Just do it! How many websites have been built like that? Most of them? With nearly an infinite amount of ideas to have a website, and the thousands upon thousands of webmasters out there, expecting all websites to be built the same way would be foolish.
For those of you that run a small business, and have no time for the technical details, I imagine/know many of you are pressed to say just do it. When it comes to your website though, you better know some basics. Continue reading »
A couple of days ago I posted, Google Webmaster Tools Now Has Keyword Significance. It was about how Google’s Webmaster Tool is now displaying a chart titled Keyword Significance. After I posted it, I received three comments, and just as many emails suggesting that it’s not clear what Keyword Significance is about.
Here is what Google says the keyword significance list is for:
Below are the most common keywords Google found when crawling your site. These should reflect the subject matter of your site.
Google is basically looking at your website, sorting its content by the number of times each word was used, and revealing to you what keywords you use the most. It’s similar to a tag cloud, but instead of being all crazy looking like a cloud it just nicely organized. Continue reading »
When I tell people that I build websites, a common reaction is, “Oh, I need a website.” Not much longer, the process of building a new website has begun, and sooner or later I ask the dreaded question, “Do you have a logo?” Those of you that have been building websites for a while now know the answer to this on. The normal response, “Can you do that?” My reaction? I guess so, if that is something you want to pay me to do. Continue reading »
Over the weekend I got to spend a little time playing with the new Webmaster Wiki that I just added to the site. I’m getting jazzed about it potential, and I am hoping many others (you) will see it as a great resource as well. Continue reading »
I believe that one of the best things you can do to improve the usability of a website is by being consistent. Consistency can be found in a variety of places: vocabulary, typography, colors, templates, headings, and the list goes on and on. For whatever you do once, their should be an established method so that it is easy to do again in the same consistent format. Continue reading »
Over the past year or so I have kept in close contact with another webmaster in the UK, Temi Odurinde. Temi is a successful webmaster, especially in the forum industry, and is also the owner of Boss Cart, a popular shopping cart software. I have done a review of Boss Cart software in the past, and you may be hearing more about it soon. A little hint here, freebie promo! What I wanted to mention though is the fact that Temi has a web hosting blog that some of you may be interested in. Continue reading »
Mondays are a lot like a double-edged sword. Sometimes they hack you down, and the entire day can seem like punishment. On others, they are inspiring goal starting days, making us eager to face the rest of the week. On this particular Monday, I was inspired, and am compelled to create a regular post just for Mondays. For those of you new to Best Web Image, I have two other regular posts a week. Wednesdays Poll Day, and Fridays Site Feedback Day. Now there is a third: Manic Mondays.
So what the heck will Manic Monday be about? I did some research about Mondays first. I was looking for something that would interest webmasters, and additionally feed the common feelings about Mondays in general. What I got out of it was this: People don’t want to go to work on Monday. Duh… This can be even more compounded for webmasters because they have the tendency to work seven days a week. Monday’s could be more of an insult to injury. So I decided to post on ways that could help start your week out as a successful webmaster.
Manic Monday will be about what other webmasters do on Mondays to start their week in a positive way. If you have a great tip, or a regular practice for Mondays send me an email: rob [@] bestwebimage.com. You can also use my contact form. I’m looking for stories or suggestions on how to make your week successful as a webmaster or site designer. When you send me an email, make sure to include a link to a website you are working on or a personal one. I want to show off your work!
The Digital Point Webmaster Forum, one the the most popular webmasters forums there is, has been down for over twelve hours now. It crashed a little after 6:30 pm, Pacific Time. I have seen this happen a few times before at DP, and I have found they usually have it up in running by the morning, my time. I am guessing the typical condition is, server crashes while the boss man is enjoys the evening away from the internet, goes to bed, and then wakes up to nightmare. Couple of hours of scrambling, and tada, the site is back up. Let’s just hope this is the case.
Digital Point is a great forum for webmasters new and old. You may have read, I have at least a thousand times anyhow, that DP sucks and so do their members. Well, I can only guess these comments are made by people who have been banned, or people who got burned doing transactions with other members. I’ve been building sites for over twelve years now, and have been a member of DP for three. I think it’s a great forum. Though I have been burned once, I have 100+ other transactions that went great. DP has a great marketplace, a great place to learn about building websites, and a great place to get quick help. Members very in experience from: shouldn’t be building websites to hardcore vetrans making six figures from their sites.
One of my first jobs as a webmaster was to build a series of intranet sites for Applied Materials. I had already been building sites for a few years at that time, but never had a task as large as this one. I built the sites, gave a few some makeovers, and was given one final request before my contract came to an end. Can you create a way for us to input new content without knowing how to build a web page? I was asked to design my exit plan.
One of the great things about blogs, content management is what they excel at. Experience in building a website? Hardly, my Mom could manage one. Actually, she’s pretty good with a computer though. I mean even my Dad could manage one. Blogs and websites are different though, and most business sites are not made in a blog format. They do however, need to make the occasionally changes, and add content to their sites. This is where CMS (Content Management Systems) kicks in.
CMS gives the site owner and/or the webmaster the ability to add or change the content of a website without having to change a whole website. Why code a whole new page when all you want to do is add an “About Us” page or something like that. Why pay a webmaster to change the date on your home page when you could do it yourself in ten seconds? Why buy web designing software to do those changes when it could be done from an online control panel? The advantages are time and money, time and money. Every site should be designed with CMS in mind, and if it’s not, your just asking for pain in the future.
Any good webmaster or web design company should from the start. What if you already have a website? Depending on the site, it should be easy enough to convert. When I was doing it for Applied Materials, I had the unfortunate luck of converting a site with over 1,000 pages, with what I think had just as many authors. So, it’s not always easy.
Though I am not looking to take on any CMS projects myself these days, I know of one company, Toronto Website Design, that I am sure would be more than willing to take it on. Here is a direct link to the (Removed link 11/17/2008, page removed) Systems page. Make your site do the work, not you.
Calling all webmasters! There’s a new webmasters forum in town, Webmaster Serve. There are always new webmaster forums being created, but I think this one has a fighting chance. Webmaster Serve was created by the same guys that brought you UKWF, a popular webmaster forum run in the UK.
The main forum categories cover search engines, design and development, and site hosting. The also have a marketplace where other webmasters can buy and sell everything from advertisements to an entire website. In regards to their search engine category they introduced a new (new to most webmaster forums) sub category covering SEO Marketing. Most forums just talk about how to optimize for a particular search engine, and they techniques they use. I believe learning the hows and whys of SEO Marketing is a better starting point.
They also have a webmaster blog of the recent goings ons that effect us webmasters, and a bunch of cool webmasters tools that are free to use. The tools are mostly pre-written code that you can slap in your site to do things like create rollovers, generate meta tags, or site maps.
I think it will. Starting a forum, like I have said many time before, is a tough business, especially a webmaster forum. These guys have done it before though, so I believe they have the know how. They have also limited the number of categories, and sub-categories. This is key in maintaining the appearance of activity. Nobody like to visit a ghost town. One other big plus in their favor? It’s not green…
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