This morning's feature upgrade went smooth as silk (less than two minutes of downtime) and now a host of new features await you in your Water, Sky or LightCMS account. I am super excited about the new drafts feature, which I am currently using for the first time as I create this blog post. It's great to see the system auto-saving my content as I type with the ability to revert to any previous version at any time. Nice.

For a full rundown on what's new, please see our pre-release post detailing all of the new features.

Attention LightCMS resellers: remember that if you have at least one paid website in your LightCMS account, you were not automatically opted into the new "Force Secure Logins" feature. We kept you opted out in order to protect your private label, since this feature exposes the publishpath domain on your site.. However, you may wish to use this feature and you are welcome to do so. To opt in, you simply need to visit the My Account --> Preferences tab and check the box next to "Force Secure Logins." This will turn this feature on for all websites under your account. More information about this can be found in the pre-release blog post linked above.

In my previous post in this series, I made the case that creating a sustainable Facebook presence for your business is best accomplished by bringing in content you already create. To accomplish this, you have to make use of some Facebook applications, and this can be quite a pain.

Since I've already been through much of this pain, I figured I'd share with you how I've set up our Element Fusion Facebook page so that you can learn from the agony of my experience.

The RSS Application

I have to say, the idea of a simple application that reads your RSS feeds, displays them on your Facebook page and writes updates to the page's mini-feed / newsfeed ought to be standard in Facebook pages. Unfortunately, it's not. Rather, you have to search and sort through all of the Facebook apps to find one that accomplishes what you need. Not only that, but you need one that actually works, which isn't always a given with Facebook applications.

I looked at a ton of RSS apps and, actually, I still haven't found one that does the things mentioned above. I did find a few that almost did everything I needed, but each one just seemed to have something that it couldn't do right. Here's a look:

1. Simply RSS: reads multiple feeds and can be installed on pages, but it won't update to the mini-feed. Evidently, this is by design, not a bug.
2. Blog RSS Feed Reader: reads multiple feeds, has a nice presentation, can be installed on pages, but it posts updates to the page's administrator's profile rather than the mini-feed of the page itself. I contacted the developers about this but haven't gotten a resolution, so no good.
3. FriendFeed: an external application that has a nice interface within Facebook and does everything we would want but ... oops, it doesn't work on Facebook pages in its full version (which is what we need). It's only for profiles.
4. Notes: Facebook's built-in notes app will allow you to import notes from an external blog and it will post to the mini-feed and it does work on pages. The problems here are that you can only import one feed and items imported are designated with an "[your company] imported a note" in the feed and on the profile. It just doesn't look that professional.

So, what did I do?
As you can see, none of these applications really did everything I needed, so here's my temporary solution until something better comes along. I use the notes app to import our blog feed and post it to the mini-feed (enduring the unprofessional look of the "imported" verbiage), then I use Simply RSS to make a prettier display of the blog on the page itself. It's a combination of two separate apps to get something close to the desired result.

TwitterSync

On a more positive note, there is one application we are using that works extremely well. It's called TwitterSync and, as you might expect, it synchronizes your Tweets with your Facebook page or profile. Since we have a company Twitter feed, this is a great app for us. It posts all tweets to the mini-feed and also creates a "status" box on the page to display the current tweet. It updates nearly instantaneously, which is a nice contrast to the RSS apps that generally take hours to update new posts. If you use this on your personal profile, it actually updates your status, which is cool, but pages don't have statuses so it works a little differently, yet still nicely.

I highly recommend TwitterSync. The developer provides excellent support as well. I had to make use of this with one problem I ran into and he helped to get things moving along very quickly.

Shared Items

Another type of content I am working on bringing into our page is my Google shared items feed. Since I do a lot of blog reading and sharing anyway, I'd like to be able to push shared item content onto the Facebook page. There is an app for this called Feedheads, and it works very well but ... oops, once again, it doesn't work on pages. I could certainly make use of more RSS apps to bring this in, but I'm still exploring the best way, especially given the brittle nature of my current RSS configuration.

