We are proud to announce the launch of the new IPHRC (Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre) website! For those of you who don’t know, IPHRC is a partnership between the University of Regina, First Nations University of Canada and the University of Saskatchewan that deals with research into the health of Indigenous Peoples. IPHRC is dedicated to supporting and funding Indigenous individuals, communities and institutions to aid further research into Indigenous health issues.  The new site is powered by OH!CMS to allow for easy content, and photo updating. With the CMS they can now add frequent news and events postings. IPHRC.ca now offers content-specific sections dedicated to Researchers and Communities and Students. You can be sure that whichever category you fall into you’ll be able to access the information you want as quickly as possible.

OH! Media is happy to announce the launch of one of Saskatchewan’s fastest growing family restaurants, Trifon’s Pizza (www.trifons.com). Trifon’s is powered by our very own CMS, OH!CMS, which allows for quick and easy updates to menu items, location info, employment opportunities and more! Trifon’s new website has detailed information for each location including hours, phone numbers and Google Maps. Menu items and pricing is now available online for both take-out and dine-in menu’s. And who doesn’t love a good deal? Don’t forget to check the promo page for new promotions and coupons valid for both take-out and dine-in orders!

About Trifon’s Pizza

As most people are beginning to notice, Trifon’s is quickly becoming a household name when it comes to great local food and family fun. With new locations now open in Estevan, Moose Jaw and Edmonton Trifon’s Pizza franchisee is growing by the day! What most people might not know is that the first Trifon’s Pizza opened in 1972 by founder Trifon Agioritis. If it was one thing Trifon knew, it was great pizza! So he decided to stake his name on it. Trifon’s has been locally owned and running for the past 30 years, if that isn’t dedication to a great pizza I don’t know what is!

We found a website that we just had to share with y’all right before Christmas. Chances are, you know someone who isn’t good with computers has suddenly acquired one, especially in this gift giving season. You might even be the designated tech support for this person.

Google has come up with a lovely website to save you and your confused computer owner!  Teach Parents Tech allows you to quickly fill in a few fields and select from a comprehensive list of tutorial videos to send to your…okay, I’m just going to say it: parents.

I just sent my mom a care package email on how to copy & paste, make text bigger/smaller and make bookmarks.

May your Christmas be filled with happiness, joy, good food and a minimum of tech support!

From your friends at OH! Media

We would like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude for our clients and followers. Thank you for making 2010 our best year yet!

We will be closed on the following days to celebrate the holidays with family and friends

• Friday, December 24
• Monday, December 27
• Friday, December 31

As we will be out of the office enjoying time with our loved ones, we would like to wish you all very Merry Christmas and all the best in 2011!

Keep Calm and Jingle On!

Google Analytics is a free system that when integrated into your website can provide you with all sorts of wonderful data about your website visitors.

Don’t worry if your Google Analytics stats confuse you. There are people who build entire careers around translating those stats. We are hear to help!  We’ve written simple guide to explain the common functions of the system. Let’s get started.

You’ve visited google.com/analytics and logged in with your username and password that we’ve supplied you with.  And then your Dashboard comes up, and your eyes bug out.  It’s okay.

Here’s a picture of your Dashboard.  Well, actually, it’s our Dashboard (well, one of our test site dashboards), but you know what I mean.  Click on the image for a bigger version.

That first block, the long chart stretching across the page – it measures how many visitors you’ve had to your site.  You can see we had a large spike in traffic around Dec 8th.

The next block is Site Usage.  Here’s a quick rundown:

Visits: How many *unique* visitors you’ve had.  This doesn’t count repeat visits from the same computer.

Pageviews: All the pageviews you’ve had, including ones from the same computer.

Pages/visit: On average, how many pages of your website are viewed by each visitor.

Bounce rate: How many people come to your site and leave without viewing any other pages.

Avg. Time on Site: How long your visitors stay on your site before they go to another one.

New visits: Visitors coming to your site for the first time.

The Visitors Overview is a more compressed version of the top graph.

The Map Overlay shows where your visitors are coming from.  Since this is a test site we use for our own purposes, it makes sense it is mostly visited from Canada, because that’s where we are!

Traffic Sources Overview: Ah, this is what you’re interested in!

Direct Traffic: People who came to your site by typing the URL into their address bar.  They didn’t use a middleman to get there, they typed in www.yoursite.com.

