Web Designers Blog

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization refers to services that are provided to website owners in order to boost the appearance of their website in search engine results. The marketing efforts to improve the visibility of the website could involve the improvement of the written copy on the website, building an effective architecture of the site and the inclusion of the website in relevant directories among many other services. These days, the market abounds in SEO service providers who use multifarious marketing efforts to influence the search engine results to the advantage of the website owner. 
With hundreds of websites sprouting everyday, aggressive marketing by SEO service providers has become the norm of the day.

However, website owners have to be very cautious in the choice of an SEO as many SEOs often adopt unethical means to boost the visibility of a website which ends in serious consequences for the website owner such as the permanent dropping of a website from search engine results. A cautious approach should be adopted in the choice of an SEO. Many SEOs make tall claims to the website owners and guarantee them top rankings in the search engines. Remember that no search engine has any priority for any SEO and hence no SEO can guarantee you top rankings in a search engine result.  
Be wary of SEOs that do not provide you a clear outline of how they intend to improve your search engine ratings.

Since this success is not attributed to the practice of some magical powers, the SEO should be able to provide you a clear outline of how they plan to implement their plan of action. Remember that you will be held responsible for the actions of the company whose services you hire for the promotion of your website. Certain SEOs may charge you a large sum to help your website rank higher in the search engine results. However, what they may actually do is to place your website in the advertising sections.

There are certain search engines that accept payments for pay per click or pay for inclusion results so you should know that your money is being put for temporary advertising rather than permanent inclusion, as claimed by the SEO.  
Always remember to ask for references. Look into the important details such as the names of the sites that have been promoted by the SEO, the number of years it has been in business, the number of full time employees that it has on its rolls and whether the SEO makes it a point to report any spams, that it detects, to Google. A reputable SEO should always be preferred over a new SEO even if that means you have to shell out much more money for the services. Ask for a money back guarantee from the SEO so that you may seek a refund if you are dissatisfied with the services provided by the SEO.  
There are a number of guidelines that a website owner can follow to improve the visibility of his/her website before seeking the help of an SEO. The accessibility, the quality of the written content and the lay out of the website are parameters that influence the visibility of a website and can be effectively managed by a website owner. If a website owner still feels that he needs the services of an SEO, the services of a reputable Search Engine optimization firm will definitely come in handy.          

Grey Dart Template

  <<  download >>

This is light grey template perfectly suitable for small and average websites, 2 column, logo incorporated with header part rounded corners around overall layout. Mouse over 4 buttons on the top.  

Meta Relevance

Do you know that you can see how relevant your website’s metas are? Just check it at whois.sc/yourdomain.com

Note the 3-4th row, where is written
Seo Score and Meta Relevance.

I don’t know whether their algorithm match with the Google’s and Yahoo ones, but that should be easy handy tool to verify your websites metas quality. As for my opinion, description and keywords tags are not so important as Title tag. You may noticed high ranking sites over the net, without description and keyword tags. This is the fact that the 1st considiration of the site depend on title, rather than other meta tags.

Oscommerce Excel Import/Export Module

We released new contribution for oscommerce which allow administrator to import and export inventory in excel’s XLS format. The module name is Oscom Excel. A poor anolog of this script is Easy Populate module. As distinkt from Easy Populate, Excel Module doesn’t require you to convert from one file format to another, and capable to include up to 50.000 product!!! You can import and export appropratiate categories/products as well as whole stock. It support any new fields, like product attributes, languages, quantiny, manufacturers and any other fields.Here are screenshots from admin side.

1. Excel Upload and Populate page. (click on the picture to enlarge)

2. Export Your product and categories into excel file. (click on the picture to enlarge)

Click here to download example excel file which is generated by the module.

Oscom Excel Admin Usage Instruction

Step by step explanation:

1.* Make Backup of your database, from Admin/Tools/Backups. This is important, so that if you fail with excel import, you could restore your backup later.
2. Go to http://www.yoursite.com/admin/excel.php
3. Click “Generate File” link on the right side.
4. In landed page you will see option box on the right side, where you can choose any appropriate category to generate, then click generate button.
If you need to generate all inventory, then don’t select anything, the system will do it itself by default.
5. Once you clicked generate button in step 4, you will see generated xls file. Click down arrow button to download the generated file to your computer.
6. Open download file, and there you will see your inventory. Change first cells text to PPL
Where is written ID

• To delete product from stock, simply place “D” letter in URL column in excel file, for any appropriate product you wish to delete. The system will recognize this sign and delete marked product from database.
• To Edit existing product – Simply change that piece of data you need.
• To add new product – Scroll down the page to bottom and add your new product name, description, price, picture name, quantity, category name. Date available field is not important.

* Note: you should if your product to be in subcategory, you should put in this format
Category=>Subcategory, in Category_id column.
Don’t add any digit to PPL column, the system will generate new ID number itself automatically.