Conclusion

TwitterSync along with two RSS apps helps me bring the syndicated content we are already providing onto our Facebook page. I'm not saying this is the sum total of everything you can do with your Facebook page, but the nice thing is that it keeps our page looking fresh with new content all the time without adding to our workload..

We are also making use of the photos app to post some photos and I hope to explore more ways in which we can interact with our Facebook page and our Facebook fans, but the apps above provide a good foundation. I hope this helps you to avoid some of the pain of research I endured in drawing these conclusions. Naturally, things on Facebook are changing all of the time so I have no doubt new solutions will present themselves soon. If you have any solutions to share, by all means please do so in the comments.

 

As an Element Fusion internet consultant, I work with clients everyday who are using our CMS products to maintain their websites. I often get asked questions about how they can expand their websites to reach their full potential. One of the features of our CMS that has a lot of potential but often goes under-utilized is the Users and Roles system.

When you have information to share with a group of people but don't want the whole world to access it, you can use the Users and Roles system to control viewable access to your content. You can make certain pages or even specific elements on a page restricted, which means they will only appear to visitors who are logged in.

This is great for:

• creating password-protected pages to store sensitive information
• document sharing
• newsletters and/or committee updates
• photos, audio or video
• group calendars

These features can be of benefit to sales teams, board members, committees, employees, clients and/or membership lists. For example, one of my clients created a restricted area for their sales team. They use that area to post downloadable resources for the team, to maintain a calendar with important deadlines and events, and to post quick, internal contact information. This information is accessible to any member of the team whenever they login to the website and, of course, they can access it from anywhere.

These are just a few ideas about how to maximize the potential of your website with the Users and Roles system. If you have questions about how to use these features, you can visit our website support site or contact our support team for help. Also, I would love to hear if you have come up with other great uses on your website. Leave us a note in the comments.

The hits just keep on coming here at Element Fusion. Our development team has been working hard on some great new features for our Water, Sky and LightCMS systems. And, in an effort to serve you better, we've decided to start announcing our feature releases a few days ahead of time so that you'll get the word before the changes hit your website. Therefore, keep in mind that the features listed below are not yet live, but they will be early next week.

In fact, the upgrade is scheduled for 7am CDT (GMT -5) on Tuesday, May 13th. The upgrade window is 30 minutes (though previous upgrades have always taken significantly less time). Your website will be offline during the upgrade process.

Now, on to the fun. Here's a look at the coming features.

Drafts with auto-save and version-tracking

This one is HUGE and will be making all of our lives much easier and a bit more fun as well. The text-editor now includes a "Save Draft" feature that allows you to save versions of your content as drafts without taking them live on the site. You can then restore any of your previously saved drafts at any time with a single click. Not only that, the system will auto-save your drafts for you every five minutes to avoid the possibility of losing your work. So relax. That big blog post you're working on won't disappear if the power fails. We're looking out for you.

1. Protection against losing your work. The auto-save feature will save a draft of what you are working on every five minutes. So, you'll always have a back-up. Plus, you can manually save a draft as well at any time.
2. Work on changes without taking them live. If you want to queue up some changes to your page but you don't want them to go live just yet, simply save them as a draft. Then, when you're ready to publish, just load up your saved draft and take it live.
3. Recall any previous version at any time. A simple drop-down box displays every previously saved version of your content (see image below). Load one up with a single click.

The drafts functionality is available anywhere that the text editor is used. This includes all text-elements, blog posts and calendar event detail pages.

The bottom of the text editor now contains a "Save Draft" button and a drop down for loading any previously-saved draft.

Custom Robots.txt content

You can now add any content you desire into your website's robots.txt file. Simply visit My Website --> Settings and click on the advanced tab to add your content. This is extremely beneficial for those involved with search engine optimization. If you are not familiar with how to use robots.txt files, don't worry. You don't have to add any content in there, but it is available for those users who need it.

