Hodgson Marketing» Blog

How SEO is like Politics

jim — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:12:46 +0000

I try to wait until people ask what I think about things before I give my opinion… outside of this blog, of course. I don’t always manage to wait, usually because most of the time no one asks and my opinions are so damned good, but I do try. So, it was with great glee and much rubbing of hands together that I read an email from one of my prized clients asking what I thought about search engine optimization (SEO).

Meta Keywords: The SEO Shake Weight

I replied as honestly as I could, and tried not to ham it up too much. I used words like “snake oil,” but stopped short of words like “scam” and “frivolous,” even though the SEO/SEM marketing proposal I was asked to comment on included mention of “Meta keywords” which are the online marketing equivalent of the shake weight.

At least with a shake weight you might build up some muscles while you appear to be pleasuring an invisible gentleman. If you’re seriously employing meta keywords, which are ignored by Google, if not all big league search engines, you’re merely going through the motions with no hope of pleasuring anyone. Except, of course, for whomever is charging you for the SEO/SEM, I guess. It’s pure profit to them.

SEO: Internet Politics

It occurs to me that they’re very similar, politics and SEO, in that there are a few very important things you need to do right at the outset in order to have any hope of success.

Declare your direction

With SEO, this means it helps to get a domain name that reflects what your site is about. In politics, it means picking a party. Of course, you can always switch either later on, but you’ll lose any good will you’ve built up with Google, the electorate, or both.

Get yourself a great title/slogan

In the case of SEO, that’d be a page title that reflects clearly what your page is about. In politics, you need a slogan that people can identify with, e.g. “I like Ike” or “Newt’s family is like your family”

Be attractive!

In the case of politics, this means actual visual attractiveness. I’m not saying you can’t have a life in politics if you’re hideous, but if you want to go all the way you want to be more Kennedy than Gingrich. More Michelle Obama than, well, pretty much anyone because she’s the best looking first lady perhaps ever in my opinion.

In the case of SEO, you need to make sure your content is relevant to the links you hope to attract, and not just a bunch of gibberish with keywords sprinkled in. You have to know what you’re talking about or you might look a bit like a fool.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW_nDFKAmCo

So, why do I think SEO is (mostly) crap?

Feel free to yell at or correct me if I am wrong, here, but keep in mind that this is only my opinion.

Google have a deeply vested interest in serving up truly relevant links. That’s how Google gained market share back in their early days. The search options at the time were a minimum viable product (Yahoo, Lycos, AskJeeves et. al.). You got pages upon pages of results that weren’t even close. Then Google came along with a pile of relevant links for every search and took over the world. Better mousetrap!

If they allowed SEO/SEM to make as big a difference as many people claim, their search results would return whatever marketers wanted them to return, not what the customer wants to see. Thus they’d be effectively degrading their mousetrap. Google hires the smartest people in the world to make sure this doesn’t happen… and then Bing copies them.

Haha, take that! Aw cheer up, Bing, I’m only kidding.

Abandon Hope, Ye Who Continue

Beyond the important points listed above, though, when you get deep into SEO or politics you’re entering a whirling fog of jargon, baseless finger-pointing, and grandstanding. On top of which, if you’re a WordPress user, most of the SEO stuff is handled already for you. If you want to get deep, there’s a plugin called All In One SEO that I hear great things about.

Unfortunately for us as constituents, what is true of SEO is not true of politics. In SEO we have a third party regulatory body called Google, in whose best interests it is to combat disingenuousness. In politics, the professed third party regulatory bodies are motivated to perpetuate disingenuousness.

I’m looking at you, the media. Also you, actual regulatory oversight committees.

Ah well, that’s the system, I guess.

How to Get a Busy Person’s Attention: Write Them a Sonnet

jim — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:53:28 +0000

Milton also included sonnets with his invoices.

I worked for a couple of weeks on a data visualization of which I am quite proud. The only problem is that I took on that project for a very busy guy.

He’s got a family, is an avid outdoorsman and cyclist from what I gather, and is head of a couple of different business ventures, like Guild Quality and Ignition Alley. I, on the other hand, am a single guy with no kids and only one business. I have plenty of time to come up with silliness.

So, how to get his attention? Hm. Well, why not a sonnet? Never written a sonnet. Off to Wikipedia to find out what a sonnet is, exactly.

Forsooth, What Be A Sonnet?