7. Once you completed your changes, you have to save the document in Excel 5.0/95 (*.xls) format. Just select from top menu, File, Save As, and then in appeared window, select the format. The system will ask you to save in new format, but please ignore the window, click No, so that the file saved in Excel 95. This is most important because Oscommerce won’t parse new format.
8. Once You saved the file, rename your file name, and add _changed like this products_20061202082221_changed.xls, it’s for your convenience so that you can identify your uploaded file.
9. Go back to http://www.yoursite.com/admin/excel.php
In top box, click browser button, and select the modified file from your computer, and click upload button.
10. Once the file uploaded you will see that, click “Populate from file” link next to new uploaded file, and confirm then.

* Please note: you have to upload new products pictures thru ftp into images folder.
The images file names must be the same as you specified in excel file.

* Free installation. Payment by Western Union only – www.westernunion.com

If you want to buy the script please send me an email at zaur@pdesigner.net

Project Parner – www.advancewebsoft.com

The module is sold under commercial license, and any redistribution of the module is prohibitten accordingly with International law.

Robust Business Template for Business Sites.

Not everything to be for money, we designers should share templates for newbies, or non-designers who are looking for the easy way to to create or update their website interface.
Follow to this idea, I’m starting to post free templates in this websites to review section.

� � � Download

It took me 2 days to create this template. Robust and Solid look of the skin would give more respects appearance to your company website.

6 menu items in right navigation bar, each menu items color is changed per visited page.
Like you see on home page menu item, you can do the same for the other menu items too. That’s done from style.css file, simply apply class=”home-nav” for the menu item’s cell. For those who need this template integration onto any script like, joomla, mambo, Please contact me, I would do that for affordable price.

Your comments are welcome.

Fantastic Paperwork!

Have you ever seen such genius artwork? Yeah, one of my friends those pictures to me tonight, and I promptly put them here for you.
I’m not sure what it worth to create them, and how long, but they are really funny and might be considered as another kind of art.

Paper Castle

How to create cartoon effect in Adobe Photoshop.

Do you have a picture and want to easily convert it to cartoon? Photoshop has nice function which allow you combine your steps in “action”, then use that action file for many other graphics. Sue created nice action file which allow you to convert static picture into cartoon styled graphic. The result is below, I� created the second picture� with just 3-4 clicks.

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Download Cartoon Effect� action. Open archive and copy Sues_Cartoon_Actions.atn file in your Photoshop’s “C:\\ Program FIles\Adbobe\Adobe Photoshop\Presets\Photoshop Actions\”� folder. Then open Photoshop, from top menu select “Window” then “Action”

You will see this window:

� Click Load Actions, in opened window select “Sues_Cartoon_Actions.atn”.
The action file will immidiatly appear in the actions window.

Now, open picture you want to transform to cartoon, select the area with CTRL+A, and start inserting actions on the picture.
You need select each of those 6 effect and click arrow button, see highlights on the screenshot below:

That’s all.

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Interview with William Mathis (President, at-websolutions.com)

Our blog welcomes William Mathis of president at-websolutions.com. This is our first interview with developer on this blog.

Mr.Mathis, how and when you become web designer?
First, I started out as a graphic designer and graduated from a design school (Platt College) in 1993. I was working as a corporate regional graphic designer for a large brokerage firm here in San Diego, creating high-end media presentations and marketing materials. This is around 1997. At the time, I had a broker that came to me and was interested in starting and online website for a professor that can teach online to his students. It would also be linked and embedded with the San Diego State University website. I had a friend, which also graduated from Platt, which I knew he was doing web design. After assisting him with obtaining the project, he explained that I should consider adding web design to my skills, which would open other opportunities. My friend suggested that I study a book, Peachpit’s best seller “HTML for the World Wide Web” to learn html. Then from there I purchased a domain and and created my website (while creating the website I was learning more and more…), launched it, and the rest is history.

What is web design for you? Web design is an extension of your graphic design skills and creative ability, but utilized on a different medium. You also have to think three-dimension instead of two (creative, graphic usage know how, limited color control, content placement and format, and html, javascript or other scripting control and abilities). As a graphic designer your output is to film then print, in web design your output is to the World Wide Web. Your audience is more broad and seeking information, instead of condense and targeted, and visual presentation and representation is highly important to capture the reader or search audience. Web design pushes your creative ability and forces you to work in a non-tradition environment or medium. In other words, web design is universal and sometimes unpredictable. That’s the challenge of web design and the designer. It can be a rewarding experience for any web designer that can see their hard work put together and the site is well-rounded, represented and everything is working properly, and your client is satisfied and happy.

