Archive for December, 2009

When you have a question on a topic, a question/answer website could come in useful to answer that question. Knowing where to look for answers could make the search for that question much shorter. Yahoo Answers is one of many question/answer websites that can help you when Google or other search engines can’t.

Yahoo Answers is where people ask questions on any topic and share opinions, facts and personal experiences to get answers. You can search for answers to questions by most popular, categories, and even do an advanced search for your topic. When the search for the answer to your question is made simple, you can get back to your projects swiftly.

Have a look at my website page in the resources section entitled Use Yahoo Answers for Any Questions You Have or try Yahoo Answers now.

Some other question/answer websites:

Answerbag.com
Answers.com
Blurtit.com
LinkedIn Answers

I’ve recently added a site index for the resources section of my website, seeing as it has grown to over 150 pages. A site index, much like a table of contents, has made navigation much easier because now you can see an entire section of my website at a glance.

The difference between a site index and a sitemap is that a sitemap is usually organized by importance or navigation, where a site index is an alphabetical order list index. This site index provides content overview at a glance to help my visitors navigate around my website. This way I could help engage my website visitors and interest them to navigate through other pages of my website.

By adding a site index to your website you offer easier navigation, more stickiness, increased SEO, and a clear layout of what your website contains. In turn, this could lead to greater traffic and more customers to your business. Have a look at my My Webdesign Resources Site Index.

Read my blog posts on:

Add a Google Searchbox to Your Website
Sitemaps For Your Website

For effective website design I tend to follow these tips to design a fast loading website. Website visitors won’t usually have the patience for a site to load and skip to the next one in search results. A fast loading website can help avoid missing out on potential customers who don’t want to wait for a website to load.

Minimal Number of Images
Minimize the number of images you use on a website and make them simple because load time is more important than a flashy site.

Optimize Your Images
Make sure images are in gif or jpeg format and minimize the image size for fast loading.

Minimal Animated Gifs
Animated gifs can take a long time to load and can distract your website visitors. Using smaller animated gifs could be used to redirect your visitor’s attention to a particular section of your website.

Small and Simple Icons
Avoid large and bulky images because they slow down loading time significantly.

Background Images Instead of Big Images
Using background images for headers and footers reduces the size of the web page, and decreases loading time.

Use CSS Stylesheets
CSS stylesheets can create pleasant text effects and rollovers and still maintain a fast loading website with simple yet good looking text effects.

Utilize Flash Sparingly
Using minimal flash can help your website load faster as well. Flash may slow down loading time for your visitors, and they might just move on to the next website in search engine results.

Design Mostly With HTML
Use HTML as much as possible, using tables, simple fonts, CSS stylesheets and minimize gifs, Flash and bulky images.

Next you can check your load time and get a free evaluation of your website at WebsiteOptimization.com to improve website performance. This tool helps calculate download time, web page size and composition, and incorporates latest, best practices of optimization, web page size trends and guidelines, and website optimization techniques.

Have a look at my website for more about Websiteoptimization.com at my Website Speed Diagnosis Report page. Also have a look at these other tips on my blog.

Just recently added to my resources section of my website is this Resources for Searching Personal Information website page. Whether looking for someone you haven’t talked to in a while or searching to find a business you’re trying to get a hold of, online information can be easy to obtain if you know where to look.

These useful tools can be helpful finding people by name, address, phone number, email, social security, area code, IP address and check criminal, death, divorce background or property records. When you want to trace someone online, these useful Resources for Searching Personal Information can come in handy.

Have a look at these other Resources for Web Design:

Website Design Tools
Useful Web Design Resources
Website Design Webmaster Tools
Other Free Useful Resources Online
Useful Computer Maintenance Tools

Clean your registry for a faster running computer with a safe registry cleaner. Many registry cleaners are malware or adware, so you might have to worry about being forced to purchase the software in order to continue. Sometimes finding a safe registry cleaner isn’t always the easiest an easy task, but AML Registry Cleaner is safe and easy to use.

AML Free Registry Cleaner is registry-cleaning software that will safely clean and repair Windows Registry problems such as cookies, temporary files and recent files with a few clicks. The Registry is the nerve center of your PC, and problems with the Windows Registry are a common cause of Windows crashes and error messages.

Registry cleaning is suggested to be done every couple of days, or less often if you don’t use your computer very often. The instructions are simple. After installation when the registry cleaner asks if you want to create a registry backup click “cancel”. Then run a “scan now” and then “fix all”. Once that is complete simply open the disk cleaner then run a “start” on each radio button across the top including Temporary Files, Recent Files, Temp Internet Files and Cookies. By keeping your registry clean you can keep your PC running quickly and efficiently.

More about AML Free Registry Cleaner
Download AML Free Registry Cleaner

Using SEO tools for website design can give you the cutting edge over your competition. When you keep track of your backlinks, domain stats, duplicate content, keywords and keyword density, and Google, Yahoo and Alexa rank, you may be indexed more often with search engines. When your website is indexed better by search engines, the amount of your website visitors may increase, in turn generating a greater number of potential customers.

