Working With Web Designer, Not Against

If you want to ensure that you get a great custom website design you need to learn how to work with a website designer instead of against them. Working against them can cause stress and anger not to mention loss of income and added expense. While you need to take an active role in the development of a website you need to learn how to work with the designers. Here are a few tips that you can use to make this much easier to do.

Know what you want before you meet with them
Most designers will schedule an initial consultation with you. They want to use this time to get to know you and your business as well. It is a good idea to go into this initial consultation with as much information as possible. If the company you have been working for has given you a creative brief or other questionnaire you need to fill it out. You want to make sure that you have the following information with you when you go and see a website designer for the first time:

* A list of websites that you like and ones that you don't
* Ideas about what colors you like best and which ones you do not want to see used in your site
* A list of functions or tasks you need your site to be able to perform (such as ecommerce or areas that are password protected)
* Digital versions of your logo or photographs that you want to include on your site
* Give constructive criticism

Once your initial consultation has taken place and you have been presented with a rough draft of what your website will look like it is important to give constructive criticism. If you don't like something be able to tell your website designer why you don't like it and how you would like it to change. This may mean alterations to the layout, color scheme or other elements. If you are able to say why you do not like something and how you would like it changed it can allow your designer to work with you more easily.

It can also be helpful to tell your designer what areas you particularly like and why as this can also give the designer an idea of how your mind works, what your preferences are and what you want your site to look like.

Give your feedback in a timely fashion
There is nothing wrong with taking a little bit of time to go over a site before you give your constructive criticism. You should, however, be able to tell them what you do or do not like in a fairly reasonable amount of time. Remember that your feedback may be needed in order to allow the project to move forward and if the design team does not have your feedback they cannot complete a project. There is no sense in fighting with a Website designer about a missed deadline if you have not given them the information they need to do their design work for you.


Article Source: Jeremy Horwitz is a freelance author who writes about various Website Design topics. To know more about Jeremy's Ideas please visit his website. www.website-design-company.net

1 Out Of 8 Virus Attacks: USB Device

From the folks at MonkeyDrunk: USB Virus Attacks

Microsoft Moves Millions To WordPress

More connections. More people. More WordPress.

Last week Microsoft announced it would migrate 30+ million current users from its Windows Live Spaces blogging platform over to WordPress.

“Microsoft says that it decided that instead of building its own competing blogging service, it should go with WordPress’s fleshed-out feature set, which has 26 million users and powers over 8.5% of sites across the web. Users will be migrated through a process that preserves all of their content, and will automatically redirect visitors who head to their existing Microsoft Live Spaces sites,” according to techcrunch.com.

We first read about this development in this article at churchcrunch.com and were pleasantly surprised to see that Microsoft is doing something that seems unmicrosoftish; it’s doing something that seems to make sense to the rest of us!

And a very big thing to consider with this move is the 30+ million people that will be added to the WordPress community, added to interactivity… added to the market! More people to reach – more people to serve.

Do I need To Copyright My Site?

You’ve probably noticed phrases like “All Rights Reserved” or “Copyright 2010,” or perhaps the copyright symbol and a date at the bottom of a website. But what do these words really mean on a website? Do you need to copyright your website? Here’s the inside scoop on what a copyright is and when you need register your website with the U.S. Copyright Office.

What is a Copyright?

Copyright falls under the auspices of intellectual property law and protects the rights of creators of original works of authorship whether the work in question is published or not. Original works of authorship include literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works such as poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer software, and photography. By law, when something is written, drawn, photographed, etc., its copyright is automatically owned by the author. In other words, a copyright exists at the moment the work is created.

Registering a copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office is voluntary. Copyright protection exists without registration; however, your work must be registered before you can file a copyright infringement case in a US court. In addition, registration of copyright makes it easier to prove ownership of your work in the event of an infringement and allows you to collect more in damages from the infringer.

While the concept of copyright is fairly clear-cut when it comes to literary works like books, it’s less clear in regard to websites and the information contained therein.

Why Should I Worry About Registering a Copyright?

