Read Laurie Dalton's review of Mike McGrath's book, 'PHP 5 In Easy Steps'.
The books covers PHP and MySql separately and then brings them together with colourful examples. For example, a chapter covers sending e-mail with PHP and the chapter is further broken down into 8 sub headings, one of which is validating e-mail addresses.
Filed under Books by on Mar 4th, 2010. Comment. 
Read Laurie Dalton's review of Richard Bransons' book, 'Business Stripped Bare (Adventures of a global entrepreneur)'.
Household names, including Belinda Carlisle, Genesis, Phil Collins, Janet Jackson and The Rolling Stones have helped to make Virgin Music one of the top six record companies in the world. The equity of Virgin Music Group – record labels, music publishing, and recording studios was sold to THORN EMI in 1992 in a US$1billion deal.
Read more on Business Stripped Bare (Adventures of a global entrepreneur)…
Filed under Books by on Mar 4th, 2010. Comment.
Cover of Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
This is a great introduction to the basics of HTML, XHTML, and CSS for beginners as well as those of us who are still using tags.
It does a great job of introducing (X)HTML and CSS in a way you won't forget in a hurry. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn Web development and doesn't know where to start.
Filed under Books by on Mar 4th, 2010. Comment.
Saturdays meeting of Smart Marketing Warriors included another step in the features being developed for members with the inclusion of not one but two Hot Seat sessions.
Both Gerard and Margaret submitted their projects for review by the Warriors with some interesting results proving, yet again, that an independent and objective view of your activities can often be enlightening.
'What Do You Think You Are Doing?' was the subtitle to Bruce's presentation on Internet Marketing Fundamentals which illustrated the need to have a good idea of where and how your project fits into the great scheme of things as well as conforming to some fundamental principles if you are to make money 'big time' as everyone strives to do.
Sian spoke on her specialisation, or rather one of them, when she gave her thoughts on 'Writing for the Web' giving illustrations of how to adapt your style and content according to your objectives at the time you put pen to paper or, these days, fingers to keyboard .
Blogs and their effective management have been a recurring request from members and more advice was forthcoming from Bruce on 'Managing your Blog'.During this presentation he covered security issues, managing the appearance of your blog, how to test effectively as well as how to leverage your content to get maximum results from your work.
The Hot Seat session gave members an opportunity to learn from real world examples of their colleagues and we will be hoping to follow up next month to see what effects the changes have had.
October 24th is the date currently pencilled in to the calendar for the next meeting of Smart Marketing Warriors. If you are not a member yet then come along to experience the whole day for the introductory offer of only £7 and join the membership at the lowly rate of just £17 before the price goes up!
Filed under Events by on Sep 28th, 2009. Comment.
Read Laurie Dalton's review of Nat MacBride's book, Teach Yourself Php With Mysql.
Nat MacBride is an IT consultant and author who has created large scale dynamic websites and database driven applications for corporate and media clients. Read this easy-to-follow guide for new users of PHP with MYSQL. There are many worked examples and exercises to follow to aid understanding.
Filed under Books by on Sep 13th, 2009. Comment.
Read Laurie Dalton's review of Peter Jones' latest book, 'Tycoon (How to Turn Dreams Into Millions)'.
Peter Jones is one of the UKs most respected and well known entrepreneurs. He has built many businesses from scratch, making tens of millions in the process. Regular panelist on the BBC2 show The Dragons Den as well as being the creator and star of ITV's Tycoon.
Filed under Books by on Aug 27th, 2009. Comment.
Saturdays meeting of Smart Marketing Warriors was chaired by Sian Murphy and took place in a new venue at Quantum House.
With a dramatically improved internet connection for the presentations and wifi and tables available for members it made for a much improved working situation.
Presentations focused on the feedback of members priorities from last month. Laurie Dalton led off with an explanation of the internet, followed by Bruce Bird on why blogging is your shortest route to the market and Roger Bourdon completed the trio with an extensive list of traffic generation tactics.
The open session was lively as usual with considerable discussion around article submission and managing your efforts in article marketing.
There are essentially three options with variations of commitment of either time or money as usual. www.uniquearticlewizard.com was again mentioned as being a good way to generate unique articles and Gren Bingham recommended ArticleBot from Icansoft if you choose to submit your articles yourself.
