Now, what you should check first? I would start from the basic.

Spell Check and Grammar Errors

Proof read your site … no matter how careful content creator was, you will always find a few misspelled words or grammar errors. If you don’t, be sure that your customers will.

Check Links

Next thing is to check if all your links on all your pages works. You can do it manually if you want, but on larger sites, it can be a tedious task. For large projects, you can use Xenu’s Link checker. The good news is that it’s free and better than most other link checking software.

Forms – E-Mail

We all want feedback from our website visitors, right? To ensure that you will get some, check if forms on your website work as expected. Make a habit to test forms on your website from time to time.

Web site visitors many times enter wrong input in form fields. If you use Java Script to validate form input, check your scripts in IE and Firefox at least. Not all scripts works in all browsers.

Page Titles – Meta Tags

Web developers use different software to create web pages. If your webmaster forget to add Meta tags on your website, in the title will write: Untitled Document.

How can anyone forget to add Meta tags, I am hearing you asking.

Well, search on Google for: Untitled Document and 35.000.000 results will be returned. For the search term Untitled Document 1, there is much less competition. Google return “only” 1.650.000. I guess that you will agree that your company name is better title than “Untitled Document”.

Meta tags are useful (especially title and description) for both, your website visitors and for search engines. So do the check.

Screen Resolution

You are looking at your website on your monitor, and it looks great, right? How will it look on other monitors and other screen resolutions? You website should look acceptable on 800 x 600 and great on 1024 x 768 and higher.

How your website looks in different browsers?

It is easier than you think, so continue reading. One of the things that you should definitely test is how your website looks in different browsers. The reason is: Each browser can display Web pages slightly differently, and you want to make sure your pages look good in the most popular browsers.

I have only one browser installed, how I can do this, I hear you asking. Search on Google for “view your website in different browsers”, and you will find different websites which allow you to preview your website in almost all known browsers. And yes. It’s free.

Usability – Can your website visitors find what they are looking for?

Ask few people to visit your website. Your friends or relatives, doesn’t matter. Ask them what they think about your website. Let me clarify. It is not important did they like the colors or the layout of the site. Important thing here is: Can visitors find what they are looking for on your website within a few clicks?

And the most important: When they look at your home page can they understand what your company is about? How comfortable they feel with your navigation, did they understand the terms that you use on your website? Can they reach your contact page?

…

Zoran Makrevski is founder and CEO of WebGoto.Gr from Thessaloniki, Greece We have over 10 years experience in Web Development. Our database driven websites will help you succeed in your online business. http://web.goto.gr/company.html

Read more articles written by Zoran Makrevski

Here’s the thing; it’s a lot of hassle for everyone if you have to hand-code in every new item. If the phone headset site finds a new distributor and gets a hundred new types of headsets in, or the religious jewelry site comes up with a new rosary necklace every week or so, they’ll need to be able to add the new products. That’s why you’ve created a fancy database-driven CMS, so they can add in the information and it automatically populates to the website.

But what happens when the new phone headset distributor sends a bunch of 1,500 pixel images when your system is designed to display 100 pixel thumbnails and 500 pixel normal images? What happens when the religious jewelry pictures are all high-resolution images that will take far too long to load? When the site layout is based on the idea of the images being a certain size, and then new images are introduced that aren’t that size, problems occur.

Now, you might be saying, “Oh come on, this is easy, just include a width=whatever height=whatever in your image tag and call it a day.” If so, hit yourself. I’ll wait.

See, the reason you see those attributes added to the images so often is, the great majority of the time, because it helps with getting the images indexed in the search engines. It’s not to actually set the image size. If you try to set the image size with them, the quality is dramatically reduced. And, if you’re sizing down, you wind up dealing with full-size loading time for a part-sized image.

Your next option is to get the client to make sure any images it uploads are properly sized. Not too likely. Aside from the very real possibility that they’ll forget what sizes to use, make a mistake, just not bother, or try to do it with Paint or something equally ludicrous, that’s just giving them more work, and one of your jobs is to minimize the amount of work and complexity they have to deal with for running their website.