In the past, the only people who had to worry about copyrights were writers, artists, musicians, and others in related professions. Today, with the onset of digital media, it’s a different story. Many people who wouldn’t call themselves writers or artists have personal or business-related websites that contain written material, photographs, or graphics that are original works and therefore eligible for copyright registration. The code and design elements of websites can also be copyrighted by their owners.

Website publishers are often victims of copyright infringement by unknowing or unscrupulous individuals who think nothing of copying someone else’s work and passing it off as their own. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to completely prevent infringement, but marking your website material with “All Rights Reserved” or using the copyright symbol can be enough of a deterrent to prevent many potential offenders from stealing your work. You may display the copyright symbol or language claiming copyright even if you choose not to register your work.

Should I Register the Copyright to My Website?

Copyright violation is always illegal, but it can be difficult to prosecute offenders without copyright registration, which establishes a public record of ownership. In addition, owners of registered works may be eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees in successful litigation against infringers.

All websites and their content are inherently copyrighted, provided they are original works. Whether you decide to complete copyright registration for your website is your choice. If the content of your website is valuable to you, financially or otherwise, or if you feel you need to protect your website and its contents for legal reasons, then taking a few minutes to register the copyright to your website is probably worthwhile. If you do decide to copyright your website, a good online legal forms/copywrite service can help.

Copyrighting your creative work protects it from unauthorized use. With a registered copyright, you control how your work is reproduced, distributed and presented publicly.

A good copyright service can help you quickly and easily copyright original works of authorship including books, movies, songs, paintings, photographs, and website content.

When a copyright service uses the Copyright Office’s electronic application, your registration certificate could arrive up to 6 months earlier than a traditional paper application.

SafeHouse Web recently priced some of the online forms & service providers, such as LegalZoom and LawDepot, and found an average price to be around $115 for the service and $35 for the government filing fee.

4 Ways To Better Business Credibility

Here are a few steps we can all keep in mind to help remain focused on building the credibility of our business:

In my overall efforts, I work at developing a target market, a point of differentiation and marketing materials to support my business. Everything I do is targeted at building the know, like, and trust factor with prospective clients. In order to develop trust, one has to demonstrate credibility. What can we do demonstrate and improve credibility?

Partnering with another provider. While you might aspire to work with a certain target market, in some cases, you just don’t have the level of experience to go after some of those opportunities. Sometimes it might make sense to partner with another provider (yes, even a competitor). If you can’t get the job yourself and it’s a large enough project for two of you to work together—why not? There’s little chance that you’d get the job on your own so there’s little risk for you.

Marketing materials. It’s surprising how many business don’t actually have anything written down. Admittedly, this is one of the weaker points in my marketing efforts with SafeHouse Web, but it’s these kinds of simple reminders that can help us all. For those businesses just getting started, prepare yourself a marketing kit. This can be a simple folder with several one page documents including your marketing story (discussing your company and why you do what you do), your difference, a list of products or services, a page of testimonials, and any case studies you can provide. These kinds of materials can go a long way in building trust and confidence with a potential client. Giving a consistent look and feel to all of your on-line accounts helps to demonstrate that you’ve taken the details into account. Think about both the online and offline presence including your social media accounts.

Professional Email Address. Think twice about using a gmail or yahoo or hotmail email address for your business email. I agree that the ability to access these kinds of email accounts is easy, however, it detracts from creating a credible business. You can still use these types of accounts but use with them an alias that incorporates your business name. Or, in the case of a referral and following a recommendation from me, you would register, host and email-manage your domain name through Dreamhost; Google’s Gmail is the client that manages the email accounts, so all the ease of enterprise-class “webmail” can be had right alongside the professionalism of having your own domain name as your email address. Spectacular!

Create and use an audit process in your business. In almost any business, you can create a list of activities to review to ensure thoroughness. Whether you’re an IT company who’s just performed a software upgrade, a senior’s life assistance service taking on a new client, a photographer preparing for an event, or a marketing coach doing a marketing material audit, prepare and use a checklist to demonstrate a level of experience that shows that you’ve done this before and that your process is comprehensive.

