Cataract operations and gallbladder extractions might be the most common kinds of surgery on the NHS but our customers prefer a Plone migration. 

Plone.org has an online manual for those who like getting their hands dirty, but it's easy to see why many organisations like specialist help with this task.

Since the arrival of Plone 4 we've been fairly inundated with requests for information on how to upgrade sites (some as old as Plone 1.0.5) to it. Sometimes the older sites are actually simplest and quickest especially if they are sites that were setup for a particular purpose with only a few extra products.

It's fair to say that the addition of a 3rd party product which isn't supported in recent Plones can be the biggest stumbling block to a full migration. Another issue is a lot of bespoke templates, especially if the site's main template has been customised. This means that a lot of functionality may have to be recreated in a Plone 4 kind of way using new templates. These solutions aren't always expensive although some customers may take the opportunity to rethink the overall design and kill two birds with one stone.

Rarely it does happen that it's not feasible to migrate a whole site, and instead it's best to make a new Plone 4 site and try and move over as much content as possible. At this point Dexterity in Plone 4 is a real bonus - it means we can quickly create new content types to match the old ones and then write a script to convert the data from one to the other.

Sometimes there is some particular content that isn't worth the time taken to reproduce and a manual cut/paste is the best solution. However, to date we have succesfully moved at least 95% of any site content when requested and our customers are enjoying all the benefits of Plone 4.

For more details about migrating to Plone 4 please contact us.

No, not the familiar Google product, but the 'ad words' found in brochures, posters, advertisements, and yes, websites: the catchy phrases, slogans and mission statements by which marketeers hope you will remember their brand over all the others. 

They have an important role to play in your overall marketing strategy, but often they are mis-used in your website,  taking up space in html tags that could be better optimised to drive search engine traffic.

Take these examples:

• "20 years of delivery" (in a hypertext link and header tag)
• "Brings people and information together to reduce decision times" (in the description text that appears on a search engine listing)
• "We are committed to the well being of all our customers, partners, employees and the general public." (the first sentence that appears on the home page)

They exude trustworthiness, permanance, and all manner of good things.  In fact, there is nothing wrong with these phrases, except - try to guess what kind of product or service is being offered. 

That's right.  This might be the kind of thing that you want people to think of when thinking about your business, but they are not words or phrases that people use to search for a product or service that they want.  All of the above examples are taking up prime optimisation opportunities, and throwing them away.

So, by all means, use 'ad words', but put them where they won't do any harm.  Right up front, make sure you state who you are and what you offer, and state it more than once.  Use those header tags, the hyperlink texts, and the description fields to their best advantage.

The websites? An oil and gas services company, a consumer electronics company, and a plumber.  All of them are pretty good websites too, but wasted opportunities can creep in anywhere.  Take a good look at your own site and see.

If you would like to improve traffic and Return on Investment (ROI) in your website, contact Openia's Usability Team for an initial consultation.