Refreshing your site for the new year.
Why and How
There are several reasons why you would want to make sure your site is fresh and up to date.
The obvious one would be to make sure all your content is current. You’ll want to take some time and comb through your pages looking for broken links and outdated content. There’s nothing worse than following a dead link or trying to contact with an email address that is no longer in use.
Another reason is to keep your visitors interested. You don’t want your visitors to think you never update your site and its neglected, this just screams unprofessional. This also gives the impression that you don’t have time for your business.. so why should they give their time to you? The truth may be that you are so busy making time for customer service that you simply didn’t have time to devote to your website. So you don’t want to give the wrong impression. Updating your content periodically will let your visitors see the work you put into your business and also have them reading your site again to see what else they can learn!
Read More…
Technorati Tags: website
(1) commentAnother cool web site re: Copyright
We know that it’s wrong to copy word-for-word another person’s web site, it’s called plagiarism. Not only is it unprofessional and illegal, but it also can damage your SEO ranking! Of course, not all web site owners know about copyright and some plain don’t care. Yes, it’s sad but true. The fact remains, once you put your text onto the web it’s protected by copyright law, but you need to be ready to protect it!
I found a website recently that had a neat feature that lets you check for other websites using your text. It looks for matches in phrases or even entire pages. CopyScape. Check it out and let me know what you think of it!
Technorati Tags: plagiarism, copyright, CopyScape
(0) commentsWebsite Optimization, SEO
I get asked a lot of SEO questions from work at home moms and small business clients. It’s time for me to do a series on SEO to get some of these questions answered! Many people ask me “Do you *do* SEO?”. My answer is simply “No”. There are a lot of things you can do to an existing site to help with SEO but we’ll get to that later. The simple answer of “No” is because good SEO on a web site really needs to start in the planning stages of your web design! I focus on creating websites that are SEO friendly right from the start!
Let’s start out with the basics! SEO? What’s that? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. When people are talking about SEO they are referring to search engines and how you are indexed. The optimization part comes into play when we talk about how you get your site prepared to be listed, how you manage your site to maintain listings and how to increase your ranking. You are optimizing your search engine experience. The next terms that comes up are spiders and robots. Spiders and robots are parts of the search engine software that actually scour the internet reading web sites and collecting the data. These spiders go out and read websites looking for information that it can bring back to the main database (search engine) to be indexed. We want to make it easy for the spiders to find data to bring back to the main database so we’ll start with that. Read More…
Technorati Tags: SEO, web design, Search Engine Optimization, spiders, robots
(1) commentWhat to expect when working with a web designer….
Recently I chatted with Michelle Waters on Product Seller’s Radio about working with a web designer.
You can hear the interview online here: top 3 tips to building a productive relationship with a web designer
Picking a designer that suits your needs.
- Look at sites that you like and see who designed them.
- Get references from others in your field if possible. Ask the designer for client references if needed.
- Look at the designer’s portfolio to see if their style meshes with your own.
- Also look at time frame and prices, but realize you may have to pay more or wait longer to get what you want. But don’t let that deter you! Read More…
Technorati Tags: Michelle Waters, working with a web designer, web design
(0) commentsWeb Site Chat Software
When you have a web presence and sell a product, customer service is very important! One way to allow instant conversation between you and your potential customers is to allow them to contact you online and in real-time using a chat program. These allow you to receive and answer questions as your customers have them. Most programs allow those customers to leave a message if you are not online as well.
There are a lot of powerful chat programs that allow for multiple operators, logs, canned replies and more. What if you don’t want to pay for a chat program and don’t need all the fancy options? If you don’t mind a bit of advertising or link back to the chat provider you have several options.
Because I am focused towards small business and work at home moms I will focus on the free software available. For information on the pay type of chats with all the extras just do a quick Google search for “chat program” and you’ll have lots of options. Here are a few that I have used and would recommend. We’ll touch on Chatango, Volusion and Crafty Syntax Read More…
Technorati Tags: chat, chat program, Chatango, Volusion, Crafty Syntax
(7) commentsHTML Crash Course
This is the VERY basics of HTML. If you want more in-depth guides and explanations try the books:
HTML A Beginner’s Guide (2nd edition) by Wendy Willard or
Web Design in a Nutshell by Jennifer Niederst Robbins (3rd edition)
Editing the content of your Page. (Picks up from: FTP tutorial)
Now that you have your page downloaded you’ll want to edit the contents. Open it in NotePad. (I’m asuming here you dont have a HTML editor).
Your description/content area may be as long as you like and includes any info you planned on including in your page. When you are completed with your listing save it. Now you are ready to upload it to your host, refer back to the FTP section.
What is HTML and what are the basics you’ll probably use?
HTML is the language your web browser reads. Its a mix of codes you’ll use to get your page to look a certain way and get the text to act certain ways. Here are the basics you’ll probably use. But you are not limited to these, feel free to explore the web to learn more! Be aware of how wide your tables and images are.. if they are wider than your page you coudl have layout issues. If you go over this it may either overlap outside your listing or push your page down on the page. The behavior will be determined by the different web browsers.