Our friendly local Wikipedia had this to say: A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term “sonnet” derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning “little song” or “little sound”.

Okay, that doesn’t sound too hard. The main themes I want to get across are:

I made a sweet visualization, like we talked about
I’d like you to look at it so that you can also see how sweet it is
I’d also like to send a sweet little invoice, which will then become bacon that goes into my mouth

What I don’t want to do is sound like I’m impatient (even though I am). This might be a struggle. Oh well, off we go!

O Geoff, ye captain of the Quality Guild,
 Wilt thou not gaze upon my proof of concept?
 For without said look, no man can accept.
 An invoice for these things built.
Besides, without it, where be the Guild?
 With data piled up, but no clear concept
 Of Meaning, or where it's slept.
 So no, the time is now, and request filled,
To gaze and offer notes, perhaps.
 I am proud of the visualization, see,
 And also would like to send an invoice.
I don't mean to be a man who flaps
 His gums. But I'm (again) quite proud, you see
 Of my work. So gaze upon it, for it is choice!

I’ll update this post when (if) I get a response. He may fire me on the spot, of course.

WordPress Plugin Promiscuity

jim — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:34:08 +0000

This power strip is a complete whore.

WordPress’s plugin capability reminds me a lot of human sexuality. A web site, much like a person, has needs that require cooperation to fill. Sure, a human’s needs might be a touch more, shall we say, embarrassing than a site’s need to list its most recent posts, but ultimately there’s a want that is getting indulged.

One can take it too far. Sometimes, perhaps drunk on the vapors of pleasure or, more likely, malt liquor, WordPress users install plugin after plugin.

Have you seen my Barry White albums?

“Oh, yes!” they cry. “Jetpack my stats! Akismet my spam comments! All-in-one my SEO!”

These three are well known friends to WordPress, but what if temperatures run higher still? Darker, less-supported plugins may get installed. The pleasure could mount endlessly upon itself. It could roll like a great wave, gathering speed, crashing now on the beach again and again! Nirvana! Xanadu! The Jersey Shore!

And that’s when things grind to a halt, friends: when promiscuousness leads us to that one bad apple.

At this point on TV some ominous chords would be played, and the screen might go all black and white

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not the numbers that get you, per se. It is possible to be quite the little strumpet without ever having a problem, but in order to live that life one has to be very careful, and very well-informed. More careful and more well-informed than perhaps most of us are willing to become.

Ryan Imel writes in WP Candy:

…plugins are arguably the best part of WordPress. To convey that they are dangerous in large numbers is to do a disservice to the community itself.

It’s true, plugins are great when they fill a need, but it’s also true that the more you have, the more likely you are to have a problem. You won’t know which one is going to cause that problem until it’s too late. We don’t want to go to Too Late Town. We want to stay in Justrightville.

Keep your hands to yourself!

Let’s be careful out there, friends. Let’s exercise a measure of caution, let’s keep ourselves informed, and let’s do our best to keep embarrassing photos of whatever we do get into off the Internet.

What Not to Ask a Startup

jim — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:42:07 +0000

Working at a startup is like drinking a vodka/Red Bull. It’s a pleasurable mix of relaxation and excitement. On the one hand, the very air crackles with the unasked questions. Will my stock options ever really be worth anything? Will any of us be working here tomorrow? Why are developers so profoundly bizarre? There’s so much to get charged up about, and yet no one is around until after 9:00AM at the earliest. There are probably a few beers in the company refrigerator. Flip flops see more action than wingtips.

It is a terribly human trait to be so compelled by such sturm und drang, isn’t it? Such tension and release.

I had my first startup company experience in 2001 at Georgia Tech’s ATDC, and work with companies there to this day. You’d think that I might have learned a few things in that time, and I have, but I am still making mistakes.

My most recent goof became clear to me at a mixer held on a friday afternoon at the ATDC. All the companies walked around the halls, networking and meeting one another. It was a great thing for me. As a self-employed graphic designer, I need to meet as many people who might use my services as I can.

I was talking to a gentleman in his company’s offices. I told him what I did, and he said he has need of graphic designers all the time. Aha, a decision maker! Perfect! It even turned out we knew some of the same people. I was feeling like Captain Networking of planet Business Success… and that’s when I blew it.

“So,” I said. “What do you guys do?”

