Siam Communications Web Services & Tools

Adding a Simple Contact Us Form to WordPress

admin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 11:00:00 +0000

If you use a hosted WordPress.Com blog, short codes have been added to simplify many of the common tasks a blogger needs to deal with. Previously, we dealt with How to Add a Photo Gallery for self hosted blogs. In today’s entry, we will show you how easy it is to add a simple Contact form to your WordPress.Com blog.

The Contact Us short code can be used in Posts, Pages or in a text Widget if your theme is capable of customizing widgets.

Step 1
Select any Post or Page to edit, or select the Text Widget and add it to your specified Widget area

Step 2
Position the cursor where you want your Contact form to start

Step 3
Type in “[contact-form]” and save the post, page or widget.

Now go preview the a page or post on your blog and you should see a contact form displayed where you typed in the short code.

When you setup your blog, you probably provided an email address on the Settings => General page. If not, make sure you put a valid email address in this field and save your changes. When a user fills in the form and click on the submit button, an email is sent the email address specific on this Options page.

However, there are other options that you can provide to over ride default settings of the contact form:

Insert a Contact Form and send to one or more email addresses:
[contact-form to="your@email.com"] [contact-form to="your@email.com,another@email.com,onemore@email.com"]

Setting a Subject:
[contact-form subject="My Message Subject"]

Allowing the User to Define their own subject:
[contact-form show_subject="yes"]

Contact Form Items to Understand

User details are based on information they enter and can be valid (if logged in) or anonymous (if NOT logged in)
Your email address will remain hidden to all visitors
Only one Contact Form per post, page or text widget, but you can have multiple text widgets

We are currently working on our next post for more advanced WordPress users on adding a Contact Form short code to your existing WordPress theme.

Stay tuned!

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Immediate Ranking on Page One of Google Search Results

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:11:34 +0000

I just read a post from Hub Spot on “Using Twitter to Ranking #1 on Google in less than 5 minutes“. At first I thought it was a hoax.

But the news was even better.

Based on the information in the article, I did a search for a post made on Monday on our own blog. None of my Tweets made ranked number 1 in Google, but the actual blog post featured on page one of the Google results for latest results. The posts ahead of me were taken by Nation Multimedia, one of the largest publishing organizations in Thailand.

I was happy being listed among the largest in the nation.

I was also amazed to see that my post had been tagged as being published about “20 hours ago”. So within a very short period of time, almost immediately, one of my blog posts gained instant page one status with the Google search engines.

The lesson learned here is this:

Keep your content fresh
Maintain consistency and posts often, but not too often
Use your keywords and phrases properly

This is probably old news for so many people out there. But by keeping these few points in mind, you can continue to enjoy Internet fame with good search engine rankings.

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Thailand’s NTC makes Fourth Attempt at 3G Bidding Rules

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:02:25 +0000

Every so often, we return to our roots as communications engineers and report on stories and events relating to the telecommunication sector. This is one such story.

On Saturday, Thailand’s telecommunications regulator, NTC (National Telecommunications Commission) finalized their 3G Information Memorandum. This sets in place a framework for a bidding process to award 3G licenses to carriers operating within Thailand.

This is the fourth attempt at setting out a process for 3G bidding. The rules set out must be approved by parliament before the bidding begins.

The new process includes a 28% fee increase to 12.8 billion Thai Baht ($384 million) over the original 10 million Thai Baht stated in previous proposals. The revisions also allow for second installments to be paid in year three. One item that has not changed is the controversial clause indicating that if there are three qualified bidders, only two licenses will be awarded during the first round. However and third auction could begin 90 days after the first auction is carried out. The proposal allows for three, 15 year licenses to be auctioned beginning August 30th this year.

Thailand is one of the few countries without any official 3G service. Many of the existing mobile operators have launched sudo-3G services in various areas to allow subscribers to utilize some form of the service within Thailand’s borders prior to any licenses being granted. The operators offering limited 3G service are AIS, DTAC and iMobile. Rumors have sprouted that True may also have a 3G test bed launched but as of this writing it was difficult to confirm.

