Softanz | Freelancer.co.uk - PHP Mysql Ajax Jquery CSS MySQL

Softanz | Freelancer.co.uk - PHP Mysql Ajax Jquery CSS MySQL

Social media presence will boost your online marketing

Online marketers earlier ignored social media and underestimated its the strength. Then they grudgingly accepted that they had to get involved with it.

As always, there were some early adopters who leapt in and profited from their foresight.

But today, being active in social media is no longer an option. Not only can the major social media sites help extend your reach, build loyalty, and drive direct traffic to your websites, but they are also becoming a major influence on search results.

If for no other reason, now is the time to ramp up your social media presence because you need to create strong social signals for the search engines to find.

Basic Web Design

by Ross Shannon

Simply learning all the HTML tags is no way to become a good web-designer. Anyone can do that, and they still output rubbish. In this advice tutorial, I’ll be giving you the most important tips in general areas to start you off on the right track towards creating great sites. There are loads of links to further tutorials throughout.

Check the Source

Looking through the source code of other sites is an excellent way to pick up HTML methods and tricks. In your browser click View | Source on any page and the code which created it will be opened (make it open in Notepad for the best way to read it) for your viewing pleasure. Find the corresponding section in the code for what you liked and see how it was created. You can then cut and paste code snippets out of the page’s code and into your own. You can teach yourself a lot this way, although it’s never as easy as just sitting down with a Coke and having a good read of HTML Source...

And now the necessary warnings: be careful about learning from badly-written code. There are plenty of awfully-coded sites that you may be reading, so try not to pick up any of their bad habits. Getting code segments and things like that is fine, but do not take designs, scripts, graphics or anything that looks like it took a lot of work. I’ve seen people rip off HTML Source’s design and it’s hugely irritating. Just no.

Once you’ve gotten your code together, the next essential step is to validate it to make sure it’ll work in all browsers without problems. You may be surprised. There’s a good (if harsh) » online HTML validator over at the W3C’s site.

Hand Code

Unless you break out of the WYSIWYG-user’s mentality, you will always be restricted in what you can create. Too many beginners go straight to FrontPage or DreamWeaver and never really learn how to code and design. When things go wrong they don’t have the skills needed to fix the mistakes their editors have left them with, and give up.

Hand coding in a text-editor (like Notepad++, TextMate, TopStyle or even trusty NotePad) means you know your code much better and so can find problems and edit smaller things. You have much better control over your design. You’re closer to your code and are able to incorporate things like CSS more easily. Visual editors also output very bloated code with lots of unnecessary font tags and paragraphs etc. Your pages will download faster if you code efficiently in a text-editor.

It’s never something anyone who has used a WYSIWYG editor wants to do, as at first it looks like a much slower, laborious way to design pages. You’re going to have to get past this barrier — you’ll eventually come to love the advantages hand-coding gives you.

Learn CSS

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, are the most important development in the webmaster’s world in the last few years. They allow you to change the look of your entire site by editing one file, and allow you to format and design your pages to look much, much better.

If you can use HTML well, CSS shouldn’t be much of a step-up. Not only are stylesheets a great extra skill for you to have, but they’re going to be essential for creating pages in the next few years. Get a handle on them as soon as possible; have a look at the introduction to style sheets.

Presentation

You need to structure your page into blocks, by using either tables, layers or frames. Have some clearly defined navigation, content and supplementary boxes — people will know where to look for specific parts of your page. Don’t stack page elements on top of each other all the way down the page — this makes a lot of scrolling necessary, something that the Internet audience do not enjoy. To lessen this, make use of horizontal screen space as best you can by aligning navigation links and inset pictures to the side so that the content flows alongside it.

Limit your font choices to two or three for your entire site. Reference is always made by typographers to the horrific mistakes made early on when word-processors came into mainstream use a few years ago. Magazines and other publications were printed with dozens of fonts used on every page, just because the designers could. This led to the pages looking like a big mess. You should use very few fonts to avoid the same fate.

Stick with a sans-serif font for your main content, as text in this family of fonts is easier to read from a computer screen than serif fonts. Keep your main body text between sizes 2 and 3 (10 and 12 point). Also remember that you should use the common fonts that everyone will have on their computer (found in the font face tutorial), so they see the same page you do.

