Archive for the ‘blog’ Category

A long overdue tribute blog in honor of my late grandmother, Beth Parkman (1893-1975), was created and launched in WordPress last weekend. The custom blog features original poems that Grandmother Parkman wrote that were discovered and compiled by her late daughter and my aunt, Eleanor Parkman Heath.

The topics include poems about God, nature, love, and family by Beth Parkman, and more. Her daughter, and my Mom, Blanche Parkman Degerstrom commented about the new blog stating “What a legacy for her children, grandchildren and all to follow. Thank you so much!”.

The WordPress blog features a custom black and white top header showing my Grandmother enjoying the woods of Maine plus a collage of bust portraits of her as young, middle aged, and then later in life. The blog sidebar lists each of her 37 original poems by title in alphabetical order.

A special thanks goes out to my brother, Eric Degerstrom, who took the mimeographed copies of the poems and scanned them using optical character recognition (OCR) to provide digitized plain text of each poem. A lengthy biography of Beth Parkman is included on the About page, also.

Hispanic small business owners represent nearly half my clients for custom web design. I’m pleased to announce a valuable resource by Juan Silvera including his Hispanic Small Business Blog at HispanicSMB.com. El Blog de Juan has been online since 2006 providing valuable insight for Latino small businesses.

Some of my clients contact me for a quality custom website that is designed with bilingual content. Once the English version is launched, site owners have the option of translating all pages for visitors who prefer reading content in Spanish.

In addition to announcing the HispanicSMB site, a link has been added to the Small Business Resource Center blogroll for the benefit of my clients interested in learning more about business trends for US Hispanic businesses. Visit their main site for more content including a Latino small business forum, how-to videos, directory, and library for Latino small business owners.

A second custom integrated blog design launched this week for author Ben Furman of Black Hawk Press. Mr. Furman is an independent publisher and writer, and former FBI Counterterrorism Chief who writes two genres of fiction. The audience for his mature content blog on counterterrorism is adults, and the latest blog features information about his fantasy adventure series for young adults.

Each custom integrated blog matches the pre-existing web design and each sidebar features a custom logo graphic as shown above to illustrate the theme of each blog. The original blog included posts on both themes, and the new blog separates content based on the target audience. Included in the custom integrated blogger template design is an audio player so visitors may listen to book excerpts, also.

The main site has more information on all books including reviews and links to purchase online.

The podcast episode in August 2008 with the do-it-yourself desktop blog and ping tutorial presented a potential problem of broadcasting blog updates for owners with multiple blogs. From testing the free software it was apparent at the time that listing multiple blogs would ping all of them even if only one was updated.

Owners with multiple blogs faced the problem of announcing updates to blog tracking services when in fact only one of several blogs were updated. The solution given at the time was to have separate installations and icons on your desktop for each blog. From my experience since then, and facing this very problem, the solution was simpler than I imagined.

Rather than multiple desktop icons I only list one blog in the program and feature just one blog and ping icon on the desktop. When updating one of my 6-7 blogs I do a quick edit using copy and paste as follows. From the top tool bar select “Menu” and then “Your Blogs” from the drop down menu, and then “Edit Blog” for the single blog listed.

Next, change the title and then copy/paste your blog URL into the next 3 boxes being sure to leave the trailing RSS link in the last box. Save, exit, and then ping and you’re done. Exit the program and then edit the title and URL with copy/paste the next time you update one of your multiple blogs.

This simple method takes 60 seconds to edit each time you post to one of your blogs, so it is efficient without the extra clutter of multiple software installation icons on your desktop.

A custom cms web design launched last week for Atlanta recruiter Fidelis Search, LLC, and includes an integrated matching Blogger custom blog template. Fidelis specializes in assisting Atlanta area corporate clients recruit qualified job seekers for accounting and finance related positions.

The custom recruiting web design includes the ability to easily add unlimited new pages using simple text content and graphics that are converted automatically to xhtml with css to meet W3C standards.

Visit the accountant and financial recruiter website of Fidelis Search, LLC, and check out their new Atlanta Job Blog custom matching blog.

A new custom blogger template launched earlier this week for the publisher and author blog of BlackHawkPress.com. The new integrated blog design color scheme and graphics match the pre-existing web design for a consistent look. Adding a custom integrated blog to any small business website enhances search engine optimization, or seo, and helps attract search engines.

Black Hawk Press is an independent publisher of counterterrorism novels by Ben Furman, publisher and author, as well as another genre with an adventure series of fantasy novels for young adults. Mr. Furman provides an inside look of worldwide intrigue and suspense based on real world experience aimed at adult readers. The childrens series of fantasy adventures offers excitement while providing positive messages for young readers.

The Black Hawk Press blog will feature posts with audio excerpts from their books, insider information about counterterrorism, and professional writing tips by Ben Furman. Follow this link to the custom integrated blog design for Black Hawk Press author Ben Furman to compare the look to their original web design.

