What’s brewing at MaxGen? What isn’t.

On top of launching a slew of new XSIS WebMaster-powered websites, stick around for all this goodness:

• New Twitter feed for xsis. This replaces the old panel and will consist of the same updates, downtime and maintenance notices. Exciting stuff for people who like their news dull, dorky and under 140 characters. Follow us @xsis.
• Semi-secret project, watch this space.
• The delightfully named Mailbomb, which is a long overdue overhaul to our email marketing system. It’s looking good and should be ready for takers in about a month. Take a peek here – (preview pic).
• iPhone Apps. All the ‘cool’ web-types are into this thing in a big way so we’ve gone ahead and registered as an official developer. Stefan and Daniel are heading this up for us, so be ready for MaxGen’s app offering when the version 3.0 iPhones are released sometime in June.
• A new design for this very website. Almost 2 years we’ve been rocking this look now, and while it’s still passable, it is definitely time we knock it up a notch. We’ve been passing concepts round for a couple of weeks now and are finally on the right track.

Dan Chung goes over the significance of localised search engines in this post

Have you tried hard to get top search engine ranking by following various optimisation guides, but no matter how many keywords you place on your Website it is still deemed invisible by Google and Yahoo?

Fret not, you may have missed a key point – Your IP address and domain name. Allow me to explain:

IP Address

From a search engines point of view, if your Website is hosted in the United States for example, then there is a large possibility that the content of your Website is targeting to people who live in North America. Search engines can easily tell where your Website is hosted by checking your IP Address. So if your Website is located in the USA, then you will lose visibility for people searching for your site with www.google.co.nz.

Domain Name

Again, if your domain name is “abc.com”, search engines will always believe your website is marketed towards American visitors. As a result you may get high ranking if searched for on www.google.com, but a lower one on www.google.co.nz. To us it makes sense: if you run a New Zealand based business, then use a .co.nz domain – it’s about targeting your audience accurately. For some reason people believe the use of a “.com” domain makes their Website seem bigger – more “global” even. This isn’t the case. If anything you’re just reducing the amount of real visitors (the ones actually interested in your Website) that will find you.

What is the best option?

Using the theories above, the best scenario is to host your Website locally and use the domain extension of your country.

For example, if you are targeting New Zealand customers, then you can choose to host with a Kiwi company like ICONZ, SiteHost or MaxGen, and then also apply a “.co.nz” domain name.

However, as a general rule New Zealand based Web hosting is considerably more expensive than other countries. And as a result, a lot of Kiwi Website owners choose to host their Websites offshore; saving money but sacrificing search engine visibility.

What it comes down to is if the price is a big issue when you choose where to host your Website, then at least choose a “.nz” domain name. That way you will have greater Website visibility in localised versions of Google.

Fortunately for all XSIS WebMaster customers, we host all our Websites locally – so to always experience the best possible speed and local search engine rankings.

In this post, Court is going to help you find stock imagery.

As Website designers we’re aware of the vast resources available to us on the Internet that we can use to make great looking sites for our clients. But once we’ve done our part, people using our XSIS Content Management System sometimes get stuck when it comes to adding stuff in, especially images. A couple of posts back, Danilo explained how you can use Picasa to organise and manipulate your photos. But often the questions stands – where does one find good quality stock images in the first place? You could spend hours searching Google for what you’re looking for, but its tough to narrow down the best sites.

Never fear, here is a compiled list of some great *free* stock photo Websites. I’m pointing out these sites because of their selection, ease-of-use and quality.

Stockvault – Really nicely categorised stock. The site has a friendly, Web 2.0 feel and they have a massive database of shots totaling over 8,000.

stock.xchng – Over 300,000 completely free images. This site is legendary and according to them gets over 3 million hits a day.

KAVEWALL – This one’s a little different. If you want something with a bit of texture,or a detail shot, check out KAVEWALL.

A Digital Dreamer – This one doesn’t have heaps of photos, but they’re all really good quality. You can tell that these have all been hand-picked.

FreePhotosBank – Neatly categorised with lots of options and info about all the shots. Not a massive selection like stock.xchng, but the shots are usable and interesting.

More good sites – Free Pixels, open stock photography, Photogen.

So have a peruse and hopefully you find what you’re after. Wouldn’t hurt to say cheers to the Website owner if his site has what you want. If you’re still finding it tough you can always give us a call here at MaxGen Media. We have a few secret stashes which are bound to have the specific photo you need.

It’s taken a bit longer than we thought, but MaxGen Media site (5.0?) is all livened up, chock full tasty treats for you to sink your Web-hungry teeth into. We’re gonna be slowly but surely adding the videos to the Touch section, which is essentially a run through of the basics of XSIS. One part tutorial, two parts explanation, all parts awesome and youtubey. Yeah I know the first video is a bit amateur night but it’s more or less a placeholder until the fancy ones are done.

We’re also going to be updating the Work page soon with some of the more recent sites we’ve been working on. If we can pry ourselves away from Guitar Hero 2 that is.