Colours

I’ve already gone over the importance of using light colours in the <body> tutorial, but I’d like to re-iterate it here. Bright, primary colours are highly uncomfortable to look at, and on the Internet where you’re looking at a lit monitor the whole time, this is very important to avoid. Pastel shades do not strain your eyes, and generally look more stylish anyway.

Have a look at sites like » Yahoo and » Amazon, two of the most popular sites on the Internet, and see what they do. Large blocks of colour are drawn with soft shades. There’s plenty of white-space left as places for visual relief. These sites have been designed following extensive surveys of web users, so they know what they’re doing.

When choosing your colour-scheme, pick one or two main colours. These will be used to fill in the main blocks of your page. Along with these, choose three or four more colours that go well with your core colours — experiment a lot with these. Apart from any once-off elements or graphics, these should be the only colours you use in your layout. They should all be from the web-safe palette.

Make sure there is a good contrast between your background and text colours. Keep your main text black in most places. The areas of most interest on your page should behighlighted with a small instance of bright colour, but make sure it never takes over.

Exercise Restraint

You may get a little excited about the glitzy special effects achievable with things like Java Applets, JavaScript and Flash, but something you’re going to have to realise is that readers are rarely impressed with a dazzling but difficult-to-use system.

Simplicity works best. A basic text-based navigation system is preferable to one constructed with image rollovers. Going straight to a content-rich homepage is preferable to a pointless and showy Flash intro or splash page. Background sounds and the like get annoying after one instance. Scrolling text and multiple gif animations are the hallmark of an amateur designer, and they’re terrible. If there’s one thing that many usability studies show, it’s that readers find many special effects to be quite obnoxious and annoying. The simpler sites always prosper.

Basic Promotion

When your site is ready for the Internet, you can start submitting your pages to the search engines. This causes great confusion and anguish for most beginners — the poor guys can’t figure out why the search engines won’t add their site. Read this: it usually takes at least 4 weeks for your site to appear, if only that. You might get lucky, you might get very unlucky, but that’s all it really comes down to. If you still haven’t appeared in their index after 2 months, you should re-submit your site. It’s a horrifically tedious waiting time, but until the engines are able to work faster it will stay this way.

While you wait, look out for other opportunities to start drawing in readers. Find directories of sites similar to your own. They usually accept submissions and add the sites within a few days. They’re a great place to pick up targeted visitors. Learn how to write promotional, keyword-rich text for descriptions. If you’re feeling really confident about your site’s quality, submit to » Dmoz (the Open Directory), and — lordy — » Yahoo. Remember for the two latter sites however, that your site’s content is the most important thing, so make sure you have lots of it. Getting into either of these is usually a fast-track into most search engines.

Stay away from things like Free-for-all pages and submission websites that promise to get your site listed in hundreds of directories. It’s all a sham.

Add in Meta tags before you submit to the search engines. Read over Promotion 101 for the fundamentals of choosing keywords. The most important is Google. Google indexes new sites quite reliably, while you could be waiting forever on others and still get no visitors from them.

Now, another mistake beginners make is that their expectations are too high. Sites that are starting out should be lucky to get, on average, 30 or 40 hits a day; and even then it depends on the popularity of your subject matter. Don’t be disheartened by small viewing figures at the start, websites ’appreciate’ over time. Happy visitors will link to your site, and people will follow these links and become returning visitors. That is, if your site is good.

Also: link to HTML Source! There, that’s my promotion done...

Fundamental Optimisation

I’m sure you’re all aware of the need for optimisation — the Internet is often very slow. A website that does not load quickly is a website that rarely gets read. People are getting more impatient, and now that there is so much choice, if your site doesn’t give a reader what they’re looking for quickly, you’ll never be heard. You can find out all about this in the optimisation section, but for now, here are some of the most basic ideas that you should adhere to when coding web pages:

Use only a few small images on each page. If you’re going to have large images, only have one or two per page, or use thumbnails. Always use the height, width and alt attributes.