What is advantages of freelancers vs web studios? That’s a very good question. I believe freelancers or a different kind of “animal”, if you don’t me saying. Freelancers are independed and self-reliant on not just their design and knowledge of their trade skills, but on several skills. I believe that to be a successful freelancer it will require you to be more aggressive, assertive, flexible, multi-tasked, resourceful and know how to network. As a freelancer, you can be sure to expect that you will be working longer hours, 12-14 our days are not uncommon. Good people and communication skills is a must, the ability to sell your services, and making sure you meet client deadlines and expectations. There is more pressure on the Freelancer, because everything you do is a reflection of you as a person, designer, consultant, your ethics and more. You will need to have or develop discipline. Freelancers take on the responsibility of several personnel as if it were a business environment. As far as advantages, I believe the rewards are not just profit or the amount of money your can make, but the opportunity to gain personal recognition, client retention, referral rewards, and finally the feeling of being successfully in depended and working what you enjoy doing the most.

Web studios: I don’t believe that there is much to say about or compare about web studios and freelancers. From my experience everything is the same with the exception that projects are in-house with designers or outsource to freelancers, you may also have personnel conducting direct sales, cold calls, account management or having an outside sales team (independent sales contractors) selling web site development, website upgrades, SEO (search engine optimization), content and database management, including web hosting. The advantages of web studios and their business services is about doing the numbers and having enough flexibility of service offering. The advantages are the more websites that you can build, contract, manage or offer additional services as mentioned, the more lucrative the business is. The target is dollars and residual income. Some web studios are being more diverse and at which can be run by a two to three team member. Everything else is outsourced and contracted. But, as a business or web studio in this comparison, the more at risk. It’s a very competitive industry and very reliant on others to assist in driving the business, and the industry is always changing, there are going to be high’s and low’s, it’s the challenge of finding a good balance as a web studio.

What technologies and tools do you like and use?
That’s very large question: Dual Xeon servers, featuring firewalls and load balancing, with independent servers for individual resources such as web, ftp, databases, email, etc. for enterprise level web hosting. Rather than using the traditional hosting architecture where you operate all resources on the same shared server, we split each service out to its own cluster of security hardened servers. “How is that for starting out to answer the question?”. To be more down to earth, I utilize different technologies all the time, it all depends on what is evolved. As far as web design goes, I’m usually on a high performance Dell PC 3.4 GHZ (Ok, stop throwing the things at me you MAC lover’s. Because I do, use a MAC also.) with 3 GB of RAM, 1GB bus system and every hardware candy you can think of. Software application are: Dreamweaver 8, Photopshop and ImageReady, Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw (if necessary, never know what application clients utilize to create their original graphics.), Macromedia Flash, Fireworks, SwishMax, and others. To long to list them.

How do you improve your skills, how do you update?
I’m always keeping on eye out on the industry changes. There is plenty of sites out on the net can provide you with upcoming new generation of things to come and what is the hottest technology or software usage for web design. Everyday is a new learning experience, and if I find out about something new, I’m usually on it and attempting to learn as much as I can about it. Most of the time it’s hands on and lots of research and studying during down time.

What do you consider good and bad in web design?
A� good design not only makes visual sense, but every link is working properly and is uniform and simple to navigate to specific content or pages for information. One of the biggest mistakes when I started out as a web designer is that I had this habit of putting all the effort in graphics and making it look “real cool”. Which made the site load too long and once it was loaded fully on the page, all you saw was graphics and animations. To begin a good designer needs to keep in mind on graphic images and file size. Having an excellent graphic file compression software for your graphics is very important, effective loading time is one of many priorities, if not the first. You want to test the website under different connection speeds and browsers. One of the other most important thing to remember is that a web page may not display the same in different browsers. Not all browers react the same or display web pages in a consistant manner from one to another, (ie, Netscape, Explorer, or Mozilla Firefox) you will need to know how to “tweek your code” to establish some kind of consistency.

A bad web design is not taking the time to do your “home work” on effectively building a web page. “Think out-of-the-box mentality”. There is plenty of books and reading material on the internet to assist you as a web designer. A bad design is….well, a bad design. Today, you really don’t have to be a master and knowing how to code html or other forms of html versions, there are WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) web applications that can do it for you. But, I suggest you learn the html and learn the basics. Then learn javascript and other important scripting that you may need one day to use.

Do you prefer open sources or custom made softwares?
Funny about the question regarding Open Source software. I was a Marketing Communications Manager for a company that marketed a heterogeneous data enterprise backup software application. It is marketed to the Linux and Unix industry. I do prefer to custom made software or in this case industry software applications, but I do support the Open Source software community that are behind it and it’s movement. At the current moment I utilize or seek out Open Source software if I need to find an application that I need immediately.

