Posted by: admin in Untagged on
Dec 24, 2008
I've written earlier about how finding and getting a Blog component to work in Joomla hasn't been the smoothest experience . I tried MojoBlog initially, then painfully switched over to MyBlog and spent a considerable amount of time making it work in my currents setup. One of my biggest pain points was that none of the Joomla Sitemap components would work too well with MyBlog - they would just not pick up the URL's. Anyone that knows anything about SEO knows that a sitemap is very important to make sure that Google crawls the right URL's with the right priority. If you have multiple websites in your shared hosting space, then it's even more important to tell the search engines what to crawl.
Xmap comes with extensions (plugins) for several major Joomla components. Make sure you check their list of plugins and make sure it has your major components that are installed or likely to be installed on your site. If not, then do not use Xmaps. It will not pick up your component's URL's which could be a deal breaker. In that case, your only choice is to look for another sitemap compeonent that might work with your specific component OR request that extension from either the maker of Xmap (who is really responsive btw) or your specific component developer. Or, if you are a developer yourself, you could write it and make it available to others in exchange from some bragging rights and free traffic from the Xmaps and related sites.
Here's what I did.
In my previous post I had explained how selecting an autoresponder is not an easy decision and can often costs hundreds of dollars per month. I had concluded with a statement about Profollow . This post has my chat transcript with the Profollow people. This might be a good solution for those looking for a low cost autoresponder to start with.
Srini: Are you guys an Aweber reseller? How is profollow different than Awerber then? Do I get access to all the tracking and analytics features in aweber or is that different in profollow?
You are now speaking with Erin Carney of Customer Solutions.
Erin Carney: Hi Srini
Srini: Hi Erin
Selecting your Email Marketing provider is a VERY important decision any website or online business will make. Why? Because once you make your pick, it is VERY difficult to change the provider if you decide to change your mind in the future. I know what you are thinking. You could always export your list to Excel or CSV and import it into another list management product, right? Yes, but there's a catch. Most list management software require your subscribers to opt in again when you import a list. This is to ensure compliance with the Spam act and make sure that all your subcribers have actually expressed interest to be part of your site. Furthermore, it's not just the list. Each product has analytics and tracking info that cannot be transffered from one product to the other easily. In Email marketing, knowing the history of a specific email list is very important in order to be able to segment your list and make a targeted pitch to each segment. So, long story short, once you pick an email marketing solution, you are more or less married to it for life. I know that sounds scary, but it's true.
First off, you need to decide between a Server Software based solution versus Hosted Solution. The difference is that a server-based solution is a software product you buy and install on your server (or even desktop, in the case of certain products). Hosted solutions manage your mailing lists on their servers.
Server Based software:
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