Email inquiries received this week from two visitors asked for advice about web design audio and video tips including audio or video templates. Advice given on web design for podcasts, audio books, and video tutorials is presented here for all website and blog or podcast owners.

Here’s some advice for do-it-yourself multimedia audio or video production. The steps involve planning, production, and distribution, so understanding more details helps me offer advice for each step. As just one example, if multimedia is informal just for site visitors, or a downloadable video, you most likely won’t need a CD cover or other artwork unless you need something virtual like an online website graphic.

If I had to specify a quality range for production it would be 1) amateur, 2) advanced, and 3) professional and certainly the costs for production would relate to the quality requirements.

My podcast of web design advice is done at home with a usb stereo microphone and then I use Audacity (freeware) to edit out the uhms, ahhs, and mistakes. I then mix the background music and narration tracks into a single mp3 file. The same process is used in website video production for screencast tutorials on my site except I’m adding the audio track to the video during post production edit.

For podcast episodes, audio interviews, or free online video tutorials I’m content with advanced level quality. For multimedia intended for sale my advice would be higher quality equipment beginning with a condenser microphone to achieve the professional level. Booking time in a recording studio would ensure top quality depending on your audience and budget.

For my readers and site visitors interested in web design services and assistance in do-it-yourself projects for audio or video, be prepared by providing details on those key steps: planning, production, and distribution. Custom website design services include html or xhtml code templates plus scripts or flash for audio players or video players to add to a custom web design.

A new custom integrated blog template design and site addition launched recently for Pacific Rent A Car, a car hire rental company in Cyprus. The new Blogger template for this international client matches their main website except for the addition of a new blog button in the top navigation. Here is a graphic of the matching blog top header and navigation buttons shown smaller than actual size:

The company manager made several comments about the completed car rental blog integration:

I am totally happy. Thank you for the great job. I worked with two different companies from India and they were not able to finish it. You are so professional. I am glad that I trusted you. Thank you very much.

Berkan Ocal, Manager, Pacific Rent A Car, Kyrenia Cyprus

The matching website integrated blog graphics and color scheme are nearly identical and passed tests for cross browser compatibility. While confirming my custom integrated blog design matched their main pages correctly in all major browsers, I reported that their main website only displays properly in IE.

Depending on when they correct their code, readers comparing my design of the Pacific Rent A Car blog and main site are reminded that I only created the custom integrated blog which was done in xhtml with css and displays well in all browsers. Their main site may not depending on your browser. The customer has contacted their original site designers to correct the cross browser compatibility.

A special thanks to Mr. Berkan Ocal for placing his order and confidence with me for a custom integrated blog. The trust of an international client more than 10,000 km (6600 miles) away for custom web design services is certainly appreciated.

Today’s podcast episode of the Small Business Website Mailbag was released earlier and included a free download pdf tutorial for adding a do-it-yourself desktop blog pinging service. The motivation for the podcast episode entitled DIY Desktop Blog and Ping is recent trends with online pinging services, and the need for an alternative method of announcing new blog posts.

In addition, the audio program explains the basics of using blog and ping to easily contact blog tracking services of new blog posts. You may view the DIY Blog and Ping PDF Tutorial online here, or right click to save your copy now. You may want to listen to the podcast episode, and then read along with the tutorial as I follow the step by step process of downloading free software, custom program the software to load your blog info, program a list of ping services, and finally set up an instant one click ping service on your desktop.

The topic for the next episode of the Small Business Website Mailbag web design podcast will cover trends in blog and ping services. From personal experience, and after feedback from a custom cms web design client for custom blogger template design, some ping services for broadcasting new blog post announcements may be in trouble.

Some have closed their websites, and others have been offline for weeks or provided sporadic service. One blog pinging service website changed their home page to a simple announcement that they closed after 4 years due to the time and effort required to track millions of blogs. A free service depends on sponsors or ad revenue to provide an incentive to stay in business. Do-it-yourself blog and ping may be the best alternative.

In addition to the review of trends in blog and ping services, I will introduce a do-it-yourself desktop solution for adding a blog and ping icon on your computer. This is an open source program that I have modified to update the list of target blog tracking services, and podcast listeners will receive links and a blog and ping tutorial that allows them to directly ping services from their desktop.

This blog and ping desktop solution for broadcasting updates to your blog eliminates the middleman, so bloggers may announce blog updates in less than 60 seconds after posting. The software download and custom modification instructions included in the tutorial should take less than 5 minutes to install. You ping 8 major services with a single click, and then a text report lists each blog service with a pingback confirmation that the ping was received successfully.

Check the title and show notes later this week to listen to the podcast episode about do-it-yourself blog and ping for DIY blog promotion.