know have the technical chops to do this or you want to just try it, it’s something to think about.

If you have a self-hosted Wordpress blog that runs on your own web server (not the kind on Wordpress.com), there’s a plugin that you can install called Twitter Friendly Links that allow you to automatically create shortened links to all of your blog posts. If you’re already using Twitter Tools to automatically tweet out your links when you write a new blog post, then Twitter Friendly Links will work well with it by automatically shortening and including the link to your blog post in your tweet. And as these links are based on the domain name of your blog…there’s little chance of experiencing an unexpected shutdown.

And the only other options you have for now is to not use a link shortener for critical links…say if you’re emailing a gallery a link to your website or online store. Actually you shouldn’t be doing that anyway, part of the value of having your own domain name is the branding. A shortened link by Owly or Twurl doesn’t look as impressive.

And finally…just to be very careful…and keep an eye on your shortened links.

Now, yesterday’s glitch happened because I broke one of my own rules for blogging and web design. I launched yesterday’s post without properly checking all of the links (there were a lot of links after all). Before you launch a post, or a new web page, or a newsletter that has links in it, take some time to click on all of the links and make sure that they are going where they’re supposed to. You might not have a reader like @sophistatiki who will take the time to let you know that something’s wrong until months later.

In addition, you might want to take a quick spin around your website on occasion to check for things like incorrect links, broken images, and features that don’t work properly. I wrote a post about the importance of doing periodic check ups on your website a while back ago and it has a list of things that you’ll want to check out. You can read the post here.

If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to change the copyright dates on your website and/or blog. There’s nothing that says “moldy old website” more than a copyright date or content that dated a year or more old.

While you’re making that change to your website, it’s also a great time to do a regular maintenance check on your website to make sure that everything working as it should. I wrote a post a while back with a list of things that you should check on your website on a regular basis. January is typically a slow time for artists, so now would be a great time to run down that list for your website.

Hopefully Hanna won’t cause us too much trouble, and thankfully Hurricane Gustav didn’t turn out to be the disaster we feared in the Gulf earlier this week. But hurricane season isn’t over until the end of November. And right behind Gustav and Hanna is Hurricane Ike and Josephine…it’s going to be a long three months.

Emergencies don’t have to be as large scale as a hurricane to cause you trouble in your life, your business, and your website…sometimes something as simple as a sudden illness, a computer crash, or problems with your web host can cut you off from your website. If you use your website to gather leads and to sell your work, long periods in which you can’t access your website or check your email means that orders can pile up, potential leads can get lost. Which is why it’s important to make every effort to stay connected in an emergency. Here are a couple tips that can help you:

Make preparations beforehand- If there is anything good about hurricanes, it’s the fact that you can see them coming and you can prepare for them. If you know that you may be disconnected from your website and your business for a period of time, prepare for it in advance. Post a notice on your website and/or blog explaining the situation. If you have an email list, notify your subscribers and customers beforehand. Then use your vacation settings on your email to automatically reply to people who are trying to contact you via email.

Keep people updated as much as possible- The thing that makes people anxious is when they don’t hear from you. If you can, create alternative ways to keep your customers updated on what’s going on. Using Twitter is a great way to do this. The Red Cross has been doing a great job of using Twitter and other web tools for disaster response. As long as you have access to a cell phone, you can send tweets via text message or through voices messages if you have a Jott account. Plus you can hook your Twitter account to your Facebook or Myspace account, your website or blog so you can post updates without having to access any of those sites.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter or Jott, you can check out my past posts on both:

• How to stay organized with Jott
• Blogging with Jott
• Adventures in Twittering
• Adventures in Twittering: Update
• An Artist’s Guide to Twitter
• Changes to the Jott Service

Designate an “in case of emergency” person- Some emergencies like a sudden illness or accident will leave you unable to contact your customers through your website, blog, or email. To prepare for events like this, you should appoint someone you trust as a sort of “in case of emergency” person. Your emergency person can be someone you trust, such as a family member, friend, or an assistant who can send out emails and notices and post to your website and/or blog on your behalf.

When you choose your emergency person, train them on how to access your blog, your website, and your email. If part of their duties includes keeping the ecommerce side of your website going, you’ll need to train them on how to fill orders and update your web store. Write these procedures down along with instructions, usernames, and passwords down so that your emergency person will have something to refer to. Be sure to keep this information in a safe place…and tell your emergency person where to find it.

Backup, backup, and backup some more- Do you back your website and blog up regularly? How about the rest of your important files like your customer lists, product inventory, and sales records. If you don’t you need to start now and continue to do so. Why? What would happen if your computer crashed? Would you be able to access your customer list? What if something happened to your web host or the service running your blog? Would you be able to switch to a new service or host if you don’t have a copy of your files ready to go?

