Design for the web.

With smartphone usage increasing every year, the platform battle continues to rage on between the big 3: Microsoft, Apple and Android. Here at GiantGoat we usually test our sites in Android and iOS. Windows Phone seems to be eating some dust while proclaiming “me too! me too!”.

Recently, Microsoft started a new ad campaign called The Windows Phone Challenge, aka “Smoked by Windows Phone” in which patrons of the Microsoft Store can compete against the new Windows phone on a variety of task-based speed tests. The idea is simple: if your phone does the task faster, you win $1,000!

When I first heard about this I had 2 thoughts:

1. That is quite the bold wager
2. This will backfire very soon

With the mobile market being so competitive, this type of advertising certainly is not new. However, as a new owner of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, I don’t really believe the new Windows phone is in fact faster (just an assumption). I mean the Nexus is just so…fast…and awesome. How can the Windows Phone compete with the dual core Nexus? Our office is almost exclusively Android users so perhaps I am a bit quite biased. Nevertheless, I was happy to see Microsoft doing this because I like the attempt at objective transparency in a marketplace bursting with flashy, misleading ads and uninformed consumers.

The reason I thought it would backfire is that developers love a challenge. Especially if its pitting you against Microsoft. Surely Microsoft realized that eventually someone would fine-tune their hardware-unlocked, over-clocked Android (or something to that extent) to win.

Well it was not long before the inevitable backfire. No surprise the Nexus took the prize – and it was done without any super geek magic too! MS decided to split some hairs regarding the fine print for the contest and deny the patron his prize. Well that did not go over well with the blogging community and MS quickly issued an apology.

Overall, I do like heads-up comparisons they are trying to get consumers to do. However, they should take a lesson from Apple and just stick to comparisons where they know they will win. Or better yet, be a good sport when you lose your own challenge.

 
Drupal out of the box is not a very search engine friendly system. With ugly urls and no meta tags available to put in for pages, out of the box Drupal does not have the SEO presence that people need for their websites in today’s search engine world. So you may ask “Why use Drupal if it is bad at SEO?”. Well the answer is simple, “There is a module for that”, or should I say “modules”.  Modules such as Clean URL’s and Pathauto create nice looking URLs that are easily read and understood by users as well as search engines. There are also modules like Meta Tags Quick that allow meta tags to be inserted into your content types. There are in fact tons of these modules available for download to make your site SEO compliant.

Since there are so many modules available for download, how does one choose which ones are right for your site? The answer, one simple module called SEO Checklist. This module has everything you could possibly want to make your Drupal site search engine friendly. It creates a simple list of all the good modules out there for you to download. It also keeps track of all the modules you already have and checks them off the list automatically. By using this list you can pick and choose which modules you want for your site without having to go searching for them. This module has sections devoted to page titles, meta tags, url paths and many many more.

Not only does this module contain download links to many helpful modules for SEO compliance, but it also has sections devoted to social media, protecting your site from spam and also links to submit your sitemaps to Google and other search engines. It has been said that this is the most powerful Drupal module that ‘does nothing’. All it does it lets administrators have access to a simple list of thing to do in order to make their site search engine friendly.

We here at GiantGoat feel that this module is a great way to keep track of SEO within any Drupal site. It allows us to check what we have and what we don’t have in any of our Drupal sites. So if you are looking for a good way to find if your Drupal site is search engine friendly look no further than SEO Checklist.