Archive for the ‘blog’ Category

To the left are the before and after photos of a cabinet I considered using for display on a website design. The top photo had flaws I wouldn’t even attempt to display for a blog post. With some quick touch ups, the photo became good enough to post on a cabinet website page.

You’ll notice the “new handle” on the bottom (as well as the reflection) was a simple copy and paste of the drawer below. The lock and hole at the bottom was covered up with a simple copy and paste as well, from a blank portion of the cabinet. Finally the flaws such as the scratch and number “90″ at the top were removed with the same copy and paste method.

When you have photos that aren’t quite the quality that you would want to display online, from a website designer’s point of view, there are many methods to edit the photo. Therefore, you can use photos with imperfections and convert them into a quality image.

(click on the photo to enlarge)

Some sidebar ideas for a main website or blog is one of the first hurdles to get over when deciding on the creation of a new web design. Keep in mind that different sidebars could be applied for each section, tab, or page of your website. Review these ideas that could inspire you to plan out your website design a little easier.

Sidebar Ideas for the Main Website:

• A social networking feed such as Twitter or Facebook
• Provide a search box for easy navigation for your visitors
• Contact information to make it easy for visitors to contact you
• Add your picture to help create a relationship with your readers
• Subscription buttons to provide methods to subscribe to your blog

Sidebar Ideas for Your Blog:

• Provide a search box for easy blog navigation for your visitors
• Links to archives by date to make it easy for readers to locate old content
• Add a popular posts link to redirect your visitors to your readers’ favorites
• Add a list of recent posts on your blog’s sidebar to encourage additional page views
• A categories list should be added to help your blog readers find posts on a particular topic

If you are running your blog on WordPress, there are a variety of add-ons that can make it easy to customize your sidebar any way you choose, and change it as often as you like. A well designed website is about easy navigation by your visitors, so consider these web design sidebar ideas to use in your small business website.

Filtering spam comments on your WordPress blog can be a nuisance because you have to determine the difference between whether your site was commented by an actual human or is spam from an automated bot that tries to get inbound links to another website. A new WordPress plugin known as SI CAPTCHA forces your WordPress blog visitor to enter a 4 character code, or captcha, to prove they are an actual human visitor and post a comment.

To install this plugin, after logging in your admin dashboard, click the down arrow next to the plugins tab and choose “add new”. Use the search function to locate the “SI CAPTCHA” plugin, click the install link on the right, then click the red install link on the next screen. Click “activate once the plugin is installed and you’re finished. Visit my father’s website and view his WordPress CAPTCHA Plugin Video Tutorial for a detailed step-by-step guide on how to install the SI CAPTCHA WordPress plugin.

With the SI CAPTCHA WordPress plugin, when someone tries to enter a comment they will have to enter a captcha code of 4 characters and press submit comment, therefore filtering out any non human comments that would spam your blog. This makes your job of approving or trashing comments that have been left much easier because only the ones left by humans will appear.

Have a look at these other blog related posts that give tips and advice on writing blog posts, writing to increase traffic, WordPress advantages over Blogger, ways to come up with post ideas and more.

Write often to generate traffic to your website and increase the possibility to increase potential customers for your business. By adding website pages, blog posts and articles online about your business niche, you increase the number of links to your website.

When you write consistently on your website or blog, you add more pages to be indexed by search engines. More pages gives you potential to be found by potential customers because search engines tend to put websites that grow more towards the front of index results.

Writing articles gives your website backlinks which is another way that search engines measure the value of a site. The more backlinks you have, the better search results you will tend to receive. Try to write about your business niche in order to have more useful information online to aid your potential customers.

Writing often can bring your website more traffic. Writing often to increase traffic to your website could get your more return visitors, referrals, customers and clients. Getting website traffic is the first step to getting more business, and writing often to increase that traffic is a great free way to do so.

Have a look at these other blog related posts that give tips and advice on writing blog posts, filtering spam, WordPress advantages over Blogger, ways to come up with post ideas and more.

Read my blog post: Write Articles to Promote Your Business or my full article: Write Often to Increase Website Traffic

You can backup and update your WordPress blog very easily. On your administrator dashboard, when you get notifications of a new version of WordPress saying what the new version is, just click on that link to get started. Then you will have the option to backup your blog posts, that is up to you. I backup my blog posts in notepad anyway, and backing up is a good idea in case something ever goes wrong with your blog host.

Then you will see two options, download the update or automatically update, and I suggest the automatic update. Once you click the automatic update, just sit back and let WordPress do the rest. In a couple minutes you’ll have your updated version of WordPress.

Next, you might see a red square with a number next to your plugins on the left column of the WordPress dashboard. Click on those to activate them again, but there is really no reason to activate the “Hello Dolly” plugin, unless you want lines from Hello Dolly to show up on your blog.

Have a look at these other blog related posts that give tips and advice on writing blog posts, filtering spam, writing to increase traffic, ways to come up with post ideas and more.

Learn more about WordPress Advantages Over Blogger and a Blogger to WordPress Blog Conversion that I did for Masterson Construction.

Wordpress has advantages over Blogger for a variety of reasons. Doing a conversion from Blogger to WordPress may be tedious depending on how many posts need to be converted, but it just may be worth the work.