These are just four simple ways to help improve the credibility of your business. What else have you done to give your credibility a boost?

Audience and WordPress

Here are a few thoughts about proven benefits to the success of most any business website; they are thoughts with audience in mind (i.e. what’s your target market?).

Given: Content is king.
Given: SEO is vital.
Given: Your audience has expectations.

When we talk about the best, and easiest, ways to wrap these 3 “givens” together in a productive approach to building or modifying a website, there are some must-have functionalities that include calendars, downloads, images and surveys. We find that WordPress is the best, and easiest, way to take action!

EVENT CALENDAR
Keep your audience in the know regarding important dates that may include special releases of content, speaking engagements, conferences or significant live events. A quick & easy, popular & readily available solution is to include your Google Calendar on your website; there are many good plugin solutions available with WordPress. Calendars inherently denote fresh content – good for SEO.

UPLOAD/DOWNLOAD AREA
If you offer your audience podcasts, video content or PDF files, it is necessary for there to be a location where the content can be downloaded. Some businesses find advantage in having a designated download area, while others use the immediate interactivity of having downloads available as part of a specific post or page.

IMAGE GALLERY
Image galleries can enhance any website, even if the images aren’t products you sell. For artists, image galleries make even more sense, especially when the galleries display the artist’s talent. Your audience enjoys visual stimulation. The SEO consideration here is: do you have a Flickr channel, a YouTube channel or even a shareable photo album on Facebook? Having a presence in these areas, and linking that to you website, is good for SEO.

SURVEY TOOL
Do you care about how your audience perceives your website and brand? Are you interested in what you can do to make their experience even better? A survey on your website will give your audience the opportunity to tell you what they think. And when you publish the results of that survey, you get to do a Press Release and spread the word through all of your other channels (facebook, twitter, linkedin, etc.) – good for SEO.

These are just four examples of additional features you can add and easily manage with a WordPress-based website. Their functionality speaks directly to your audience and their benefits shout loudly at the “givens” of content and SEO. As a premier content management system (CMS), WordPress continues to add to its boastroll.

And we enjoy the boast! Let’s build your new website – your new tool to talk to your audience – with success at hand.

It Comes Up Repeatedly: Easy Blogging Steps

Repetition, when you want to do something well, is a good idea. Learn the right way to do it and then repeat, repeat, repeat, until you continually improve. Blogging is no different, nor is the need to repeatedly go back to a list or an outline of what your blogging about, why you’re blogging about it, and the basics of what any blog should include. While there are many, many lists out there and , even here you will see different variations on blogging tips, it is always good to keep the same basic principals drilled into your head.

So here you go! These 5 can help you make sure you get the most out of your blog activity; a short list of some blog framework that you can hang your quality content on:

• Be informative – you’re trying to create an impression that you are knowledgeable about your business. Your reputation matters so be sure to stay current and check your facts. Initial blog posts can include items like a history of your business and how you got started. Future blog posts can highlight new products and services, special events, employees, or tips for customers.

• Use keywords wisely – one of your goals is to increase your visibility, so it is wise to use words that people will use when searching for your types of business on the web. Each blog post should have a title as a headline that will attract attention and be relevant to the post.

• Quantity matters – in order to attract the attention of search engines, you will need to develop content with substance. A simple headline or single sentence is not going to grab someone’s attention or help get your post found on Google or Yahoo!

• Frequency matters too – if your blog content is updated and you add new information frequently, you can keep customers interested and search engines will index your pages at regular intervals.

• Grammar and spelling count – It only takes a few extra moments to check your posts before putting them on the web. Keep your posts looking professional and make sure there are no spelling errors or grammatical mistakes. You can create your content in Microsoft Word, check for spelling and grammar errors and then paste it into your blog.

Need help setting up the tech side of your blog? Just want to have some help putting it together? We’re just a call or click away…. and it won’t cost an arm & a leg.

WordPress 3.0 Released

After a half year’s work, the developers are going to get some rest and their byproduct is running happily into the jungle.