Helpful HTML tags to know:
Simply hitting ‘enter’ will not start a new line. Same is true for bolding the content using your word pad and any other attributes. Browsers dont recognize these comands unless they are coded in.
| <p> </p> | indicates new paragraph, any text typed after will appear 2 lines down. | ||||||
| <br> | indicates a line break, any text typed after will appear 1 line down. | ||||||
| <pre> </pre> | is a preformatted code. It displays type exactly as it is typed, extra spaces, returns and all. | ||||||
| <blockquote> </blockquote> |
The blockquote indents the pragraph on all sides. Often used with customer comments or quotes. |
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| <b> </b> | Bold attribute, anything inside this tag will appear bold. | ||||||
| <i> </i> | Italic attribute, anything inside this tag will appear italicized. | ||||||
| <center> </center> | Center attribute, anything inside this tag will appear centered. |
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| align="right" |
Inserted into a paragraph type tag will align the paragraph to the right. Applied to an image it will align the image to the right and cause other text to wrap around it. |
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| align="center" |
Inserted into a paragraph type tag will align the paragraph to the center. Applied to an image it will align the image to the center and cause other text to wrap around it. |
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| align="left" | Inserted into a paragraph type tag will align the paragraph to the left. Applied to an image it will align the image to the left and cause other text to wrap around it.You do NOT need to use this to align text as text is automatically defaulted ot teh left, but it does come in handy to use with images. Explained better in the image section. | ||||||
| <font> </font> |
The font tag effects the way text looks. Many atributes can be added into this tag. Examples:
|
Basic table information
Gallery and ordering info you may want placed in tables for easier arranging and editing.
The following is what you need to know regaurding editing them. There are endless ways to use and edit a table including, border, color, width, height, spacing and padding. A search on the internet can turn up lots of resources explaining all these variations, for our purposes I’m keeping it simple.
This code is where the table starts, this sets up width and spacing. Ignore, dont edit. The numbers all will vary though depending on the usage of the table.
<table width="x" border="x" cellspacing="x" cellpadding="x">
This code declares the beging of a new row in your table.
<tr align="left" valign="top">
This code declares the start of an actual table spots that are in the row. Each row must have the same amount of td (cell) sections.
<td>
Each code has a closer, this is the HTML which ends the function. For a table you’ll have </td> </tr> </table>
When editing table content you edit the content between the following codes:
<td> content </td>
A basic table code may look like this:
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="1">
<tr><td>Content 1</td><td>Content 2</td></tr>
<tr><td>Content 3</td><td>Content 4</td></tr>
</table>
On the web it would look like this:
| Content 1 | Content 2 |
| Content 3 | Content 4 |
Basic Graphic information
All images used need to be stored somewhere on the web to be able to use them on the web. The basic place to store them is on your host of course! When possible try to upload them to your file called "images" for easy organizing, just remember to include the title of the images folder when you are linking it.
To place images you use the <img src="yourfolder/imagename.gif"> code. If the image is hosted on the same host as your website you do not need to have a complete URL. Its ideal to already have your images to the size you need instead of relying on height and width codes to change them. This will keep loading times down and also help reduce file sizes when smaller images are used. It also makes it easier on YOU to add more pictures if you have less code to worry about! A program like Irfan View is a great resizer and its free!
To make a thumbnail you actually need 2 images; a small one and a large one. Insert your small image and surround it by a link to the large one. Its that easy! Example: <a href="url to large image"><img src="small image url" border="0"></a>
Aligning images so text wraps around them. Do you want your image inserted into a paragraph and the test to wrap around it? All you need to do is add the align property to your image tag.
The align properties are: align="right", align="left", and align="center" .
To add a border simply add the border="" tag and give it a number, ex border="2"
To add horizontal padding you include hspace="10" to add verticle padding include vspace="10" (change 10 to whatever space you want) Example: <img src="url to image" align="right" hspace="10" border="2" vspace="2" >
See example to the right that has a right align and horizontal padding of 10 verticle align of 2 and border of 2.
Making a Image a link. (Banner links etc)
Follow the same rules as making a text link but instead of inserting text, insert the image code.
ex: <a href="http://websavvymama.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.babyspaceslings.com/websavvybannersm.gif" border="0"></a>
Looks like: 
and is a clickable link to a new window.
Basic Link Information
Links are pretty easy to apply. You just need to know what the link is that you are going to and how you want it to appear. If its not on your domain/host you will need to type out the full web address like this: <a href="http://www.domain-name.com/page-to-access.html">Text to appear</a>. If the link is located somewhere on your website you can use a shortened version <a href="yourpage.html">Text to appear</a>.
Format:
start with <a href= insert "location always surrounded by quotations.html" followed by > insert test to appear and close with </a>
translates to: insert text to appear
You can also indicate if you want the link to open in a new broswer window. To do this you include target="_blank" in the link code and it will open in a new window. Completed it would look like this: <a href="http://websavvymama.com" target="_blank">Web Savvy Mama</a> appearing as: Web Savvy Mama
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