Below are the correct settings to enable cron jobs with an OS Ticket installation on Dreamhost.

Steps to configuring OSTicket Cron jobs on Dreamhost

1. Make sure you have shell user access.

To get shell user access, log in to your Dreamhost web panel and click “Users”=>”Manage Users”. You should see the screen below.

2. Give your user Shell Access

Click on “edit” under the user you want to give Shell access to. Make sure you click the “shell” radio button as seen below, then hit save.

3. Add new cron job

Once changes are saved, navigate to “Goodies”=>Cron Jobs=>Add New Cron Job

1. In the User: field, select the name that you just gave shell access to
2. In the Title: field, give your cron job and name (you can make this up)
3. In the Email output to: field, enter a valid email address to receive notifications of successful or failed executions of your script. *This is not required* however, it is very useful in troubleshooting the setting up of your first cron job. You can remove this email address at a later time if you do not wish to receive emails.
4. In the Status: field, select “enabled”
5. Command to run: field. This is where the majority of Dreamhost users have problems. According the OS Ticket, the proper format of the entry should be this. (ignore the quotations)
   */5 * * * * nobody /path/to/php /path/to/api/cron.php

   However, dreamhost has you set this up differently. 
   1. The first */5*** are time settings, which you should ignore. Dreamhost lets you configure the time settings below.
   2. Next you need to figure out your “/path/to/php/“. For Dreamhost, this is “/usr/local/php5/bin/php” Enter that EXACTLY as it reads between the quotation marks.
   3. Next, add a space and enter your "/path/to/api/cron.php". For me, this is “yourwebsiteURL.com/support/api/cron.php” because I installed OSTicket into a sub directory of my website called “support”
   4. Combe Steps 2 & 3 so your Command to run: looks exactly like below (enter your own domain and exact path to cron.php)
      

      /usr/local/php5/bin/php yourwebsiteurl.com/support/api/cron.php"

4. Tell Dreamhost when to run your cron job

Under When to run: configure your time using the web page. I configured my cron job to run every 10 minutes. When all your settings are entered, hit “save” or “edit” to make your changes go into affect. You must wait 10 minutes (or whatever you set your time interval) to verify whether you cron job worked or not. After it is executed, it will send you an email verifying success or failure.

Below is a screenshot of the final settings

THATS ALL

Now test your cron. Wait for it to run on the scheduled time. Mine is set to run every 10 minutes, so it runs at 12:00, 12:10, 12:20, and so on… Starting on the first run, you should get email messages for any successes or fails. If you do not see the email message, check your Spam box. Some email accounts like to Spam emails from dreamhost. If everything is going well, and you do not wish to receive emails upon every success, then read the note below.

Note: after "cron.php", I have added ">/dev/null" which instructs Dreamhost to only email me IF the cron job fails. I hope this post saved you time and headache. If you have any questions or I can be more clear, leave a comment or email me at mmcverry@workforceod.com

-M

We’ve made investments that allow us to troubleshoot, repair, and upgrade our client’s email systems, network systems, devices & printers, Windows Computers and servers, from anywhere in the world.

What this means to you!

• Faster service! Got a critical system that isn’t functioning? We’ll be able to diagnose and fix the issue over the internet.
• An “on call” support team! We can look into your problem the moment is arises. Just pick up the phone and dial 1-888-711-WORK or send an email to info@workforceod.com
• Lower costs! We charge you less for support over the web because of the lower costs involved
• Less headaches / frustration / downtime! We start working on your issue the moment you contact us resulting in higher productivity for you!

What kinds of things can I get remote support and assistance with?

• Email problems (Gmail, Outlook, Private email systems)
  

  Call us for those really tough fixes

• Back up problems (remote backup, cloud backup, etc)
• Software Installation and upgrades
• Device Installation and upgrades
• Anti-virus installation, upgrades, troubleshooting
• Firewall problems, network problems, etc
• Operating System updates and troubleshooting
• Website updates, support, and design

I’m not an existing client. Can you help me?

Yes we can! We hate seeing anyone bogged down by problems with their computer and internet. If you are interested in getting support for your home office or business, give us a call at 1-888-711-WORK x44, send an email to info@workforceod.com, or click here.

The last word

Our remote IT support is safe, secure, and fast. Although most issues can be fixed without an on-site visit, not everything is possible. If an on-site visit is required, we will always inform you ahead of time and allow you to choose your best solution.

