We continue to roll out exciting new features for use with Perceptive OBP.  These features, which have been implemented as a result of our customers' requests, address the need to make the platform more customizable, SEO friendly, and supportive for both clients and their audience.

Among the updates included in the newest release of Perceptive OBP:

• Device-Specific Site Wide Templates
• SEO-Friendly URLs for WebApps
• Recursive Modules
• Partial URL Matching
• Improvements to Order and Work Flow Notification
• Forum Subscriptions
• Updated Social Integration

These updates and fixes will enable Perceptive OBP to do more for your business by allowing you to easily customize your site with the features for which you've been asking.

Device Specific Site Wide Templates

Now you can make your site mobile with the device-specific templates that have been created for desktop, tablets, and smartphones.  These site-wide templates detect the type of device your customer is using and display the appropriate template and resolution.  By making your site mobile, customers and users can view your site and interact with it using iPhone, iPad, Android phones, smartphones, and tablet PCs. The templates are customizable through the Perceptive OBP admin panel and may be uploaded via FTP from the Templates folder.

SEO Friendly URLs for Web Apps

Perceptive OBP now offers support for customizable, SEO friendly URLs in the Web Apps Module.  This feature is available through the Search Engine Optimization settings page.  Your web apps' URL will appear as follows, but you may edit the URL in your Manage Web Apps screen:  http://www.yoursite.com/webapp-name/webapp-item-nameRecursive Modules

Recursive modules are essentially "modules within modules."  By implementing recursive modules, Perceptive OBP now allows you to:

• Place modules within content holders
• Add products or catalogs within blog posts
• Insert any module, such as a webform module, catalogs/products, or literature items, into a web app list or detailed view 

The module rendering engine now allows recursive modules up to three levels deep, and in order for you to take full advantage of the recursive module feature, the module limit per page has been increased to 75.

Partial URL Matching

This feature allows your site to become more user friendly for your customers and directs users to their intended target.  Partial URL matching is available for announcements, catalogs, products, and web app items.  With partial URL matching, which may be turned on and off in the Search Engine Optimization settings page, your site's users may type an abbreviated form of the URL and be redirected toward the appropriate page.

Work Flow and Order Notification Improvements

Customizable workflow notifiications and order notifications have been improved by the addition of layouts available through FTP.  Further improvements include the addition of new tags to the Packing Slip layout and Packing Label layout:

• Packing Slip - {tag_shippingattention}
• Packing Label - {tag_shippingattention}, {tag_shippingdescription}, {tag_shippinginstructions}, {tag_invoicenumber}

Forum Subscriptions 

Users can now subscribe to forums and receive email notifications whenever a new topic is opened.  The email template can use both the forum name and topic in the email subject line, making it easier for subscribers to sort, filter, and read forum email.

Updated Social Integration

The new Social Media capabilities of Perceptive OBP have necessitated easier social integration with the platform.  Along with the Facebook Like Module, we have added support for the Facebook activity feed and Facebook Send.

We are excited about the new features and fixes in the latest release of Perceptive OBP and hope that you will find that our latest improvements boost your online success and make keeping up with your business site easier than ever.

Earlier, I explained how to GeoTag your site to reach local clients and customers.  Another way to reach your local market is through the hCard Microformat.

At its simplest, the hCard is a 1:1 XHTML representation of the vCard, which has long been the standard in electronic business cards.  The hCard takes electronic business card contact information and formats it for any HTML, Atom, RSS, or XML file.  Your hCard can be formatted so that it is invisible to your site's visitors, but the contact information is collected by search engine spiders.

A simple hCard format, providing just your name and URL, would look something like this:

[ code ]

<div class="vcard">
   <a class="url fn" href="http://www.travislangley.com/">
      Travis Langley
   </a>
</div>

Of course, by adding classes, you can add detail to your contact information, as in the following example:

[ code ]

<div class="vcard">
   <span class="n">
      <span class="given-name">Travis</span>
      <span class="family-name">Langley</span>
   </span>
   <div class="org">Travis Langley & Associates</div>
   <a href="mailto:travis@travislangley.com">
      travis@travislangley.com
   </a>
   <div class="adr">
      <span class="locality">Edmond</span>
      <abbr class="region" title="Oklahoma">OK</abbr>
      <span class="country-name">United States</span>
   </div>
   <div>+1.405.923.5810</div>
</div>

For help creating an hCard for your site, you can use the hCard generator from Microformats.org.  You can learn how to hide your hCard in your website in the article "Everything About the hCard Microformat" at Qreative Zone.

