The fact is, women who have succeeded in technology deserve recognition; they are an inspiration for everyone, male or female, demonstrating what can be achieved through creativity and hard work. And so we present this expanded list: “The Most Influential Women in Tech.” We candidly acknowledge it is subjective and incomplete. Among other shortcuts, we focused on only a few sectors (we left off medical researchers and pure academics, for instance). We also favored established firms over early-phase startups.

Now let’s have a little fun with it and see how we can relate women to technology.

~ HARD-DISK Woman:

She remembers everything you say and do, FOREVER.!!!

~ WINDOWS Woman:

Everyone knows that she can’t do anything right, but you can’t live without her.

~ EXCEL Woman:

They say she can do a lot of things but you mostly use her for only four of your basic needs.

~ SCREENSAVER Woman:

She is good for nothing functional, but at least she is exciting, colourful, and lots of fun!

~ INTERNET Woman:

Difficult to access and hard to keep running.!!!

~ SERVER Woman:

Claims to be available to you, but Always busy when you need her.

~ MULTIMEDIA Woman:

She has a way of making horrible things look very beautiful.

~ CD-ROM Woman:

She always has you on the move, going faster and faster.!!!

~ E-MAIL Woman:

Out of Every ten things she says, eight are plain nonsense.

~ VIRUS Woman:

Also known as “WIFE”; when you are least expecting her, she shows up, installs herself, and starts gobbling up all your resources. If you try to uninstall her, you will lose almost every thing. If you don’t try to uninstall her, you will still have nothing.

If you like this please click the “LIKE ” button below.

1. Your Website Must be Engaging

   You have a compelling headline that grabs your visitors’ attention within the first few seconds. Your information must be clearly stated with compelling copy to truly connect with your ideal clients so potential customers can find what they are looking for easily.

2. Your Website Must be Informative

   You focus on the end benefit to your client and you’re not caught up in explaining the details and the process. You provide information that is useful to visitors. You tell your potential clients how they will benefit from your products & services or how you will help them.

3. Your Website Must Establish a Relationship

   The moment someone visit your website they make an instant decision about your company based on what they see. Make your website work for you.People begin to get a sense of what you can offer them. Often you begin to develop relationships with your ideal clients from your website.

4. Your Website Must Flow Well

   You must have a clear strategy on the steps you want your visitors to take on each page. This means there is a logical, proven flow and strategy for your content that leads to the next step. That step should be to move your visitor closer to a lead or a sale.

5. Your Website Must Promote Action

   People need help in making decisions; it’s your job to let them know what the next step is. This means you invite visitors to do something that engages, informs, establish your relationship and ultimately results in sales. This could be a video, a free offer, like a consultation or free estimate, or an interactive quiz.

There you have it the Five “Must Have” Elements of a Result Driven Website.

Did I miss any?

Search through 161,951 icons or browse 853 icon sets for webdesigners and developers in an easy and efficient way.

The site launched in 2007 as the first search engine focused on icons.  The target audience is webdesigners and developers, but the icons are also used to style desktop or in presentations and reports. With millions on icons downloaded every month it is among the most popular icon sites.

VISIT SITE

FreeIconsWeb.com

FreeIconsWeb.com was launched in 2006,It is designed and maintained by Mattdogs.

This is a free icons download that aim is to provide visitors with latest and wide variety of icons resources such as free icons,stock icons, custom Icon Design, useful tips, tutorials and much more. If you are a software developer or web developer, I will tell you where to get free icons resources you need, if you want a custom icon for your project or want to buy high-quality icon packages, Here you will see the best free icons and icon art designers from around the world. If you are the icon art designer,Welcomed the submission of high quality icons. At this site all of the articles are free icons or stock icons resource related, to download free icons and use without paying any fees, Hope everyone will enjoy here and get some useful tips and resources.

VISIT SITE

Icons Etc

FreeIconsWeb.com was launched in 2006,It is designed and maintained by Mattdogs.

Icons Etc is pleased to offer 128,743 free icons and clipart stock images for web design, application design, graphic design, and many other purposes. Click on the Browse All Tags tab in the menu above to browse all of our tags in alphabetical order. Go to the top of the sidebar to Browse By Category (Icon Style) or scroll down and Browse Icons & Clipart by Most Tags (In descending order). Check back often to view our latest releases of more great icons and clipart.

