AusClicks 2021. Different. Good? Maybe.

AusClicks is changing.

Well, it changed quite a while ago.

But we thought it time to update our website to reflect that.

Hopefully, we can update more soon.

But. You know. Busy.

Email and Domain Switch Done

Looks like we had a few bugs to iron out during the week, but it looks like our transfer of domain registrar and email hosting provider has finally been sorted out and it’s all working great now.

Had a small hiccup with the email transfer which meant we did not get any emails sent from probably Monday morning till Thursday afternoon. Probably not the best week to be having a problem like that but then there is never really a good time to switch stuff like that.

So if you did send AusClicks an email or contact form in the last few days – unfortunately, we didn’t get it and probably won’t. Sometimes these issues sort themselves out and you get a backlog of emails that have been waiting – but not this time I think. If you could be so kind as to accept our apologies and please resend your inquiry. No – unfortunately you won’t have received a bounce-back or something before – it just completely disappeared.

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Halfway there with domain switch

OK, so far so good with out domain registrar switch. Now for the fun bit.

So far the switch to Hover has been pretty smooth sailing – same as out other 50+ transfers we have done in the last month or so.

But AusClicks is a little different. Our website is hosted on a WordPress MU Network install (one WordPress, many sites), but our email has been hosted by NetRegistry for about two years.

It was back in around May this year we started having real issues with our emails – and old registrar and host in general. So I have been looking for a good solid alternative since, 3 or 4 attempts later, I’m very happy with the new setup and pretty excited for what we can do next year and beyond.

But still, we need to do one last switch – either it will be as smooth as everything else – or I will be a little ball of stress at the Dubbo Chamber Breakfast tomorrow morning out at Lazy River.

See you there !!

PS – if you find our email borked. Call, contact us on AusClicks Twtter or use michaelq@gmail.com

Email might be a bit wonky this week.

 

Just letting you know our email (and even website) might be a bit wonky this week.

We are switching over to our newish domain registrars and hosting this week, and so the usual problems with such things might pop up.

Hopefully everything will be back to business as usual asap, and then we can start chatting about some of the exciting things we have been planning for 2014.

 

See you on the other side.

 

Michael

Michael & AusClicks speaking at Dubbo Chamber Breakfast

Michael Quinn (from AusClicks Dubbo) will be speaking about using Google AdWords in Your Business at the Dubbo Chamber Time To Network Breakfast, this coming Wednesday, May 1.

Google Adwords can work for all types of business – big and small. See how to get qualified traffic and leads coming to your website when customers are looking to buy your product or service.

People spend more time on the internet everyday – computers, smart phones, and now tablets. Advertise where they are!

What’s the difference between SEO, PPC and Local Listings? Search Network or Display Network? Find out on Wednesday.

Michael will give a quick overview of the latest changes including Ad Extensions, Dynamic Ads, new changes in Trademark rules, plus the all new Enhanced Campaigns starting soon.

Join Michael at the Outlook Cafe this Wednesday, 7am for a 7:30am start.

Michael Quinn & AusClicks are a Google AdWords Certified Partner.

For bookings and more details, head to the Dubbo Chamber website.

Thanks to Orana Mutual for sponsoring the breakfast.

Whoops… emailed borked in early Jan.

Looks like our switch to the new website wasn’t as smooth as it seemed.

Part of the switch involved using a new setup for email and instead using NetRegistry for our email hosting. The initial testing was fine, but when we switched the new site on, the whole DNS / parking / mishmash got mixed up and basically our email was mostly broken for about 3 weeks.

I say “mostly broken” because it was one of those wonderful IT problems where it works OK for you, but broken for others. We were getting some messages, but obviously not others. That combined with the quiet Xmas period and we didn’t really notice the lack of emails arriving.

That and waiting for baby #2 to arrive kept me more than enough distracted to not think about email much.