So how do you get these phone headsets to fit in the proper format, and these religious jewelry pieces to load in an acceptable amount of time? Well, it just so happens that there’s some php code that can resize images automatically on the server. It’s not perfect for enlarging, but it does a pretty clean reduction, and it’s not too hard to code up a loop that will run through existing images to size them, and then add the resizer to the backend of the admin – right by where the image uploads works. Personally, I prefer setting some variables to determine the size and folder of the image, and then having it size the image in the chosen ways (a thumbnail, standard view size, and full size, for example), and save each to their own folders, keeping a single image column in the database.

So, when working on admin systems for e-commerce sites, from phone headsets to religious jewelry, expect there to be pictures. Prepare for them for the first batch of uploads and for future updates by including dynamic image resizing. It will make things easier on you and the client, and result in a cleaner, nicer-looking, and more easily updated website.

Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique Website Design. Truly Unique works on websites of all varieties; their clients may offer products and services ranging from religious jewelry to phone headsets.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com

The first option to make money online is writing. While there are many employers seeking freelancers for individual jobs or projects, finding a stable and secure full or part time job as a writer is the best option. You only need to have good writing skills and you are halfway there. There is a great demand for web content writers, article writers for magazines, websites, or even advertisement, and most of all there is a high demand for high quality writing ghostwriters. With the right set of skills and the luck to get the perfect part time jobs, you are well on your way of being able to say you make money online. When it comes to requirements, you will find that you only need a computer, an internet connection, and a good word processing application, like MS Word.

The second dream job that is also in high demand is based on web design and programming. It is a well known fact that programming jobs pay really well. This is especially true when it comes to online part time jobs, because people usually request programmers to work on tight deadlines, thus further increasing the pay amount. This is the case for web designers also, although in this case, all the time spent learning is replaced by talent. You can make money online, lots of money, if you choose to learn first the basic languages like, HTML, CSS, PHP, well needed for the creation of websites, and then more complex programming languages that will bring in money by the bucket. In order to get such part time jobs you need solid knowledge in any field you wish to enter, and secondly a technologically advanced computer.

The last entry in the top three of the most sought after ways to make money online, is consulting. Even if on the internet, consulting jobs still pay very well. Consultants are needed in many sectors, from medical and legal advice, to internet related consulting, like website optimizing, search engine optimizing, and so on. You need to make sure that you are well versed in the field in which you would like to find part time jobs, because if you work is not high quality, you can be sure that there are hundreds of others just waiting to take your place.

To conclude, I’ll say that when it comes to making money online, apart from skills, knowledge and talent, you still need some just, simply because the numbers of workers from every country trying to find part time jobs is simply overwhelming.

For more resources about make money online or even about part time jobs please review this website http://www.worldofincome.com

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The key to maintaining your own motivation to be creative is actually a long term effort.  Starting out can be tough, and in most cases the most difficult part.  But with the right methods and consistency you will be able to reach a point where staying motivated is easy.  It is a simple case of knowing when to make the right choices at the right times.

Obviously everyone is unique and each of you will have your own methods and actions into being creative.  But here is the chance to read something that offers some possible methods and solutions when getting motivated and staying motivated.

The main things to take into consideration are:

Set goals
You will find it is a lot easier to stay motivated when you feel like you’ve reached a target.  Give yourself something to achieve and break the work load down.  If it is a large website project you are working on, set yourself mini goals so you are reaching targets every few hours or days rather than spending weeks trying to get the lot done.

Small bite-sized objectives
As mentioned briefly above, set yourself up for more success than failure by being realistic in goal setting and come up with small, bite-sized tasks to start with.  As you complete more tasks, start making your goals more ambitious.

Build a creative workstation
Whether you design websites at your desk, in a dark room or a home office, you need to assign a place to yourself where you can be creative.  Once you’ve decided on that place, use it!  Each creative task and success you achieve in your ‘creative workstation’, will slowly train your mind to be creative within it.  When I first set up my creative workstation it took me about 3 months for it to click in my mind that it was actually my workstation but as soon as I enter now, I can focus my mind that I’m ready to work.