Don’t use animated GIFs when a static one would have done the same job. Animations are often distracting page elements.

Optimise your graphics as much as you can. It’s a less advanced process than you probably think.

Leave out most multimedia effects.

Split long pages into a few smaller ones.

The Golden Rule

And the one notion that will sum up the attitude you’re going to need to become a good web-designer?

Be willing to learn and improve.

You’ll never produce a perfect site design, much like you can never produce a perfect painting — your work can always improve. Accept criticism of your work (however hard it may be), and work to sort out the problems you and others see. Update your site as much as you can, and redesign it every few months. Care about the quality of your work. Continue to learn new techniques and keep on top of new developments in the world of web-design; look at well-designed sites and pick out elements that you like from them; answer your email; listen to good music; sketch down ideas; and above all have fun at it.

Email Marketing – The Money is In A Responsive List

You may have heard the familiar line that goes, the money is in the list. Undoubtedly there is some semblance of truth to the famous quote. Nonetheless, what is more crucial for your long term business goals is a responsive email list. Nowadays, you will see that a lot of people are subscribed to various mailing lists instead of how it was in the past when receiving email was something out of the ordinary. In this new environment, you should be extraordinary to stand out from the rest of the online crowd. If you message about software for instance Backlink Energizer review you must set up the tone.

Online marketers who have built huge email lists over a period of time may be able to succeed without so much effort. But then, if you are a novice internet marketer or merely want to be more successful with your email marketing, you must observe the trends that work in today’s marketplace.

Don’t forget that your list is more than simply a collection of names. These are living, breathing people with real concerns and dreams for a more well-off life. If you begin to look at this as merely some kind of cash cow to be tapped into at will, you are going to see that your outcomes will at best be short term. Most likely you are subscribed to multiple lists. Which emails are you likely to open and which ones go straight to the recycle bin? Why would you decide that some emails are always worthy of reading? Is it because you perceive that sender as worthy and ethical?

Keeping in touch and establishing relationships with your customers can be done in lots of ways. If you understand how social networking has altered the way people make choices and recommendations online, you can utilize this to enhance your list building techniques. This may be a two-way method of building up your online reputation virally.

You can get many readers to your mailing list by establishing good relationships with individuals you know on Twitter and Facebook. This can likewise lead to their friends and followers coming to you by way of recommendation. An additional benefit is that you can create a further viral effect by referring subscribers to your mailing list to the quality content you have published on your different social network accounts. This kind of relationship marketing is one of the most effective ways to develop a really responsive email list.

You may have read about the decrease in email open instances. Although intriguing, the only open rate that is applicable is yours. If you put in that first effort and keep working from the point of view of giving client value, your emails will be opened. Do not fall into the trap of simply mailing sales pitch after sales pitch and sending the exact messages that everyone else is using. So abide by the tips here and you will be able to build a profitable business by using the power of a responsive mailing list.

You can also consider Fortune Hi Tech Marketing to get more detailed headlines.

How to design a Good Logo?

Everyone wants his organization logo to be the finest but how very good is very good? How do we define a great logo? Is it required to be colorful or an exquisite piece of art? Can a straightforward design work as a good logo? We are often in a dilemma.

Now to define a good logo design we first need to understand the purpose of having a logo. A corporate logo is among the most crucial branding elements for your organization. It will want to be instrumental in creating your corporate identity and will want to effectively exude the organization’s perspective. The viewers should have some thought concerning the disposition, character, or fundamental values of the organization via your logo. The performance of a logo does not end here, I have not but talked about one with the most necessary operate of the company emblem. Your emblem will need to have to have the ability to create a good, powerful and lengthy lasting impression on current and potential consumers. The rather instant an individual views your logo, even a part of it, he will want to believe of 1′s organization.

Just believe of a couple of of the all time excellent logos, McDonalds’, IBM, Nike– the minute you see their logos, even should you see a part of it or may possibly be in Black and White (there comes an additional crucial facet!) are you currently ready to believe of something else compared to respective firm? The reply is absolutely NO! The very first factor that arrives for your thoughts will be the title with the firm. This reveals how powerful an impression their emblem leaves within our thoughts. Isn’t that, what all of us are searching for?