No related posts.

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New Version of WordPress Refreshing

admin — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:23:35 +0000

Sometime during the night while I was sleeping, WordPress released an update – WordPress 3.0. I have spent some of the morning messing around with it and the new features.

My consensus – Refreshing!

Among some of my first impressions are is a more simple looking administration area, which seems to load quicker and with less overhead on my servers.

I have also looked at the new theme that is installed with the update and I am really eager to dive into it further to understand how the new version will enhance the user experience.

More to come as we continue to put the new version through it’s paces.

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How Usable is Your Website?

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 06:51:41 +0000

I had the pleasure of meeting with a user experience expert yesterday, Carl Heaton from Web Courses Bangkok. Carl showed me a great tool for website owners called UserFly (affiliate link).

Userfly allows you to test the usability of your website as each visitor goes to your site. You start by adding a small JavaScript to the web pages you want to track. It’s that easy.

You can then view your account activity and watch a video of the users experience on your website; what they looked at, what they clicked on, when they left your site. This is a fantastic tool for helping us website owners to understand website usability. It can also point to potential problems that we didn’t realize existed.

For instance, Carl showed me a video of their old site. (They have just launched a fresh new look this week.) On the old site, visitors wandered around aimlessly not sure where to click or what to look at. This resulted in a redesign of the layout which assists users in finding what they are looking for much quicker and in a much more productive manner.

I am trying out the tool on my site now and I am amazed at what I have been neglecting in providing my users with helpful guidance on where to go and what to look for. It looks like I may be examining the layout of my site in more detail in the months to come.

About Web Courses Bangkok

“It is the 1 year anniversary of Web Courses Bangkok. I started the company exactly 1 year ago and we have already helped 12 people become professional web designers AND taught over 200 people.” – Carl Heaton
You can find out more here: http://www.webcoursesbangkok.com

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Twitter changing the way they handle Links

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:49:46 +0000

If you use Twitter on a regular basis, you will want to be aware of some changes taking place in the way the service handles links in your Tweets.

The Twitter blog details the changes that will take place over the coming few months and how they will effect all users (Twitter Blog: Links and Twitter: Length Shouldn’t Matter).

The changes are being made in order to increase security for users, and offer more relevant linking text when adding links to Tweets. Some of the changes include:

Wrapping links using a new t.co URL
More Intelligent shortening of links
Better quality link scanning against malware or phishing sites

Twitter is already testing some of the features on employee accounts. They also hope to offer more details of the service to developers in order to prepare for the change.

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Google’s Caffeine: Search Results 50% Faster

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:41:24 +0000

According to an article published on TechCrunch (Caffeine: Google Finally Brews Its New Pot Of Web Results — 50% Fresher), Google is finally ready to roll out it’s Caffeine platform for search results.

This has been confirmed on Google’s Blog as well (Our new search index: Caffeine).

Both articles offer some minor insights into the enhancements available with the new index compared to the older index. There has been a lot of hype about the launch of Caffeine since August 2009 when articles began to surface in various blogs. Many thought that the launch would come in December 2009, but it didn’t happen. It now looks like Google is ready to let the world experience this new platform.

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Misunderstanding Bangkok

admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 01:55:40 +0000

It was a very interesting week for us in Bangkok last week as we witnessed the worst violence the city has experienced in decades.

In all of my 16 years here, I have never witnessed anything that effected the nation as these events did. Business were forced to close their doors in the interests of the safety of their staff. The whole city seemed to come to a stand still as the military forces fought with red shirt protesters.

It would be easy to make assumptions as to what the reasons were for such violence. It would also be easy to assign blame to either side for the way events developed. But in the end, this was a tragic situation that effected many living in Thailand.

Some of the press from other countries was accurate while much of it was speculative and down right incorrect. I learned that the only a select few individuals can be trusted to reports the facts of a situation. And that the International press community as a whole litters their stories with rumors and hearsay.