Make it a regular practice to backup your website, blog, and computer files. Burn your files to a rewriteable CD or DVD or to a portable hard drive and store them in a safe place, preferably away from your studio or home office. You can also use an online backup service like Mozy, Carbonite, or iDrive, but you should also keep an offline backup on DVDs or on a hard drive in case you can’t access the web. You should also tell your emergency person where your backups are and how to access them.

So now it’s your turn! How do you keep in contact with your customers during emergencies? Leave a comment and let us know!

Here’s the second video in the makeover series. In this video, I visit my blog and point out more improvements that must be made.

RSS Users click here.

But what if your hosting service seems to have problems like this all the time? You should start getting worried if:

• Your hosting service goes down more than a couple times a month
• You’re consistently having a hard time reaching anyone in tech support
• Tech support fails to respond to questions or problems within 24 hours
• You start noticing some of the same complaints from other customers in the tech support message boards.
• Problems with your website are due to changes or limitations with your hosting service (it’s possible that your website just outgrows the abilities of your current host)

So what to do? Well in some cases, the problems are just temporary and they’ll even out. In other cases, it may be time to find a new web host. If you do find that you need to get a new web host, here are some tips that can make the transition easier.

• Make a backup of your website as soon as possible. This includes all of your web pages, graphics, and any software installations like Wordpress blogs, shopping carts and any databases that goes with them. If your web host uses cPanel for website administration, this is pretty easy. If you don’t know how, get someone to help you. (and once you’re settled on your new host, make it a practice to back up your site regularly)
• Take your time looking for a new web host. Don’t rush this because you’re frustrated or angry because you don’t want to leave one bad host only to sign up with another bad one.
• Get some recommendations. If you know of someone else who has a website, ask them who they use. Chances are if they’ve been with their host for a year or more the host is pretty reliable.
• If you got your domain name at the same place where you’re hosting your site, seriously consider transferring it to another registrar before you move your website, like My Namespot or any of the other domain registrars out there.
• Don’t prepay for hosting…at least not for the first couple months. A lot of hosting services gives discounts if you pay 3 months, 6 months or even for the entire year up front. While it’s tempting to save money by getting a yearly contract, I usually recommend that you pay month to month at the beginning. That way if the service starts to head south, you’re only obligated for a month. Once the service has proven itself, you can try switching payment plans if you wish.
• Don’t cut off your old host until everything is up and running at your new host and the DNS for your domain name has been changed properly. Remember that changing the nameserver or DNS information for your domain name take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to be universal across the Internet. So keep that in mind when you’re switching to your web host. If you don’t know what DNS is or how to change it, check out the video below.

RSS Viewers Click Here to watch video

“Um…yeah.”

If you’ve registered a domain name or if you’ve opened up a hosting account for your website, soon after your account is set up, you’ll get several emails from your hosting company or registrar. DON’T THROW THESE AWAY! These emails contains important info that you need in order to help maintain your website.

If you’ve registered a new domain name, you’ll get an email that contains the following:

• The username and password for your account
• Your account number

If you ever need to transfer your domain name from one registrar to another, or if you ever change hosting companies, or if you change email addresses, you’ll need the user name and password to your domain registrar account in order to make these changes. (In case you don’t know, a registrar is a company where you can get a domain name; popular registrars include Godaddy and Network Solutions)

Domain registrars have gotten very strict about making sure that you’re the owner of the domain name before they allow you to make any changes. There have been a number of cases of fraud in which people essentially steals a domain by pretending to be the owner. So if you lose your account information, be prepared to spend some time on the telephone with tech support trying to prove who you are.

When you sign up for hosting, you’ll be emailed some important email as well. This info includes:

• The username and password for your account
• DNS information (so you can point your domain name to your hosting account)
• Instructions on how to set up your hosting account

Again, expect to spend some time on the phone with tech support if you lose track of this info.

When you get these emails, save them in a separate folder and you might want to print them out and file them with your other important records so you don’t have to go digging through your emails to find this information.

Also, if you happen to change the email you used to open the domain or hosting account, be sure to update this information with your hosting company or registrar. Sending emails to the email account on file is one way these companies verify your identity. If you happen to close the email account that’s tied to your domain or hosting…you could be in a world of trouble.

It was a quick fix, but it’s a fix that I should have been able to catch myself had I been more careful about testing. And of course, it may have been broken for a while without my knowing.

Ironically, I wrote a blog post yesterday about making sure that everything is working properly on your site. Well, the same thing goes for your offline contact points (snail mail, fax numbers, and phone numbers). If you provide a phone or fax number, make sure that it’s the right number and make sure that it works. If you’re only available during certain times during the day, list those times on your site and try to make sure that you’re actually available or provide a message explaining how to further contact you. If you have voice mail, make sure your message is up to date and contains all the right info. There’s nothing like listening to a voice mail greeting that wishes you happy holidays in the middle of July. If your fax number, phone number, or postal address changes, make sure that change is reflected on your site.