His face fell. Not much, mind you, but his smile lost a point or two of sheen. “Well, you can read the thing,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. I turned to look behind us. The entire wall we were standing in front of told exactly what his company did. The wall to my left told me exactly who his clients are.

I had just showed him, with a single question, that I am an unobservant nimrod with the business acumen of a sand flea.

Sure, there are worse faux pas, but I realize now that startups have to answer that question all the time. Have you ever broken your arm? Remember how often you had to tell the story of how it happened? It’s like that, except a broken arm heals in a month or two and startups last much longer than- Well, some do.

Also, when you ask “What do you do?” you’re really kind of saying “Sell yourself to me.” In my position that was a big mistake because I should have been selling myself to him. Not the other way around!

So. Do not make my mistake, friends. Know who you are talking to. Do a little bit of legwork. Whatever you do, do not ask a startup what they do!

Authenticity and The Overuse of Actually

jim — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:22:50 +0000

I overheard a young woman talking on her cellphone the other day at a cafe. She managed to work the word “actually” into nearly every sentence, and after a while I couldn’t read anymore. Each “actually” rang in the air like a bell.

She was trying to express to someone that she’d had a job offer a few days previous, and that she’d need time to consider the offer that the caller was now presenting to her. Whatever problems I might have with her word choices, clearly she’s someone with marketable skills. I’m pleased with her success!

She also had a lot to say about her “ministry,” and while I’m not sure what that entails, I gather that it includes helping others, so I’m inclined to think she’s also a person with a good heart.

She’s far from the only person I’ve heard overusing this word, and the word “literally” gets a lot of the same treatment. The question in my mind became “What makes a person who is kind and talented overuse a word like this?”

Increased communication

Now, I should say that my opinion is that people do not change very much. By that I mean that I don’t think that people today are any different, at their cores, than people from the 1950′s. We just have a lot more information at our fingertips than 50′s people did.

I remember hearing a presenter at a conference I attended talking about the “erosion of trust in business,” and I remember wondering whether business might kind of deserve that loss of trust. It seems to me that if your customers having greater access to one another means an erosion of trust in your business, then perhaps it is because they are sharing true stories of poor customer service.

Maybe the answer isn’t to try to suppress those sentiments. Maybe the answer is to treat your customers better so that they’re sharing great stories!

Authenticity

Maybe the same thing is happening in interpersonal relationships. Maybe people are more aware now than they ever were before when someone badmouths them. Maybe it is much easier now than ever before to evaluate a person, not to mention a business, and judge their authenticity.

It might even be possible that people realize on a subconscious level that this is taking place, and it might be causing them to stress their own authenticity in their everyday speech with words such as “actually” or “literally”. It might even explain the popularity of the sentiment “Don’t judge me.”

Whatever the case, I think that authenticity is something that you demonstrate, not something that you can get just by stressing that you are authentic.

Mercedes Marathon Race Expo, the Trak Shak Gets it Right

jim — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:14:19 +0000

Part of doing many endurance events, at least triathlon and running events, is the phenomenon of the race expo and packet pickup. Rather than mail your race number and timing chip to your house, they make you come pick it up so that they get a chance to inundate you with marketing messages in person.

Mind you, I want race organizers to make money because I want there to be races for me to do, but I think things could be rearranged a bit to make life better for everyone.

Before you Run the Race: Run The Race Expo Gauntlet

You, the athlete, need your bib number and timing chip in order to do the race. You might also want to grab the free shirt or hat you get for participating. The race organizers stack as much marketing around the act of someone handing you these things as possible.

Usually you must physically walk down rows of manufacturer booths. Do not make eye contact! Remember, expo booth salespeople only pounce if you look them in the eye. I wear dark sunglasses, a ball cap pulled low, and a hoodie.

I’m kidding, of course, but it is a bit annoying to me that I can’t just be mailed my bib, chip, and shirt. On the other hand, the organizers should be paid for their time. They’re not putting the thing on just because they enjoy seeing me wheezing and crying mile after mile. Here’s my solution:

Why not mail bibs and chips to the entrants, but require them to come to the expo if they want their shirt?

This way people who want their free shirt come to the expo and get exposed to the manufacturers, but people who aren’t at all interested and are willing to forego the shirt just stay home.

Race Packet Signal to Noise

So, eventually you make it to the back of the room after fighting your way through the sea of manufacturer booths. Your clothing is probably torn from fighting hand-to-hand with a shoe rep; those girls are tenacious. Now all you have to do is get your actual packet and head out, but the marketing isn’t over yet.