WordPress 3.0 has been released. The folks over at WP have dubbed their latest and greatest as “Thelonius.” At the time of this post being published, I am still doing research as to the origin of the dub – my guess, it’s going to be a humor-added discovery.

You can now take WP 3.0 for a test drive and check out the many new features that are available. Head over to www.wordpress.org for the free download, the Famous 5 Minute Install Guide, or the full-blown documentation and support resources. Many people already use WordPress for many things other than just blogging but this release will certainly create opportunities for managing content even more effortlessly than before.

WordPress was first released in 2003 as a content management system intended for bloggers, and today is regarded as the most popular blogging software available and a CMS-favorite of professionals and do-it-yourselfers, alike. WordPress is constantly being upgraded with great new features that make it possible to use it as a full website CMS instead of just a blogging platform. Many blogs and even large business sites are using WordPress as their CMS: CNN, Wall Street Journal, Nikon, Pepsi, etc. No question about it, WordPress 3.0 has extended the possibilities for creating a full website with a user-friendly CMS for clients.

New Menu Management Feature

In my opinion, this is one of the most noteworthy new features with WordPress 3.0, and it’s included in the default installation. Before this, it was possible to create a dynamic menu with some plugins and/or WordPress ninja skills. But it was never very easy to accomplish and now they’ve made it super simple.

You can add pages, categories, and even custom website links. With the custom website links option, you could link straight to a post, another website, whatever you want. It’s very user-friendly and setup similar to the current sidebar widget area where you can easily drag and drop to customize it just the way you like.

Custom Post Types

Currently, you can only create pages and posts with WordPress. In 3.0, you can create your own custom post types, and set up the appropriate fields to go along with each. When a user chooses a new post type, something like a Podcast, they will just add a podcast, simple as that. You don’t need to walk your clients through a complicated process and explain why they need to add a new post for a podcast and then click on a certain category and fill in a certain custom field. It’s one step now, and clients will love the simplicity. It does require the use of a plugin, but before it required much more work to setup.

Multi-User

WordPress MUhas been around as a separate entity for a while but will now be integrated in WordPress 3.0. MU allows you to maintain multiple sites from a single admin panel. It’s great for anyone that runs more than one site or blog and would like the simplicity of logging in once and maintaining them all from one place. This is especially helpful if these sites share content, templates, or plugins. One installation means less work and less time to create the same thing.

This isn’t completely setup in the default installation, but it’s fairly easy to get it up and going. First add this line to wp-config.php.

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

Now “Network” will appear under Tools in the main menu. Once there, fill in the Network Title, Admin Email Address and press Install. WordPress gives you the option to set these sites up under sub domains or sub directories. If you’ve installed this version of WordPress in a sub directory or you’re using localhost, WordPress requires that you use sub directories.

Other Noteworthy Features

You can now choose your own username and password in the installation process, no more auto generated passwords using the admin username. Not only is this cool, but also a significant security improvement.

The new default theme, Twenty Ten, is nicer. It’s clean and lightweight with minimal style attributes.

I’m looking forward to a couple of things with WP 3.0: Getting our existing clients upgraded, and then proactively using 3.0 for as many new website installations as possible. At SafeHouse Web, I think it’s important to stay as close to the leading edge in a new Release Version – while many people will remain complacent with their WP 2.9 (or earlier) installations (which are very strong platforms, don’t get me wrong), I have experienced the benefits of being able to confidently tell my clients that they are getting the best, newest WP version to run their business website.

How Do I Optimize My Site

Optimize it for humans, and it will be optimal for engines, too:

1. Publish good material.
2. Publish good material well! Standards for online content authors
3. Link to good material.

OK, maybe that’s not the complete story but it’s the best you can get in a short answer. To quote Michael Torbert, maintainer of “All in One SEO Pack”, the most popular WordPress plugin currently:

The biggest thing, of course, for SEO [...] is content. That will never change and it’s become increasingly, more and more important [...] as the search engines get better and better determining what is on your page and parsing through all that data. So, having good content is the key.

