Include the comments form on a Page

To enable the comments template, simply open page.php (in the wp-themes/theme-name directory) and paste

<?php comments_template(); ?>

before the

<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

statement. If you don’t want the comments template on every Page, you can switch them off when creating pages in the admin panel or you could create a new template just for the contact page. To do this, save the page in your theme directory as “page-contact.php” with this code at the very top:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Contact Page
*/
?>

When you create your contact page in the admin panel, be sure to select the template ‘Contact Page’.

Change the header

To change what the header says (instead of “Leave a comment”) open comments.php (again, in your wp-themes/theme-name directory) and replace

<h3 id="respond">Leave a Reply</h3>

with this code:

<?php if ( is_page('Contact') ) { ?>

<h3 id="respond">Contact Us</h3>

<?php } else { ?>

<h3 id="respond">Leave a Reply</h3>

<?php } ?>

Your page name must be ‘Contact’ for this to work. You can also use this “if” statement to remove fields or change the submit buttons for example.

That’s it!

You can see my contact page in action here, the header reads “Contact Phil” and the submit button says “Submit Message”. Look at the comments form below and spot the differences.

With a couple of tweaks, you too can use the comments form to allow visitors to contact you without going through the hassle of finding a contact form plugin and styling it to look like the rest of your WordPress site. Simple!

It doesn’t really disappoint but it’s not exactly inspiring either. In a nutshell, Godin declares Old Marketing (meatballs) is dead, New Marketing is brilliant (ice cream) but a traditional organisation can’t just employ New Marketing for the sake of it and expect massive results (a meatball sundae). Old Marketing, as you would expect is TV advertising, paying for shelf space, newspaper estate and so on. New Marketing isn’t just blogging and social media, though they are mentioned a lot, it can be the entire business model of the company itself, such as CafePress allowing thousands of people to open their own “stores” selling custom printed shirts and products which CafePress then produce and distribute.

Seth keeps the metaphors and frustratingly short case studies coming at an almost blisteringly fast point, regurgitating points made only a couple of pages ago. In parts it feels very limited; fluffy feel good stories about new businesses offer no actual analysis or statistics and sometimes you question whether the businesses mentioned are actually making profits despite employing this lovely New Marketing. Seth also shies away from actually telling you what or how to do New Marketing and so this is less of a manual and more of a guide to change your mindset about marketing. This it does do well.

Some of the points he make might seem common sense to A-Level Business students but it has to be said that there are many insights and case studies that force you to take a breather and really think about marketing from every perspective; as a consumer making a brand choice, as a current employee trying to achieve results and imagining what you would change if you worked for a big FTSE 100 company.
Overall it’s not a bad book. It won’t tell you what to do but it might change the way you do it. Click here to buy from Amazon.

I get a lot of e-mails from networks and programs and although I often don’t read them all, this one caught my attention. Titled ‘Important Affiliate Notice’, I opened it and read as follows:

Dear Phil,

You have joined TotallyGifts.co.uk affiliate program some time back.

We have noticed that you are not participating in promoting TotallyGifts.co.uk using the methods you mentioned at the time of joining.

We will like to discuss how we can help you in order to start promoting TotallyGifts.co.uk website.

Please respond us by Tuesday 30^th June 2009 with the proof of promotional activities otherwise your account might be suspended.

Look forward for your response.

Thanks & regards

The e-mail starts off innocently enough, but I’ve bolded out the points where the e-mail seems very accusational and perhaps cheeky. First of all, what the hell is this supposed to mean: “We have noticed you are not participating in promoting TotallyGifts.co.uk using the methods you mentioned at the time of joining”? Have they decided that I am promoting the site via other, unscrupulous means? If I am, I’m not doing a very good job of it because the total number of sales I’ve generated for them are none which I’m fairly certain wouldn’t be ringing many bells on an affiliate managers fraud-o-meter.

Secondly I’ve joined the program on an account called “thediscountblog.co.uk” where my methods of promotion are described as “discount voucher sites”, “blog” and “seo”. If we take a look at the only place I am promoting them, you’ll see a highly neglected page on The Discount Blog for Totally Gifts voucher codes:

That seems fairly accurate to me.

So next they want me to prove how I’m going to promote them. Well I’ve just proved where I’m promoting them currently, but if you really want to know, I have three other sites in development that would be a reasonably good match for the program as they will be targeting kids toys, gifts & gadgets and experience/activities respectively. But if I don’t e-mail back and tell them this, they will suspend me? Forgive me, but this sounds a little hostile and also, why do affiliate managers cull affiliates for no reason? I have three other sites in development that are a great match and therefore could be generating sales come the Christmas peak period but hey, I might be suspended and my sales will have to go to their competitors. It’s a pretty competitive market too.

