Saturday, August 13, 2022

The Big O Foundation Website Launch

the big o foundation

We recently launched the new website for The Big O Foundation in North Liberty, Iowa. This website is our nonprofit award project of 2022. The Big O Foundation and corresponding website intends to  honor the life of Owen Eugene Skelley who passed away on March 3, 2022. The foundation aims to raise awareness of mental health issues and provide support to individuals wherever possible. We encourage you to get involved, make a donation, or volunteer. Any contribution of money or your time is most welcome and needed. We utilized the color purple throughout the site to tie in with mental health and with the Liberty High School colors. Our donation of this website and the ongoing hosting and site management was initiated by an inquiry from a friend of the family and we were honored to be able to be a part of The Big O Foundation,

About The Big O Foundation

The Big O Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt charitable organization. Individuals may take a tax deduction on a charitable gift to a 501(c)(3) organization that is organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, literary or educational purposes. The mission of The Big O Foundation is to serve and support children, teenagers and their families that are facing mental health challenges. We share Owen’s story to spread mental health education, draw our community together, and support the welfare of local youth. Our resources are used to keep Owen’s light shining by giving back to the community and spread awareness about mental illness and suicide. The Big O Foundation is managed by volunteer board members and no donated funds will be retained by individual board members. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your donation is tax deductible as allowed by law. Visit their website at https://thebigofoundation.org/ to see the finished product.
If you're interested in a new or redesigned website for your business, check out our Business Website page.

Original post here: The Big O Foundation Website Launch

Monday, July 4, 2022

Liberty Doors, Inc. Website Launch

Liberty Doors, Inc.

We recently launched the completely redesigned website for Liberty Doors, Inc. in North Liberty, Iowa. The owners wanted to have their website updated and chose Team 218 Web Services to overhaul their website. We gave the website a facelift and added location pages for each of their Iowa offices (North Liberty and Ankeny).

About Liberty Doors, Inc.

Liberty Doors, Inc. first opened for business in 1972 and is a highly recognized name in the commercial door industry. They supply and install top quality commercial doors and service any size account. If you need doors, locks, closers, access control and more, you need to talk to the pros at Liberty Doors, Inc. They also offer professional installation for their local customers. With 2 locations in Iowa (North Liberty and Ankeny) they supply hollow metal doors and frames, fire rated commercial doors, and architectural wood doors.They'e the experts in all the different types of hardware used in locks and closers. They supply contract hardware from the top names in the business and can show you how to choose the right products for your needs. Visit their website at https://libertydoors.com to see all the changes.
If you're interested in a new or redesigned website for your business, check out our Business Website page.

Original post here: Liberty Doors, Inc. Website Launch

Sunday, June 26, 2022

The Big O Foundation

The Big O Foundation Screenshot

We are honored to have been chosen to create a website for The Big O Foundation and have designated the foundation's website as our 2022 Nonprofit Award winner. Honoring the life of Owen “Big O” Skelley, the mission of The Big O Foundation is to serve and support children, teenagers and their families that are facing mental health challenges. Owen was a young man full of life, love, and generosity. His love of sports especially baseball and football were very important and rewarding to him. He was always striving to get better and a dedicated team player. He could always pick someone up when they were feeling down regardless of the situation or mood he was in. Improving and building up others was his highest priority. One of the fundraiser events The Big O Foundation holds is the Owen Skelley Memorial Golf Tournament. If you'd like to learn more about The Big O Foundation, please visit the foundation's website at https://thebigofoundation.org.  

Original post here: The Big O Foundation

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Malware & SPAM Tips

malware & spam tips

Malware is Everywhere

We originally wrote this back in 2017. Since then the level of SPAM coming at you from every direction has increased. We thought it was time to revisit this topic and remind you to be vigilant in your effort to avoid these attacks on your inbox and privacy.

MALWARE & SPAM TIPS

We've all experienced a jump in the amount of SPAM emails recently. Along with the increased amount - the tactics have become more ruthless. It's something everyone is affected by and it can have malicious intent, or be more benign but regardless, it's ALL a big pain in the ass. Especially for businesses.

