Teething troubles and link building for my new directory: two steps forward, one step back
Background: I’ve been launching and promoting a Devon business directory, which promotes arts and environmental concerns alongside general clubs, blogs and business listings.
View all blog posts about launching the directory.
21 – 23 September 2007
21/9 Continuing testing / correspondence with Joomlapolis forum people about the Community Builder login problems. I find out there is a particular browser setting to accept cookies that is required for login to work. I’m not pleased that people might have to adjust their browser settings to log in, but at least know I know there’s a fix I can tell them about it. I add a help file and a link to it from the login box.
Started looking through the Devon Arts section of Dmoz for likely looking websites to approach for a link swap.
Emailed North Devon Arts, which keeps bouncing my email back. Emailed:
Music Events
Devon Earth Building Association
Flaxey Green (folk music network)
Exmoor Border Morris
Joined Plymouth Freecycle
Someone else registers and the listing doesn’t arrive. What on earth is going on 
Friend John is going to try it this weekend though – hopefully he will figure it out.
Bad news – eventually discover a new bug that has stopped the ‘Send’ button working in the Add Entry form in Internet Explorer. Eventually fixed it. Very annoyed. How many listings (and how much of my reputation) have I lost through this? Must do more Internet Explorer testing.
While I’m working on the form, I try again to make it more user friendly.
22/9
Emailed Plymouth Freecycle. Mail bounces back. Posted again through their website.
I make more usability improvements to the form, rewording things, grouping things together and best of all adding some javascript to hide the non-working map from Internet Explorer users – they now have a link to my working map in a new window instead.
Message comes back: Plymouth freecycle moderator did not approve my posting Feel a moment of despair till I notice she has suggested posting it to their ‘cafe’ group instead. So I join the cafe group and post it there instead. Fingers crossed that it will go through this time. It’s a much smaller group but hopefully might have some keen environmentalists wanting to advertise something.
Post goes through to cafe group. I email Plymouth group moderator saying thanks for pointing me in the right direction and would it be ok to add a listing for Plymouth freecycle groups as I’m keen to get more green listings in. Spam protector bounces it back but I register with it, message gets through and she agrees. I add listings for Plymouth Freecycle and Plymouth Freecycle Cafe groups. Become resigned to having to add most of the early listings myself.
I receive a positive reply from Trevor from Flaxey Green folk music network – great! Added his listing and sent him the link (hope he likes it!).
Joined Recycle South Devon Group and sent them a message. Just checked their website – the group doesn’t seem very active and has a lot of unrelated spam postings – still at least that makes mine look more respectable!
I see a posting on Recycle South Devon from someone who was organising an art festival in Plymouth. So I email her, just on the offchance.
Emailed the person who was trying to register when the Send button wasn’t working. Apologised and offered to add the listing and transfer it over to her.
Emailed someone from Exeter Freecycle who set up a recycling website a while ago, asking to exchange links.
23/9 Started off well – I switched on the computer to find someone new had registered and added a listing for jewellery making classes in Cornwall (well it’s near enough!). I published them and emailed her suggesting it could go in a couple more categories and she said yes please and also added a listing for card making and a news item. Then I ran into a slight hitch: after publishing her news item I discovered I couldn’t transfer the ownership of it to her. Posted a query on Joomla forum, hope this will not be a problem.
Then came some bad news – angry email arrived from Trevor from Flaxey Green. Because I’d added his listing myself, I hadn’t expected the system to send him a payment email. But it did, so he was angry, thinking I’d offered him something free and then charged him for it and asking me to remove it because he had no intention of paying. Felt terrible. Emailed straight away with an explanation / apology saying definitely no charge, automatic email, didn’t expect it to go to him, sorry for misunderstanding, etc. Checked the email and it said Error on it and had an extra paid gallery as well. Posted panic stricken help message to Sigsiu forums (for the directory). Then realised I’d got the emails mixed up – he’d got the right info but just shouldn’t have got it at all. Posted apology to Sigsiu forums. Emailed another apology to Trevor offering free stuff to make up for the annoyance and asking to keep the listing in. Terrible PR all round – hope he doesn’t still want me to remove it.
Emailed Exeter freecycle group owner asking if I could add a listing for them as I’m keen to get more green listings in. Allyn doesn’t think I should email the freecycle group again though. Some of them probably didn’t see it last time, but a repeat posting might annoy more of them.
As my friend Dawn said, I’m not having much luck asking people to test things or put entries in, because it’s asking people to do things when it’s something they haven’t heard of. Offering free stuff just seems to make them suspicious. So I realised I have to raise the profile of the site – at this stage I don’t necessarily even expect listings to result from my adverts (though I hope some will), it’s more a matter of just getting the site’s name out there. Thankfully, Stairway to Devon is a memorable name!
(23 September promotional work is continued in the next post)
Click this link to view all posts about launching the ‘Stairway to Devon’ directory
Comments
Link Building: a total nightmare
Of all the promotional activities I’ve tried in launching the directory, ‘link building’ is the most unpleasant by far. During the last 6 months, as a rough estimate I’ve probably emailed about 20 – 30 website owners, individually, with carefully thought out emails tailored to the subject of their websites and how we might benefit each other (ie not mass mailings in any sense), and only about 3 have even replied.
This kind of minimal response makes email for link building a massive waste of time, and you need a very thick skin for it too or a couple of weeks of this can really get your spirits down (at least if it’s your own site: I guess if you’re doing link building for someone else you might not care as much).
For a more well established site, I’d guess ‘link building’ by email might be more productive, due to the increased name recognition and page rank the site can offer in any kind of partnership.
For new sites, I wouldn’t bother doing this again. Instead, on the next site I’ll try adding links between content items and waiting to see if they are ever reciprocated. People do check their back links and referring sites, and by the time enough of them do, a website might be well established enough for them to consider linking back to. The unpleasantness of link building is another excellent reason why I will launch any future directories with data from DMOZ.
Joomla Access Groups and Content Authoring
I discovered that simple registered users are not entitled to add content items to a Joomla site. There are a couple of ways around this (including Joomla extension components): the one I discovered this time was to add a line of code to the gacl.class.php file.
Javascript conflicts
Javascript conflicts are very likely on a Joomla site, as you can have many extensions installed that are written by different programmers. I’ve tended to find that any Javascript conflict can result in important functions just not working in Internet Explorer, while Firefox will happily continue as if everything is fine. Therefore, regular Internet Explorer testing is unfortunately necessary.
Cookies and Community Builder
Although the cookie problem can be (kind of) worked around, I am still not pleased about it. I’m planning a major overhaul of the Stairway to Devon website in a few months’ time, and one of the changes will be an exit from Community Builder. Stairway to Devon is not a ‘community’ site as such, and developments in SOBI 2 and other components I’ve found since then have made Community Builder an unnecessary extension for this site.
Usability
Usability, in particular for the ‘Add Entry’ form, remains a major concern with this site, and will be the key focus of the upcoming major overhaul. As I’m doing an OU course in ‘Fundamentals of Interaction Design’, that should provide a useful framework for usability improvements.