How do you obtain your emblem to depart these kinds of a powerful lengthy lasting impression? The important to this query would be to allow it to be quick to keep in mind. Companies usually make the mistake of thinking that a complicated artistic design may function well for them, whilst the reverse is true, in most cases. The simpler your logo is, the simpler it is to keep in mind and so it leaves a stronger impression around the folks.

You also require to think of all the feasible mediums where you’re going to use your logo. You are not going to use your emblem in only 1 medium, you may possibly utilize it in your small business cards and stationery, you may possibly utilize it inside your internet site, you may possibly also utilize it within the traditional media like newspaper classifieds and magazines. This is why it really is most necessary to inform your emblem designers regarding the achievable mediums exactly where you’re going to use your logo. You really should also check if your logo appears excellent in Black and White, since tomorrow in the event you require to get a document in black and white with your logo on it, it really should be really effortlessly compatible to that also.

In the beginning of this article, I have mentioned, that your logo can successfully convey the character and nature of 1′s company to its viewers. How do we do that? There are a host of factors that are considered prior to developing a emblem. When you location an purchase for any emblem style, like a consumer it really is your duty to provide a apparent short of one particular’s firm profile, the business you’re in as nicely as the nature of emblem that you simply are searching for, towards the designers. If you aren’t certain regarding the nature of emblem that fits your firm, allow the emblem style firm choose on that. There are a number of emblem style corporations who’re knowledgeable and they’ll be considerably greater outfitted to recommend you the right sort of logos. Any fantastic emblem style firm would perform a marketplace analysis regarding the diverse sorts of logos employed inside your business by your opponents and their effect within the men and women. Based on that they’ll provide you a set of logos from which it is doable to pick any 1 after which they’ll customise that for your perfection.

If you’ve got any company colours, as we have now red for McDonalds’, it’ll be clever to recommend the designers to make use of that coloration within your emblem-any fantastic designer would anyhow do this.

One final term, as with some other business, it truly is surely advantageous to get skilled services than to go for almost any amateur styles simply to preserve several bucks. You may well be the ideal inside your business however they know their work far better than you, so in case you want to obtain an excellent outcome, attempt to rely in your emblem style organization. I do realize that you’ll find particular emblem style organizations that cost exorbitant fee to develop a emblem style however the business is altering. These days you will discover corporations that offer you fantastic logos for nominal fees. So just before you choose to location your buy for the emblem style, examine the portfolio with the corporation after which examine the cost tag. You can surely obtain some skilled emblem styles at reasonably priced costs.
Find out about logo design.

How to design a website

Introduction

If you go to google.com and search for “website tutorial”, “website design tutorial”, “how to design a website”, chances are you won’t be able to find a result that will take you from the beginning of the design process, to the end of the html process. And that is exactly what I’m going to do in this elaborate design tutorial, and for free! Also check out my new article how to make a website at my other site after you finish reading this.

Not only am I going to cover every step in detail, but also provide the reasoning and principles behind the decisions I make. Other design tutorials out there only focus on the instruction aspect, but to truly become a better designer you have to understand the principles and concepts that go into effective website design. All of these principles will help you understand how to make a website.

I have over 8 years design experience (web and print) and to give back to the community I started these design tutorials. I know how difficult it is when you really want to design a great looking site, but simply have no idea where to start because of the huge lack of quality tutorials. I would have figured 8 years down the road there would be a lot of great sources from which to learn, but there simply isn’t. So I guess I will try to provide a great source that many people can find value in. Also, feel free to read my free guide about how to make money online.

The Project : SiteVerdict.com

I figured since I’m going to be taking the time out to write an elaborate tutorial, I might as well try to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. So I thought of an idea for a website that I thought was somewhat unique, that I could potentially make a buck or two off of. I came up with SiteVerdict.com, and it is the site that I will be documenting in this tutorial. It’s a simplistic web 2.0 design, but both looks great and is very easy to use and understand.