Unsubscribing

Many times an unsolicited email will have an "Unsubscribe Link". Score right?! Well, maybe but it might just turn out to be a touchdown for the other team. Take our word for it, those almost never work. As soon as you click it, you're alerting the Spammer they have reached an active email address. It encourages the sender to throw more junk your way. Don't waste your time with Unsubscribe Links.

Address Removal Services

Well, what about using one of those Address Removal Services? There are a bunch of those, all offering to remove your email address from spammer lists - for a fee of course. Turns out, these Unsubscribe Services are just as bad if not worse than the spammers they claim to help get rid of. They are cons; some even claim to be consumer protection agencies. They hit you two ways. First, they extort money from you, then instead of removing you from any spammer's list - they collect your email address and any other personal information you have given them and use it to spam you all over again. The truth of the matter is that once you start getting spam emails (and you almost certainly will) it's impossible to remove yourself from the clutches of these creeps. About the best you can hope for is to set up some email filters to help deal with it.

You May Be Spamming

Did you know you could be sending out spam yourself and not even know it! Usually, it happens like this: you get an email with a link to a suspicious site. You are on top of your game and know that you shouldn't click on the link but the email came from your friend and you trust them, right? Wrong! Once you click on the link a bot is downloaded to your computer. Now the spammers will use the bot to send email to your friends to try and get them to click on the same link you did. Eventually, they build a network of bots they can use for bad things like denial of service attacks or sending out massive amounts of spam. Installing a good anti-virus program can protect you from bots. Want to check your computer for malicious code or viruses? We recommend Malware Bytes. They offer a free version and it works!

Rules To Live By Online

  1. Never click on an attachment in an email unless you are 100% sure it's from a trusted source AND even then proceed with caution. Hover over the link and look in the status bar to see where the link will take you. This is a good way to "look before you leap".
  2. Never, ever buy anything from an unsolicited email. Never! Don't you do it!
  3. Install and use a good anti-virus program. There are many free programs that do an excellent job of protecting you. Find one and use it!
SPAM is costly ($6.28 at WalMart for the canned version - back in 2017 it was $1.98). Trying to pin down an accurate cost of SPAM is tough but most estimates put the cost in tens of millions of dollars. (we think the true cost is much higher than that). According to the IBM Threat Intelligence Index 2022The volume of malware increased 3,000% Q3 2019 and Q4 2020. If you have a SPAM problem and would like some additional information or help to resolve it, please use our Contact Form - we'd love to hear from you. Unfortunately, Malware and SPAM are here to stay and something we all have to deal with. Follow our Malware and SPAM Tips and stick to common sense online "rule of the road", learn how to set up filters in your email client to delete SPAM and remain vigilant. If it makes you feel any better, buy a can of SPAM and fry it up. It's actually not too bad.

Original post here: Malware & SPAM Tips

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Should Web Design and SEO Be Mutually Exclusive?

Web Design and SEO - Should Web Design & SEO be Mutually Exclusive

Why Do So Many Web Designers Neglect Technical SEO?

The web design community has been quick to embrace the benefits of having an awesome website, and we’ve seen a lot of innovation over the years with design software and techniques. But when it comes to the topic of SEO, the landscape has evolved so quickly over the last decade that many web design professionals are either unaware of the fundamentals or, worse, don’t care.