So, while you’re running down your periodic test of things on your web site, take some time out to make sure that phone number and voice mail works like it’s supposed to, and if you have a fax machine, send yourself a fax to make that still works as well.

When was the last time you checked to make sure that your shopping cart works correctly? How about the links on your web site? Or your contact me form? A couple months ago, I had poked around my blog and discovered that my Feedburner feature wasn’t working properly. While this discovery wasn’t earth-shattering, it was still something that needed to be fixed. But what if it had been the subscription link to my newsletter? How many subscriptions would I have missed in between the time it actually broke and the time I discover that it was broken? What about your web site? Is your shopping cart working? Your “email me” link? Your contact me form?

Don’t count on the visitors to your site to let you know if something is not working right. The majority of visitors will just leave the site without notifying you that’s something’s wrong. Perhaps your web host did a routine upgrade that disables something on your site. Or you made a change to your site or added a page that somehow messes something up. It may be months before you stumble on the fact that people can’t buy anything from your web site…which is really not good.

So every so often, as part of your regular maintenance, you should check your site over and test everything. This includes:

• Your images- Make sure all of your images appear like they’re supposed to. Replace any broken images that are stored on your web site and remove broken images that are linked from outside web sites.
• Your links and navigation- make sure that your links goes to where they’re supposed to go…this also means any mailto links as well. Remove or correct any incorrect links.
• All your online forms- send yourself a message through your online form and see if it works
• Your newsletter- Try subscribing and unsubscribing to your own newsletter to make sure that this works properly…send a copy of your newsletter to yourself and see what your customers see…make sure that your mailing list program sends you a copy of your newsletter from now on so that you get your newsletter everytime you send one
• Your shopping cart- If your shopping cart has a test mode, go through the ordering process and see if you can complete an order…or at the very least, make sure that you can add or substract things from your shopping cart. And don’t forget to take your shopping cart out of test mode once you’re finished testing!
• Any kind of multimedia- If you have Flash, audio, or video on your site, be sure to check these too…make sure that the files load up like they should…make sure they like they play like they should and watch out for error messages.
• Error messages- Keep an eye out for any error messages that may pop up as you navigate through your web site. Take note of what the error message says, what page the error occurs, and what steps you took before the error appeared.
• The speed of your site- Take note of the speed of your web site. Is it taking a long time to load up? Are there certain pages that seem to just hang and never completely load? If your site seems to be slow, there can be a number of different reasons why. The most common culprit is usually the size of your images. Make sure that your images are properly formatted and sized. Another common culprit is inefficient HTML code or poorly installed programs and databases. If the slowness seems to affect your whole web site, consider checking with your web host to see if there is a problem on their end that may be slowing up your site.

Have a realistic timeframe- When I decided to do the upgrade I was hoping to get my whole thing done over a weekend. Well…we can all hope, can’t we? If you’re planning to tie the redesign of your blog to a specific event that has a deadline, perhaps your one or two year anniversary is coming up and you want to celebrate it with a new look, or you’re planning a big promotion that’s going to send people to your blog…be sure to give yourself plenty of time to get it done. Despite our best intentions, things happen, we screw something up during the upgrade and have to fix it…real life intrudes and we have to take care of something personal or business related…or sometimes we just vastly underestimate the time it will take to get the job done. Whatever you estimate it will take for your upgrade, double, maybe even triple that estimate. If you overestimate the time, the worst that can happen is that you finish early.

Back that thing up- Before you even touch anything on your blog, back it up. Back up your database, your themes, any plugins that you may have installed…everthing. The last thing you want is to make one wrong move or install a bad piece of software and lose months or even years worth of posts.

Work on a copy of your blog- When I was doing my upgrade, not only did I make back ups but I created a duplicate of my blog including the database and the theme on my server and made my upgrades on that copy. This was useful in several ways. One, you can make your changes without worrying that you’re going to blow up your current blog. If you’re using a copy of your actual database, you can see what your blog will look let in it’s new theme with real posts. One thing I found when I was doing this was that some of the pictures I have in some of my past blog posts were too big for my new theme. I made sure to resize those pictures before I launched my new blog.

Keep backing that thing up- If you are installing more than one plugin for your site, be sure to back up your database before installing each one. A lot of plugins makes changes to your database and if that particular plugin destroys something on your blog, you’ll have a fresh copy to go back to. The same thing is true if you’re customizing a pre-made theme. Before you start making changes, be sure to have a fresh copy on hand just in case you ruin the theme beyond all recognition.