Search Engines: Yes, that’s people who find your site from Google or Bing.

Referring Sites: Sites that link to your site but aren’t search engines.  For example, if you sell a widget, and the manufacturer of the widget posts a list of their widget distributors on their own site that’s a referral.

Content Overview is just a list of the most popular pages on your site and the number and % of pageviews they count for.

To top off this basic tutorial, I’m going to talk about one more section, the Traffic Sources (which you can access off the left hand menu).  I don’t have a picture of this page because it contains very specific data.

But at the bottom of this page are two columns you are very interested in:

Your Top Traffic Sources and Keywords.

Your traffic sources are fairly straightforward.  The ones labeled Direct are people who go to www.yourcompany.com, the ones labeled Google are people who go to your site from Google, and ones labeled Referral are independent websites that link to you.

Your keywords are the search terms people use on Google to get to you.  Here you can tell how people *find* you.

There are full report links underneath each of those options if you want a full lists of traffic sources and keywords.

There you have it.  Not to difficult was it?  If you have any questions or would like to learn more we’d be happy to give you a more detailed rundown!  Drop us a note!

So your website has gone through the final review stages. You’re happy with it and excited for the world to see it! While it was in development, you were given a temporary web address to access the site, but now it’s going to be www.yourcompany.com!

Except that when you visit www.yourcompany.com, your site isn’t there.  If you had an old website there, it’s still showing up.  Or if this is the first website at that address you’re getting a temporary ‘coming soon’ page or it may just seem like the site is loading forever, nothing ever coming up.

I’m going to talk about why this happens – in geekspeak, we call this propagation.

Another geekspeak term is TL;DR – too long, didn’t read.  I’m going to put the TL;DR version below.  Keep on reading past the next paragraph to get the full technical explanation.

Geekspeak:

You know there’s some magical technological thing going on to make www.google.com bring up Google but you’ve never really thought about it.  Well, www.google.com is a URL.  A URL needs to be told where the website files are.  If a URL hasn’t been told where to go, you get Server Not Found messages and long loading times that go nowhere.

So now the techs have told www.yourcompany.com where to go – to find the files we’ve been working on.

But wait!  It’s been an hour since they emailed you they updated your domain settings and your site still isn’t up.  This is because the instructions telling the URL where to go need to propagate.  The internet is controlled by 13 ‘root servers’.  When we tell a URL to go somewhere, that message needs to make it to all 13 root servers.  The reason the internet works this way is because your Internet Service Provider or ISP (for example, Sasktel or Access Communications) only has to talk to those 13 servers to get instructions on which website goes where.

This sounds really complicated.  Here’s how it breaks down:
your website files -> a URL -> root DNS server -> Sasktel/Access/etc. -> you.

This is where the time lapse comes in.  The root DNS servers need to record the URL change.  Then Sasktel/Access/etc. need to talk to the root DNS server to get their updates.  Sometimes, an ISP only updates those records once a day or even once every two days.  This explains why your friend on Access can see your site but you on Sasktel cannot.

TL;DR:

When your website is set to go to www.yourcompany.com, it needs to be updated on a special server, and the company you get your internet from checks the special server for website address changes.  But it may only check once every day or two, which is why you cannot see your site.  Unfortunately, we can’t force this process.  Not even Microsoft can!

If it’s been a full business day, try clearing your cache.  You can also flush your DNS cache just to make sure it grabs the updates from your internet company.

Hi, I’m Hayley, and I’ve been working as a front-end developer for 3.5 years now. In this industry, that’s light years.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed that seems to concern all new clients, it’s the question: is this design firm working for us and looking out for our best interests, or are they out to sell us features we don’t need to make a quick buck?  I think you know our answer to that question!

We pledge to never sell you the shiniest new gadget for your site for the sake of it.  We promise to take the time to learn about your organization, to develop a plan that best suits your needs, to design an attractive website that is easy to use by all your customers, that’s easily updateble using our content management system, searchable by Google, and fully supported by our professional and friendly staff.

We take client relations very seriously at OH! Media.  In a recent industry tour by local SIAST students, one gentleman spoke to my boss after the presentation about how he really appreciated the fact that we spoke about building relationships with our clients, something the other companies on the tour failed to mention.  To us, building relationships is the most important part of doing business, it’s what we strive to do everyday.

