Blogs

A bit like buses – nothing for weeks then 3 posts in a day.

Do you use the Internet for banking, buying and basically anything financial? If you do – you’re most certainly not alone – then you really MUST take care of your personal and account details .. and one of those things you have to be asware of is Phishing. Nothing to do with fish – it´s a pun on fishing .. you hook ‘em and reel ‘em in — A Phishing Site (or email) is a way to trick you into giving your account details, password, Credit Card numbers etc to those nice men who will promptly empty your account! But it’s surprising how few people know how to tell a Phishing Site, so here are 2 tests you can try (I got 100% BUT I’m fanatical about my personal data), I guarantee they’ll make you think

• www.phish-no-phish.com
• www.paypal.com/fightphishing

I really must put more effort into these titles!

One of the challenges any business must face is sorting out any problems, queries, general questions etc and making sure it all gets dealt with in a timely manner. Bits of paper get lost (not to mention my awful memory), so we’ve put what´s known as a ´Ticketing System´’ in place. Sounds posh but all it means is that any queries get entered in to our computer system and not forgotten. You don’t have to fill in a form (you can if you want to!) just send an email to support@mangolink.com and the system will start the ball rolling by sending you an acknowledgement (and a Ticket Number) and me a copy of your email! We’ll email you with a proper response as soon as we can (and you can check up on it at any time following the simple instructions in the acknowledgement).

We’ve been working so hard that I’m afraid we forgot to update the blog!

What have we been working on? Well, the main push has been on our support software – the behind the scenes stuff. I’ve also been evaluating and trying out some exciting new features that will be on the site very soon:

• Help Desk – actually that’s already in place (I’ll post another blog about it)
• Classified Adverts — for all those small (and not so small) things that yiou’ve been meaning to sell (or buy come to that)
• Services – Reyes day and you need a plumber? Check our services pages (that’s not a joke, it really happened me the other year!)
• Forum – discussion areas
• and as they say .. lots, lots more (and do let us know of any new feature that you’d like us to add – just click here to send a quick email to the design team(support@mangolink.com)

A happy new year to you, one and all.

I hope you had a great New Years Eve. Last night we turned on the TV for the midnight countdown .. what a complete and utter waste of time. Spanish TV at it’s most dire, awful and pathetic worst!

We watched 30 minutes of utter tripe .. no show, no music, no spectacle, no wandering interviews in the massive crowd – no, what we were subjected to was a tall over made-up blonde in an incredibly low-cut and tight evening dress and an asinine imbecile in a Dinner Jacket. They chatted to themselves in a smug ‘look at me I’m important’ sort of way, and rabbited on .. and on .. and on. The only entertainment value was in seeing whether her dress would hold and trying to figure out if he was drunk, on drugs or just a cretin .. the latter I think!

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One of my all time favourite Christmas songs (as opposed to Carols) .. and as for the next line – well – we’ve done a lot (although that’s probably an understatement!). 3000+ pages in English and Spanish and Valencia is nearly finished. This week I start on Alicante (just the basic data structure) – Sally has already made big inroads in collating data so expect the first actual page later this month (maybe!).

I’m jusy finishing the code for the Blog pages (making login/out easier etc). Don’t forget you can make comments if you want .. just click on the comment link under a post.

To all our readers (Hello Rosemary, our first regular blog reader according to Chris) .. A very merry Christmas and wonderful New Year

Graham

.. and things are going rather well.

The company has finally been formed and we are officially Makarikari S.L. but we will still call ourselves Mangolink, so don’t worry about Mr Mango becoming Mr Makarikari. Chris and I have been joking about Makarikari – we are undecided whether it sounds like an illness (“I’ve got a touch of the makarikari’s”), an indian food (“I’ll have the makarikari with rice”), or my favourite, a cocktail (“A makarikari with a twist of lime”) .. maybe we’ll have a competition!

I’ve extended the blog system and we can now host multiple blogs SO if you think you know a subject (an activity, a hobby etc.) well enough to write a blog then let us know (don’t forget you can always use our contact page to .. well .. contact us).
The vertical menu (or sidebar) is now resplendant with a photo or icon, usually of the ‘blogger’ – and “Yes” that really is me, and I do scrub up well if I say so myself! (that was at my son’s wedding 2 weeks ago – congratulations Rob and Mandy).

Almost forgot – these posts should start appearing on Facebook (fingers crossed)

It took longer than anticipated (mainly due to a network problem) but the website(s) have both been successfully restructured. Content and menu use remain the same although files have been moved. If you can’t find what you were looking at previously then do try using the ‘Google Custom Search’

any problems please notify us using the ‘contact us’ page

Hands up .. our mistake .. there is a flaw in the structure of the website (to be honest I’ve been aware of it for weeks if not months) and I am going to have to correct this now before our popularity gets any higher (we’re currently getting 100-200 hits a day). This affects both mangolink.com and mangolink.es

To minimise any problems here the plan (and I’ll maintain this post to show progress). NOTE that when I wipe one of the sites ALL the files will be replaced – addresses may change. I’ll try and do this very early in the morning(4am-ish! spanish time)):

1. backup websites – DONE
2. download both sites to local machine – DONE
3. local machine: restructure .com – DONE
4. local machine: test .com – DONE
5. local machine: restructure .es – DONE
6. local machine: test .es – DONE
7. wipe .com – DONE
8. upload .com – DONE
9. wipe .es – DONE
10. upload.es – DONE
11. verify .com link structure – DONE
12. verify .es link structure – DONE
13. restructure completed – DONE

Our sincere apologies for any inconvenience

We’re still checking the site – I’m buried in the depths of the spanish site (www.mangolink.es), reviewing and amending the code. So far 4 comarcas (counties) done which leaves another 10 or so PLUS Valencia City. A long job but we’ve got to get the site right. Chris is planning our sales strategy and finalising the company formation. Not much to add – another week of effort and hopefully another week nearer to the finish!