Although this may be a little off topic I thought it relevant since it’s an issue that has repeatedly plagued my site.  Since I migrated my site from asp to php/WordPress it has been difficult at best to find a form that works consistently across all browsers as well as deliveries.  Like most people somewhat new to WordPress I decided to ask a few friends for some direction on which form worked the best and had the functionality that I wanted.  Overwhelmingly the majority said Contact Form 7 as it had the ability to create custom forms and was fairly straightforward plugin.

My friends were right, Contact Form 7 was easy to implement BUT it was very buggy.  Once I added the form to my site I ran through a series of test emails to make sure I was getting the delivery.  What I found was that form submissions from email accounts using Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail would show a warning that the form could not be sent at this time.  Needless to say it was frustrating at best. 

Being that Contact Form 7 was a fail.  I scoured the web to find form plugin that would work consistently as well as easy to configure.  After finding a few good candidates I proceeded with the implementation.  Again I ran into the same issues, inconsistent deliveries and or errors until I found a plugin named Formidable.

Formidable is by far the best contact form I have seen for WordPress.  What makes this plugin so great is that it is easy to create and has had 0 issues with form deliveries.   What makes Formidable unique is it’s ease of use and reporting capabilities.  Instead of having to type out your form like in Contact Form 7, they have a simple drag and drop system that takes all of the guess work out building a form. 

Formidable Pro also has great reporting capabilities which give form submission data i.e. which page, browser type, and ip info.  Although Formidable Pro does cost it may be well worth it to those that require more data.

So far its been a very interesting few days since Google’s release of Google Buzz. It seems that Mashable has found the most practical Buzz uses, tips, and tricks, but the fact is it still seems as though Google showed up late to the Social Media Dance. For your average social media user it is often an impossible task to get them to adopt new platforms, technologies, or tools. It will be interesting to see if Google can overcome this steep obstacles. I am withholding judgment for now but Google Buzz does have potential especially for all those gmail users.

Here is a great video that illustrates the value of Social Media Marketing

The video says it all.  I will be writting a post on this but I wanted to add the video to illustrate some of the latest trends in social media. Video by http://www.youtube.com/Socialnomics09

Well it seems even Google is giving advice about online reputation management these days.  Although the advice is what I would consider common sense for people in the search engine marketing and social media space it does have some good points for those that are not as experienced in reactive reputation management. 

However they did hit on a touchy subject by suggesting to “proactively publish information” in order to push the negative results further down the page.  There are those that believe it is unethical to do so. Whether you agree or disagree here are few the tips Google suggest to try if you cannot get the negative content removed.