Small Business Tech Musings

When Animals Meet Cables

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 16:18:35 GMT

BaseGlamp in Whitefish

When your lifeline to the world gets an angry animal on it, the results are sometimes interesting. Tim from BaseGlamp called me up and asked why the internet wasn't working...I think we found the reason. Of course we didn't have enough direct burial at the ready to get the cable completely replaced but within an hour we had the network back up and running again.

New Site Build

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 22:06:18 GMT

This is a subtitle for your new post

True North Chiropractic Center in Columbia Falls, MT just completed a nice looking site for their business. Mobile friendly, already moving up the ranks in Google, attached to all the services they wanted and for a totally reasonable price. Take a peek for yourself! Oh, and we did some logo work for them this time around! I am NOT a graphic designer, but I do play one on TV sometimes...this is one of those times.

Let's Go Marlins!

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 18:05:21 GMT

MLB Draft 2020 Tech Support

Got the opportunity to provide tech help for the Covid-19 MLB Draft! Upgraded the network in the basement to support proper video conferencing speed, and a huge ultrawide display to the two laptops and ipad that this Marlins Scout was using to help make picks in the 2020 MLB draft! I've got a good feeling about the upcoming pitching in the future years!

For reference, the Marlins took:

Max Meyer

Dax Fulton

Kyle Nicolas

Zach McCambley

Jake Eder

Kyle Hurt

ALL PITCHERS. Time to go strike out the rest of the NL East!

Flathead High School Audio Upgrade!

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Mon, 13 Jan 2020 16:14:52 GMT

Time for an upgrade!

I was contacted by Flathead High to do an upgrade to the gymnasium audio system. Before, there were three PA cabinets and 1 PA subwoofer in charge of distributing audio across an entire gym. People are sound suckers, so by the time the sound hit the first few people it had dissolved so much that a mid court seat couldn't hear the announcer. Enter 8 new 15" Electro-Voice PA speakers and a new amp rack and mixer with wireless control via iPad. The gym is now capable of controlling the mix of 2 wireless mics, laptop music, phone music, and the entire mix easily from the scorer's table during sporting events. For things like graduation, the mixer is capable of handing 16 inputs which could include anything from an acoustic guitar to an .mp3 of the class song. It really is a quality system with ease of controlling that will work well in a setting where many people are trying to operate the sound system with varying backgrounds of sound experience. For a little more low-end, we utilized the existing subwoofer in the gym and integrated it into the sound rack. There's not a dead spot in the building anymore.

Thanks to Flathead for the opportunity to work on your sound. Here's a few pictures.

Stick to the theme

Thu, 11 Jul 2019 15:48:36 GMT

Often times there are too many decision makers to get it right.

I know I'll probably catch a lot of flack for this among the web design community, but I tell you what, my thought on web design is...stick to the theme. Some web designers (and I imagine it's a dwindling number) still code a website from scratch...in my opinion, there are very few situations in which this is even remotely necessary. I have to imagine, as with most things, that pride gets in the way of being efficient and creating easy to edit, easy to change with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) website creation/editing software. Some people simply want to be able to say, "I coded that from scratch."

The overwhelming majority of websites now start with a theme and allow you to build from there. In fact, this site is built using Duda and I'll be darned if it's not REALLY REALLY good for almost everyone's needs. Squarespace, Wix, Duda, etc., are all WYSIWYG editors and they are all fantastic at creating a useful web space for your small business to reside. They get the point across, allow most changes, but don't allow you to royally screw it up. And heck, if you do royally screw it up, just hit restart and pick a theme to go from again.

Here's the stick to the theme bit. When using a WYSIWYG editor to build a site for a client, I always ask them to comb the themes and give me one or two that stand out to them. From there, I build a skeleton, replace some stock images with images relevant to their business, change the text to resemble what I think they might say and show them. From there it's edits and changes to make it work, but it's simple. The struggle with the theme is that it seems that when you've got a larger client with several decision makers, the process gets paralyzed by everyone wanting a different color here, or photo there, so you stay stagnant. The point of the website is a web presence, so stick to the theme and get it online. Don't allow yourself to get so swayed from the point by little things like, which color should we use here, or there, or...or...

Stick to the theme, get the site online, modify from there. Simple. Effective. Efficient. Easy.