As people, I guess we all get caught up in the emotion of a situation like this which causes us to say and do things that are out of character. But there were a few people that, with a calm heart, made statements that simplified the situation and put into perspective the reasons for the clashes. One such person, Na Tusakon, wrote a very nice note on Facebook: “Bangkok: To Misunderstand is the Greatest Loss“.

If you were wondering what the real reasons for all of the trouble is, he has captured a clam hearted and succinct view point in his note.

Things seem to be back to normal and we are all returning to work today to start fresh. We hope to stay a bit more regular with posting articles that will help website owners stay on top of their online issues.

Thanks for visiting.

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Protecting Your Online Identity

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 02:33:53 +0000

We all understand the Internet to be a useful resource. I have a difficult time remembering what I did before I had an Internet connection. You can pay your bills, shop from home, check your bank account’s, and much more. The bad news is that the Internet also poses some very real and dangerous risks.

You can become a victim of identity theft. If you are unprotected, your credit cards, personal or corporate identity, and your bank account(s) could be at risk. Knowing how to protect yourself on the web is important in preventing your online identity from being at risk. If you want to surf the web with peace of mind and have more privacy, anonymous web surfing is something worth considering.

Siam Communication (SiamComm) has launched our first Offshore Privacy Service – Virtual Private Network (VPN) Service.

What is a VPN Service?

A VPN service provides a tunnel connection, via an Internet connection, from your computer to a server in another location. This location could be in another city, state, province or country. All requests for Internet services (websites, email, VoIP, etc.) are routed through this tunnel to the target server. The server then makes the request to the necessary service provider.

VPNs provide a secure an anonymous method for accessing services on the Internet. Every time you make a request, your IP address is available for anyone to determine your location. With a VPN service, your location is protected because the IP address being transmitted belongs to the server.

A VPN server is also configured to protect those that want to try and connect to your computer to steal personal data. Because the IP address belongs to the server, and not to your computer, hackers cannot gain access to your personal computer. The VPN server also contains a firewall that does not allow rogue or suspicious traffic past the server.

The SiamComm VPN Service is available from anywhere in the world with connections to 15 countries for secure and protected Internet access.

We will soon be launching additional services that will also protect your identity and:

Encrypt your email
Provide email from an offshore server
Transfer and Store Files Securely
Access servers using Secure Shell (SSHv2)

All of our services are simple to setup and use. You do not need to be a geek to understand how to make use of them. Our services also work on many computer platforms and operating systems such as Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X and Linux.

If you are looking for protection and anonymity on the Internet, come by and have a look at SiamComm Privacy Services.

Domain Name Registration and Management

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Search Engine Ranking and Domain Names

admin — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:00:48 +0000

I see many questions in forums and social networks about the effect a domain name has on the search engine ranking of a website. The most common questions I have seen relate to:

Using hyphens between words of a domain name
Including primary keywords in a domain name
The TLD of a domain name(i.e. – .com, .net, .us, etc.)

Based on feedback from the experts, and reference materials from Google, we will summarize the answers to these issues.

Hyphenation in a Domain Name

Most experts were pretty sure that hyphen between words of a domain name had no effect on the search engine ranking of a website. Search Engines like Google can recognize keyword patterns in a domain name without the need to break the domain name apart. Hyphens were helpful for people though. Some tend to hyphenate words when searching for a specific domain, but the numbers are very low.

Primary Keywords in a Domain Name

Most experts agree that having one or more primary keywords in a domain name was an important factor to good search engine ranking. But the benefit was only realized when primary keywords were also used well in the title, headings and content of a web page.

TLD of a Domain Name

The TLD, or Top Level Domain such as “.com” or “.net” seems to have little or no effect on search engine placement according to Google experts. However, if a business was local the TLD had some effect. For instance, using “.ca” or “.us” to indicate the country demographic for the website, might increase search engine placement for that site in local results.

Google tends to determine a web users location whenever their Search Engine is used. Google blogs indicated that results that were local to the users location were considered more relevant in some cases. But again, much of this depends on primary keyword usage in other key areas of a web page.

Of course we will never know for sure how the search engines make all of their calculations. But these guidelines will help in choosing a domain name that adds value to your websites search engine ranking.

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