Force secure logins (LightCMS resellers, please read carefully)

To improve the security of our system, we have added a "force secure logins" feature to redirect all requests for the login page on your website (i.e. yoursite.com/login) to a secure page. To do this, we must redirect the login page to your site's publishpath.com domain. Our security certificate for the publishpath domain gives us the ability to offer security on every site using this method.

However, this means that when logging into and administrating your website, you and your users will be pushed to your publishpath.com domain rather than your custom domain. Because this may not be desirable for some, we have provided you with the ability to "opt-out" of the force secure logins feature. You can visit "My Account" and click the "Preferences" tab where you will be able to uncheck the box next to "Force secure logins" (see image below). Keep in mind that disabling this feature means your logins will continue to take place on unsecured web pages.

Attention LightCMS account-holders. We know that the private-label nature of our system is extremely valuable to you and that exposing the publishpath domain to your clients may not be desirable. Therefore, if you have a LightCMS account with at least one paid website, we will not be automatically opting you into this new feature on Tuesday. Your logins will continue to work as they do currently. If you wish to take advantage of the force secure logins feature (and you are ok with the use of the publishpath domain on your client sites), then you can opt into this feature on the "Preferences" tab under "My Account" (see image above). Every other account on our system, other than LightCMS accounts with at least one paid website, will be automatically opted into this feature on Tuesday.

Regarding login elements: Some websites make use of our login elements to add login functionality onto a specific page. This new feature will not affect login elements, only the login page accessed by using "/login" at the end of your domain. To make a login element secure, you would simply need to make the page on which it resides secure by visiting the advanced tab of "page settings." This would, again, invoke the publishpath domain as it does for any secure page on our system.

Should you have any questions about this or any of our upcoming new features, please contact us at support@publishpath.com.

I'm always very cautious about adding more effort to our company's marketing mix. It's very easy to start something that can't be sustained. If we're not careful, we can end up with blogs that never have posts added, or Facebook pages that are little more than a few fan photos. This is why I spent a lot of time evaluating Facebook before getting our company into it. Actually, I am still in the evaluation process, as we haven't made any official ties yet to our Facebook page. I may still determine that there isn't enough reward to justify the effort.

Leverage what you already have

However, I have increased the reward / effort ratio dramatically by using Facebook primarily as a mirror to other content that we are already creating. We already put a lot of energy into our blog, so I simply publish our blog onto our Facebook page. Voila! Instant Facebook content. We've also recently added Twitter as a company communications channel. The Facebook TwitterSync application lets us synchronize our Facebook status with our Twitter feed and publish all of our tweets onto our Facebook page. Again, more exposure with no added effort.

Facebook should be secondary

It's important to note in all of this that we are not originating any of our content in Facebook itself. Why would we? Sure, Facebook has 30 million users, but that's nothing compared to the total number of internet users. So, it makes sense to keep our marketing website the primary focus. This may seem like a simple point, but I think it's critical to understand. As I said in part one, Facebook isn't magic. It really doesn't offer anything new. It simply expands and enhances the reach of the efforts we already undertake.

One exception to this is with photos. I've started adding photos to Facebook directly. It would likely be more "pure" to add photos to Flickr, but I haven't quite seen the advantage of that yet. Having photos on Facebook gives you some cool functionality that can be of benefit, and there's no way to integrate that functionality seamlessly with Flickr. There are lots of Flickr Facebook apps, but none of them really do much more than just display a bunch of photos on your page. So, at least currently, I'm considering making Facebook the place to store some company photos. Of course, this is subject to change, and naturally, I will still store some photos on our primary website as well.

If it's just doubling content, why use it?

This is a practical question, and the answer goes back to my argument in part one. Facebook does have 30 million users, putting it, in my opinion, just on the brink of becoming something really powerful. If they can continue to build their user-base and improve their page support for companies and brands, then having a "presence" on Facebook is a worthwhile thing. But nothing says that presence has to be completely unique.

This is just like your company having a presence at a trade show or other function. Likely, the content shared at those functions is always the same, but having the presence in multiple places is a good way to promote the brand. By creating a Facebook page that mirrors content your company is producing anyway, you can establish a Facebook presence with minimal ongoing effort, making it more likely that your presence will sustain rather than fizzle.