Using ProStore’s built in Search Engine tools

Basic Comparison Shopping (No account required)

ProStores provides tools to allow you to upload your products to free comparison-shopping sites Google Base, NexTag, & The Find without registration. These are free and do not require an account so make sure they are enabled, and the products are frequently being uploaded to the sites as signified by the “Last Upload” date. Click on each link to Google Base, NexTag, & TheFind to go to their respective settings and enable them.

Advanced Comparison Shopping (Account required)

Below the basic comparison shopping options, there are advanced options which require an account, and sometimes a fee. They are Google Base (advanced), Shopping.com and Shopzilla.com. The only option that is free is Google Base advanced, the rest require a paying account.

To set up a Google Base account (Now Google Merchant Center), follow the instructions in the video below.

Upload your site map to Google and Yahoo

Next, it’s very important that Google and Yahoo are seeing your site maps.  See below for a video on how to set up your site maps with Google and Yahoo.

Build your ProStores site to be Search Engine Friendly

Adding breadcrumbs for navigation

Adding breadcrumbs to your site will make the site much easier for search engines to navigate. When crawling a website, the search engine clicks on a category, then subcategory, and so on, until it gets to your final product. Using breadcrumbs on your site allows users and search engines to navigate backwards from smaller subcategory to major category, and across different subcategories. This allows for better indexing as more pages can be reached from more areas of your site.

Adding Product Listing Navigation

We’ve seen a large increase in search engine results when we added navigation to our product listing templates. I am guessing this is because it adds more words related to the products being searched for to the website. It also adds more relevant search terms to the pages, which search engines see. After using ProStore’s built in tools, the Breadcrumbs and Product Listing Navigation have helped out search engine rankings significantly.

Featured Categories with Sub-Categories listed on Home Page

ProStores gives you the ability to list featured categories on the home page. This is nice however it doesn’t give customers and search engines much information on what’s listed below the featured categories.

By listing the subcategories of the featured categories on the home page, it gives your home page more text for search engines to index, and shows your visitors a greater array of products your store carries with easy links to the most relevant information.

Make it easy for customers to find what they are looking for

Make it as easy as possible for customers to find exactly what they are looking for. Forcing customers to click through 3 levels of pages to find the product they need is extra work IF you can design your site so they can find what they need in 2 clicks.

Customers like it when they find what they need fast, and search engines love it when they can find what your store carries fast. It’s a search engines’ job to get the most relevant information possible to a search engine user as quickly and efficiently as possible. If the information or product is going to be hard for a user to find, it’s going to be ranked lower on a search engine.

Remember, anything that will help website visitors navigate your site and see more products (and text) will help your search engine rank.  The better your site is designed and the easier your navigation, the more your site will be appealing to search engines and visitors alike.

Speak your customers language when designing product pages

We ran into a problem when we first designed our site. We spoke the technical language for our products, but not the customer language. When writing page titles, make them 70 characters or less, and written in a way that customers would search for. Compare the 2 examples below. (actual examples, old vs new)

Wash up blade 40-1/2 ‘ x 2-1/4” x 14 holes, metal & rubber for Heidelberg sm 74

Versus

Heidelberg wash up blade for SpeedMaster 74

Leave the detailed descriptions of the product for the product detail area, and let the product title draw the customer in to find out more about the product.

Post your questions or comments below and I will respond to them quickly.
Thanks!

In our experience, getting links is like getting votes in high school to be the homecoming king. You can get links (votes) through a variety of methods- being popular, funny, weird, different, original, or just going out and asking for them. You can even pay for them, although that is generally frowned upon by Google, and the homecoming court committee.

In the video below from Google Webmaster Help, they answer the user submitted question of how to get more organic links.

Organic Link Building according to me, is one of the most difficult tasks for SEOs (search engine optimization professionals). Can you please list 5 effective ways of organic link building other than building great content

The author immediately passes this as a false dichotomy, since building great content IS one of the most effective way of organic link building.

Moving on, the author goes on to list  effective ways to achieve organic (non paid) link building. I have summarized them below.

1. Controversy – This is the worst way according to Google. “There’s a few people who’ve made a profession of hating everybody, but they aren’t very much fun to hang out with”
2. Participate in the community - showing up, participate, and answer questions. If you can add value by answering questions to common problems people have in a subject you’re well versed in, people will find you and your site knowledgeable, remember you and possibly link to you. You know that guy who knows all about computers that you refer all your friend’s tech & computer questions to? Well it’s like that (and that guys is me).
3. Original Research – The author lists examples of Danny Sullivan, a man who compared how well different webmail services were able to de-spam his inbox. All he did was sign up for several free email accounts and compare them over a month on how well each service was able to prevent spam from reaching his inbox. This was original research on his part that was free and only took a little bit of time, but was very popular on the internet.
4. Get a blog and establish yourself as an authority. “There is no excuse for a company these days to NOT have a blog”. More likely, you’ll use your blog to establish yourself, your brand, or what you’re about.
5. Run a service that people find useful (or create a product) and give it away for free to the community. You can do the work once, and make lots of people happy through giving them something useful to them for free.
6. Site Architecture – This is a basic one, but make sure your site is easy to crawl for search engines, and easy to use for visitors.
7. Make Videos- Making videos can give people a lot of value, and all you have to do it talk- something we naturally do everyday! The idea is you make the video once, and when it’s posted it stays on our site and helps out people searching for that topic who come across your video for months, or years to come.

