Archive for August, 2007

Being new to web design has its advantages; you aren’t caught up inside of traditional concepts, over-alluring attention grabbers, and misconceptions of search engines.

Today’s top-edge designers are bringing more relative, optimized content to the internet. We are seeking out what a client needs to get traffic on his website. Rather than creating attention-getters, we are creating attention-keepers - user friendly, search engine optimized, usually accessible, and generally clean of coding errors.

We are fresh, we are new and we are the competition. Why offer a client the option of good design or high page rank, when they can have both? Getting hits to a website is no longer the responsibility of an SEO (search engine optimization) pro - today’s top-edge designers are now required to include optimized coding that is noticed and easily read by search engine spiders. After all, what good is a website if nobody visits it? Why would a client use your services if you cannot design with good conversion in mind?

Before I got into web design, I spent three years sitting in front of my monitor, searching web content. I’ve never been a “gamer,” I’ve always been a seeker. And seeking for information, sometimes 50 pages deep into Google, I taught myself keyword discovery.

Approaching my second year of web development training, I can now code pages without any errors. I can generate a website that receives its formatting from a separate (CSS) style sheet. I can create product specific copyright, company specific design, image enhancement, and image manipulations, including Photoshop font imaging. To combine all that into a search friendly website doesn’t require rocket knowledge, the main requirements is to use spider-attracting markup, and repeating desired key words.

After much study on website traffic, I came across this article that motivated my writing, “Successful websites built on ‘good foundations’.”

“Good foundations underpin the potential success of any website,” said Matt. “And it is vital that every website is built so it can be as search engine friendly as possible.

“In the same way a building will fall down if it no has foundations, a website is rendered invisible on the Internet if it is not built in a way that allows it to be easily signposted online.

“If it came down to a simple choice, I’m sure every business would rather have a mediocre looking website which attracts lots of visitors, than one that is stunning but nobody can find it on the Internet.”

“For many years we, along with other SEO’s, and search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) have been trying to re-educate web designers to consider search engines and how they navigate websites.”

“Building search engine friendly or accessible websites is not complicated, in fact it’s relatively easy …”

It makes me wonder - if I had received my web development training five to ten years ago, would I be one of those web designers that don’t consider search engine importance? Would I seek training in this area? Maybe like so many designers, I just wouldn’t have the time for it.

So when seeking out a web designer, be sure you get a designer that doesn’t suggest or outsource search engine optimization - they include it.

stevestuff

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Here I am, 3 am Sunday morning, can’t sleep - already slept 3 hours after having 5 St Pauli Girls and a great dinner. Compulsive obsessive, that’s my general personality description according to my girl friend, and I’ll have to agree.

My new home, this weblog at WordPress, does make my internet presence a lot more comfortable. I simply LOVE this design. I never thought it’d be like this. So now, maybe I’ll put up more posts - maybe not: I’m compulsive obsessive and I just might find another new endever.

My new home here is also a double-wide: with dual monitors. I feel that it’s a necessity for a web designer asa designer usually has 3 to 5 programs going at the same time. Then with a few folders open and a bunch of files scattered all over, I don’t see how this job can be done efficently on one screen.

After my eMachine blew up, I saw the opportunity to revamp my workplace and I hope somebody at the Goodwill will enjoy the 19″ CRT I’ll be donating. And that’s what started this transformation.

New monitors AND a new PC - but I was a bit leery of this replacement; a “Great Quality Systems” machine made by Fry’s Electronics. With only 512MB of ram, still it performs better than the 3 year old 1GB eMachine that didn’t have a dual processor - this’ll have 1.5GB to 2GB soon.

With a year’s training behind me, now feeling confident enough to make websites for others, my next step is to learn active content. I think that WordPress with it’s PHP format will come to be a great learning tool.

So what about this design, did I make it myself? No, but I could have designed the graphics for it. And the PHP pages? Maybe by this time next year. One thing curious about this theme: there is no credit for the designer. I looked in the source codes and it’s not there, either - not sure if I can remember where I got it from, I was all over the place when I was looking for this.

Starting out at Theme Viewer, I traveled through Mashable’s 30+ WordPress 3-Coluimn Themes, on to doshdosh’s Adsense Optomized Themes, then browsed through the themes at mandarinmusing. Venturing off track to a few sites having 2 - 10 themes displayed (N.Design Studio for 1), I browsed to Smashing Magazine - their “83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen” But that’s not where I found this either (presently searching through my history pages).

Kaushal Sheth also has a great variety of themes to sort through. Could have been WordPress Theme, maybe it was themesBase.com, CSS Design Templates, or … FOUND IT - Themebot.

Well, at least I gave myself a run-for-it - had to, I’m compulsive obsessive!

stevestuff

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Totally affordable computer, deliverable most anywhere in the world. Yup, you read right: priced at $150, this is a high quality, brand new laptop for the everyday user. OK, so it may not be the fastest out there, but hey - $150!

Features:

• Intel® Celeron 1.5 GHz CPU
• 14″ Widescreen X-bright LCD
• 256 MB Ram memory
• 40 GB Hard Drive
• 802.11g Wireless LAN
• Optimized Linux operating system
• Pre-installed office and multimedia applications

medisoncelebrity.com

stevestuff

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Install Ubuntu from Windows in 3 Steps without Using a CD

VERY FAST - it will download the appropriate version and all you have to do is select the size of the partition..It wont effect windows at all because its on a virtual drive … no repartitioning of your hard drive!

read more | digg story

stevestuff

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