I have been engaged in the process of exploring Facebook over the past several weeks. My goal is to determine if Facebook can really offer any value to our company and, if so, how. I'll be sharing some of my discoveries and conclusions with you in this series on "Using Facebook for business." This is part one, which I have entitled "Why?" I want to discuss whether there are any good reasons to use Facebook for business.

Individual or Company?

It's important to determine whether you want to use Facebook as an individual or as a company, or both. An example of an individual use might be a sales rep who uses Facebook for their own business networking purposes. This is different from a company attempting to establish a presence on Facebook for their own brand.

Facebook only extends what you already do.

Facebook is not magic. In truth, it really doesn't offer anything new. It simply provides a new method to accomplish the things that you already accomplish for business, whether you are an individual or company.

Let's think about the sales reps mentioned above. They already engage in networking activities of all kinds. Facebook simply provides them with another channel through which to pursue these networking opportunities. The value of Facebook, therefore, should be evaluated just like you would evaluate the value of any networking activity by asking -- does it produce the desired results?

At the company level, the same is true. Facebook does provide the opportunity to create "pages" for a company or brand, essentially allowing you to establish a presence for your business or brand on Facebook. This might be equated to your company having a website presence, or an advertising presence, or a presence at a certain trade. Facebook is quite simply another place for your business to establish a presence.

Is it worth it?

So, then, the question becomes, "is it worth it?" To answer that question, you have to determine whether the people you are trying to reach are likely to have Facebook accounts now or in the near future. Without a Facebook account, a person won't be able to interact with your Facebook presence (though Facebook pages are accessible by anyone, there's not much interaction if a non-Facebook user views your page). In our case, we have many customers who use Facebook, so there is a compelling reason for us to establish a presence through our Facebook page. With 30 million users, Facebook is just now, in my opinion, getting the critical mass it needs to become compelling to our business and others. If it can keep up the momentum and continue to grow, I think our business will definitely benefit from having a presence.

That said, the benefit is not huge at this point and so I would not want to invest too much effort into maintaining a Facebook presence. So, in future posts, I'll be discussing how you can create a Facebook presence that leverages content you already create and therefore requires little specialized upkeep.

Here are some good articles from the past couple of weeks:

1. Whiteboard Friday - SEO for Branding from SEOmoz. Video content which discusses how SEO can have a valuable impact on branding efforts.
2. Tools for Engaging in Social Media from Search Engine Land. I'm engaged in a lot of discovery about social media right now and this article is on point. I'm not sure how many of these tools I will actually end up using, if any, but it is always good to have the information. Check it out and see what you think.
3. The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet from SEOmoz. This little gem was instantly circulated around our office the moment is was posted. Definitely something to have on hand.
4. Church Technology Usage and Growth from Church Relevance. Good information here for churches. Shaffer abstracts some of the findings from Barna's 2007 Protestant church technology report.
5. Free Twitter Graphics from Randa Clay Design. We launched into twitter last week and so it got me interested in a bunch of Twitter related posts. If you are looking to add twitter to your process, this post has some pretty nice free graphics you can use. Of course, we used our own Jason to create our bird graphics.
6. Do Online Press Releases Serve a Useful Purpose? from Smiley Cat. I found this interesting. I have to say I agree with the author here who is disagreeing with another article referenced in the post. I think displaying and archiving press releases online is a great practice.
7. Starting with CSS and bug fixing tips from Veerle's blog. This is a great resource providing tons of links to other resources where you can get a start with CSS, as well as some with with fixing bugs in IE 6 or 7.
8. Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor from Signal vs. Noise. Ok, this is just a personal favorite. I've often thought about this subject but never written on it. This post really sums up my feelings on the matter. I've also heard some stories on NPR that add research to the idea that almost everyone needs at least 7 hours of sleep.

Our "Be Well Read" giveaway competition celebrating the launch of our new LightCMS user forum ended yesterday. What a great success! We had a ton of users sign up and some great discussions take place. We love to see the community of LightCMS designers / developers growing and helping each other out.

