Archive for the ‘websites’ Category

This WordPress page comments tutorial explains how to easily set the WordPress 3.x page no comments setting without code edits. Comment settings for blog posts and pages are controlled under the admin menu option for Settings, and then Discussion, yet the only choice is a check box to allow comments, or not.

People want a better choice to allow or not allow WordPress page comments without affecting blog posts.

Custom web design clients with the WordPress platform as a CMS Content Management System usually want comments on blog posts, but not on pages. As WordPress continues to gain popularity as a CMS solution, it doesn’t make sense to have static looking pages like the Home page, About Us, or Contact forms with an option to leave comments.

The ability to add, edit, or delete content without advanced technical skills means “keep it simple” for novice site owners. Currently as of the date of this tutorial, a formal feature request to set the default for pages and posts independently under the setting for discussions remains open 6 months after the request was made.

Easy Solution for WordPress 3.x Website Page Comments Settings

This illustrated tutorial provides an easy 3 step process for setting “no comments” on WordPress 3.x pages while you are actually creating a new page. Note: Illustrations are smaller than actual size.

Click any illustration for an enlarged full size view.

Step One: Click

Click the “Screen Options” in the far upper right of your admin edit screen next to the Help button.

Step Two: Check

Check the box for “Discussion” from the popup section that appears.

Step Three: Uncheck

Uncheck the box for “Allow comments” further down the page just below the page text edit box.

If you overlooked the settings and notice pages have the comment section, return to the page edit in admin and follow these same steps.

Publish your new page and the comment section will not be displayed at the bottom of the published page. If you are doing an edit of selections on an existing page, select the “Update” button instead of “Publish”. You’re done.

Again, this WordPress page comments tutorial is a fast and easy solution as of the date of this post to the current WordPress version 3.3.1. Once the feature request is implemented in a future WordPress update this tutorial may not be needed.

The best solution is WordPress core files that provide a separate allow comments checkbox for posts, and another for pages, so you never have to remember to reset it for new pages in the future.

Maybe the WordPress team will surprise us and make the default setting already unchecked for allow comments on pages!

Learn web design solutions for email in your web design to give a professional first impression, add credibility, and avoid spam. Nearly half the websites for custom web design clients I’ve helped over the last 15 years use a free email service like AOL, GMail, Hotmail, or Yahoo because it is familiar and easy to use.

This tutorial is intended for small business or sole proprietor owners where one person handles email.

My advice is having email links in your web design that send email to info@[your domain] as the primary. Having multiple email addresses on your website like sales@, service@, or even employee names is fine, too.

The key to giving that positive first impression that adds credibility is having an email address that matches your www domain name.

An email address to match your domain is more professional and shows sophistication.

Internet service providers who provide www domain name registration and monthly hosting include email packages. Choices are direct email where you select the prefix like info@ and a password to access email, or forwarding where your email is set up to be sent to another email account.

Whether direct or forwarding, you can have an email link in your web design that matches the domain.

With a direct email account that requires a password, the site owner can then use whatever email program they have on their computer to receive incoming email and reply directly without logging on to a website to view email or reply.

If you only use forwarding, your incoming email arrives automatically to the forwarding address, so if using one of those free email services, you would log on to their website with your existing password to view your inbox. Using Yahoo as an example, the downside is you can only reply with that Yahoo address.

Email replies with an address from a free service are more likely to be sent to your spam folder, or marked as spam by the customer because it is suspicious. Why risk losing a sale because your email reply address was unfamiliar?

Personally, I prefer using both direct and forwarding.

By using info@ as the primary direct email address you only have one email account to set up on your computer. Additional forwarded addresses used as email links in the web design for sales, service, or other departments are forwarded to the info@ automatically.

As a result, when I click the receive button on my computer, emails from any links on my website all arrive in one inbox. Regardless of the incoming prefix, all return replies are sent from that one info@ address, so the matching domain will be familiar, more credible, and less likely to be trashed as spam.

If you never bought premium email software, not to worry. All computers have at least one free email program that you can use. The most common email software packages for free from my experience are Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail.

Your domain, hosting, and email service provider likely has written step by step instructions with settings for creating the email account on your computer. Search their help files or contact them for assistance.

Finally, don’t make the mistake of hard coding your email address in your web design.

Spammer robots surf the internet looking at code and will recognize email addresses to harvest and use, or sell to other spammers. You should cloak your email so it cannot be recognized. View and download this PDF, 4 pages, titled web design email link tutorial to begin protecting your website from spammers.