SEO Tools from Tools For Search Engine Optimization:

Alexa Ranking Tool
Backlink Builder
Backlink Anchor Text Analysis
Backlink Summary
Check Yahoo WebRank
Domain Age Tool
Domain Stats Tool
Keyword Density Checker
Keyword Playground
Keyword-Rich Domain Suggestion Tool
Link Price Calculator
Reciprocal Link Check
Redirect Check
Search Engine Spider Simulator
Similar Page Checker
URL Rewriting Tool
Website Keyword Suggestions
Website to Country

To use a website, sometimes you need to evaluate and make sure that the website is worth using. The following are some of the ways to evaluate a website quickly and easily so you can feel confident about trusting them.

Consider the website’s first impressions, that it looks good and catches your attention. The purpose for the website should be clear whether it’s for goods or services.

The pages of the website should be clear, easy to comprehend, and not too cluttered with text and images. Colors that clash should be avoided and the font size should be clear and readable.

The content should be current and up-to-date. Check whether the website’s blog has been written on recently, and that all information is recent and accurate. Checking the information given can give you a clear concept of the owner’s level of expertise.

Have a look at the navigation of the website you are evaluating. When you roll over the links at the top or left hand side, you should see the landing page at the bottom of your browser.

The website should have contact details on the home page such as phone numbers, email address, and business address, giving a personal feel for the website you are evaluating.

In the search engine you use, change the keywords a few times to see if you can still find that company with just a small amount of information.

By checking when the domain was registered, you can see how legitimate the website is. The age of the domain is an indicator of a trustable website because generally, a legitimate website should be registered for at least a year or two.

Checking the traffic rank of the website could indicate it’s value. These websites are useful to check traffic rank:
Alexa.com
Compete.com
Quantcast.com

By evaluating websites for online value, you can feel more comfortable online by knowing who to trust. You can analyze a website with “Who Is” from GoDaddy.com.

Check the Page Rank for a Website

Use these Webmaster Tools on your website to monitor your pagerank, paid links, competition’s keywords and much more to keep the leading edge in website design.

Here’s a list of Website Design Webmaster Tools:

Adsense Preview Tool- Find adsense ads connected with a website
Browser Checker- Check info passed to the server by your browser
DoFollow Blogs Search Engine- Find blogs without a nofollow tag in comments
Google Pagerank Checker- Bulk check of Googlerank
HTML Code Obfuscator- Encode your mailto links
HTML Encoder- Encode your HTML
Keyword Density Analyzer- Find the keywords used by your competitors
Online .htpasswd Generator- Generate a password restricting file and folder access
Paid Links Detector- Detect if paid links are in a website
Search Engine Update Monitor- Find out when search engines change algorithms
Site Information Tool- View pagerank and whois info

Find out more about Website Design Webmaster Tools

Have a look at these other Resources for Web Design:

Website Design Tools
Web Browser Add Ons
Useful Web Design Resources
Website Design Webmaster Tools
Other Free Useful Resources Online
Useful Computer Maintenance Tools

By having multiple glossaries to reference for terms you may not be comfortable with in website design, you may better comprehend when reading up on subjects your competition won’t bother to. Use my Enormous Glossary Reference to stay on the leading edge in website design terms in a multitude of categories.

These lists of over a hundred website design glossaries cover a series of subjects ranging from CSS, HTML, marketing, SEO, social media and software. No matter what definitions you may need in these website design categories, this list of glossaries will have your answer.

The categories of terms covered by my Enormous Glossary Reference include:
CMS Glossaries
CSS, (X)HTML, DOM and JavaScript Glossaries
Graphic Design Glossaries
Marketing Glossaries
Print Design Glossaries
SEO Glossaries
Social Media Glossaries
Software Development Glossaries
Twitter Glossaries
Typography Glossaries
Usability, UX and IA Glossaries
Web Design Glossaries

Under each category is an entire list of subcategories as well. Use this as a reference or bookmark my Enormous Glossary Reference as a favorite for your researching endeavors in website design.

Have a look at these other Resources for Web Design:

Website Design Tools
Web Browser Add Ons
Useful Web Design Resources
Website Design Webmaster Tools
Other Free Useful Resources Online
Useful Computer Maintenance Tools

Add your contact information to every page of your website and give your website visitors the option of contacting you for business no matter what page they might land on. This gives you a better chance of being easily found by your website visitors.

When someone finds your website in a search engine, they might land on any webpage that you have. By having the contact information at the bottom of every page, you give your website visitors the option to contact you no matter where they land. Keeping your email address, phone number, and perhaps even your address at the bottom of each page of your website is a good practice for making good use of your website traffic.

When you add your contact information to every page of your website, you make it easier for your website visitors to reach you for business. Keeping an easily accessible line of communication between your website visitors and your business can make it easier to turn visitors into customers.