Web Design and SEO

In the past, SEO and design were two distinct disciplines that were largely mutually exclusive. While today the two go hand-in-hand. This isn’t to say web design is no longer necessary; far from it. As our world has expanded and digital media has become mainstream, companies have begun to see the need to create websites that are visually engaging and have functionality beyond simple navigation. There are many reasons why SEO and design are intertwined today. The most obvious reason is that web design is critical to the success of your website. As a matter of fact, web design and SEO are so closely related that you can’t have one without the other. So what does that mean? It means that when you create a website for your business, you should use design principles that are SEO-friendly. This includes things like using appropriate tags, keeping page load times as fast as possible, and optimizing images and video. SEOThere’s no arguing the fact that SEO is the most important factor for driving organic traffic. But as web designers begin to dabble in web development, they may find themselves neglecting many of the technical SEO aspects of the web. Technical SEO is a very important aspect of website design that often gets overlooked. It is the foundation upon which you build a site and helps determine the site’s overall ranking. The lack of attention to technical SEO can have a negative impact on the success of a website. I've reviewed a lot of websites and am always surprised when I do a basic site audit and find so many basic technical SEO elements not used correctly or missing entirely. To me this seems like a disservice to a client. How can you do good SEO without taking basic design into account? In an ideal world, a company’s website would be the best possible representation of its brand. In reality, this is rarely the case. In fact, most sites don’t even rank in the top 5 for anything. Let’s take a look at what technical SEO elements a web page needs to have in order to rank well in search results. In my opinion these should be mandatory and it's disappointing to see so many web design firms omit or ignore them altogether. The elements we think are important are based on our real-world research and testing - not on what someone wrote in an article somewhere. SEO Elements 1. Title Tag: Title tags are what you see when you click on a title in a browser. They are an important element of the link between the searcher and your web page. It is highly recommended that you use a keyword-phrase in the title tag. This helps to make your web page more relevant to potential visitors. 2. Meta Description: Each page needs a meta description that describes the content of the page with an optimal length between 70 and 320 characters. This should summarize the page and "sell the page". The meta description is what you see when you perform a search.   3. Header Tags: Header tags are used to structure a document and provide information to users about the document's structure. Each page should have only ONE H1 tag. Header tags should follow the correct heirarchy order (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6). Search engines will give more weight to web pages that have clearly defined headings, which help to improve search results. Headings also play a critical role when it comes to screen readers for someone who is visually impaired. 3. Keyword Consistency: Keyword/keyword-phrases should be distributed across important HTML tags like the Title, Description, Header tags, and page content. 4. HTML Structure: HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, and is what creates a web page. HTML is also used to create forms, videos, and other documents. A web page's HTML should be clean, simple, and organized. It should follow best practices and be easy to read. 5. Alt Tags: Alt attributes are an often overlooked and simple way to signal to Search Engines what an image is about, and help it rank in image search results. Alt tags are used in place of images for web pages that cannot load any images. These tags are also used by screen readers. 6. Schema.org: Schema.org is a type of structured data markup that describes the content on your web page and is used by search engines to understand your content. 7. Content: Content is the information that you want to share on your web page. It could be text, audio, or video. Having good keyword-rich content helps reinforce your page authority to search engines. Ideally you want your content to have a mixture of text & images and contain around 1,000 words. 8. XML Sitemap: You may already be familiar with the concept of a sitemap. A sitemap is a list of pages on your site that outline the content and links within the website. When you make changes to your site, you can easily add these pages to the sitemap. The sitemap is crucial to a successful website. Google and other search engines use this information to determine what your website offers. 9. Linking: Internal linking of web pages is important and often overlooked. Not just using a menu - interlinking pages by the use of anchor tags can boost page rank. All of these technical SEO elements should be used correctly on every page of a website. Unfortunately in a lot of cases, that's not true. Here are some of the errors I see frequently: 1. Title tag too short or too long. 60 characters is optimum. 2. Title tag doesn't include the main keyword/keyword-phrase. 3. Meta description missing. 4. Meta description doesn't include keyword/keyword-phrases. 5. H1 tag missing. 6. Multiple H1 tags. 7. Keyword/keyword-phrase not included in header tags 8. Header tags out of order. 9. Header tags not used. 10. Alt tags not used. Good web design and SEO can live together in perfect harmony. It doesn’t matter how good your website looks if no one can find it. Search engines such as Google and Bing make decisions about where to rank websites based on various factors. Your website’s content and the structure of your website pages are often among the most important ones. However, a combination of both is best! It may seem redundant, but consider SEO as a part of the project, not an afterthought. Think about the keywords and phrases you want to rank for, how users will find your content, and what types of content they might want to find. A well-designed site that offers useful information, easy navigation, and an easy-to-read layout will make it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for and keep them on the site longer. A well-optimized website that ranks well for keywords in search results is sure to bring traffic and revenue to your business! We incorporate proven technical SEO elements during our website design phase on sites we develop at Team 218 Web Services. If you have questions about Web Design and SEO or anything covered in this post, send us a message and we'll be happy to help you out.