Here’s a photo of what was in my race packet arranged in two columns. The column on the left is useful content, and the column on the right is not. The left column also contains the feet of a curious niece. Ignore these.

In the left column we have the race shirt, my bib and chip, some race-day directions/map, and some Trak Shak gloves. These gloves represent far and away the best marketing in the whole experience. I’ll get to them in a minute.

On the right column there are ads, ads, and more ads, a Blue Cross/Blue Shield bumper sticker — hey guys, want to lower the resale value of your car in return for marketing our brand? — and a gift card good for $500. Wait, $500? Here’s the card from Red Star Worldwear:

I handed the card off to my sister’s husband, who looked it up. It’s a company selling sunglasses that they claim are worth many hundreds of dollars. All you have to pay is the shipping, handling, and processing fees which seem to total around $20-30. The really odd thing is that based on some Internet reviews of the glasses, people seem to think they’re pretty much worth the $20.

Here’s a company selling a product for exactly what it is worth — to customers who seem happy — and going about it in as stupifying a way as possible. It boggles the mind.

The Trak Shack gets it right

The race is on the second weekend in February every year. The temperature is usually in the 30′s at the start. There’s a lot of shivering at the beginning, believe you me. So the Trak Shak hands out these cotton gloves with their company name printed on them every year. Most people discard them during the race and they’re cleaned up later by the race organizers.

I, on the other hand, keep mine and run in them all year. Here’s my collection of Trak Shak gloves:

In fact, I’m impressed with the Trak Shak on a lot of levels. If you check out their site above, you’ll notice that it looks pretty good, but more importantly, they already have a message on their front page congratulating yesterday’s runners.

I don’t live in Birmingham, but if I did and I needed running stuff, I know exactly where I would go.

Moreover, someone spotted me running in last year’s Trak Shak gloves not long ago and said “Oh you must have done a race in Birmingham recently.” How’s that for brand recognition? They could even tell what year I’d done the race by the color of the gloves. That’s amazing marketing right there, people.

It makes me feel so good to see someone getting it right. Hats off to you, Trak Shak!

Organic Marketing for Artists: Mind Cheese and the Last Painting

jim — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:37:10 +0000

I had a really interesting day yesterday, due in no small part to a very fun meeting with some artists in their combination studio/gallery space in the Buckhead section of town.

I met Lisa Moore when I was out playing guitars last week. Upon seeing our show, she wondered if my buddy Dwight and I might like to play at her gallery some time, and through that conversation she found out about my organic marketing daytime life. She asked me if I might like to come talk to some artists about it.

In a word: Hell yes!

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking in front of retailers, merchandisers, and musicians before, but I know a lot less about the business of being a visual artist, so I was quite hopeful to learn a few things. It turns out that artists have many of the same concerns and challenges that other businesses do, which makes sense because they are, of course, human beings just like the rest of us.

Here are some of the things I heard the artists saying.

I have a web site but it’s old and I don’t know how to change it
I don’t see how Twitter can help me.
I’m worried that if I start using Twitter it will consume my whole day.

Produc-twitter-ty

If I may address the last question first, I guess I’d say that productivity is an issue, so that concern is quite valid.

Organic marketing costs less money but takes more time. That’s just the nature of it. It’s a matter of personal discipline that we all face not to get sucked into Twitter or Facebook all morning when there’s work to do.

I’m especially tempted to spend Monday morning looking at Facebook pictures of everyone’s weekend. I just have to turn it off and look at it later on.

I have a web site, now what? Can Twitter help?

Of course, my answers to the “now what?” part are things like WordPress, blogging, and organic marketing, but how to explain something like blogging or Twitter effectively? Thankfully, I got lucky on that one. As I was sitting here thinking about it, Lisa sent me an email including a post from Alyson Stanfield at the Art Biz Blog.

The post above is about writing an Artist’s Statement, but it put me in a good frame of mind to think about blogging for artists. Could it be that an Artists Statement is really just one super well-thought-out blog post?

The Last Painting

I started thinking about the concept of a last painting. Would a painter ever finish a painting, look at it, and go “Yep, that’s what I wanted to say. I’m all done painting now!” I don’t think so, and it’s the same with blog posts.

Each one is like a slice of cheese, except instead of cheese it’s a slice of your mind, which hopefully will never run out. Mind cheese!