On Blogger, should your account accidentally get wiped out there is no way to recover it. The database to recreate those pages is gone even if you publish posts to your own site because it lives on Blogger’s servers and you’ll have to recreate the content manually.

When it comes to administration and customization, WordPress offers a lot more flexibility over Blogger. WordPress supports open source modification of the core files, categories instead of labels, and WordPress plugins for even more features.

Another key advantage of WordPress is the ability to have categories, the same way you have labels in Blogger. This way you can sort your blog posts efficiently and organize them by topic.

Should you consider keeping your blog for the long term, WordPress is a better choice, and since WordPress is hosted on your own account, you regulate your growth and expansion over time. Sure, Blogger is much easier to use, but it’s good to learn how to use WordPress to it’s full potential.

Have a look at these other blog related posts that give tips and advice on writing blog posts, filtering spam, writing to increase traffic, WordPress advantages over Blogger, ways to come up with post ideas and more.

Read my blog post on:
Blogger to WordPress Blog Conversion for Jackmasterson.com

The previous custom cms website launch for Masterson Construction earlier this month included an announcement that a matching blog was planned and involved performing a Blogger to WordPress blog conversion. The general contractor matching WordPress blog has been converted and launched.

During evaluation of the blog content it was decided to enhance the seo, or search engine optimization, of all the posts going back two years. Post headlines, URLs, and on page content was changed to improve the seo value. To maintain rank value of these aged pages, custom 301 redirects were included in the htaccess file to forward external links pointing to old file names to the new file names created in the redesign. In addition to posts, labels became categories, plus archive file names all required redirects to maintain the existing seo value, as well.

Moving the existing blog to WordPress provides ease of use and near perfect xhtml code quality, plus optional plugins that were easy to install for added functions of social bookmarks, seo automation, and automatic database backup operation. While Blogger is fine, and my choice for a blog platform, WordPress is considered superior especially for site owners without advanced technical skills.

Have a look at these other blog related posts that give tips and advice on writing blog posts, filtering spam, writing to increase traffic, WordPress advantages over Blogger, ways to come up with post ideas and more.

Have a look at other posts regarding website launches.

Custom CMS web design budget tips and advice for the development of your website design and blog prove to be an invaluable resource. Having a functional website that drives traffic to your company won’t always come easily and takes an experienced website designer to fulfill.

This recent article written by expert author Jim Degerstrom on a wide variety of Custom CMS Web Design Budget Tips could come in useful to have a great functional website and feel good about the price you paid for it.

Some excerpts from Jim’s recently published article:

“Budget funds for as much quality as you can afford for the initial development and launch of your custom CMS web design.”

“Evaluate your options for a source to create the custom CMS web design based on their quality and experience.”

“Plan to add original quality content often to your new custom CMS web design to attract repeat visitors.”

Finding the right website designer to handle your project for your small business may not be as easy as it sounds. Being able to have a site with the ability to add, delete or edit content in plain text without technical skills could be very valuable, and that’s what Jim Degerstrom and myself at CodeRepair offer.

Read the entire article on Custom CMS Web Design Budget Tips

Keyword tracking for SEO helps regulate which keywords should be used to gain traffic for your website. By thinking about what potential clients would search to find your products and services, small business website owners can direct more traffic to their website. Keyword tracking tools can aid in the research necessary to drive more traffic to a website.

Do a Google search on some keywords you might use to find your website.  Have a look at what business come up and take a look at what keywords they use.  Make a list of 10 or 20 keywords that fit your business niche the best and keep those in mind for tags when you write blog posts and for keywords on website pages.

Some Keyword Tracking Tools for SEO Include:

Read more about Search Engine Optimization, view these Keyword Research Resources and have a look at some more posts on SEO.

I’ve compiled this list of “10 ways to come up with blog post ideas” in order to make it easier for writers to get the creative juices flowing.
Hope these blog tips help!

1. Solve a Problem
Answer a question for your readers, and try to solve a problem you may have come across yourself. A great way to attract readers is to be helpful in your posts.

2. Pick a Topic and Research it Online
By thinking of a topic to write about and doing a little research, you can get the rolling start for writing in your own blog. Researching keywords can help as well.

3. Brainstorm and Write Some Headlines
Pick some headlines you feel like writing about today, and keep a list. Pick out the ones that you feel you have some great ideas about, and carry a notepad with you.

4. Ask Readers
Find out what your readers want you to write about next, or pay attention to the types of questions that come up in social media, Twitter for example.

5. Create a Post With Older Post Links
Refer to other posts you’ve written in the past as reference for your readers.

6. Research
Read books, newspapers, watch the news, and write about current news in your niche.

7. Write When Inspiration Hits You
The best time to write is when you’re inspired to. Don’t lose a thought because it was forgotten, so carry a notepad or voice recorder with you for when good ideas hit you.

8. Take Breaks
When the stream of ideas starts to fade, take a break and refresh yourself. We all need food, drink and rest to function properly, so don’t forget the bare necessities.

9. Read Other Blog Posts
Subscribing and reading what others are writing about is a great inspirational tool to get the creative juices flowing.

10. Write About What You’ve Learned
If you’ve learned something and find it useful, don’t hesitate to share. Nothing brings your readers back faster than when you’ve taught them something they can really use.

Have a look at these other blog related posts that give tips and advice on writing blog posts, filtering spam, writing to increase traffic, WordPress advantages over Blogger and more.