newmediaMike

Google Forms and WordPress

As you can probably tell, I love Google Apps. Not only do I have Gmail and add in every new gadget their labs can come up with, but I also use Calendar and of course Docs. I love Docs because I can create say a keyword basket list and share it with my client, it’s the perfect online collaboration tool.

Then there is Google Forms. I can’t explain it, but I have never been able to configure a CGI form properly. I don’t know why but they never work for me. When I discovered Google Forms it was the answer to my prayers. A simple to set up form that sent the results to a spreadsheet. Who could ask for anything more?

I set up a number of forms for various areas on both Videozine.ca and SEOServicesToronto.com and both worked like a charm. Then this past weekend I started my makeover of both sites using WordPress as a CMS and my forms stopped functioning. I couldn’t figure out why.

Then it struck me … Google Forms function in iframes, PHP doesn’t support iframes! Which means I cannot embed my Google Forms into my WordPress CMS. My solution will be to create separate HTML pages for the forms to reside on.

So if you are having problems integrating Google Forms into your WordPress site, the solution is to create separate HTML pages.

Spring Cleaning

I got into the spring cleaning mood this weekend. Oh my office is still a mess, but my online presence is getting a make over.

First, I downloaded a wicked new product last week called Artiseer which is a WYSIWYG WordPress template creator (Sorry Verge). I downloaded it to make over a client’s website into a hybrid website/blog, but that’s a horror story best left for another post.

I started playing with it with the idea of re-making the website for my company Videozine into a hybrid website/blog. The idea being from an SEO standpoint, that if I’m generating fresh content several times a week and the spiders will come and crawl me more often and boost Videozine’s ranking. Sure Videozine is still #1 for “VHS to DVD Transfers in Toronto”, but there are other services which aren’t  doing so well and hopefully they will get some lift from the makeover.

I also decided to shift the SEO consulting aspect of my business life to a third website I have, SEO Services Toronto. I’m in the process of making over SEO Services Toronto into a similar hybrid website/blog.  Again, SEO Services Toronto is ranked #1 on Google for the term “SEO Service in Toronto” but other aspects of the SEO Consulting are not doing as well, so I know that if I blog about SEO then that site will gain a lift.

But, I currently blog here on new media Mike about SEO. I also blog about Twitter, Facebook and Google as well as some digital content creation.  I decided to split my blogs into two. SEO Services Toronto will now be my exclusive SEO blog and as for newmediaMike, this  will be a blog about what I consider in my humble opinion to be new media. To me the new media is social media, so as of  April 1, newmedia Mike will be about social media and SEO Services Toronto will be about SEO.

I hope you will continue to subscribe and read my take on social media as new media or if you are here for the SEO Tips, pop over to SEO Services Toronto after April 1 and check out the tips there.