Original post here: Should Web Design and SEO Be Mutually Exclusive?

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

10 Great Technology Advancements

Technology Advancement Comparison of iPhone and old phone

How Technology Advancements Have Changed Our Lives

technology advancement robot hand holding light bulbJust look at how technology advancements have changed the way we communicate, how we live, and how we work. Technology has created massive changes in our culture and society. It has changed the way we live, and even the way we die. We have learned how to use it, and it has helped us live longer. It has created jobs, and it has destroyed jobs. The world of technology has changed, and so has the world of business. Technology is an integral part of every aspect of business. Some businesses rely on it heavily, while others barely notice it. This post gives a brief overview of how technology advancements have changed our lives.

Communication

From mobile phones to email to text messaging, the way people communicate has drastically changed. With this change, comes a massive shift in the way businesses operate. technology advancement man on old phoneJust think about it, we used to spend hours on the phone calling a company and asking them to provide us with information. Not any longer! Nowadays, we can simply send an email or text message to find out if a company is willing to provide us with the information we need. This has completely changed the way businesses operate. Today we can order just about anything online (including a car) and have it on your doorstep the following day. People order groceries online. Then a store employee does the shopping for you, sends you a text when your order is ready and brings your order out to your car when you arrive. Covid ramped up the curbside delivery model and caused retailers to scramble to implement this new way of selling their goods. Almost unheard of a few short years ago, it's now commonplace to see curbside pickup areas at stores everywhere.

Adapt or be Left Behind

So what can we take away from this? Well, in today’s world, it is absolutely imperative that businesses adapt and adjust to the ever-changing world of technology. When it comes to communication, technology has made it easier than ever to reach out to someone and inquire about a product or service. This allows businesses to respond quicker, and it keeps customers satisfied with the quality of service that they receive. Even if we don't have a smart phone, we can still find ourselves on the Internet thanks to an incredible network of Wi-Fi hotspots. It's not that long ago that we relied on landlines, faxes, and snail mail for the bulk of our communication needs. Now, we're always connected and online at the same time.

The Internet

Technology has affected all areas of our lives, but none as profoundly as the Internet. We have an incredible amount of access to information at our fingertips thanks to the Internet. With technology advancing every day, we have so much information at our disposal that we have to take a deep breath and slow down sometimes. There is hardly an aspect of our life where we are not impacted by technological developments. The technological advancements in society have occurred throughout health, communication, work and entertainment, and the changes brought about by technology are significant. While many people are concerned with the advances made by technology, there are those who embrace them and find great benefit in the many ways in which technology helps us. There is also a part of the population who are confused and stifled by technology.

Medical Technology Advancements

Civil War battlefield physicians routinely sawed off injured limbs. Today we marvel at artificial legs and arms and even wearable robotic hands. And a few years from now, we may be looking back at surgical robots as a primitive form of technology. Technology Advancement Medical RobotTechnology is changing health care at an unprecedented rate, and it’s a fact of life we can’t avoid. The field of healthcare technology has grown to encompass anything from wearable devices that track vital signs to automated decision-support systems that interpret MRIs. As healthcare providers try to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, this trend is only going to accelerate. 100 years of medical advancements have changed the world of health care in countless ways. From the creation of an entirely new field of medicine, to the rise of artificial intelligence, technology has revolutionized the way patients receive treatment. The use of technology in healthcare has evolved over time. As a profession, medicine has been around for thousands of years, but advances in the early 20th century brought about the rise of modern medicine. With the advent of the internet and the mobile phone, modern technology has drastically improved patient care by allowing doctors and other health care professionals to provide remote care to patients anywhere in the world. Technology advancements have changed our lives in many ways and for the better. It has helped improve the way we live our lives in many ways. There are many people who believe that we will soon be living in a digital world, where everything we need will be available through the Internet. This isn’t just a fantasy, as the Internet is becoming a more important part of everyday life for many people. It’s easy to forget the impact that technology has had on people and society since it became a part of everyone’s lives.

