This new email marketing tool is Open Source (as usual) built using PHP and MYSQL. We have employed some fairly simple yet effective Ajax and Javascript functionality to generate the informational overlay pop-ups and generate the dynamic email builder preview. Now we just hope that it helps all those RacingPost.com customers get the gift they want for Christmas… instead of one they don’t!

Initially a Google Adwords (local) campaign targeting printer repairs, we have recently moved live two additional campaigns for fax repairs and photocopier repairs. The custom landing page for printer repairs had proven so successful (based upon tried and tested usability principles) that similar pages have now gone live for fax repairs and photocopier repairs to further increase their business leads from search engine advertising.

In some cases we have found that the geographic targeting options within Google Adwords are not 100% reliable, this is because where your computer is and where you actually connect to the Internet are two totally different things – Google can only target the latter. This of course raises questions from clients themselves when they cannot see their adverts whilst Google hungrily spends their budget. However, in Lyndon’s case we are seeing both high volumes and high conversions – all to the good of the bottom line.

PPR came to us back in 2004 and we built them a site and Content Management System (CMS) to enable them to post jobs and manage candidate applications / CV uploads. This time round they had a new template designed by a chap called Jason Shoffman and Firetop were tasked with cutting Jason’s PSD  files into SEO friendly HTML and populating the content via the existing recruitment CMS (see right).

The Firetop recruitment CMS is a fairly basic Open Source offering but does the job for a recruiter requiring an online presence:

• Editing of in-page text and image content.
• New job postings, edits and deletions (multi-category options + RSS feeds).
• Candidate detail review and Word doc downloads.
• Employer vacancy postings and submission management.
• Automated email message text editing.

When combined with the revamped search engine advertising campaign (also managed by Firetop) we hope to see business flourish for PPR at a time when the economy isn’t in the best of health!

The site sits on a PHP/MYSQL based Content Management System (CMS) powered by Hungarian web development company Pressflex. The folks at Pressflex have been super efficient and managed to tweak our HTML to fit their needs for all browsers (including the dreaded IE6). We like their CMS, it works very nicely indeed for publishers and enables traditional print-based publishers to upload XML files for each printed issue whilst also editing and tagging the content themselves.

A professional developer has to test multiple browser platforms with each new Website build and create CSS work-arounds to fit the whole gamut of versions, this ensures that a consistent screen display occurs for the majority of people. For the website funder / customer this means more time spent and consequently a more costly development. One could argue that the BBC headline may as well be ‘Microsoft to make Web development more expensive until 2014’.

Given the recent Twitter hashtag popularity on ‘IE6 Must Die’ we would have hoped that Microsoft might have paid attention to the Web developer community! However, as they appear to have done quite the opposite we shall continue to test multiple browser versions via a single PC on an IE6 simulator. This isn’t particularly straight-forward until you look into it and discover Microsoft’s free Virtual PC 2004 download and associated ‘VPC images’:

1. Download Virtual PC 2004

2. Download a suitable Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image
Here there are many VPC images for IE6, 7 and 8 on XP SP3 and they provide the only really stable and well supported browser testing environment that we can find. The VPC images currently expire on 31st August 2009 so here’s hoping that with the new IE6 support announcement new VPC Images will be loaded in the next few weeks! September update: new VPC images expire January 1, 2010 – PHEW!