After you launch your new blog keep a copy of your old blog for awhile- This is useful just in case there are some things that you had in your old blog that you forgot to activate in your new blog. Once I launched my new blog I found that my Feedburner feed was still pointing to my old blog after I did some poking around the old copy. I probably wouldn’t have caught that mistake if I had overwritten the old blog.

Launch your upgrade during off peak hours- My blog statistics showed me that the majority of my readers are from the U.S., so I switched the out the old blog for the new one at about 1:30 in the morning. That way if I messed up the switch it wouldn’t effect my readers too much. If you don’t want to do your switch in the middle of the night, prepare a page that says that you’re upgrading your blog and you should be back up shortly. Make this your index page so that will be the page that people will land on when they arrive at your blog. Once you’ve made the switch and tested out your new blog, remove the page and open up your new masterpiece!

If you can, monitor your 404 hits after you’re done- There’s a great plugin for Wordpress called 404 Notifier that notifies you every time someone hits your 404 page…otherwise known as the Oops! page because it’s the one that people get when they arrive at a page that’s no longer there. Although you should test your blog to make sure that all of your posts are still there, this plugin is good for catching those you miss.

If you have a tip I may have missed, leave a comment!

1. Start the switching process early- If you expect your old email address to be deactivated at some point in time; it’s best to start the process of switching addresses early. Try to start the process a minimum of two weeks before you expect your email address to be deactivated. This will give you enough time to completely transition from your old email to your new email without missing any important messages. Two weeks is the bare minimum, one month is ideal. Either way, the earlier you start, the better.
2. Make a list of where you need to change your address- If you’ve had your email address for any length of time, you’ve probably given it out to any number of people and web sites. This includes:
   • Email lists
   • Online accounts (for online banking, bill paying services, etc
   • Membership profiles (forums, message boards, directories)
   • Web site
   • Business cards
   • Resumes

   Any place that you’ve provided an email address needs to be changed. Make of list of these places and once you’re fairly certain that you have everything listed, start the process of switching addresses at each site. Once you start making these changes, you’ll begin to get confirmation emails from these newsletters web sites, and accounts. Create a folder in your email client and store a copy of these emails. From now on you should start saving a copy of confirmation emails every time you join a new mailing list or open a new online account. Why? If you ever need to change your email address again, you’ll have a ready made list of everything you need to change along with the email addresses and web addresses you’ll need to contact to make the changes.

3. Use your new address for any new contacts- Once you’ve gotten your new email address set up, start using it for any new mailing list subscriptions or membership profiles you sign up for from now on. If someone asks you for your email address, be sure to give out the new one instead of the old one. Don’t continue to use the old address out of habit thinking that you can make the switch when you deactivate your old email. One, you may forget to make the switch when the time comes, and two, whoever you tell may forget update your email when you decide to make the switch. In the end it’s just easier to start using your new address as soon as possible so that you’ll have less to change in the future.
4. Don’t forget your address book and stored emails- If you are switching from one web based email service to another (for example from Hotmail to Gmail); you’ll also need to remember to transfer your address book and any stored emails to your new service. If you’re using a desktop based email program like Outlook, Eudora, or Apple Mail, you won’t have to worry about this step as your emails and address books are generally stored on your computer. You will, however, need to create a new account
5. Announce your new email address to your contacts- Once your new email address is up and running, send out an email to all of the people you have in your address book and tell them that you have a new email address and ask for everyone to update their address books. Use your new email address to send out this message so that it will be easy for people to add your new address to their address books. It’s also a good idea to send this message again a week or two later. Some people may forget to update your address or they may have missed your first email. A second email will give them an extra little reminder if they have forgotten.
6. Monitor your old email address- If you can, keep your old email address activated for some length of time and monitor the emails coming in. No matter how thorough think you’ve been it’s possible that there a mailing list you’ve forgotten about, an old forum account you’ve missed, or a friend who’ve still hadn’t gotten the memo about your new address. By keeping your old account open, you’ll be able to catch whoever or whatever that may slipped through the cracks. If you wish, you can keep your old email address open indefinitely and use it as a “throwaway” or a spam address. You can use this email when you’re signing up for contests, temporary mailing lists, or other things that you don’t plan on keeping up with that may attract a lot of spam.

Have any tips that I may have missed? Post a comment and tell me about it!

How important is this? Well, legally having an updated copyright date can only help if someone is stealing content off of your web site. On a more practical level, it gives visitors to your web site the impression that you keep your site fresh and up to date. I mean, how impressed are you when you visit a site with a copyright date as recent as 2001?

So now that you’ve cleared away the confetti and champagne, scoot over to your site and get that date current. And if you don’t have a copyright date on your site, resolve to make that the first change of the New Year.

Happy New Year all!