Did you receive this e-mail or was it really just me? What did you think if you did? Personally when I develop these future sites, I’ll be promoting the old favourites in the gifts and gadgets market.

So, how does the new Woolies site look, feel and work?

From the very first glance of the homepage, there is a sense of disappointment and lost opportunity. It looks, to be blunt, pants. As much as red is their primary colour, the use of red on the site is dismal and quite depressing. There aren’t any other colours that really stand out, apart from the bright green and blues that sit atop the tabs on product pages, which don’t really blend in.

Besides the use of colours, space isn’t used well either. The homepage is dominated by a Flash section detailing the three different stores rather than promotions or price cuts; the same of which can be said of the category pages which also appear uninspired and even confusing. In fact, the big picture of a family titled ‘XBox’ on the consoles page actually lead to XBox accessories, not the console itself.

The navigation has friendly dropdown menus but they take a moment to appear which can be irritating, particularly when the anchor title appears before the menu itself and even obscures them.

The product pages are dreary in design but the information provided is quite good. Interestingly enough, the popup that appears when you add a product to your basket is open source library AJAX/Javascript code because the site I’m currently redeveloping has the exact same pop-up (which I’ve redesigned because personally I think it’s a bit rubbish).

Switching sites just confuses you further. For a start, the checkout isn’t shared throughout the sites so you either have to buy your product or empty your basket before visiting another section of Woolies, which is even more bizarre considering you buy your X-Box in a different part of the site to the X-Box games. I like the funky Pick ‘n’ Mix site but again, different checkout, different product pages and so on.

Never mind that this is the resurrection of a well known and well loved family brand, this new Woolworths site has to compete with the likes of Amazon and Play.com and quite frankly Woolworths have gone into battle with a wooden sword. It’s a big shame because the new site was supposed to revive the brand aswell as provide a cover story for how a big high street brand that saw it’s demise during the recession was brought back thanks to the power of online marketing. I think with their current website, this isn’t going to happen.

Nameservers for ****.at were not changed to
ns.**************.com and ns2.**************.com

Error text: Authentication Error.
If you are attempting to modify nameservers for an .eu domain, we are currently looking into this issue.
please try again later.

Apart from being a bit miffed they couldn’t recognise I was trying to move a .at domain, not a .eu domain I carried on trying then headed over to the new support website and posted a ticket. I’m not much of a support ticket kind of guy, I tend to find solutions on my own via the web or asking people but in this case it was required. Being a full-time internet guy who’s used to real-time updates and fast information, as well as past experience with support tickets at other internet companies such as Heart, I expected a prompt response. Wrong again.

Apart from the relatively rubbish automated response that tried to direct me to answers that couldn’t solve my problem, I had to wait until the 21st May for a response. That’s almost a week, a bloomin’ eternity in internet time, especially when I wanted to get my new project going! The ticket didn’t even solve the issue, it merely mentioned the incident had been passed to product development. Oh joy, it had now turned into one of “those” incidents. On the 24th May (almost 10 days now), I got a new ticket saying the issue had been solved. Hurrah! Off I go to my control panel, change the nameservers and…ah. Computer says no again.

Nameservers for ****.at were not changed to
ns.**************.com and ns2.**************.com

Error text: Command not supported.
If you are attempting to modify nameservers for an .eu domain, we are currently looking into this issue.

Now I’m miffed. 10 days, 2 updates (3 if you include the automated response) and no solution. I was seriously contemplating just moving all my domains over to Heart and start buying them there and attaching them to the hosting straight away. It would be a lot of hassle, but if I’m going to get grief from 123-reg, it might be worth it.

But…wait! On 25th May, I received a ticket saying it’s been solved, the nameservers changed and I should wait 24 hours for the changes to propagate. 24 hours later and the domain has now been moved and is happily sitting, waiting for my new little project to be launched upon it.

Along with the support ticket, I received an e-mail that apologised for the delay (due to high volume of calls and e-mails, naturally) and that they had even tried to phone me which is a personal and kind gesture from a company that has made me wait 10 days for a solution.

And then on top of that, I received a new support ticket titled ‘Is everything OK’ from a support agent who had spotted my unimpressed Tweets and associated the profile with my 123-reg account. I don’t think I’m even being followed by said support agent or 123-reg (which looks like it’s either being squatted unsuccessfully or woefully unutilised). I found this quite amusing, especially since my Twitter account has a link to this website, where a contact number is actually displayed.

So what’s the lesson here?