Please continue to support the forum. It is a great place to give help and to get the help you need as well. Our team also actively monitors and participates on the forum, so it is a great place connect with us too.

Now, onto the prize! Today, we have randomly selected a winner from all of the entries in April. Remember, each comment or post written onto our forum counted as one entry. The winner of the "Be Well Read" giveaway and $200 worth of web design books is:

Carmelo Rivera

Carmelo, we'll be contacting you by email soon to arrange for the delivery of your prize. Thanks for all of your great posts and thanks to everyone else as well.

[start triumphant music] We're all winners on the LightCMS forum. For the community ... for the world!

Element Fusion owners Justin Cowan and Ryan Whitaker have been selected as nominees for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award for 2008. This prestigious award honors business leaders at the regional, national, and global level. Oklahoma City is located in the Southwest Area North region of the US which includes North Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Previous Southwest Area North winners include Michael Dell of Dell Computers, Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, and Norman Brinker of Brinker International.

Nominees for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award must be owners/managers of public or private companies who are primarily responsible for the recent performance of their companies. They must also be active members of top management at their companies, which must have been in business for at least two years.

Judging for the competition will commence on May 6th, 2008. A group of finalists for the Southwest Area North region will be selected. From there, regional winners will be named who then compete for the national award. Then, national winners advance to the global level.

As a part of the selection process, representatives from Ernst and Young have personally interviewed Cowan and Whitaker and collected extensive information about their work and the business of Element Fusion.

"We are excited to be a part of this process," said Cowan. "It's an honor to be recognized alongside so many other great companies."

Lately, I've been working a lot on Facebook, exploring its usefulness as a marketing tool and a part of our company's brand. Some may think that I'm way behind the times, but I would disagree. I think that Facebook is just now getting to the point of potentially becoming valuable to businesses. For it to truly come into its own, it needs to overcome some of its awkwardness, particularly in it's "pages" interface, which is where most businesses and brands would find their fit.

While Facebook is pre-configured right out of the box to quickly get people up and running with their profiles, it really takes quite a bit of exploring, research, and configuring to get things working on a Facebook page. First, you have to figure out that pages are available and that you want one. But then comes the somewhat maddening task of customizing that page through applications that will do what you want them to do. In our case, I want our Facebook page to aggregate all of the activity our company puts out on the web through other channels. So, for example, I'd like to have our blog feed brought into our page.

You'd think than an RSS feed reader would be a pretty standard application, and there are many to choose from. But of course, you have to find one that is trusted and dependable. So, you start searching and reading user reviews. But then, most applications on Facebook don't work on pages, only on profiles. So, you have to find the apps that do work on pages (few and far between) and I've not found any type of search feature to let me easily search only applications that work on pages.

I did finally find an RSS application. I installed it, configured it, and set it up. Then, I posted to the blog to see if it would work. After 16 hours, it still hasn't updated. So, in reading the forum for the app, I discover that it's very unreliable. So, I try another one. Again, set up, configure, and then try to make a post to test it (actually, this post is going to be my test). The process is cumbersome, and not helped by the fact that every time you need to navigate to your page, you have to click several times to get there, and Facebook is anything but snappy in its load times.

(sidenote: the built-in Facebook notes application does allow you to import blog posts from RSS feeds, and it's a lot easier to set up. But it only allows one feed and all of your posts are prefaced with "Element Fusion imported a note" which isn't really desirable)

I know this is a bit of a rant. Please excuse me as it's just what is on my mind currently. I do see potential value in Facebook for businesses out there, but at this point, it's hard to recommend the tool to others because of all that's required to utilize it effectively. You can bet that as I continue to uncover more things that work, I will share them here and hopefully save someone from the effort I've been going through to get things working well. In the meantime, if you have any insights to share about using Facebook for business, please do so in the comments.

PS. I can say that the TwitterSync application really has worked well for us. Not only that, but the developer was right on with timely support when I needed it. So, that one's a winner!