Each blog post, like a painting or a photograph, is a representation of a thing or an idea, but it is not that thing or idea. That’s why you can look at a hundred photographs of someone and still not know exactly what they look like.

That said, each time you describe that thing or idea, the better you get at it. That’s one of my favorite things about blogging.

It really helps me focus my mind cheese!

Announcing the Organic Marketing Group

jim — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:39:24 +0000

I’ve been wanting to experiment with a Meetup.com group for a while, and after some thought I set up the Organic Marketing Group (OMG) a few days ago. I’d love to have you join me. We’re getting together for the first time next Tuesday.

My laptop defines “organic” first as “of, relating to, or derived from living matter”. Organic marketing, then, is marketing that is intended for, perpetuated by, and relevant to living matter, or as I like to call them, “people”. You can call them “living matter” as well, but you’re likely to find yourself spending your next cocktail party chatting up the mini hamburgers if you do.

Food producers have a system of requirements that they have to abide by if they want to call their food “organic” and I think it should be the same for marketers.

Currently I am defining “Organic Marketing” by way of three rules, but one of the things I hope to get out of the Meetup group is some thoughts on these. They may change in the future, but as for now, they look like this:

Never abuse privacy or permission
Always be Targeting
Draw business, don’t drive it

If you can think of anything that needs to be added or amended, get in touch!

As If Web Designers don’t work like Architects

jim — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:30:13 +0000

I recently ran across a new interpretation of an old chestnut titled “If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers”. I say “old chestnut” because it has been around at least as long as I’ve been working on the Intertubes, and I started in 1996 or so. The first time I saw it it referred to programmers, not web designers, but it’s mostly unchanged.

At the time I was discovering Perl as a replacement for shell scripts, and the idea of installing Slackware 2.3 on my home PC was terribly novel alternative to Windows 95. Good times!

Here’s a quote to give you an idea of the gist of “If Architects…”:

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Of couse, it’s meant to be funny, but there’s an undercurrent of client resentment here that I find annoying. It makes me want to shout a message to all my fellow web designers, developers, and wranglers; from the lowliest Dreamweaver student to the most zen-like master of programmification.

Quit your Bitchin’

I guess we’re meant to take away from this that web designers are terribly put upon because their clients do not have a depth of knowledge about designing sites. Well, whose fault is that? Myself, I consider it my job to guide my client through the entire process. Sometimes that means I might have to explain a few things.

Do you really think that architects never deal with unrealistic requests from their clients?

You Are Not a Beautiful or Unique Snowflake

You might have noticed that creating web sites isn’t that hard. Even making ones that look pretty good and function properly is so streamlined at this point that anyone can learn to do it in their spare time.

My point is that being good at doing stuff, in this case designing sites, is not as valuable as being able to relate to people. Anyone can do stuff. Learning to interpret client needs while not overextending yourself is tricky and takes years of experience.

You get the clients you deserve

Mind you, I am a student of business kung-fu. I do not have everything figured out, but the older I get and the longer I work on keeping my business alive, the more I believe that we teach our clients how to treat us.

I first heard this idea thanks to living with someone who was a Dr. Phil devotee. She watched his show daily. If I may quote Dr. Phil:

You either teach people to treat you with dignity and respect, or you don’t. This means you are partly responsible for the mistreatment that you get at the hands of someone else. You shape others’ behavior when you teach them what they can get away with and what they cannot.

Of course, Dr. Phil isn’t referring specifically to business relationships, but I think that relationships between people are relationships between people. It doesn’t matter if its your love life or your work life, it’s all people.

Get On With It

Friends, we all want the same things. We want to do good work. We want to be valuable, and we want to live happy lives. I think we’re much better served in the pursuit of those ends by learning what we can do to better relate to people than we are by pretending that there’s some other profession in the world that doesn’t require us to grow.

Having said that, though, you know… If you find one, let me know!

Ruby on Rails for Designers: Getting Stylish with ERB

jim — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 18:12:09 +0000

I just spent a week working with my friends at Highgroove studios — boom! — on one of their projects, and I learned a lot that I’d like to share. This is my second experience with design for rails and I’m slowly getting a grasp on how people who do that type of work operate. Hopefully some other non-programmer types will find this helpful.

I’ve only used the ERB (Embedded Ruby Templating) package so far, so I’ll concentrate on that.