One thing our clients never have to worry about is our dependability.  We’re always here.  So if you call us, we answer our phones.  If you have a question or need help about your website, we’re more than happy to take the time to help you.  We’re established within the community, sponsoring events like the Queen City Marathon and the Regina Family Expo.  We sit on the boards for both Saskatchewan Interactive and the Saskatchewan Motion Picture Industry Association.  We have 7 full time employees which means we are big enough to serve you well and small enough to care. We’re a team of professionals that each have an area of expertise, be it online strategy, design, development, or project management.  Roll all these experts together and you have one helluva team!

If you want to learn more about how we do things differently here at OH!, give us a call or contact us through our contact page.  We’d love to hear from you.

We’ve had many requests from clients on how to use their Wordpress sites. Wordpress is an excellent blogging platform, but it can also be daunting to new users.

The main thing you want to do with your Wordpress site is make blog posts. Below is both simple and more detailed information about the process of creating a blog post:

The Basics of Creating/Editing & Publishing a Blog Post

• First sign in using WordPress Login page. ex. (www.examplesite.com/blog/wp-admin)
• Click the “Posts” tab located within the left side navigation.
• Click the “Add New” link located both at the top and left hand side of the page.
• Add blog title where it says “Enter title here”.
• Add some content!
• The content box has many editing functions similar to those you would see in Microsoft Word. You can bolden, italicize, add links and more!
• If you plan to write blog posts on a variety of topics creating categories is a great way to keep your posts organized.
• Add a category by clicking the “Add New Category” link located in the “Categories” section to the right of the content area.
• If you’ve completed your blog post but don’t want to publish it right away you have the option to save as a “Draft”.
• To save as a draft click the “Save Draft” button located to the left of the page under the “Publish” section.
• If you’re ready for the word to see your words of wisdom, click Publish!

Need more details? No Problem…

Blog Post Title

This is the title of your post. You can use any words or phrases but  its best to avoid using the same title twice as that will cause problems. You can use commas, apostrophes, quotes, hypens/dashes, and other typical symbols in the post.

Content Editing Area

The blank box where you enter your writing, links, links to images, and any information you want to displayed in the content of the post.

Preview button

Allows you to view the post before officially publishing it. This is located under the “Publish” section to the right of the “Save Draft” button.

Publish Section

Contains buttons that control the state of your post. The main states are Published, Pending Review, and Draft. A Published status means the post has been published on your blog for all to see. Pending Review means the draft is waiting for review by an editor prior to publication. Draft means the post has not been published and remains a draft for you. If you select a specific publish status and click the update post or Publish button, that status is applied to the post. For example, to save a post in the Pending Review status, select Pending Review from the Publish Status drop-down box, and click Save As Pending. (You will see all posts organized by status by going to Posts > Edit). To schedule a post for publication on a future time or date, click “Edit” in the Publish area next to the words “Publish immediately”. You can also change the publish date to a date in the past to back-date posts. Change the settings to the desired time and date. You must also hit the “Publish” button when you have completed the post to publish at the desired time and date.

Visibility

This determines how your post appears to the world. Public posts will be visible by all website visitors once published. Password Protected posts are published to all, but visitors must know the password to view the post content. Private posts are visible only to you (and to other editors or admins within your site)

Save Draft

Allows you to save your post as a draft / pending review rather than immediately publishing it. To return to your drafts later, visit Posts – Edit in the menu bar, then select your post from the list.

Publish

Publishes your post on the site. You can edit the time when the post is published by clicking the Edit link above the Publish button and specifying the time you want the post to be published. By default, at the time the post is first auto-saved, that will be the date and time of the post within the database.

Post Tags

Refers to micro-categories for your blog. Posts with similar tags are linked together when a user clicks one of the tags. Tags have to be enabled with the right code in your theme for them to appear in your post. Add new tags to the post by typing the tag into the box and clicking “Add”.

Categories

Categories refers to the general topic the post can be classified in. Generally, bloggers have 7-10 categories for their content. Readers can browse specific categories to see all posts in the category. To add a new category, click the “+Add New Category” link in this section. You can manage your categories by going to” Posts” >” Categories”.

Discussion Options to enable interactivity and notification of your posts. This section hosts two check boxes: Allow Comments on this post and Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this post. If Allowing Comments is unchecked, no one can post comments to this particular post. If Allowing Pings is unchecked, no one can post pingbacks or trackbacks to this particular post.

