Posts

Posted on

Backup, Backup, Backup!

If you’ve had your hard drive crash and have lost all your data, I will be “preaching to the choir”, as you will most likely have kicked yourself and then bought an external backup drive already. If not make sure to read this post so you are not kicking yourself in three months about backing up your data.

There is nothing worse than starting your computer and nothing happens. Especially if all your business and billing financial records on on the computer. For any business, student, or computer user regular routine backups should be part of your routine. Businesses should back up their systems at a minimum of once a day and should both backup to the working disk as well as to another network location and to an external drive. Sounds redundant doesn’t it, you bet it is, but have a problem and you will be so glad that you had multiple backups in different locations. For the typical homeowner and student backing up your computer may be best done once a week.

There are many backup utilities and some external drives even come with their own. I use several systems. I use the Windows backup utility that comes with Vista once a week and I use my Seagate External drive back up utility once a day. Once a month I back up to another location in my network.

With redundant backups you can assure that your data is covered and you won’t miss a beat if your system crashes, computer gets stolen, or your files get corrupted.

Posted on

Your Website is Down! What Should You Do?

You just looked or a prospect or client emailed you to tell you your website was down, what do you do?

First don’t panic. Sometimes a website will go down because the server at the web host is being refreshed, serviced, or the host had a power outage. Wait for 15 minutes and try to access your site again.

In some cases you will get an error message. Make sure to copy the error message. If you get a reference to your database or header files, don’t call your web host, this is a website and webmaster problem. Meaning that something is wrong with the source code of your website or the database that runs your website has gone down (that may be a web host issue).

If your website is not up in 15 minutes or your get a database error that you have never seen before and your site was working fine before, it is time to contact your web host. In some cases it is most practical to pickup the phone and in others more practical to do a tech support ticket.

If your email is down as well, it is time to make sure that the problem really isn’t that you’ve let your domain name expire or that you did not pay your web hosting renewal bill. Here a prompt call to your web host sales department is in order. Typically if your web host has had a hiccup and our website is down, your email will still be operational.

Personally I have only seen both email and the site go down when the client has let the domain name or web hosting expire. Of course there may be other reasons, but letting the domain expire or even the web hosting expire are the most common reasons.

So if your site is down for more than a day or if your email is down too you need to take action and start by calling your web host first.

Posted on

Google AdWords’ New Certification Program for Account Managers

You may not be aware, but Google has a new certification program for professional account managers such as myself. The old program called certified account managers Google AdWords Qualified Professionals or Google AdWords Qualified Individuals.

Now, Google has a new program called Google AdWords Certification. All professionals previously certified as Qualified Professionals, Qualified Companies or Qualified Individuals have six months to retest in the new program. Additionally, the account manager must now pass two tests instead of one. One is the AdWords Fundamental Exam and the other is one of the manager’s choice. The topics for the second exam are on search placement, the content network, or on Google Analytics.

I have already passed the Fundamentals Exam with a score of 97% and am starting to study for the Search exam. Additionally Google states that all certified businesses and professionals will need to take the Fundamental exam once a year and the higher level exam once every two years. Instead of retesting every two years as in the old program. This makes sure that all account managers that are certified in Google’s program are up-to-date with the changes Google enacts on their system.

As a business owner you should be aware of these changing certifications, so you can make sure your own account manager is certified with the knowledge to help you.

I have to say that additionally individuals with poor knowledge of AdWords will be weeded out by these new stronger certification programs and standards. The Google AdWords Certification program will mean that your account manager not only has the knowledge but the real world skill to effectively manage your account.

Posted on

Dell Customer Support Gets My Top Ratings

I have two Dell laptops one of which just had some issues this last week. My son and I started on troubleshooting it last weekend. We finally figured out when it would not reboot that maybe it was more than a bad hard disk. My husband thought it was the motherboard.

When I finally got enough information from the Dell forum, I started the repair process with Dell just to find out that the 2 year warranty had expired on June 7th and I was phoning Dell the morning of the 8th. With a gentle push, Dell agreed to sell me the extended warranty and cover all the problems on this just one day over two year old computer which originally cost about $1,700.

Since then I have received a new motherboard, hard disk, heat sink, and keyboard. Not only was the support desk helpful and incredibly knowledgeable, but courteous. Yes, it was an awful problem to have and I did have to pay $279 for the extended warranty and get a bit pushy to get it initially, but my problem has been handled quite well.

The support personnel from India were very knowledgeable and when I had them spell their names so I could pronounce them properly, they really warmed up to me. I need a new laptop as one is so old that for me I would think of no other place to start shopping but Dell. However I may actually buy the extended warranty for it up front. I have found that the difference between the paid extended warranty help and the free support is worth the extra fee.

I am not being paid by Dell for this post, just wanted to share my real world experience and let you know that yes, there are good people out there helping make things right for customers.

Thanks EmNiel, Bhupesh, Mohammed, and all the rest from Dell Support!