Installation
First check out the official guide on layouts and rendering here:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/layouts_and_rendering.html

Also let me direct your attention to this guide on installing rails on Nettuts. It says it is for designers, but it looks like an install guide for sysadmins. If all that text frightens you as much as it does me, let me just go ahead and tell you that you’re going to be doing a lot of command line work.

Obviously, the best possible answer to this problem is to hire someone to do the text editing for you so you can concentrate on things like horn-rimmed glasses and the Helvetica typeface, but sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty your own self.

If you’re down with the CLI — yeah you know I, uh.. am! –then let’s move on.

Tip Number One: Rails Layout
First of all, just be aware as you’re trying to apply your awesome design that the files you’ll need to edit are all over the place. I assume you’re already hip to either Firebug for Firefox and/or the Chrome Developer Tools. These will help show you what styles are being displayed for a given element, but you then have to track down in the code where that stuff is generated.

As you can see from the Nettuts tutorial, there are a lot of directories going on, but if you’re just trying to apply a design you’re going to be mostly concerned with the /app/views/layouts directory.

The stylesheet and javascript files are located in /public/stylesheets/ and /public/javascripts/ respectively, but when its time to get down with the actual layouts, things get tricky

Clues to Rails Files
Figuring out where to put CSS clases or IDs onto HTML tags so you can apply your styles can be a bit of a pig, but there are some clues. I referred often to the terminal window where I started rails server on my local machine. Every time you refresh the site, rails will tell you exactly what it is rendering from what files, like this:

Started GET "/user_session/new" for 127.0.0.1 at Tue Jan 11 12:20:21 -0500 2011
  Processing by UserSessionsController#new as HTML
Rendered layouts/_header.html.erb (6.2ms)
  SQL (0.6ms)  SELECT COUNT(*) AS count_id FROM (LOL BORING SQL)) AS subquery
Rendered layouts/_navbar.html.erb (19.6ms)
Rendered layouts/_message.html.erb (2.7ms)
Rendered layouts/_noticeerror.html.erb (1.8ms)
Rendered layouts/_footer.html.erb (0.8ms)
Rendered user_sessions/new.html.erb within layouts/user_session (73.4ms)
Completed 200 OK in 243ms (Views: 83.5ms | ActiveRecord: 0.6ms)

If you’re familiar with templating, you’re straight away going to be looking for the master template file that tells everything where to be. Most of the time you’re going to have a file called /app/views/layouts/application.html.erb which is the one you’re looking for, but in this case, as you can see from line 9 above, there’s a different master layout file being used. Check this out:

9	Rendered user_sessions/new.html.erb within layouts/user_session (73.4ms)

See how that says “layouts/user_session” instead of “layouts/application”? That’s because the controller, mentioned on line 2 of the server output, has this in it:

1 2	class UserSessionsController < ApplicationController layout "user_session"

You use controllers this way to tell ruby what layouts to load based on what got requested. Sneaky, huh? Now, let’s talk about partials.

I’m partial to partials, and so is the marshall
Those files listed like this are partials:

3	Rendered layouts/_header.html.erb (6.2ms)

You can tell because it has an underscore as the first character in the file name. You can also tell because you’ll see this in the master layout file that called it:

<%= render :partial => 'layouts/header' %>

A partial is a bit of layout code that you know you’ll be using again. You don’t want to repeat yourself, so if you discover a slice of templating code that is in more than one file, abstract that mother out to a partial and render it like a boss. That way you don’t have to change it more than once if you should need to.

Last, but not least, let’s talk about adding a class.

How to add a class to a tag
You won’t see a lot of raw HTML in these .erb files. Instead you will see code like this that saves the developers a lot of time, but doesn’t include an obvious place to add a class selector so you can style whatever it is:

<%= form_for @user, :url => users_path do |f| %>
  <%= f.error_messages %>
  <%= render :partial => "form", :locals => {:f => f} %>
  <%= f.submit "Create" %>
<% end %>

If you want to add a class to that submit button so that it doesn’t look like a visual fart from 2002, just add this bit of magic to line 4:

4	<%= f.submit "Create", :class => "class_name" %>

Conclusion
That’s pretty much all I know so far and I’m learning every time I dive into this stuff. Please help me by correcting or adding thoughts to anything I have written here! Thanks to Chris Kelly at Highgroove for fielding my questions during the week!