Having a web design that gives a professional first impression, adds credibility, and avoids spam is not difficult. Work through the advice given to enhance your website email links, and ask for assistance from your service provider if needed to start using an email address that matches your www domain.

Another custom cms website design launched earlier today with a custom cms attorney web design for Komara & Cranton, P.A.

Partners Kenneth Joseph Komara, Esq. and George D. Cranton, Jr., Esq., serve Osceola County and Orange County in Central Florida, and specialize in Family Law, Personal Injury, Criminal Law, Traffic Cases, Juvenile Cases, Forfeitures, or Record Sealing and Expungements.

Komara & Cranton, P.A. has an office in Kissimmee, Florida, one block south of the Osceola County Courthouse.

The initial custom cms web design includes pages for Home, Staff, Individual Profiles, Legal Services, Location, and Legal Links. For now the site navigation includes main horizontal tabs with dropdown menus under the Staff tab with links to individual profiles of each attorney.

This web design was an upgrade to an older site on a different domain with outdated information, and includes a bolder new look appropriate for an attorney or law firm website.

A key advantage of a custom cms web design is the ability to easily add new content for less than the cost of static pages. Advanced features to add easily include video, audio, or contact forms, and the cms website may be expanded in the future with a matching blog if needed.

Wondering if a custom cms, content management system, web design is right for you? Contact us today with any questions.

The website optimization strategy in the SEO for 2012 Report tutorial released last month works, and this case study provides evidence. You must invest time to improve and promote your website to achieve online success.

A recent custom cms web design implementing the principles in that seo search engine optimization strategy blog post has performed beyond expectations in less than 2 months.

Launched on 4 December 2011, the new dog rescue custom cms website for Lifeline Dog Rescue, a division of Central Florida Weimaraner & Dog Rescue, Inc., demonstrates remarkable success.

In summary, the first strategy for attracting search engine traffic begins with providing a positive visitor experience by creating high quality original content often. You cannot launch a new website and then ignore adding fresh content if you want to motivate happy visitors to return.

Likewise, a dynamic site that changes often will attract search engines to return and index updates frequently.

The second strategy is creating off site content in social communities that directs visitors to your website. The seo report recommends becoming active on social network websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Flickr. A key feature on this new custom cms web design is social network icons linking to those sites and social bookmarking sites.

Those icons and links make social interaction easy. Being active on social networks and interacting with your contacts provides real time off site quality content that enhances your positive reputation for visitors and search engines.

Consider the following milestones achieved with the custom cms web design and social network accounts for Lifeline Dog Rescue. Clues to the success may be found by viewing the social site icons and statistics at the bottom of their home page.

In less than 7 weeks as of 31 January 2012, the stats show 92 likes on Facebook, 146 tweets on Twitter, 2 Google plus one shares, and 16 links to social bookmarking sites. Keep in mind those numbers are just for their home page.

Next, consider Alexa traffic numbers for the Lifeline website. Lower ranking indicates higher traffic in comparison to competition between 100+ million other websites. Lifeline launched ranked at 16 million. As of the date of this post the rank is 797,404. Any number under 1 million puts your website in the top 1%.

Stats tracking likewise shows 1) a steady increase in traffic, 2) a very low bounce rate meaning visitors land on one page and continue to expore more pages, plus 3) the rate of return visitors continues to climb which indicates popularity.

Why does this seo search engine optimization strategy work so well? It depends on quality content and natural methods for attracting search engines. The strategy is forward looking and considers the importance of human interaction and not just mathematical algorithms of Google crawlers to determine website ranking.

Is it simple? Yes. Is it easy? Not really. You must still invest time on website content and social connections. Site owners who recognize and implement this simple strategy will reap the benefits of staying ahead of their competitors who do not.

View and download the 2012 SEO Design Strategy Tutorial (pdf, 13 pgs., 96kb) and then apply these principles of website success.

Improve and enhance SEO search engine optimization of website content with this 2012 SEO web design strategy tutorial. Unlike printed marketing materials to promote your business product or service, your website content is easily changed.

This new 13 page SEO search engine optimization tutorial download provides readers an up to date strategy to implement on their website to enhance their online success in 2012.

Please note that you do NOT have to register or reveal your email address to get this free SEO and web design tutorial. Simply click the link in the last paragraph below.

Website owners can perform this annual website content review even if they outsource the actual web design to a web developer or delegate the task to an employee. Take one day to invest the time in learning these basics to apply to your website and help promote your business online, and then review the results with the person responsible for managing your website.