Walk away, but don’t quit!
Whatever you do, you must always remember to never give up on a website or problem.  Put them to one side for a while but always come back it later on, even if it means coming up with a theory for solving the problem.  These problems build confidence and develop a nice portfolio.

Find your creative time zone
Just like your body’s sleeping and eating times, there is also a best time when your body can be most creative.  For me, the best time to be creative used to be late at night, now-a-days it’s usually between midday and late evening.  Although I do have a creative burst where I get most work done after 9pm.  Your main objective is find out when you are at your most creative side and start using that time to your advantage.

Using the right tools
When being creative designing websites you need to ensure that you are using the right tools for the job.  The ‘right tools’ doesn’t necessarily mean the best tools but being creative can be difficult enough, therefore, the idea is to make the job / project as easy as possible.  For example, my best choice design software has got to be ‘Photoshop’, you may make this more difficult by trying to use ‘mspaint’ to come up with some amazing graphics.  It’s something you just don’t do!

Following progress
One of the key points in being creative is to follow your own progress.  As mentioned in step 1; the main objective is to break the task down into smaller parts.  Therefore, after a few weeks working on a project look back and see how far you’ve come.  If you don’t stop every so often to see where you were a couple of months ago, and where you are now – do it!  You might just surprise yourself on how much progress you’ve made and how your creativity has grown.

Get out of the house
This may seem a bit like the step where you walk away from your work and come back to it later, but there is a fine line between setting aside some work and actually taking a break from your workstation.  Whilst a creative workstation can often be the best practice, it sometimes helps to go somewhere different to work.  It can provide a different level of ideas and influence your creativity and work.

Work through it
You may think that it’s pointless trying to force yourself to be creative when you’re ‘not in the mood’ but often it can work in your favour.  It may feel difficult to start with but as you gain momentum you’ll find your motivation returns almost every time!  After all, you have nothing to lose; you get the job done and you’re still producing quality work / websites.  It may not seem like they are of good quality but you may still be working the same as you usually do, you’re just in the wrong state of mind to realise.

Read more about web design and Ecommerce web design glassbottomdesign.co.uk.

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When you are developing your website design, you have to consider that it is the face of your company. In the same way you want your office to look clean and professional, you should feel the same way about your website. Customers will judge how good a company you are by the website design you use. If you use a jumbled and messy website design, customers will quickly become frustrated and move on to someone else. You need to make sure your layout is user friendly and allows customers or visitors to move easily from one area to the next.

Another major aspect of your website design is the originality factor. You don’t want a cookie cutter website that looks just like everyone else’s. You should make sure your logo and slogan are used in your website, and that any photos you use are original for your site. You will find that many website companies now allow you to use templates to create your website design and these can be great to quickly get online. However, you will find that your creativity is severely limited and you may not be able to create what you want. The best thing to do is build a website completely from scratch and lay it out the way you feel is best.

If you are unfamiliar with building websites, you may want to go with a professional website design company. Many companies will even design your logo for you and help you come up with a tag line. These companies also have sophisticated programs that can make your web pages look completely unique when compared to other sites online.  They can even include custom boxes about your products or videos made for your company. These companies often offer packages to build and maintain your website for a certain amount of time. You can have your site built and then make changes as needed throughout the term of the contract. This is often the best way to go since your products or services may change throughout the year.

In order to be successful online, you need to have a unique, user friendly, website. Having your site custom built is the best way to guarantee both aspects.  The best part is that you get complete control over what is done and you say when things should be changed. With a professional company, they will allow you full input into the creative process.

Want a Great Web Site Design Quote in South Wales then Click the link below.
http://www.completewebsolutions.co.uk/website_design_services.html

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It does not make a difference what you are promoting up to a point. There is someone looking for your information. Everywhere you look, you will see ads promoting a website address. On TV, in the newspaper, on the radio, billboards, bus benches, in your mailbox, ads are everywhere.

As long as your website has a way to convert visitors into income, you can justify placing small ads in local newspapers. Submitting articles to local newspapers is a cheap way get more traffic. Newspapers are always looking for informative articles to fill space. They have a staff of writers, that they pay to fill this space. So, yes they will consider your article as free labor. As long as it benefits their readers, it’s a win-win. There are thousands of small, local and niche newspapers all over the country. So, don’t think you are limited to just the ones you know about.