I Love A Good Computer Build

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 03:51:34 GMT

Anytime I get to do one, it makes me happy (and sometimes jealous)

Finished up a computer build for a client about a month ago. He's been gaming on it since with glowing reports. I couldn't help but do a 3dMark benchmark test to see where it would end up among current computers out there. Above is a screenshot of the 3dMark result and as you can see, this machine killed it. Best part is that it's super stable, and temperatures remain cool even under load. Stats if you want them:

Intel i7-9700k
Nvidia gtx 2080 video card
64gb ram
Samsung 860 evo SSD

This machine absolutely eats games for lunch. Thanks for letting me build it for you! I had a great time!

If you've ever been curious about what it takes to build your own PC, take a look at a few great resources:

BuildAPC subreddit - it's excellent. You could read and look at this content all day long. It's an awesome community that can help you get going with building your own machine.
Logical Increments - it's silly to overbuild your machine in one area and underbuild it in another. Logical Increments aims to fill the niche of decided where your money is best spent based upon your needs. It's really excellent.

We're not building a rocketship here.

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 17:57:19 GMT

Building a website is not difficult.

People call me, email me, talk with me in person, and often they have the same issue. They lack the knowledge of where to begin with a web presence in today's business world. I understand, as a small business owner, there is a serious lack of time availability to teach yourself to do web stuff. Most people sort of understand Facebook, or Twitter, and think that a business can operate solely from those sources, but if you haven't noticed yet, people are becoming immune to business posts on social media. Maybe it's because everyone including your friend's Grandma wants you to buy essential oils, but people aren't looking at social media like they used to . The basic, yet beautiful and user friendly, website is back in full swing. If you're not relevant in Google, people won't find you.

Consumers today want a simple search and solution. They don't want to "find you on Facebook." Hell, a lot of them hate Facebook to begin with. If I'm looking for a painter in my town that does good work, I'm not busting out the yellow pages, I'm not polling my friends on Facebook, I'm opening my browser, and I'm searching for "Painter in (my town)." From there, I use Google reviews and page rank to find a company that takes the time to keep themselves relevant online and has a good website, and then I'm giving them a call or an email. Bada bing, bada boom. House painted.

"Okay, Chad, so what are you trying to tell me here?"

Well, I'm telling you that building a website isn't building a rocketship. It's simple these days, even with limited knowledge. The learning curve is exceptionally quick, and if your business isn't worth putting 8-10 hours into then your business clearly doesn't want or need more business.

"But, Chad, I can't keep up with this stuff."

Monthly upkeep time with an online presence is probably about 30 minutes. If you keep your site relevant by changing content and adding a post from time to time, you'll continue to remain high in the rankings. Just put your laptop in front of you while you're drinking your morning coffee twice a month...that's it. Use Squarespace, use Duda, use Weebly, use whatever...just don't hire a "website company" and pay them $600 per month to do literally nothing for you. I hate when someone tells me, oh I pay XYZ company $600 per month to "maintain my website." There is NOTHING TO MAINTAIN for them. They simply sit on their ass and collect your money. Once you pay for hosting, and purchase your domain, you're looking at about $200 PER YEAR. At $600/month (in my area this is a low figure for a web company to "maintain"), you're spending $7200 annually for something that can be obtained and done even better for $200 and a cup of coffee every two weeks.

Look, I get that sometimes people don't want to learn this stuff, and if that's the case, hire me, or whoever, to build the site to your liking for a thousand bucks or something, then teach you how to blog. Boom, less than $2000 later, you've got an amazing site, that does what you want, that drives business to you. All you have to do from there is give a crap about your business twice a month for 15 minutes. Totally. Worth. It.

Are you backed up?

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 17:09:38 GMT

It's simple, it's cheap, and it's amazing for peace of mind.

One of the most common errors I see when a small business asks for help is that no backup plan is in place. For less than $100 per year, an offsite backup is extremely affordable and simple to put into place. Services like Backblaze or Crashplan are so easy, and so good at making sure that WHEN your hard drive fails (and it will), that you have a method of recovering information to keep your business running.

Best practice suggests that there are 3 locations in which you maintain copies of your data.

