Recently, I learned quite a bit about Search Engine Optimization. One of the more interesting things I learned is that for best SEO results, you should have one “direct link” (meaning no redirect), and all other redirects should be 301 “permanent” redirects. Many public facing sites’ regardless of provider or if done in-house ignore or are unaware of this principle.

Windows by default uses a 302 redirect “found”. The 302 redirect is considered a temporary redirect for SEO concepts. While the 302 redirect does the job, it will not achieve desired results in an SEO context.

Therefore I would like to raise awareness that any public facing site needing a redirect, whether www or otherwise, should be provisioned using a 301 permanent redirect. This literally only requires one small step.

How to Redirect Links According to SEO Best Practices

When creating your redirect it typically will look like this:

Well, here we are and already eight months have flown by so quickly since my first day. Having had a great time on the West coast at SPTechCon San Francisco, I was ready for the next event I could attend with Fpweb.net! My next venture led me to the great city of New Orleans for Microsoft TechEd North America. This was also my first time visiting New Orleans.

Boy, was I in for a treat! Where else can you enjoy a delicious, warm, sugary beignet and talk SharePoint? I quickly learned that Missouri is not half as bad when it comes to being humid. Saying New Orleans can be hot and very muggy is an understatement, but the food and the people are worth the visit.

They may say that New York is the city that never sleeps, but there is always something going on in New Orleans day or night. On every street you could hear a jazz band playing and see people dancing. Outside of my room, you could hear the trolley bustling by every 30 minutes or so. Each night, our team would go out to eat and it would mean trying something new every time. At first it was clams…..which I couldn’t muster up the courage to do. But, when the Alligator came, it was on and it was pretty good!

And while culinary treats are always a great time, we didn’t eat and run throughout the city the entire time. I know what you’re thinking, what about the conference Steve?! 

Fun, live and to the point!
It’s not a webinar… it’s a Fpwebinar!

This month, we take a whole new approach to the classic webinar with our series “Steven & Jamal Discuss the Cloud.” Don’t expect PowerPoint slides driven by monotone narration – we’re mixing it up with a 20 minute live presentation featuring our friendly Cloud experts, Steven Rupp and Jamal Pryor.

Join us on June 27th, 2013, at 11:00am (ET) for the first ‘Fpwebinar’ as we present “The Battle of the Clouds: Public vs. Private” – an informal, educational chat about the differences between the shared cloud model and the dedicated cloud model. With a cloud computing market that Gartner predicts will reach $150 billion this year, businesses are making the shift to the cloud and Jamal and Steven show you which is the right fit for you.

How Speaking at Conferences Helped Me Conquer My Fear of Public Speaking

Public speaking was a phobia of mine pretty much my entire life until I began to face it by presenting at my industry’s Microsoft SharePoint events. In the past attempts at public speaking, my voice would shake and/or I’d break into sweats all while losing my place and forgetting what I was talking about.

Despite classes I took in college on public speaking, it was and still is not easy for me. I wasn’t forced into the SharePoint speaking circle, however; successfully delivering a technical training session to a room of strangers was an important goal of mine which I figured could only help my career, and I definitely feel that it has. As a speaker you are set apart as an authority on a subject as well as someone who wants to help others understand that subject.

In preparing for my first SharePoint Saturday session (a wonderful, free conference series open to the entire SharePoint community) I read a lot about how to get over the fear of speaking as well as the tricks you can implement to limit fidgeting. I wanted my presentation to be valuable to the audience, not just showcase my nerves. That’s why I researched public speaking so extensively. There are a lot of books/ideas out there, but here are a few tips which I use:

Everyone is Marketing…

Every time you wear the shirt. Every time you mention your job. Every time you answer the phone. We all play a critical role in representing our business. So yes, you are on the Marketing Team. …I’m looking at you Mr. SharePoint Admin.

The best Marketing a company can put out there doesn’t have to come from an expensive ad agency, a flashy, albeit amazing two story conference booth, or the sharply dressed marketing pros on the exhibit floor. In Marketing, nothing will ever trump the nerds in the dungeon offices (sporting the ninja turtle t-shirts) who make sure when a customer gets off the phone they’re almost happy the problem happened in the first place since they got that extra juicy tech tip offered at no additional cost.