Michael Torbert, AKA hallsofmontezuma, in: “All In One SEO To Go”

With that said, search engines can always use a little help to index a website better. There are two very popular WordPress plugins suited for this.

“Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress” is a must-have. It automates the generation of an XML sitemap, a document recommended by the search companies themselves.

An XML sitemap tells web crawlers (also known as “spiders”, “robots” or just “bots”) where to find the content to be indexed. So, everything is indexed, even pages with no links, internal or external, pointing to them. An XML sitemap helps crawlers in other ways too. For instance, when a crawler sees the same content repeated in the home page and in the permalink of an individual post, it does not have to work too hard to decide which to give more weight to: it just looks at the XML sitemap, and learns that the main and permanent location is the permalink.

XML sitemaps and sitemap pages in websites are DIFFERENT things. The former are unstyled XML documents meant for web crawlers. The latter provide an index, an overview of the site’s content, for human visitors.

“All in One SEO Pack”, the other very popular SEO plugin, does various kinds of optimization. One is similar in purpose to XML sitemaps: It adds noindex tags (“do not index this”) to pages that duplicate content (category pages, tag pages, etc.), so that crawlers can work better.

It can also rewrite page titles, add meta descriptions, and more — see its page for details.

• Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress
• All in One SEO Pack

Both plugins work fine in their default settings. Just install and activate.

7 Things To Stop Doing Now On Facebook

Some of these steps may seem overly protective or overly simple. But, we all know some of the ill-intentioned people out there often thrive on the most simple opportunities. We think this is good stuff to remember and to put into practice; and it really doesn’t have to curtail the entertainment or communication benefits of this powerful social tool!

Using a Weak Password

Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters. One good technique is to insert numbers or symbols in the middle of a word, such as this variant on the word “houses”: hO27usEs!

Leaving Your Full Birth Date in Your Profile

It’s an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you’ve already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the Info tab, then on Edit Information. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.

Overlooking Useful Privacy Controls

For almost everything in your Facebook profile, you can limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or yourself. Restrict access to photos, birth date, religious views, and family information, among other things. You can give only certain people or groups access to items such as photos, or block particular people from seeing them. Consider leaving out contact info, such as phone number and address, since you probably don’t want anyone to have access to that information anyway.

Posting Your Child’s Name in a Caption

Don’t use a child’s name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete it by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn’t on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name.

Mentioning That You’ll Be Away From Home

That’s like putting a “no one’s home” sign on your door. Wait until you get home to tell everyone how awesome your vacation was and be vague about the date of any trip.

Letting Search Engines Find You

To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to the Search section of Facebook’s privacy controls and select Only Friends for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn’t checked.

Permitting Youngsters to Use Facebook Unsupervised

Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities. “What they think is nothing can actually be pretty serious,” says Charles Pavelites, a supervisory special agent at the Internet Crime Complaint Center. For example, a child who posts the comment “Mom will be home soon, I need to do the dishes” every day at the same time is revealing too much about the parents’ regular comings and goings.

What Is A Business Blog?

A Business Blog is an inexpensive, fast way to build an online presence. It is a direct way for business entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants, speakers, authors and other professionals to establish their credibility and expertise. Since your readers can post comments, you create a conversation with your audience and build rapport and trust as a result.

The very nature of a blog is perfect for the busy professional. They are quick and easy to update. You are creating fresh content frequently (two to three times a week is recommended minimum) that is useful to your prospects and customers and loved by search engines. In contrast to “traditional” static website, a blog is a dynamic site that encourages your visitors to interact with you through commenting so they can get to know you better.

When you create a conversation with your audience (visitors, readers, prospects), you are establishing your credibility. You build your network and increase the visibility of your products and services in a casual way.

A blog is an essential tool in the professional’s marketing toolbox. Combined with a website, an ezine, database management and ecommerce system – or any of these pieces – you will have everything you need to develop and run your business locally and globally, online.

Our approach to the Business Blog is this: if it is where you can start today, start! If it is where you can add value to your static website or integrate it into your overall website & online presence plan, add!

Contact us for a free consultation on getting your Business Blog started right away, and the right way.