The idea behind the site is to provide a service that allows designers / webmasters receive quality feedback and reviews about their websites, in order to make improvements - and ultimately increase earning potentials. In order to post your website for review, you have to either (a) review X number of sites, or (b) pay $X to skip the process of reviewing other sites.This has been done before, but not successfully. There are webmaster forums that have forums designated specifically for website review and critiquing, but having a full site dedicated to is far more ideal in terms of review/feedback quality and accuracy.

Website Design Principles

Many webmasters wish they could design great looking sites, but simply can’t. They’ve given it a few attempts, but either due to lack of application knowledge (with apps like photoshop), or lack of “artistic talent”, they give up. And that’s fine, because it keeps the market for design healthy! ;) But no, it really doesn’t have to be like that. If you’re an aspiring designer, there are a few key principles that I want to outline first. They are what helped me through my path to becoming a good designer, and they should help you too if you follow them.

• It’s not the 90’s anymore
  When the early pioneers of the internet age began designing websites in the 90’s, they became fixated on the filters offered by programs like Photoshop. Lens flares, bevels, drop shadows, glows, were used to their fullest extent. You need to avoid abusing these filters, or I should say, you need to avoid misusing these filters. There are instances in which these filters can be a great benefit, but you have to know how to use them properly and not just slap them on anything and everything.
• Usability, Not clutter
  Usability is all about making the visitor’s experience a good one on your site. Things should be easy to read, easy to access and most importantly, easy to understand. When a visitor visits your site, they should know exactly what your site is about within the first couple seconds. This is obviously where design, and layout come into play. You need to avoid cluttering your site in the physical sense. I’m not talking about having “too much content”, but rather how you choose to display that content. Things should be laid out with spacing and margins.
• Text Do's and Dont's
  One of the really big fads that was prevalent in the early part of this decade, was the use of small fonts. I was one of those idiots because I thought it “looked” cool. But for all practical purposes, I always scorn people for using size 10px or less for fonts. Never go below 11px font - and even 11px should only be used sparingly. Size 14px (which is what this is) seems most ideal for paragraph’s of text. You can get away with 12px of course, but as screen resolutions are increasing, 12px suddenly becomes smaller.

Line-height is very important. Line-height is the spacing between each line of text in your paragraphs. Standard line-height I find is a tad bit too thin, and I like to expand it a little more. It makes it easier for people to read.

• Colors and Contrast
  The color theme of a site is obviously important. A lot of aspiring designers have a tenancy to use too many colors, simply because they’re there. But I like using no more than 2 primary colors and a third “secondary” color that I will use sparingly throughout the design. A simple color theme is easier on the eyes, easier to “comprehend” and overall just looks better. Of course there are exceptions to this, but 9 times out of 10, it’s always better to keep the color theme simple.

The color theme also needs to connect with the visitors and the purpose of the site. For example, I wouldn’t use blue and florescent green/yellow for a site about health - it simply doesn’t make sense and I think that’s a given. :)

Contrast is hugely important. It’s very important that your content and navigation are correctly contrasted. The foreground text needs to either be very dark, or very light in comparison with the background color. I see a lot of sites where the text will be a light gray and the background is white - err! That’s very annoying and hard to read.

• Design around the purpose of the site
  A lot of designers, those experienced and not, always use the same “formula” for layout and design elements. To really make an impressive and effective site, you need to fully understand what the purpose of the site is, and what the goals are. Whether the site is based around selling memberships, or just general ad-based content - the design should cater most effectively to the purpose. And that’s what I will be demonstrating in the tutorial proceeding this page.
• Learn by example
  A common mistake for the aspiring designer is thinking they should be able to open up photoshop, and design a great looking site on their first try. Nope, doesn’t happen like that. You wouldn’t pick up a guitar and start writing music without first learning a few songs right? Right, and it should be no different for web design. I recommend that beginners simply try to recreate existing designs that they think look good. If you do this a few times, it will (1) help you learn the application, (2) help you become a better designer. You subconsciously learn when you recreate an existing design. You automatically pick up design sense when you do this, and it really helps and goes a long way when it comes down to designing your own sites.

I could probably go on a little bit, which I will cover in future articles but I’m probably boring most of you by now :). So let us get started with the actual design portion of the tutorial.