one of the #1 things a new webmaster or designer can do for his/her site is to know who your target customer is.  If you don’t know who your target is you can not even begin to put together a good layout or navigation, or really anything at all for your website. How can you do any of these things without knowing who you are trying to attract?

With this in mind, we will assume that you have your target firmly centered in your cross-hairs, and we will go over the top 10 things you need to look at for SEO.

1) Title tag - this has got to be at the top of the list, because it’s at the top of your page! usefull keyword rich titles are important.  If you just have the default “home” for a title you will have a hard time with the search engines.

2)Meta-tags - this, according to some is not as important anymore, but I belive the keyword tag, and the discription, geo, and content tags are still VERY important.

3)Layout - how is your site layed out?  What is the first thing a search engine going to read on your page? Your navigation, or your content?  A lot of SEO experts are going to right side navigation beacuse of this question….I think it is a better way of doing things for just this reason.

4)Flash- Great stuff —- in moderation.  If the whole site is in flash, the search engines won’t see anything except the code for the plugin, get board and leave. your content NEEDS to be readable by the bots.

5)Navigation -  K.I.S.S. (keep it simple stupid) if your visitors can get confused on where to go, it’s a sure thing the bots will too.

6)Content - YEAH! more more more, and keep it updated.

7)Links -if your are talking about the newest CSS designing techniques, link to articles about CSS designs. (shows you want to be relivent to this term)

8)Directories - Are you listed in places like DMOZ?  There are some good diretoies out theer that don’t cost an arm and a leg, link love is needed to help raise you in the all mighty search engines eyes.  This is one way of starting this step of your proccess.

9)Articles - Do you write articles? Either in blogs, or places like News Vine?  Great way to get out there in the public eye.

10)LINKS! - like the directory idea in #8, links are the moast important thing in the search engines eyes.  The more sites that link to yours the better, but you want them to be quality links not quantity.  If you have 1000 sites linking to you, but they have nothing at all to do with your subject matter, they will help a little (maybe even hurt if they just appear over night).  But 50 GREAT links about related matter and you will get more out of it.  This is the hardest thing to get done, but doing it right will give greater results than giving your web addy to a FFA ( Free For All) link exchange.

Hope this helps someone out there at least

Shannon

Tampa website Design

Photoshop shinny text tutorial

Now let the games begin!  This is the part of the tutorial that, to me at least, is the most fun!  Lets make that text SHINNY!! The first part of the process is simple.  We will use the bevel and emboss filter on the text to round it out a bit.  Use these settings (but feel free to play with them of course.) 

First rasterizing the type layer is important, as some of the things we are going to do we will have to merge the layers  As a fatter of fact do so now.  After we merge the layers we will do the beveling. with these settings. and it should look something like the next figure.

now create a new layer above the text layer we just finished. ctrl-click the text layer to select the text while staying on the empty layer.  Now chose the gradient fill tool and select white to transparent.  make a fill starting at the top of the letters, and only fill about the top 1/8 to 1/4 of the text from the top. like this.

After you have done that, make a new layer and keep the selection of the text in place, because we will make an upward fill ( again white to trans) but only make it about 5-10 pixels. this will give a bit of the shine from the floor we will make here soon.

  The next is to de-saturate the image about  %75. and give it a bit of color from
the same menu.  I used a bit of a blue tinge.  That’s it! after you have run the tutorial on reflective text, you should come up with something like this.

See you all the next time!

Shannon

Tampa website design

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

Photoshop shinny text tutorial

First rasterizing the type layer is important, as some of the things we are going to do we will have to merge the layers As a fatter of fact do so now. After we merge the layers we will do the beveling. with these settings. and it should look something like the next figure.

now create a new layer above the text layer we just finished. ctrl-click the text layer to select the text while staying on the empty layer. Now chose the gradient fill tool and select white to transparent. make a fill starting at the top of the letters, and only fill about the top 1/8 to 1/4 of the text from the top. like this.

After you have done that, make a new layer and keep the selection of the text in place, because we will make an upward fill ( again white to trans) but only make it about 5-10 pixels. this will give a bit of the shine from the floor we will make here soon.

The next is to de-saturate the image about %75. and give it a bit of color from
the same menu. I used a bit of a blue tinge. That’s it! after you have run the tutorial on reflective text, you should come up with something like this.

See you all the next time!

Shannon

Tampa website design

1) Ye old body centering trick.   body {text-align:center} now your all your content is centered.  The draw back to this method I have found, is you have to define a container for the content to be placed in, then re-align everything inside it.

2) the negitive margin trick: #container {position:absolute;left:50%;left-margin:-375px;} this will make a container that is 750px wide and centered.  Draw back….not fluid. set width for this type of setting.

3) auto margin idea:  This one has a lot to say for it.  You can set a site up with this one, and all will be centered.  Liquid designing is posible,  although I haven’t really tried a fixed width design with this one, I am not sure it would work.  I will try it out on one and get back to you on it.

As you can see, my 3 ways of doing this centering thing work, but are not by any means the only way to do it.  I hope they will at least help someone out of a pickel somewhere!

 Shannon Smith has been a graphic designer for almost 20 years.  His love of art and design has lead him to the internet, and website design.

Tampa website Design

Do you know who you are?

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in an online business is its identity.  How does your online presence conform to your real world store front?  When you look at your web site, do the graphics (logo, header, and colors) match up with your printed matter? (Business cards, postcards, tri-fold brochures)  Does your e-mail reflect the same?  Can any Joe/Jane customer take one look at your site and see your company as a partner in solving his/her problem?  Do any of these questions ring a bell?

We will look at each of these questions, and how to work with them in the next few sections of this article.

Are your graphics killing your business?

This seems like a no brainer here doesn’t it?  You have graphics on your site. Yup, their there all right.  Sitting there looking all snazzy, but are they doing their job? Their job is to help your customer navigate your site; give you some flavor of the company that put it there, and to bring some color to the content of the site.

1) Navigation:  Nice looking roll-over images are great to look at.  Make sure your designer is using a lot of code to produce the effect, as this tends to weigh down the sites load times.  There are great ways of doing roll-overs in CSS that will be light weight code wise and look awesome as well. Check out this article on CSS Roll-overs to get an idea.

2) Flavor: A good designer can utilize your existing graphics to help conform your online identity to your store front, not detract from it.  Have you ever gone to a site that looks good, but nothing like the newspaper ads you have seen, or the T.V. spot?  You have to wonder if it’s the same company at all.  If your store front is red, white, and blue, make your website red, white, and blue to match.  Let your customers KNOW that they are on the right site.

3) Color: This is to mean not just the layout colors from the last point, but images.  Getting some images of your product in the customers face, without slowing down the browsing experience.  This can be a trick sometimes.  Most people think “I’ll just put a gallery page up” In some cases this is a grand idea.  (I don’t think a proctologist website is a good place for a gallery myself) Placing related images, such as the doctors image in his Bio, or some of the staff behind the counter, can bring more comfort to the customer when they know who they will be dealing with when they go into the office.

These are a couple of things to look at when thinking of redoing your web site, or redoing your business plan.  Just remember the biggest question out there…

WHO ARE YOU?