Magazine Ads are more expensive, choose your target customers wisely. Instead of accepting the rates they quote you, you can tell them what you are willing to pay. You might have to wait for last minute decisions from the editor, but thats okay. They don’t want to let your money walk away. Be ask to ask for upper right hand corner ad placement. It will help with your return on investment. Articles should be approached in the same way as newspapers. Offer them as filler space as a place to start.

For those of us who have websites or would like to build websites. We can increase our traffic through Offline Advertising methods. Promoting business opportunities is less competitive offline than online. As far as television and radio ads go. These methods are expensive and you need a product to sell. Affiliate program products only offer a small to moderate percentage for commission.

Direct mail ads fall into the same category as fliers, and co-op advertising. There is little control over targeted marketing. Consider the source that tells you, your ads are only going to people looking for your information. Then believe about 10 percent of that, divide by four and hope for a return.

It is not hard to find people who need more income. Unfortunately, most people are intimidated by the fear of the unknown or fear of failure. In my opinion, those of us who do not try, have already failed. So, get up and just do it! Regardless of your dreams or ambitions, you are the one who makes it work. Whether it be online or off, set some goals and go for it.

Author Bio: Affiliate Programs Council is a resource for helping people succeed online. We invite you to visit us at
Affiliate Programs Council

To your success, Dave Council

The above snippet is the foundation of a database call, and one of the major workhorses of advanced websites.  Databases are, in my opinion, among the most powerful tools in any web designer’s arsenal, and a necessary component of each of the above sites.  For as a highly technical profession, website design entails some rather respectable rates, and there’s no way our religious jewelry site would want to pay for the hours upon hours we would have to spend hand-positioning every single product image, or the headset site would want to accept the cost of an individually-created page for every last item (with new pages having to be created for each new item sold).  Good luck keeping the shipping company’s records or the translator’s current jobs in order without a database, and I’m sure that our sports handicapper and seeker of cheap airline tickets will want to have to wade through your html to position their new all- inclusive vacation packages or update their latest sports picks.

With a database, and a robust CMS or admin system to maintain it, though, you create a glamour of site edits.  In fact, these systems aren’t there to let people edit their sites – or at least, not the coding.  Rather, they allow the addition of variables into the database, which the site is coded to retrieve and use.  Each database has a series of tables, which have what can be best visualized as rows and columns, not unlike a spreadsheet document.  Each row holds one entry, with a variable placed in each column.  The power of databases lies in their ability to reference that data in a variety of ways, grabbing based on certain values, sorting by others, and then using the information retrieved in code or even in other database queries.

So our religious jewelry site, for example, might have a pair of tables.  The first allows the creation of categories, which is called for in the site to produce links to each category’s page (itself an illusion; there’s only one page, and by passing a variable to it, it brings up the information attached to that variable in the database).  Once we have the category, a call to a second table for the jewelry products gathers the information from each, such as the piece’s name, price, and the location of its image file.  With the variables gathered, a looping code allows us to display them all in an organized format without having to go an hand-place every piece, saving time during site construction and allowing for easy upkeep where all the client has to do to add new products is post the new variables to the database.

Wireless headsets is probably using the same two tables, but rather than trying to display several products at once, the categories lead to a product list, which themselves lead to a full page that grabs all the information from the products and displays it.  A differing approach is necessary here, for where the jewelry site relied on small thumbnail images and short, probably one-line descriptions, the headset site has room to provide larger images and longer details about each product listed.  In fact, as a web designer, you might choose to advise the jewelry site to use the same sort of style the headset site wants, providing larger images of the pieces.  Naturally, the other option is to take the best of both worlds, with a set of thumbnails that click through to full detail pages (which, themselves, might even click to full-sized images).

