Restart Apache Server In Mac OSX

Depending on the location of the apachectl file the following syntax will restart Apache from within terminal:

sudo /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/apachectl restart Retweet this button on every post blogger

Getting Apache RewriteRule to work

No intro or background, to get the RewriteRule to work in htaccess you need to activate it. This is specifically for Apache and not ISAPI rewrite on IIS.

1. Open httpd.conf
2. Look for MULTIPLE occurances of AllowOverride None
3. Change to AllowOverride All
4. Un comment this line #LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
5. Save & restart the apache server
   

Couple of note worthy points:

1. Apache recommend not using htaccess for peformance reasons. There are other methods for nice urls.
   
2. This is a Dev environment. I've not check out if the above has any security issues, for live servers.

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Publish your LinkedIn profile to the web

Make your linkedIn profile readily available to others. Simply:

1. Login to your profile
2. Click "profile"
3. Click "customise your URL"
4. Click "Promote your profile with Customized Buttons"
5. Pick a button, copy the code
   

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Most effective protection from copy/paste

Ever had a client ask for their content to be protected from copy/paste, or specifically tables of data? Well with Coldfusion you've a great head start.

The usual steps for doing this are to:

• Disable copy/paste
  
• Prevent drag/drop of text blocks
• Remove right click & file bar
• Prevent print
  

But this still leaves, the information available in the source code and as soon as you've downloaded that page you can do what ever you want with it...

Here's the clever bit.

A good way to get round this I thought would be to send this information in via ajax so it's not in the source code. CF steps in with cfgrid which can bind itself to a CFC for remote AJAX calls. Not only do you get an instantly cool looking grid you get the AJAX power grid.

Now, normally this would still leave the ajax call prone to a direct call to display the information, but with CF when you try to call the CFC directly you get the CFIDE login screen. Pretty sweet.

There are obviously ways to still surpass this but I would hazard a guess that even most web savvy people won't be able to get this data and it would require some of us with a little more know how. Retweet this button on every post blogger

Sales Techniques

Sales are simple, and that's why I'm going to keep this post very simple. 4 Key points to help you on your way with sales are:

• Control the conversation
• Listen to the customer
• Give them a reason to buy
• Ask for their custom
  

That's it! (but I'll expand a little on each point)

Control the conversation
Lose control of the conversation and you'll lost the customer. Sales is a journey. You know the beginning and the end so you just need to ensure you keep the customer on the same journey.

If the conversation starts to stray pick up on what they are saying, emphasise, relate, and bring it back to your journey. It can be the most unrelated simily, it doesn't matter, your back in control. Dumb sales people are often the best, they don't care if it doesn't make sense as long as they keep control.

Listen to the customer
On your journey your customer will talk and give you clues. Pick up on these and make a mental bullet point list. It will arm you to help them make the best choices. Drip feed these points back to them, use it to qualify your customer and remove potential obstacles when you come to close.

Give them a reason to buy
That's great, thanks for that I'll be in touch... SALE LOST. If the customer has no reason to buy now, generally they wont'. Incentivise them. Greed & fear are common tools of the salesman.
Reasons to buy now can include:

• limited stock
• waiting lists
• opportunity from a "cancellation"
• Special offers
• etc etc

Ask for their custom
You've done everything right so far, you've given your pitch they've listened and you've come to an agreed service offering and price, now what? Sign them up. That's it again, very simple.

You'll be surprised that once customers start to give you details they open up and become much more open to closing. Start asking their details, fill in an order form and ask them to sign. Don't be shy about asking for money, don't ask for money, ask how you'd like to pay and they will do the rest.


Lastly, an extra tip, customers who start by telling you "they are not ready to buy now" are telling you the exact opposite, don't get disheartened you will be able to convert them.

Good luck, now go get some sales!
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Twitter Experiment

I've noted lots of people have started to add me to the list of followers just after a post. I'm assuming these are happening from keywords in my posts, which begs the questions:

a) why
b) how

One can only assume that the why is because if I follow you there is a good chance you will follow me. This can lead to an inflated ammount of followers but are they really useful? I guess if you have enough followers (aka listners) it could be deemed a powerfull tool and not just an ego nursing exercise. So I think I'll test this with a new twitter account on a subject which is more of a hobby to me than anthing else right now, poker. Rightly or wrongly I'm probabley just going to leave this as an automatic update system for now but I think it will be interesting to see how many followers I can get from using a service such as twollo (the how).

Twollo was supposedly developed in a day for $150 but appears to be a paid for service after a free trial, so this may be a pretty short test, but none the less I think its with a twirl.

ps. next I'll be testing out OutTwit Retweet this button on every post blogger

Handy Google keyword analysis tools

Handy Google keyword analysis tools

1. Google Insight
2. Search based keyword tools
3. Google trends

Not looking good for CF, but this could be misleading with all the other CFML providers out there now. Retweet this button on every post blogger