View the 2012 SEO Design Strategy Tutorial (pdf, 13 pgs., 96kb) online now, or open it to download to your computer and read later.

A new web design and matching blog launched earlier this month with a custom CMS for Lifeline Dog Rescue. A CMS or content management system style of web design allows the owner to take control and manage site content without advanced technical skills.

In addition to the main website and blog design, social site pages were created for the client and the site features links to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.

Lifeline Dog Rescue is a non-profit caring for Weimaraner and other breeds of dogs providing shelter, fostering, and adoption. They are a division of Central Florida Weimaranaer & Dog Rescue, Inc., a Florida non-profit corporation since 2011.

Headquarters are in Davenport, Florida, and the 3 acre rescue property with private lake and enclosed on all sides with fence, is in Okeechobee, Florida. Plans for the future as early as 2012 include doubling the size of the dog rescue property, and the number of at risk dogs being rescued and placed for adoption.

Visit the Lifeline Dog Rescue Florida non-profit website to learn more about their work and how you may help.

The key to search ranking in a phrase is still “add original quality content often”, and a recent article on the official Google Webmasters Blog provides advice to implement this strategy. Read the post entitled More Guidance on Building High Quality Sites, and then compare your website content to the Google web design quality list plus the analysis here.

Rather than list each question or duplicate that portion of the Google blog post, readers may follow the link above and read for themselves.

Instead, our analysis will pick out the negative web design and seo search engine optimization factors as mentioned to highlight strategies to avoid that violate best practices.

The photo shown is a Google logo bumper sticker that I received by mail. Google represents more than 80% of search engine traffic to my website. It makes sense to follow their quality advice. Here’s my analysis.

Avoid the following seo or web design strategies:

• duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles
• spelling, stylistic, or factual errors
• attempting to guess what might rank well
• content mass-produced or outsourced
• sloppy or hastily produced content
• an excessive amount of ads
• lacking in helpful specifics
• content that might cause users to complain

Knowing the negative factors and realistically evaluating your website content to eliminate violations is key to ranking well in Google. Each item listed above violates the words “original and quality” in the phrase “add original quality content often”.

Apply this analysis to your plan for creating new web design content as well as evaluating existing site articles or pages. Older sites may have outdated content published years earlier that may not accurately present facts about information that has subsequently changed.

If adding content often is important, some website owners may be reluctant to remove previously published information thinking more is better. However, outdated or inaccurate content violates the word “quality”, so reasonable choices are to edit the information and republish, or remove it entirely.

Important: Negative ranked content can impact and lower the ranking of all pages on your website including quality content pages.

Our advice? Edit or delete poor content that violates the rules for a high quality website design, and then follow the advice from the Google blog and our quality analysis presented here.

This tutorial is for custom web designers looking to offer clients optional QR codes, those square barcodes that link mobile devices to websites. The target market to reach is users with an iPhone, smart phone, or other capable mobile device when thinking about adding mobile app QR codes in web designs.

After “What are QR codes?” and “How do you create QR codes?”, the big question becomes “Are QR codes appropriate in web design?” This tutorial answers those questions.

What Are QR Codes?

You’ve likely seen print ads with a box of complicated black and white coded squares and rectangles that remind you of common line bar codes. Perhaps you’ve wondered how to create the complex mobile app version that people scan with their camera, and exactly what data you can embed.

The graphic above shows two versions of QR codes as examples of what designers could use in a custom web design. The left one with the blue background decodes as a clickable hyperlink to the home page of this blog. The right one with a green background will display a simple text message of that same link though not clickable.

The background color is for illustration only and is not required for the QR code to function. The graphic could be further enhanced in a variety of colors for aesthetics, yet that doesn’t improve the ability to scan and decode them with the camera on your iPhone, smart phone, or other mobile device.

At least 7 types of data may be encoded in a custom QR code including: URL website link, text message, phone number, SMS message, email link, contact entry, or calendar entry. At present, and in addition from research I’ve done, less than half of mobile device owners know how to scan a QR code.

How Do You Create QR Codes?

How can you create the customized QR code graphic? This online tool to generate a custom QR code was used for this blog post illustration. Visit that link to try theirs or search Google for others, as well.

The example QR codes above were purposely put close together to make them difficult if not impossible to scan. Think about hyperlinked QR codes in a web design for a moment. That link is viewed while on your website, so it doesn’t make sense to force a site visitor to take the extra time to scan the graphic when a simple text hyperlink will do the job.