While those two debate the relative merits of varying image sizes, we’ll move on to our travel site, which has a whole list of affiliates to place.  Now, as any SEO expert will tell you, text content is an important part of site design, so the admin system here is certainly going to need at least two tables.  The first, not unlike the products table for the headsets site, has the page built around it.  This is a table for articles, a blog, forum posts, or whatever other method of content generation the site owner favors.  While the content can be highly useful to visitors, the affiliates remain of primary importance for monetary purposes.  Of course, different companies offer different options to their affiliates; some provide animated, eye-catching banners tied to links with unique identifiers.  Others might use Javascript code to track clicks.  Still others might have a third-party handling their tracking, providing code snippets from them to their affiliates.  Regardless, varying types of code, sizes of banners, and styles of linking means that no simple formula will suffice for adding new affiliates.  Rather, by creating a table listing the affiliates, as well as some details and/or options for the nature of the links, you can have an easy way to add the proper codes and then call it based on whatever parameters you choose.  From there, you just call for the proper types of code in the proper places on the site.  One area across the top might call for 60×600 long banners, while a section on the right might use any 125×125 squares your have stored.  If Captain Dirt Cheap Airline Tickets really wants you to get into advanced coding, you might also create your own tracking system that you can use to compare data with the affiliate sites, relying on forwarders.

This article is continued in “The Illusion of Website Design III”.

Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique Website Design. Truly Unique works on websites of all varieties; their clients may offer products and services ranging from religious jewelry to wireless headsets.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com

Different tools always work best for different situations. Consider, then, a series of companies each with their own goals. Perhaps one sells an artistic product, jewelry perhaps. Maybe it fills a more specific niche; we can use religious jewelry for this example. Another sells items of a more technical bent; headsets, headphones, and similar audio devices. A third can provide practical products in the form of heat packs, containers, and other items for shipping. Others will be providing services, which could range from sports picks to translation to travel deals.

So we have six companies, each one looking for a website. They’ve arrived at yours through a variety of routes; maybe the religious jewelry and shipping sites found you on the search engines, the one offering sports picks was referred by a past client, the headsets company found you on a site’s classifieds, the translator cost you a buck and a half for pay per click, and the travel site is a returning customer with about a thousand domains that they’re trying to monetize one website at a time. Whatever the case, they’ve come to you looking to get a website designed.

Each one has different ideas, desires, and influences. Of paramount importance to the jewelry site, for example, is being able to display all their products – rosary beads, cross necklaces, first communion gifts, and so on – in an efficient but attractive manner. The shipping site, on the other hand, doesn’t expect a lot of new products or changes to existing ones. However, an organized, automated system for maintaining the business is a must. For the company selling cordless headsets and wireless earpieces, individual pages to provide full details on each product is the order of the day. On the services side, the travel site wants to make connections among a plethora of affiliates that offer everything ranging from dirt cheap airline tickets and all inclusive vacations to Las Vegas coupons and discounts at couples resorts. The sports picks website wants to be able to maintain and update a list of current and upcoming games and picks, in a password-protected area for members only. Finally, our translator needs clients to be able to upload the documents (written, audio, and video) that need translation, and to be able to access, reference, and return them all through the website.

And we as website designers craft a cunning illusion indeed, for while these sites are quite varied in their goals and aims, a visitor who browsed to each would have no way of knowing that all six were founded on the same basic piece of code: mysql_query(“SELECT * FROM table”).

This article is continued in “The Illusion of Website Design II”.

Dustin Schwerman is the head web designer for Truly Unique Website Design. Truly Unique works on websites of all varieties; their clients may offer products and services ranging from religious jewelry to wireless headsets.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com

SEO is a developing science. Reputable search engine optimization companies will tell you that they are constantly learning and altering their strategies to get the very best rankings for their clients’ sites. Learning it all in one go is not really possible, but there are a few ground rules that serve as a good introduction. These include:

1.    Spend more time on the code than the design. If you are the only person involved in the designing process (i.e. you don’t have a team of SEO technicians cleaning up behind you) you will have to learn to spend some quality time with the code. This will make the process of creating the ‘look and feel’ of the site much easier; plus by using descriptive tags to structure your pages, you will ensure that search engines will have a much easier time reading and understanding your all-important content.