Can you always satisfy your customers, if not what are reasons?
As a rule, I always keep an open mind regarding new prospects and current customer clientele. You can keep a customer satisfied by being responsive in a timely manner to their needs and providing up most customer service. Sometimes just calling a customer “out of the blue” or sending an email and checking that everything is OK, and if they have any questions your available. Being honest about “what you can do for your customer” vs “what you can probably could do” is being honest about yourself, your abilities, and to show respect to your customer. If anything, you will gain respect from a customer for your honesty. You don’t always have to “take on” or “win their confidence” to every customer that comes to you so that you can retain an account or make money. It’s OK not to know the answer, but have a follow-up with good information. Best to be honest about your ability to satisfy a customer than to fail of not living up to your word and capabilities.

How do you see the future of the web design?
I see that in the future that more and more people without design and code experience will be able to build websites on their own. The industry is already being effected by it. What use to be a specialized service, will evolve to where clients have the capability to design their website from an online server-side graphical and content management application, and they have been around for at least the last 4-5 years. In most cases a customer can build a website from a control panel through their web hosting service. It may not look custom, but is effective for practically $0 with no out-of pocket expense. This will drive quotes and pricing down from what was five years ago. Five years ago, I was making $7,000 to $10,000 a month on web design and I was very busy. Now when conducting a bid on the net for projects, I see designers that are bidding on a website project that require needs for e-commerce, special scripting, database requirements, customized graphics / photos, and content management capabilities on the fly that are being bid at $500 or less’s, and can be promised on certain number of days. Are these web designers starving or what? There is no way that I can be dishonest and tell a client that for $500 that I can have their site done in 7 days to 14 days with that kind of need.

For web designer to stay competitive, we will probably need to expand or become knowledgeable in all areas of the web design industry. It’s already very competitive, there are hundreds if not, thousands of web designers. SEO is the probably the next thing to do and have under your hat as a web designer. Diversifying yourself as a web designer to include traditional graphic design service in addition to web design can be very effective. At this moment, I’m working on my creative skills for Flash web page design. I’m also using SwishMax. I see that websites will be more a high-end look, feel, and content driven in a multimedia format. Much like a very cool commercial. Website branding will come into play in the future. Time to prepare.

What do you advice beginners?
Hmm, my advice to beginners is to first learn about how a web page is made and how it works in a very basic format. Go to the nearest book store to seek web design books that provide the know how, but also provide visual examples. Study and practice creating graphics and producing low file sizes. Utilize a industry graphic software like Photoshop or Illustrator and learn to convert images to jpeg or gif. Remember photos are utilized in jpeg, vector graphics are converted to gifs, if you don’t have the funds to purchase these high-end software applications, then go to site like Zdnet.com, Downloads.com, Freeware.com and you should find low cost software applications that you can download, try for free or purchase. Practice and practice your skills. Master the application.

From there use a WYSIWYG web design application like Dreamweaver or InDesign (there are others). Learn how to place content and importing graphics on to the web page. You should be able to view the page in html format, study the code, try to use a blank web page and type the code in html format setup and see if it comes out the same. I also suggest that you will need to learn how tables and cells are utilized to hold text content and graphics and practice with them. Learn how to publish sites, using ftp programs and other web file management software. Create links and study the code. Learn how to create a basic form page, code it correctly and test it to see if you can retrieve it throught email. One program you can use is “formmail”, you can google it on the net to download the code and it’s instructions.

The other thing I would like to leave as advice is to keep it “Simple”, and keep learning as much as you can and have fun. Remember, web designing is fun and is an extension of your creative ability and know how, and has financial rewards. So have some fun! Wishing all the beginners success!

Protect your website from Google Code Search

It has come to our attention that Google has released a new product, Google Code Search, that is capable of indexing and crawling through archive files stored in the public directories of web servers. This is security advisory because� I have discovered that some site administrators are storing archives / backups of their website in the web root. Because of this, Google Code Search is able to crawl the archives and read unparsed PHP files as if they were plain text. This has resulted in the disclosure of some sensitive information including MySQL passwords and SMTP credentials.

How many web sites hosted on the same ip

Do you wonder how many other websites hosted on the same ip address with you? You can check it easily if you type in your web browser whois.sc/yoursitename.com, the page will show you many useful information such as your registration details, alexa ranking, your domain’s registration date… along with ip address and a number of sites hosted on the same server ip.

As for my opinion, as less websites under your ip the better share of traffic you would have, but in another hand, more websites means� higher responsability. Because if your website is down for some server problem, you will know that hundred other people would contact hosting support for resolving the problem.

Does search engines� take into account ip addresses of websites?
It was another subject on agenda how bad to host multiple domain names on the same ip address. Some seo experts still consider the fact that search engines like Google take into their account domain’s ip address, and don’t value cross links among the sites located on the single ip address. Some hosting companies offer shared ip addresses, where you can assign various ip addresses per each your domain name, this should help.