Gren has subsequently reported that Incansoft are offering a limited time sale on their products and you can find Articlebot at http://www.incansoft.com/IS0030.php
Regrettably, we are having some difficulty with the membership software plugin on the site which is holding up development. However, we hope to have the presentation recording posted shortly and I look forward to seeing you all next month.
Put it in your diary now for 26th September.
Bruce
Filed under Events by on Aug 25th, 2009. Comment.
We're just putting the finishing touches to the content for the next meeting on Saturday.
On the agenda are some of the biggest issues of interest to online marketers today. We will have three presentations this month covering a range of subjects but mostly based on your audience feedback from last month.
Are you one of the majority of internet marketers who haven't the foggiest idea how the internet works and are constantly bamboozled by the geekspeak from help desks and support forums? Well, Laurie will be aiming to lay some foundations for your understanding of how the Internet works with a laymans guide to the technology.
Bruce will follow on with a presentation on 'Blogging – The Shortest Route to Market' together with advice on how to set up your blog most effectively and his recommendations for effective working methods and a selection of recommended plugins to get the most from your efforts.
After lunch, Roger will follow with 'Top Traffic Generation Tactics'. He was working on number 59 last time he let the number slip so make sure you've got lots of notepaper.
We'll be closing the day with an open Q & A session where you can ask questions, network among the members and make sure we know what your priorities are that you would like us to cover next month.
Space is limited so even if you are already a member you MUST book your seat by RSVP on the Meetup site www.meetup.com/smart-marketing-warriors.
Don't forget to tell your friends too. This is still a great offer at only £17/month membership for continued access to all the content we will be accumulating on the membership site. Tell them now so they can get in before the price goes up again!
Make sure they RSVP to book their seat at www.meetup.com/smart-marketing-warriors and if your friends want to be sure of getting in at the current price then they should also join right now before the price goes up. www.smartmarketingwarriors.com
Looking forward to seeing you all again. Start time is 10 a.m. Don't be late!
Filed under Events by on Aug 18th, 2009. Comment.
Saturday, 25th July saw the inaugual meeting of Smart Marketing Warriors as the long established Meetup finally blossomed into the Warriors membership organisation.
Blending the Meetup format of a free flowing exchange of members problems, experiences and solutions with the Warriors structured delivery of useful internet marketing training was something of a problem in the time available and we continue to give a lot of thought to how we will structure the day in future.
For the moment we stayed on the well proven path and worked to the Meetup format in the morning before delivering two valuable presentations in the afternoon.
Members obstacles - Click to Enlarge
Members problems assembled in real time onto a mindmap appeared to present a very varied range of issues. However, a few minutes thought boiled them down to some broad groups as shown here and enabled us to identify common problems as well as obstacles being encountered by individuals.
As expected, a number of them (6 to be exact) were clustered around the use of Wordpress which has become such a universal tool for building web presence and credibility.
Four more fell into the field of basic marketing processes. These will be dealt with in future through the methodical delivery of training via the Smart Marketing Warriors online course.
Of the remainder, Social Marketing was already lined up to be the subject of one of the afternoon presentations, and the others were either dealt with immediately or have gone into the lesson planning process as priority items for us to respond to as soon as possible.
Smart Marketing Warriors offers the combined experience of 4 established online marketers and in the afternoon Roger Bourdon, one of the founding partners, presented his experience of launching his first product.
Of particular note was the optimisation process of starting with the basic structure and then progressively improving the offer and the consequential improvement in the profitability.
Laurence Borel, an independent consultant in the field of Social Marketing strategies, then gave a presentation on Social Media and an insight into this hot topic which is clearly becoming a very powerful marketing tool – when used correctly.
Finally, we wrapped up with some members feedback which, together with the collection of problems identified in the morning session. has given us a clear steer on what members are looking for.
As our objective is to deliver what our audience wants (good marketing strategy, that one 
) members can look forward to some good stuff in the near future.
Meetup members who attended were rewarded by an irresistible offer to join the Warriors and lock in their membership fee as Foundation members.
There will be another offer next month (not quite so good because it always pays to get in early) but if you are reading this and have not joined yet then make sure that you do before the next meeting on 22 August.
Filed under Events by on Jul 28th, 2009. Comment.