The Modern Marketing Team

The Marketing Brain: It’s more IT than you think…

In a technology company, it can be difficult to get everyone on board with the “everyone is marketing” philosophy, but I find it’s the most critical aspect to the success of our Marketing department.

You can spend all the budget in the world on a two story booth for Microsoft’s SharePoint Conference, but what will the investment mean if your help desk engineer leaves a customer with an unsavory taste after a quick troubleshooting call? Or if Sales takes a week to produce a quote, and billing runs a payment one too many times? These things matter!

SharePoint 2013 has been out for almost six months already. Many of us didn’t even have the time to learn everything there is to know about SharePoint 2010 (if that’s even possible) much less begin digesting what 2013 has to offer.

As a SharePoint Administrator, I was sad to see that one of my most used features was no longer available, out-of-box. This is the option to Sign-In as a Different User. Often times, during any troubleshooting, we need the ability to quickly log off an admin user and login with a different user for various testing purposes. For example – testing specific permission levels for sites. You must login with your admin user to grant the user permissions to SharePoint, then sign in as that newly created user to test if the appropriate permissions are correct.

Below is an example of what the user drop-down menu looks like on a fresh installation:

SharePoint Scalability comes up in most conversations we have with customers. What do you do if you outgrow your environment? Plan for it!

We host quite a few SharePoint farms here at Fpweb.net and typically, our customers opt to start with a single server or a smaller farm with the intention of adding resources on an as-needed basis. We make it clear that each SharePoint environment is ‘flexible’ and can be scaled easily. It’s a sensible approach to hosting.

Why pay more for what you need until you need it?

Eventually the time comes when a SharePoint farm is maxed out and requires more resources. At this point, one of the dedicated SharePoint Engineers here at Fpweb.net works with the client to determine what resources are needed. Sometimes it’s a matter of increasing RAM, VPU, or Hard Drive storage. On occasion, however, a farm will require something more than just additional memory or storage… it needs new servers.

Now in farms that already consist of multiple servers, this isn’t a problem. Spin up the new server, join it to the farm, and assign the appropriate roles and services to it. Easy scalability is one of SharePoint’s strong suits.

As someone who is fortunate enough to work with our customers each and every day, I’m always fielding questions about hosted SharePoint, about my company, Fpweb.net, and about the value of both. I try to take note of particular questions that I encounter more than others and then create a blog that answers them all in one place.

So, let’s take a look at a few of those questions and hopefully my answers will help in your quest for superior SharePoint solutions and service!

My Top Five Common SharePoint Questions

1. How do I create new users in SharePoint? 

Since there is no quick answer to this one – especially given that it may depend on the release of SharePoint (SharePoint 2010 has an AD account creation mode that SharePoint 2013 does not) – I’ll defer to the teachings of some of our great SharePoint resources here at Fpweb.net:

So you finally have a SharePoint 2013 environment and you’re ready to start adding users. Great!

After logging into your Windows Server 2012, you ask yourself, “How do I find Active Directory in this new Server Operating System?” Luckily, your internet search brought you to this page! (If it didn’t, please contact Google and petition that this gets a higher SEO ranking…) Otherwise, buckle in as we explore the new realm of Windows Server 2012 and how to add a user in Active Directory.

First, you will want to search for the Active Directory Users and Computers application. This can easily be accomplished in two different ways.

When you first log in, your desktop should be staring at the “Server Manager Dashboard”. We need to get into the Start Page to access your programs. Move your cursor over the right side of the desktop until a bar appears presenting you with the Search, Start and Settings icons. Click on the Start icon to take you to the start page.

Typical work day scenario: You arrive at the office, Starbucks Vanilla Spice Latte in hand, set down your Encase backpack, greet your fellow colleagues, plop your bottom in the desk chair and start working away. Maybe you start strong. Maybe you’re mowing through your work. And then it hits you.

Suddenly your concentration is broken and you can no longer focus on the tasks at hand due to the constant drone of ambient noise. Papers shuffling, chairs squeaking when someone rocks back and forth, the nervous tapping of Kenneth Coles against the floor. Will it ever stop?

<Don’t worry, this isn’t a commercial for 5 Hour Energy…>

Nowadays, it’s very likely that you have to share office space with a colleague or two… or four. While it may seem like your privacy and any quiet time are a thing of the past, there are a few tips that can help you get your work completed, distraction-free!