2.    Your site is not a Christmas stocking. So don’t stuff it! Keywords are extremely important and should of course appear in strategic places throughout your site (e.g. the URL, the title tag, the main heading tags, etc.). Just make sure not to overdo it, if you mention your keywords too many times your content could be penalised for keyword stuffing (which is really, really bad).

3.    Don’t be a flasher. Using Flash for navigation can be very tempting – what could be easier than whipping out a trendy drop down effect? Search engines however, have difficulty reading and understanding Flash files, which means all those lovely navigation links, will end in cul de sacs.

4.    Use alt attributes in image tags. When labelling the images on your site, it has proven helpful to use the alt attribute to describe what it is. That description will normally contain keywords relevant to the topics under discussion (keywords that your target market may type into their web browsers).

5.    Name things correctly. Every page on your site should be given a unique title attribute. If every page has the same title, search engines will deduce that every page on your site is about the same thing (which is kind of boring and not bound to get them to warm up to you).

6.    Use specific link titles. Links are incredibly important. If you are linking to content similar to that on your site, make a point of including a word in the link description that described the content in question. E.g. if you link to a list of dos and don’ts for car rental, name the link ‘learn more about car rental’, instead of just ‘learn more’.

7.    Be consistent in your use of URL. Before you let your site go live, decide if you want to keep the www-prefix of not. Search engines see www.learnSEO.com as one site and learnSEO.com as another. This could lead to duplicate content issues and believe me, you do not want that kind of trouble.

8.    Build it and they will come.  Link building is one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization. The more quality incoming links you have pointing to your site, the better your SERP position will be. So how do you get people to link to your site? That’s the hard part – having unique content will help, as will being generous with your own links, but sometimes you are just going to have to beg.

And there you have it – eight little SEO tricks to add to your bag of tricks. This is of course just the tip of the search engine optimisation iceberg but it should send you well on your way to better Google rankings.

The author Michael Forrester heads up the web design department of a successful SEO firm in Cape Town, South Africa.

There are certain principals of proper web design in the world which design “governs”. Let us begin with the whole model- scheme. It is should be clear and simple. Even a complex layout should seem as if it is a simple one. Then, the data, page content and texts must look readable, understandable and logical. In other words, a reader must get useful, new and fresh information, other wise he/she leaves the site and will go to another one.  Proper content, a suitable text amount and related to the site’s topic.  All of these need to embrace a good language level. Another special point that every web designer has to mind is the loading time for web pages.

Almost all designers like to use various kinds of audio, video or textual graphics. Here they must take care of graphics` usage as many complex effects slow down the speed.  Also be aware of multiple frames applications in one page. As this design component reduces speed of page loads. Another chief issue that a good web designer should verify is display resolution. Some designs that look good in a certain resolution may look bad in another. Be careful not to be using both vertical and horizontal bars on one and the same page. It looks bad and drives crazy your user, because it is not convenient to handle two different bars simultaneously. Also a first-rate design has to be friendly and well-matched to all web browsers. An advertisement is a very good thing. Besides free advertising it can bring money. But, here you must find the golden mean in the amount of ads. Too big, alluring and eye-catching ads can redirect users from the message of your site. Also jumping pop-ups might annoy and disturb visitors.

So, try to be as careful as much as possible. A high- professional designer would arrange links and tabs in a reasonable way. It means that there are links, images or tabs in the page, but their position is so advantageous that is does not distract user’s attention from site itself. We would like once more to draw your attention to the information placed on the web site. It should be brief and clear, instructive and verified, logical and basic. Before posting onto the web pages, please, check all material and avoid all grammar or typographical errors.

In conclusion, quality and quantity must go together. All these factors described above should work and interact with each other. All tools must serve one mission of your site- it is message to your users. A lot of criteria define the web site as efficient product. If you receive a feed- back from users in the form of an enquiry letter, comments, purchasing etc, then you message got the recipient.

Kaweb is website design company set up in Birmingham offers to you web site design, programming, optimization. We are working in online industry for over than 20 years. Having a great experience we can help you to create a nice and effective web site. Trust to create a good working site to professional hands.

Article Source: http://bb-articles.com