Are QR Codes Appropriate in Web Design?

Before adding a QR code to a web design, consider the practical point of view of your website visitor. They don’t need links for navigation. A well designed website will have contact methods to include mailto: links for emailing, your physical address, and certainly phone number info on every page.

A mobile device owner on your website likely has an app to use those links or copy/paste text of contact info. The other data options are secondary until an introduction is made and the casual prospect shows genuine interest in becoming an actual customer.

For those web designers staying in touch with the latest in technology, and hoping to justify adding mobile app QR codes in web designs, all is not lost. Whether you provide graphic design services or your client takes care of artwork for print, you can still use the advice in this QR code tutorial including that online tool to supply the “artwork” of the custom QR code.

Conclusions and QR Code Tutorial Tips

My advice is avoiding QR codes in web design, yet web designers can demonstrate sophistication by teaching clients how to use a QR code with an embedded link to their website for print ads, brochures, and more. Don’t try embedding a lengthy amount of data in a QR code. It may be too complex to scan for some devices and others might give up trying.

Bonus QR code tutorial tip: Before adding mobile app QR codes in web designs or providing a custom QR code graphic for print, make sure to test the artwork to confirm it actually works. Test on a variety of devices, not just top of the line mobile phones.

Don’t offer QR code artwork for print if you do not have software to generate a high resolution version at 300dpi or better. It would be a disaster and likely ruin your reputation if the client pays for 10,000 post cards or 500,000 newspaper ads with a defective QR code.

I finally got around to a makeover of the first blog template I ever designed which seems overdue after being in custom web design full time since 2004 and doing websites more as a hobby since the mid-1990′s.

The screenshot here (smaller than actual size) is from the newly designed Growin’ Up in Maine personal blog where I tell stories of “Childhood Memories of Small Town Maine Life During the 1950′s and 60′s”.

While at it, I moved the blog from free hosting on Google’s Blogspot.com to a custom domain. Buying the custom domain through Google for $10 includes free hosting, so the old blog has a new template and home on a TLD top level domain.

The future cost to keep it online is $10 a year.

Originally the plan was to use the blog as a test site for offering custom blog design services, and the intent was to learn template design from the experiment then trash the blog.

To my utter surprise people my age in the boomer generation just loved the stories that brought back memories of their childhood. Based on the popularity and positive feedback I decided to keep the blog going.

The top header in the Blogger template design uses original photographs I took this summer in Maine for a widescreen view of the place we referred to as Down Back for 3 generations in the 1900′s.

Additional photos and video footage were used to create a YouTube video that you may want to view showing that special place including the old swimming hole Down Back on the Sebec River in Derby, Maine.

At times I’ve gone months without writing new stories, but that’s about to change after this makeover of the first blog I ever designed. Watch the video. Check out the new look of the Growin’ Up in Maine template and blog.

Bookmark the site or subscribe to the rss feed to read future stories about what it was like living life in a small Maine town.

Here’s a web design META Title tutorial with positive advice to follow after the post recently about page titles and what NOT to do.

Each page META Title on your site is like a newspaper headline to grab attention. A single sentence that web designers use is the META Description that states the essence of the content on that page. These elements appear in the code and require key words to optimize the seo value and rank well with search engines. This strategy is part of the technical aspect of writing for the web.

The title of your page is usually the visible headline at the top in the on page content, plus if properly used as the META title it will appear off page at the very top of the screen next to the logo of your browser brand. If bookmarked as a favorite the title becomes a summary or reminder in your visitor’s bookmarks, too.

The page title continues to be THE most important seo high value item on each website page. It makes sense to give extra thought to your equivalent of a newspaper headline to capture the interest of readers and motivate them to continue exploring your site.

A good website page or blog post title often takes as much time to write as the actual article. Keep the POW factor in mind as you write title headlines. Less is more is an old yet accuracte advertising adage. In the case of titles my advice is using 6 words or less for website page or blog post titles. “Man Bites Dog” is a favorite example of a short headline that grabs attention.

This advice bears repeating: The page title continues to be THE most important seo high value item on each website page.

If you take all the advice written by dozens of experts, the ONE top key seo factor for ranking well is something you can learn to your advantage over competition to attract search engine traffic to your website.

Interested readers may want to learn more about seo for META Descriptions and search engine strategy in a blog post written last week at my collaboration web design site opened earlier this year with my son.