The hCard is only one of the many microformats that add information to your site and make that data available for searching.  Microformats can also help you perform tasks quickly and easily:

• Use XFN to link to friends and contacts.
• hCalendar allows you to add events to your site.
• With hReview, you can review books, movies, and products.

Microformats.org has tools and creators for all of the above microformats to help you with coding microformats for your site

It's been awhile since my last post, and that means business has been good.  I have a series of great new client projects to work, and that has kept me pretty busy.  However, I needed a break from the layout and coding, so I thought I would add a new entry to the blog - actually, this is a recycled post from my old site..  This one deals with the use, or lack of use, of www on your sites URL, how it can affect your search engine rankings, and what you can do to correct the issue.

First, what really is the issue with using www or not you might ask.  For one, it's an issue of what is the best URL to serve for a given web page, otherwise referred to as canonicalization.  Most of us would consider the following to be the same thing:

grademyshades.com
www.grademyshades.com
www.grademyshades.com/index.htm

Actually, the  list could be a lot longer, and in this case these all point to the same page... but they don't have to.  Each of these URLs could actually represent a different page, and that's how the search engines see it, as different pages.  Just check out the following image for reference:



Notice above how Google has listed both grademyshades.com and www.grademyshades.com as two separate listings.  So what's the big deal?  The deal is two-fold.  First, search engines don't like duplicate content and will very often hand out penalties because of it.  This is exactly how the search engines see this - as duplicate content - two different pages with identical information and this is something you should definitely avoid. Second, search engines place a lot of weight on links from other sites to your pages.  Let's say that some of those links include the www in the url, and some do not.  You are essentially splitting those links up between what the search engine sees as two different pages, and neither version of your page will rank as well as if all those links were pointed to the same page.

Good news, there is a simple fix that essentially makes the non-www version non existent.  Just add the following bit of code to your .htaccess file (place in the root directory of your website - and replace domain.com with your domain) :

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.domain\.com [NC]

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

What this does is redirect any requests for the non-www version of you site to use the www version.  It also issues a 301 permanent redirect code, so that the search engines will know to only index the www version.  And there you have it - 2 simple lines of code to prevent or help correct what could be a big problem for your search engine optimization efforts.

Want more information on the subject?  Here's a good link from an industry insider on the subject of canonical urls (primarily from a google point of view) that should help answer more questions.

The web is global and has really expanded the reach of many businesses, and search engines are a great tool to give them exposure in the world marketplace.  However, a lot of folks don't realize that these same engines are an excellent way to reach those customers and clients that are just around the corner.  It's also a lot easier to achieve visibility locally than to compete for good search engine placement against business worldwide.  Even if you provide your products and services worldwide, don't forget to reach out to those a little more close to home.  Here's some tips to help you succeed with local search.

• Get Listed
  
  The big search engines all provide tools to allow you to submit your business details to be included in their local search indexes with plenty of detail.  In addition to your just your website and business name, you can include your address and phone (obviously) as well as business category, hours of operation, accepted forms of payment, an image of your business, if free or paid parking is available and other relevant information.  After providing your business details, you will generally be required to verify that you are the owner (or a representative of the business).  This may be done by mail, email or phone, and varies depending on the search engine.  You should start by submitting your site to the following local search services:
  
  www.google.com/local/add
  listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit
  ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx
  biz.yelp.com/signup
  
  Also, google shows listings from other local search services (like yahoo, yelp and others as shown below), so if you want to try to increase your market share, it helps to list your business in a variety of sources.




• GeoTag Your Site
  
  In your HTML, you can place some tags in the header to help the search engines know where your site is located.  This is done by setting up Geotags, and it's a pretty simple process.  GeoTags look something like this:
  
  
  [ code ]

  <meta name="geo.position" content="35.644707, -97.545419">
  <meta name="geo.placename" content="Travis Langley & Associates, Edmond, Oklahoma, United States">
  <meta name="geo.region" content="US-OK">
  
  
  If you need to convert and address to lattitude and longitude for the geo.position tag, try mygeoposition.com.

Up Next - hCards and Microformats.
Check back soon for part 2 of this article.  It's late -  I'm off to bed...