1. 123-reg – you were very close to losing a customer. Granted, I don’t spend millions with you (and I’ve even admitted I use Heart for my hosting) but I do have a good list of domains, have used you for clients and you seem aware I have an internet profile (over 200 followers on Twitter! w00t!). Word-of-mouth seems especially important for the ridiculously saturated market of hosting and domains. Plus my domain addiction is only getting stronger; I’m planning on buying many more over the coming months. Please don’t make me wait so long again

2. 123-reg again – If you’re watching Twitter, use your own Twitter account to communicate with us! If it’s being squatted, get it back. I wonder how many hosting companies do communicate with their customers and potential customers on Twitter. It must be on a weekly basis where someone asks on a forum or other social networking site “What hosting do you use?” etc. Customers are there ready for the grabbing!

3. Everyone – you’re not necessarily being watched on the internet but it’s damn easy to connect the dots. Someone might be reading what you’re saying about them

I would have been awake at 5am to nab my own username but due to heavy hayfever and a plethora of tablets that do nothing except make me drowsy, I slept right through until Saturday afternoon. Thankfully though, it seems my last name is relatively unique and I’m now the proud owner of facebook.com/philhancox. Along with twitter.com/philhancox and, of course, my own domain philhancox.co.uk, are there any more vanity URLs I should be snapping up?

Naturally a few funny and interesting Facebook usernames have also been registered. One of my favourites is facebook.com/defaults.aspx (of course, Facebook is primarily written in PHP but meh, it’s still genius) or facebook.com/index. I also quite like the mirror username facebook.com/moc.koobecaf and I’m sure with another 3 million or so vanity URLs registered, there will be another good few funny ones out there.

At the moment though I chose my vanity URL for the one reason they’re important: branding. With a Facebook URL, people and businesses (and those where the two are one and the same) can have their own shorter, attractive and more trustworthy Facebook brands instead of facebook.com/pages/blah/blah-blah-blah/01234567890 it can be facebook.com/business. Nice.

Facebook is realising Twitter is becoming a powerful tool that businesses are using to converse with their customers, and Facebook wants in on the action. Instead of businesses putting up signs saying follow us on twitter.com/business, they want them putting up signs saying check us out on facebook.com/business and vanity URLs are one step further at achieving this mission. We’ll see if vanity URLs help Facebook become a larger slice of the branding and social media strategy for businesses wanting to get closer to their customer.

Did you get your vanity URL? Friend me on facebook.com/philhancox and don’t forget to follow me at twitter.com/philhancox.

I’m quite upset about this feature change. I love going through my timeline and picking up on conversations, reading the whole conversation and even following the other person if I find them interesting. With this reply curtain I can no longer follow debates, conversations, see interesting links, tips, answers to questions, polls and so on. This is a massive part of the reason I use Twitter – to meet new people and learn new things, and it seems a lot of people agree.

I can appreciate that if you follow a lot of people, or follow noisy people, this feature might be relieving but (apparently) there used to be a setting that allowed you to switch the feature on or off. It is now defaulted to off, which is taking away our choice to decide whether or not to view @’s to people we don’t follow. I have, on very rare occasions, unfollowed people who were filling my timeline with noisy crap (if you post a rubbish quote by some random historian or political figure every 10 seconds, I will unfollow you). That was my choice. The cost of losing this one timeline greatly outweighed the cost of losing the many interesting @’s to people I don’t know.

It might be nice to have an additional feature which rates the importance of each person you follow, kind of like Facebook’s “hide this person” in the timeline. If someone is too noisy, I could tell Twitter to tone down the number of Tweets I get from that person.

If you want to send @’s but don’t want everyone else reading them, that’s the point of the DM’s. Or e-mail. Or a phonecall. Maybe a text message or a private message in a forum or even a carrier pigeon. If you don’t want your conversation to be public, don’t put it in public.

The reply will only be hidden if you start your Tweet with their name, so please don’t or people like me may not be able to follow the conversation. I’m starting my replies with #fixreplies, one of the trending topics at the moment. #twitterfail seems to be doing nicely, too.

So Twitter: This party is a bit quiet, can you bring all the guests back please? I want to eavesdrop those who are happy to bring their conversations to the party, learn something new and even make new friends. Like I used to be able to. Thanks.

I managed to reach the limit of 100 respondents so thanks everyone. I particularly want to thank these lovely Tweeters who filled in the survey (and replied to confirm), retweeted or in Hannah Swifts case, helped with Facebook pestering aswell!

• @AffiliateStuff
• @BFG9000
• @charliejclark
• @chrisclarkson
• @glassboxmedia
• @hairycornflakes
• @iBradley
• @jst1986
• @jesseowen
• @KeithBond
• @lammo77
• @swifty7

Apologies if I missed you out, let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

I will possibly release some results and analysis (in a less academic manner than my dissertation) next week but, of course, it’s not a massive or controlled study so take it with a pinch of salt.

Thanks again for your help everyone, I owe you all a beer/favour/hug (place your orders now!).