But one of our clients alerted us to the problem last week and the guys from NetRegistry were great in fixing things asap. To keep things interesting I somehow twisted my back on Wednesday morning so I’ve been in bed the last 5 days recovering and not been able to do any work.

All better this morning – my back and email.

Ironic that we are trying this new setup to avoid email hosting problems from the past. But the idea is solid and if anything, this mistake has actually led to a better way of doing things again.

Unfortunately if you sent any email either directly or via our new contact form from January 1 to about January 18 – we didn’t get it. I’ve tried recovering things this morning – but seems it’s lost. I will be trying to manually contact a few people we know we missed communicating with over the last couple of weeks, but obviously we will miss others that tried and didn’t realise our problems. It’ll take a day or three to catch up completely I expect.

Cheers.

Michael.

Finally… our new site is ready.

Finally… Hello World.

After almost 2 years since we switched from trading as Mildura Internet to AusClicks – the AusClicks site is ready. Well as much as we can for the moment.

Actually this is the 3rd AusClicks site I’ve written in that time. The first one was a very quick couple of pages thrown together to simply have something on the ausclicks.com.au domain. Although there had been plans to change trading names and redirect the business, it was all rushed together within a week or so to coincide with Michael’s visit to the Internet Show in Melbourne in 2010. That trip changed our business so much we quickly became so busy we didn’t get a chance to revisit the site for another six months.

In late 2010 I started working on a new site, got about 3/4 of it done. Looked fantastic, very happy with the direction it was going. Then the developer of the theme I was working with disappeared off the planet, the new version of the software I was using was undergoing a massive (and needed) upgrade that would break old themes and projects, and then in Xmas of 2010 while on a weeks holiday in Adelaide, we picked up about 10 new clients. Doubling our new client tally for the year. So it was crazy busy, the developer went awol, and it could all be broken and unusable within 6 months. Backburner for the new site.

In 2011 we had several more trips to Adelaide for our daughters cerebral palsy diagnosis and operations, a wedding in Hobart (got caught by the ash cloud), we relocated to Dubbo which didn’t go terribly smoothly, I personally had 3 bouts of flu that put me in bed for the best part of a week each time, plus Fiona and Eliza also ended up in hospital with the flu for about 5 days each. Oh and we got pregnant again. And somewhere in there I kept up with existing work as best as possible. Not a lot of time for working on the site.

Towards the end of 2011 I started working on the WordPress platform again. Something I had dabbled with years ago but WordPress 3.x is a very powerful version. After doing a couple of client sites in WordPress, I decided to switch most of my own development to WordPress including my own business site.

So over November and December 2011, and into January 2012, I’ve finally had the chance to put together a decent site for AusClicks. Even this has been through 2-3 variations. The current incarnation reflects my goals of wanting a nice looking site for desktop / laptop computer – but also looks great on tablets and smartphones. Well OK – it has to look awesome on my iPad and iPhone. This “responsive design” has been great to work with. Little tweaks that I never would have thought of bothering with before make all the difference to an iPhone user.

There is still lots to do – new font engine to fine tune, checking links, price list plugin to install, Google+ etc. Lots of these things have to wait until I switch the site from our test domain to parking it on AusClicks.com.au. One of the clever things about WordPress 3.x is it’s easy Multi-User / Networking feature which lets me have one installation of WordPress, and run unlimited sites and domains off it. Sounds a bit confusing? It means I only have to update and maintain one site for the backend, not dozens / hundreds.

Once all the new stuff has been installed and tested, there is loads of content I want to get online. I’ve been holding off on Tweeting too much, posting much on Facebook, putting together our business blog and newsletter, all until the new site was ready to roll.

We have lots of new friends in our new home of Dubbo to show off too. Now with a site I am proud off, I’ll be making a bit more noise around town.

Please subscribe to our blog and Newsletter. 2012 should be a lot of fun and I have lots to share which will help your business online and offline.

Oh, and our other new baby should be here soon too. 39 weeks tomorrow!