Instantaneous Information

Not only have technology advancements changed the way we communicate with each other, but it has given us an abundance of information at our fingertips. We no longer have to go through countless papers and books to find the information we are looking for.

Just Google It!

Now, we can access information right from our devices. As a result of this, we’re able to get more done with less effort. Have a question? Need to know something? Easy - just Google it! That has become a common phrase around our house. It’s also impacted the way we market ourselves and how we sell our products. In today’s market, it’s easier than ever before to reach a lot of people with the right message. The challenge is that most people don’t want to hear what you have to say, which is why you need to show them first. Technology advancements have made the buying process easier and more accessible, yet it hasn’t eliminated the sales process itself. In fact, sales processes continue to evolve with the advances in technology. This means that businesses must continue to invest in the sales process to keep up with the times.

Our Top Ten Picks

Here are our picks for the Top 10 technology advancements in the last 100 years.

These technology advancement examples have most likely touched your life.
  1. The Radio: The first invention that came along after the printing press. It took about 25 years to get the radio to the point where you could hear it without earphones.
  2. Television: The television is considered the first true mass medium. It allowed people to sit at home and watch something at the same time.
  3. The Telephone: The telephone was the first time people could speak to someone else who was far away. The telephone revolutionized society and business.
  4. The Computer: When the first computers were invented in the 1940s, they were very large, expensive, and only useful for big businesses and universities. By the 1970s, they became smaller, cheaper, and more useful.
  5. The Internet: In the mid-1990s, the Internet became the world's biggest computer. Before that, it was just used by scientists. It changed the way we live, communicate, and interact.
  6. The Personal Computer: The first personal computer (PC) was invented in 1951. The early PCs were big and bulky, but they quickly got smaller and more powerful.
  7. The Mobile Phone: The mobile phone, which is smaller than a credit card, is now so widespread that almost everyone has one. The mobile phone has made communication between people easier and more accessible.
  8. The GPS: A few decades ago, the GPS system was used by pilots and sailors. Now, anyone can use it to find their way around. This is a huge benefit for car and motorcycle riders, hikers, and bicyclists.
  9. The Electric Toothbrush: The electric toothbrush was introduced in 1881. This invention led to the dental revolution. The first electric toothbrushes were made from copper and were incredibly expensive. They could only be used once or twice a week and were hard to use. Today, electric toothbrushes are the most popular and affordable oral hygiene device.
  10. The Mobile App: Apps have been a huge benefit to consumers because they can be used on a wide variety of devices. People can download apps from the App Store on their phones, tablets, and even on the internet. Apps are an easy way to stay connected with people you care about.
Do you agree with our picks? What other advances in tech would you include? We'd like to know your thoughts. Let us know in the comments.  

Original post here: 10 Great Technology Advancements

Monday, May 9, 2022

We Refreshed The WebRidez Website

WebRidez Car Shows Car Clubs

We just finished a little remodeling on one of our side project, WebRidez. We gave the site a facelift and made some nice improvements. For instance, you no longer need to register to post your events on WebRidez. You can also post your Car Club to help generate more exposure for your club and drive traffic to your club website. We have improved the ability to browse events and search for events by type of event, by state, or by the name of the car show or club. The overall user experience is improved and the whole process is faster and easier. When you post an event to WebRidez, it remains active and published until 1 day after the event. On the day after the event we don't delete or remove your event - we just un-publish it. That way we can resurrect it for the next year if you like. We're still working out some of the details on the republishing process but that's the goal. We invite you to hop over to WebRidez and check out all the new stuff. Here's the link: https://WebRidez.com  

Original post here: We Refreshed The WebRidez Website

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