My kettle is broken… no more tea….. what will I do without tea?!

I woke up this morning and through perserverance, managed to make a half-decent brew by boiling water in a pan and, as usual, logged onto the net and came across the following two replies on Twitter by a company called Stylish Goods:

@philhancox If you like any of our kettles, we can get them sent to you in super-fast time.

@philhancox See if you like any of the kettles here:- http://is.gd/tOYw and you can have a 5% discount as a twitter user.

What an example of wonderful Twittermarketing! First of all, they seem personal and not just automated replies to the keyword “kettle”. They recognised my urgency my stating kettles have a fast delivery time. Score 3 points here; 1 for recognising my Tweet in their marketing message, 2 for triggering the thought process in my mind to view their website for kettles and finally for telling me about their delivery times, all in less than 140 characters.

The second Tweet just seals the deal for me, a nice link and a 5% discount if I decide to buy. Suddenly, this company isn’t just auto-replying any more, they’re helping me out and making me valued at the same time. Unfortunately for Stylish Goods, I’m in a student crib and the maintenance form has been sent off, meaning I should get a new kettle soon. However, I will be moving out soon and I’m so impressed that I will use them to buy a kettle for my new flat.

But whilst the Twitter messages got me involved and triggered my internal purchasing decisions, the website, sadly, turned me off a bit. Clicking upon the link given took me to a page where, above the fold, all I could see was a digital scale and half a hand blender. Where are the stylish kettles? I had to scroll down to see them which in usability (and conversion) fields is a big no-no. It would have been better to send me to the search results for kettle which does just show the kettles but unfortunately neither they nor I can link to because it doesn’t generate a unique URL.

I could mention a lot more about the site that could be improved, but I may save that for another time as I will be doing in-depth website reviews on this blog in the future. I just wanted to highlight Stylish Goods as they brightened up my morning with laser-targeted but effective and friendly marketing to a guy who is skeptical to such tactics. Congratulations guys, now improve your site to really capture those conversions.

This isn’t an advert, but it is a happy coincidence that this incident occured as only last night I was chatting to @hairycornflakes about his new tool, which is in beta release at tweetdock.com. It allows you to target Twitter users based on keywords and even geographical location and send them replies automatically (although you can check the messages first to ensure they will appreciate the message and personalise it for maximum effect). You can use it for more than one Twitter account which means if you have multiple websites, this could turn into one hell of an effective marketing tool and I look forward to using it myself. I’ll blog about the results in the future, but for now, take a peek and see if it could do anything for you.

And the Twitter story of last week – the race to 1,000,000 followers. Was it to be Ashton ‘Dude Where’s My Car’ Kutcher or the CNN news feed? It was, of course, Mr. Demi Moore who was crowned the ‘King of Twitter’ as he reached the one million milestone first. The Punk’d star even recorded the momentous occasion live and declared

one man can have a voice that’s as loud as an entire media company. And you can have that voice as well. And we can all have that voice together. And, and, and we can change media forever

Ha! First of all, the normal man isn’t a Hollywood celebrity, one who posts half-naked pictures of his gorgeous wife on the internet. And secondly, whilst Twitter is brilliant for real-time news (take the Hudson River crash as an example), I’m certainly not going to be going to Ashton Kutcher for the latest headlines.

The man becomes more unpopular, however, when we find out Oprah is launching her own Twitter profile just as the “King of Twitter” is scheduled to speak on her show, along with the Twitter founders. So, whilst we were originally not giving a flying monkeys about how cool Kutcher thinks he is, we’re now thinking it’s all a bit convenient. Take, for example, this post which reports 1,113 billboards donated by the third biggest billboard company in America urging passers by to follow @aplusk. It also claims that users were blocked from unfollowing either Ashton or CNN in an attempt to ensure that at least one would reach the milestone.

Oprah is now being belittled by the #herebeforeoprah campaign and Ashton is getting a #backlashton. In my eyes, celebrities like Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross or Philip Schofield are the kings of Twitter. They engage in conversations with fans, give interesting insights into their lives, share links and pictures and, most importantly, gained followers naturally due to the previous three reasons. That’s how Twitter should work and why I’m enjoying it so much.

It’s great that Twitter is gathering such a huge following to people of all backgrounds and lifestyles, and celebrities are helping achieve that. I don’t necessarily agree that social media such as Twitter spells the end for corporate news sources because that’s not the point of it – Twitter gives us real-time teasers of news stories that are explained thoroughly (biased or not) by the investigative journalism of more corporate news sources – but it’s certainly an interesting addition to the way we absorb and share information.

But the Ashton million thing is a complete joke. That’s not the point of Twitter (yes, I’m also talking to you idiots who follow me and try and sell me viral follower adding services), and those of you who also thought it was a joke will understand why.