So I kind of took a way too long extended break from my blog. I’ve been working hard on our product sites, in particular oClubhouse.com which provides high quality CMS websites for Associations, Membership Clubs, and Organizations. It’s really a fun product and I know that our new customers are gonna love it. It really puts alot of emphasis on making websites work for membership clubs with just enough bells and whistles to grab them new members, and leverage the social web to keep their current members hooked, while not providing so much to get overwhealming for people. It’s a delicate balance.

We’re making a few other products as well, in particular oFitnessclub.com for Fitness clubs, Athletic clubs and gyms which is pretty cool, as well as oDaycare.com which I’m even more excited about. The ROI with oDaycare.com is pretty crazy. Any Daycare that has open spots and isn’t using oDaycare.com is missing out on money. For less than the cost of one student a month (alot less) they can really provide an extra level of service for their parents, as well as bring in tons of business.

Anyway that’s another blog.

This one is Captcha Captcha Captcha.

So as I said, I was being a bad social marketer and ignoring my blog. Well I come back after a couple of weeks and I have 179 comments. SPAM. Porn spam, handbag spam, bad english me like post and bookmark very informative i read again SPAM.

delete, delete, delete, delete, delete….

I can’t believe I didn’t install a captcha in this WordPress install. Talk about forgetting something major.

Captchas are those images or math problems or things you have to listen to in order to post in certain places. For instance if you try to post a comment on my blog here after your name and message it’ll have this picture of numbers and letters and you have to put them in a box. I’m sure you’ve seen them all over the internet.

The reason for them is that they, for the most part, prevent non-humans from posting spam. Computers have a hard time reading the images and figuring out what they’re saying, where the human eye does not. Of course they’re getting better, or some people hire cheap Chinese day labor, but still you’ll prevent a ton of spam posts from even going through.

I didn’t have one on. Big mistake. Everyone needs to use captcha. Sure it can sometimes be a little bit annoying for the user, but it’s worth it in the long run. Most Captchas are very inconspicuous and take a second or two to complete, and they clean up the internet for you and for me.

I can’t believe I forgot to put one on in the first place.

Ah well I hope this one works. I’m using the SI Captcha Ant-Spam plugin for wordpress which for some reason is hosted on a Long Beach weather website. That troubles me somewhat, but what can you do.

Every site that takes submissions or registers users should use captcha. It’ll save you the headache of deleting 179 spam emails when you go away for a couple weeks.

I’m gonna copy a post from OrcaPack.com

http://orcapack.com/new-website-focus-products

We’ve launched our new website for OrcaPack at orcapack.com to focus on our new targeted website products. We’re starting with oClubhouse, oDaycare, and oFitnessclub.

Since our inception in 2002 our company has undergone a number of radical changes. We started out as a product company making a specific product, then as a website design and service company, then catering to specific industries, then back to general. We’ve been all over the map, whatever needed to be done on the web, we did.

This is a new chapter though. One where we’re moving into working on our specific products.

All these products focus on specific industries. The idea is that instead of having web design be a service, we have it be a product that someone buys a subscription to. It’s like leasing a car versus buying.

When you buy a car you spend tens of thousands of dollars on a new car. Let’s say you get a semi-decent new car for $30,000. You get certain warranties with a car, that it’ll keep working and the like, but the car itself doesn’t improve. A few years later the newer models make yours look kind of grungy. You don’t have the latest GPS system, or DVD Video in the back for your kids. The doors don’t slide open automatically, the seats don’t store in the floor, whatever. Plus it’s just looking a little dingy and dirty. The car manufacturer will be happy to help and build you a new car for $30,000 or more given inflation to get those new features.

Not to mention that all along you had to pay for gas by yourself, clean it yourself, drive it yourself.

It’s the same thing when you buy high quality websites. You’re spending 10,000, 20,000 or more, sometimes significantly more, to build a website with a high quality design, specifically architected for you and your industry, but as soon as it’s handed to you, the responsibility of the designer is done. If a month after it’s finished you see some cool new thing, well… It won’t be on your website, unless you pay extra. If after a year you don’t like how the site looks it’s going to cost you thousands more to redesign the site.

That’s why what we’re offering is more like leaseing the car. You pay a low rate per month and you get the same site as if you had paid tens of thousands of dollars. We maintain the site for you. We keep it clean. We update it, make sure it’s patched and secure. If a new feature comes up that is applicable to your industry we add it. Every month the ‘car’ is new, fresh off the lot. You get a current, technologically up to date, well maintained site, that looks good, and is architected specifically for your industry for a low price.

The three industries we’re focusing on initially are membership clubs, organizations, and the like with oClubhouse; fitness clubs, althletic clubs and gyms with oFitnessclub; and daycares, preschools, and early learning centers with oDaycare.

oClubhouse focuses on membership clubs and organizations. One of our flagship subscribers is the Publicity Club of New England. Whether it’s a local professional club, or a college alumni club, etc. Groups that need to have an active membership with many social ties. Groups that need to get new members to find them and join and sign up (and pay dues!). Clubs that have events and need to sell tickets to their members. oClubhouse focuses on providing a basis for these groups to bring in new members, get those members to participate in your club, both at your real life events, as well as online, and to generally be a sucessful club.

oDaycare focuses on daycares, preschools, and learning centers. One of our flagship subscribers for oDaycare is First Step Childcare Center. Whether you’re a daycare, preschool, or some type of early learning center we can help you. oDaycare focuses on these businesses, to better help you get new students, to keep your own parent/clients happy, and make it easy for people to find you. In addition we’re partnering with a number of services so that not only can you have a basic website, but easy setup to provide secure areas for your parents to view video within your center, post secure pictures online, etc. For far less than the cost of one student a month you can help fill your center to capacity by using oDaycare.

oFitnessclub focuses on fitness clubs, athletic clubs, and gyms. One of our flagship subscribers for oFitnessclub is Cambridge Athletic Club. Fitness and athletic clubs have some specific challenges that our product is aimed towards solving. Not just getting new membership, but also keeping your membership involved in your club. It’s important for gyms to get new members on a regular basis, and we can help with that, but every member that doesn’t quit is another one that you dont’ have to worry about refilling. oFitnessclub can help with incorporating various forms of social networking into the site, as well as some other features to make the life of a gym manager more bearable.

We have a number of future products in the pipeline. oLawoffice is live, and we’ll be focusing on bringing that up soon. As well as oScientist, creating websites for science and technology research companies. We’re looking to do numerous other future products as well.

For now though OrcaPack and our new website have changed to our new product focus, so we can bring the experience we’ve learned working with these industries for the past 8 years directly to our new customers, for a low monthly cost, instead of a high initial investment.

For more information please contact Tim Hinkel by calling OrcaPack toll free at 866 830-8165 or contact us using our email contact form.