But don’t take my word for it. Watch the original 8 minute video below, straight from Google! They’ve GOT to be the authority right?

"Be Original" says Michael

I love hearing this question because we have such a simple and obvious response. We show up. That’s it. We don’t give any long winded responses about design theory, SEO tactics, or overall business strategy. What sets us apart is our customer service. We put a face to the anonymous nature of the internet. We work with you in person at your location, to make sure there is nothing lost in translation. In fact, in a business climate where customer calls are seen as an expense, and everything is done by email, we prefer to work with you in person. It’s simply easier to communicate, resulting in less time & work wasted due to misunderstandings, and allows us to establish a better relationship with our clients.

The University of Northern Iowa states:

As much as 90% of your communication is done without words.  Gestures, facial expressions, and posture provide information about a person’s emotions and relationships with others.

http://www.cba.uni.edu/buscomm/nonverbal/index.html

In the subjective world of web design,  its hard to understand if a client really likes, or just likes, your ideas for a layout, page design, or marketing plan. We feel that showing up and working with our clients in person is the most effective and efficient way to meet our client’s needs.

Here’s one more quote to conclude this post.

90% of success is showing up

-Woody Allen

The first thing we recommend when building a new website is designing it in a fashion to pull organic search results from search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Many templates based content management systems are already highly optimized. Other options such as ecommerce sites may not be so easy.

Once you’ve created the site, how do you know what you need to do to improve search engine results? For that, we rely on a tool called Website Grader. Website grader analyzes about 10 different aspects of your website and presents a grade for your site on a scale of 0-100. However it is the breakdown of that grade that provides the most important information. They measure things such as domain age, number of indexed pages, use of alt tags, etc. The ability to read your grade and make changes to your site that allow it to be given a higher rank is the most crucial step to improving your overall website.

Don’t be discouraged with a low grade, many sites (including ones we’ve built) often start out in the bottom 10%. With time, content, and work, these scores can be drastically improved. The below grade is for a site we operate on behalf of a client, National Offset Warehouse. Since it’s inception in May 2010, the grade has gone from a 12% up to it’s current grade. Every week that passes is a chance to continuously fine tune the site to increase its grade. Each increase in grade is increasing probability that the site will show up in search engines and attract customers.

It’s true, during my tenure at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), I worked hard for over a year to bring cloud computing to a technology group there. It just so happens, that technology group writes software and analyzes data for the Mars Rovers. Although I didn’t work in the software group, I was the main person to negotiate terms and conditions with the cloud service provider (Amazon.com) and the first person to open up cloud computing to the laboratory. The challenges involved were not IT related, but legal and compliance related. With the help of our legal counsel and some prodding by higher ups, we were able to assemble the right group of IT personnel, legal personnel and contract specialists to make this idea a reality. My role boiled down to putting the right people in place and get them working together, however it was the people using the product that unleashed the possibilities.

Fast forward 12 months. Recently I configured cloud computing for one of our small business clients, Labor Resource Solutions, in Anaheim California. In this instance, there were no compliance or legal obstacles to overcome, however every business has it’s challenges. Workforce on Demand was able to help Labor Resource Solutions implement Egnyte for there business, which provides a cloud server with file sharing, a cloud back up solution for office computers. With every software solution, there are multiple ways to use software and the challenges were in determining the best use. Ultimately, we were able to eliminate their office server entirely, while providing more secure incremental backups for each system to the cloud, which saved time over full system backup sets. Security was increased as information no longer depended on outdated hardware at the office. Accessibility improved as folder permissions were given to specific area of the file server, allowing customers to see only relevant information from their site. After the initial configurations on our end, I am amazed to see the various uses of this cloud solution by the customer, and the time and cost savings. The end result was fast backups, higher data security, file sharing and permission, and elimination of a server (and all the maintenance and power costs associated). This was all after 8 days. We provided the path and the customer realized the possibilities.