Your computer hard drive. Great news, you're one for one. This is the place we all work from, and whatever is on the computer hard drive is our first copy of data.
A backup drive that is located in house. When your hard drive fails, having a ready to go backup drive that has cloned your computer's drive is the logical place to rebuild from. If you don't have a backup drive...get one. It's much fast to get you up and running from a backup drive than from an off site service.
A non-local backup cloud server. Backblaze, Crashplan, or similar will keep your information perfectly safe in case your office burns down. Rebuilding your information to a new computer is made simple with different options ranging from downloading your information to having the company send you a backup drive in the mail.

There is no excuse to keep your business crossing it's fingers without a backup plan. If you need help, give me an email or call and I'd love to help you figure out your plan.

AdWords Express

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 17:33:53 GMT

Let's do a quick run through.

Advertising with Google has never been easier. Use your Google Login that can be created here .
Then head to AdWords Express .
Within AdWords Express you can create an ad that is dialed in to a certain distance from your business, or you can select cities you would like to advertise to, and keywords that will show your ad when people search for them in your selected place(s).
Spend 15 minutes creating an ad.
Select how much you'd like to spend on advertising (from $50/month upward).
Watch the clicks and call roll in.

It's that simple, folks. I made two separate Google AdWords Express ads just yesterday in the space of about 30 minutes. You can do it. So why wait?

One word of caution that I run into all the time with small businesses is that they don't want to spend $5/month on an email setup that points to their domain (i.e., chad@chuffu.com vs chuffu@gmail.com). I'd certainly advise associating your domain name with your business, so your Google account becomes something like chad@chuffu.com, instead of chuffu@gmail.com. It's more professional, and I can teach you how, and it only costs you $5/month per user. If you have a large enough business that you need multiple accounts, it is a very simple way to present as the professional business that you are.

Happy Turkey Day

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 16:32:29 GMT

From my family to yours, hope your holiday is great.

Thanksgiving has always been a time to get together with friends and family to devour food. I'm hoping this year to take extra time to do something constructive with my kids and brother who'll be visiting from Oregon for the holiday. I think we'll build a coffee table instead of websites for a few days. Be merry, we will see you on the other side of the holiday.

You can do it

chad@chadisanerd.com (Chad Huff) — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:33:11 GMT

Don't let tech companies fool you into thinking you can't.

Creating a digital space for your small (hopefully growing) business is not nearly as difficult as some companies would like you to think. I recently came across a business in the Flathead Valley that was paying for "website maintenance" and "a team of professional writers to make one social media post each month." How much? Over $600 per month. $600! Per month! That's $7,200 annually! I was appalled. That's when I decided to get this C.Huff.U thing going.

I am a former teacher and current Stay at Home Dad. I have been a hobbyist in tech since I was in middle school. I built my first computer at age 14, and I installed DSL internet for my community as a high school student. Building websites used to be exclusive. I started out on a piece of software called Dreamweaver, I published my first website with it in 1998 using it. That was back when you needed to know some code to build a website. The story is very different now.

Today on the internet are a solid handful of really amazing web creation tools and services. Sites like Duda , Squarespace , Weebly , and Wix are some of the easiest and most robust website creation tools available. You know when you go to a website and know exactly where to click and everything works well...it's likely they built it on one of those platforms. I've got to tell you, you can go there now and get going for about 1/10th of the cost of the lowest priced tier of the previously mentioned company that forced me to start C.Huff.U.

Web maintenance and tech companies have gotten awful for small businesses. A simple site change or update takes months or years, and by the time you get that done, it'll be outdated. There's a whole lot of, "we are working on it," and not a lot of action. I'm tired of hearing about people getting run around by companies that say they are locally based, but really you'll never get a hold of them. And heck, nobody knows where the business actually is...so forget knocking on the door.

I am doing this because small businesses don't deserve the run around they are getting to "maintain" their digital lives. I live in Kalispell, and I'm typing this from my basement. I'm using Duda to create this site and it will look beautiful. My wife tells me that the mortar board in the logo I created is not good though, so I guess that part won't be beautiful. There may be an error or two, but honestly, for a local business looking to help other local businesses, it will do just fine without a "team of professional writers." I am looking to help small businesses (and maybe some individuals) get their digital life on track by educating them on how they can handle it themselves with very little time and money invested.

I can help you get going, and I can be as involved as we decide for me to be, but I can't be employed by everyone, so here it is...welcome to C.Huff.U (pronounced Chuff You). Hit the contact button at the top if you'd like to talk about how I might be able to help you.