Password Protect This Post

To password protect a post, click “Edit” next to Visibility in the Publish section to the top right, then click “Password Protected”, click Ok, and enter a password. Then click OK. Note – Editor and Admin users can see password protected or private posts in the edit view without knowing the password.

Post Author

Post Author refers to a list of all blog authors you can select from to attribute as the post author. This section only shows if you have multiple users with authoring rights in your blog. To view your list of users, see “Users” tab on the far right.

WPScreencasts also describes this process, except using a video podcast, so if you are more of a visual learner, the video below is for you:

First in the series of blog posts to help clients get the most out of the OH!CMS content management system.

Adding a New Page

Under the “Pages” tab click on drop-down option for “New Page”

Step 1: Select where you want the page to go…

• If you want the page to show up in the main menu: Click the link at the very top of the page directory. This way when you view the main menu of the site the new page will appear as part of the main menu. (Ex. Home, About Us, *New Page* etc.)
• If you want the page to show up as a secondary page: Click the title of the page which you want to be the parent. For example if you want to add a secondary page beneath the page “About Us” you would click the “About Us” link.. This way when you hover over the “About Us” link in the main menu the new page will appear as a drop-down option!

• Step 2: Enter Page Details…
• It will ask you to input the following information for your new page…
• Page Title: This is where you write the title of your new page . ex (Our Company)
• Page Tag: This is automatically generated based on what you put in as the Page Title. So if you create a page titled “Our Company” the automatic page tag will be “our_company”. The CMS uses this tag to generate the link to that page. For example when your on the Our Company page the URL will read “http://www.example.com/our_company”.
• Page Template: The templates will be input by us and will be titled “homepage”, “inner” etc. So for all inner pages you will click the “inner” template image and the new page will follow the layout and design rules set for the inner pages of the site.

Step 3: Enter New Page Content…

• Page Title: Will be set from what you input in Step 2.
• Content: The page editor looks very similar to a Microsoft Word. You have options to bold/italicize text, add bulleted/numbered lists, align content left/center/right, add images/links/pdf’s and more! You can paste in content from word documents or write content right in the content area and style appropriately.
• After every edit you must click the “Save Changes” button displayed below the page editor. An orange bar will appear that says “Loading Page Content” once that bar changes to “Complete” it is safe to exit the page editor. If you leave the page before it states its complete your changes will NOT be saved!

Other important Points…

• To the right of the page editor you will see two headings – Page Revisions and Page Options.
• Page Revisions: Shows a list of dates and times when the page was edited. If you decide you want to go back to a past version just click on the date and the page will reload and look as it did that selected day. To save this click the “Save Changes” button. If you realize you don’t want to overwrite your current version with a past version DO NOT click save and nothing will be saved and you can continue working on the current version.
• Page Options: Shows you whether your page is enabled and whether it shows in the menu. This can be important because if you want to create a page but not have it show up in the main site menu you can un-check the “Show in Menu” box and it won’t show up in the menu, however you can still link to it through another page.

Deleting an Existing Page

• Under the “Pages” tab select the page you wish to delete.
• The page editor for that page will appear.
• Click on the “View Options” button displayed below the page editor.
• Once clicked a selection of options will appear below the editor.
• Click the “Delete this Page” button.
• A box will appear asking you “Do you really want to delete this page?” Click “OK” and the page editor will
  disappear and you will be returned to the “Pages” section.

As always, if you have questions or you need help with the CMS, please do not hesitate to call or email.  We’d be happy to help you out!

Locker distribution is often a long process, especially for universities which need to manage rentals, locker combos and huge campuses. OH! Media worked closely with the University of Regina Students’ Union to help alleviate some of the stress involved with registering lockers. In the past students would need wake up early and wait in a long line in order to secure their locker, a process that was often time consuming and frustrating.

To help alleviate the problems, OH! Media developed a user friendly web app that allows students to register and pay for the rental of their lockers safely and securely online.  The system allows students to select the building they want a locker in, the section of the building and then pay for their rentals via credit card, PayPal or cash in person.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

The student is asked to click “Pay for my locker” and is sent to PayPal.  Once the transaction has been completed, a confirmation email is sent to the student containing the locker # and lock combination.

The lockers app is extensible and customizable for any institution, so if you’re thinking ‘Wow!  We could use something like this!’ or would like a full demo, drop us a line and we’d be happy to talk with you!