VISIT SITE

Findicons.com

Search through 313,284 free icons in 2,390 icon packs

As its name suggests, FindIcons.com is an icon search engine helps you find free icons. We have the largest searchable free icons database in the world (Found somewhere with more icons than us? Let us know!) and both a sophisticated search filtering and result matching system make it possible for you to get an icon you need for every design task.

VISIT SITE

Icon Archive

IconArchive is a professional tag based icon search engine with more than 325,000 icons for web developers, end users and graphic artists.

Also it is an inspiration source for new design ideas and a place to enjoy beautiful icons. You can collect, organize & share your favorite icons here with ease. If you want to customize your desktop, you can download icons for all operating systems, Win, Mac & Linux. Website or Software developers with demand for custom icon design could search for professional icon artists here. This may result in freelance jobs and/or design help for projects of any size. On our icon artists page you can select artists offering custom icon design.

VISIT SITE

EcoStrips is a premium WordPress theme from iDesignEco with a dynamic post wall mashup design inspired by Pinterest. The theme has a dynamic mobile responsive layout, with the wall reorganizing itself based on the users screen size.

Download | Demo

Brick and Mason

Brick + Mason is ideal for photographers and/or design studios. It utilizes infinite scrolling so users don’t have to leave the page to experience all your talent. This theme also uses the jQuery masonry plugin so the content will fit any browser size.

Info&Download | Demo 

Sentient for WooCommerce

Sentient is a smart, innovative WooCommerce theme. Products are cleverly aligned using jQuery masonry allowing you to cleanly showcase a great number of products on your shop pages without any wasted space.

Info&Download | Demo

TheStyle

TheStyle will give your blog that unique visual impact you have been looking for. With its unique jQuery-enhanced fluid width design, your posts always get displayed in a way that is best suited for your visitor’s resolution.

Info&Download | Demo 

Shaken Grid

This was our first theme which we released to the WordPress community and one of our favorites. Shaken Grid uses jQuery Masonry which

Info&Download | Demo

Imbalance

Imbalance 2 turns you WordPress-based website to an attractive blog, portfolio or even online magazine. This free template designed in strict modern style with a minimalistic touch. Imbalance 2 can easily fresh up your web-magazine or blog.

Info&Download | Demo

Liquid Magazine

This is one of a kind theme, there are no analogs on ThemeForest It will suits best for the blog with creative posts. Different thumbnails height is giving a special “style” to the template, your visitors will love it!

Info&Download | Demo

Photolux

Photolux is a powerful and elegant Portfolio and Photography WordPress Theme which is best suited for photographers and creatives who use portfolios to showcase their work. Photolux theme is powered by the advanced Pexeto Panel, which provides tons of options to manage and modify any aspect of the theme – it is well suited for both beginners with no coding knowledge and developers. The theme comes with three base skin choices: Dark, Light and Transparent, as well as numerous of back end options for easy customization and building your skin.

Info&Download | Demo

Chocolate T

If you need clean, light and simple Tumblr Theme, Chocolate T is definitely… not your choice! It is refined and elegant template with complex and precise combination of light gradients and shadows.

Info&Download | Demo

The bottom line is you want to make it easy for people to do business with you and having a phone number + someone to answer it 24 hours a day will help demonstrate that you are the best at what you do. Having a phone number also instills trust and peace of mind to your current and potential clients.

Improving site conversion?

Could something so simple as adding a phone number to the main page of your website really improve conversion? Could those ten digits get people to sign up for newletters, buy a product or hire you?

KISSmetrics.com did an A/B test wherein website had a phone number on test A and had no phone number on test B. Visitors that saw test A with the phone number signed up for product sign ups 56 percent of the time whereas visitors that saw test B with no phone number had a 46 percent sign up rate.

The company notes that the test was flawed in that the goal was to test with the number prominently placed and highly visible rather than the nearly 12 point font on the side of the page, but the results show a trend that a phone number increased the conversion rate of the tested site.

The KISSmetrics hypothesis before testing was that “by having a visible phone number on their home page, the trust factor would increase and therefore sign ups would too,” a belief they feel was proven at least minimally by the testing.

The bottom line

Our belief regarding this test is that although a slight uptick in conversions, should the phone number be more obvious, the feeling of trust would, in fact, improve by adding a layer of accountability.

In five to ten years, this same study analyzing sites that offer or don’t offer social media contact links will likely produce similar results.

Consumers that shop in person have the ability to demand to see a manager, but websites with no number has no layer of accountability and consumers don’t trust that the company is even in America or not run by scammers.

The bottom line is that a phone number is the minimal amount of contact information that should be placed on a page not only for conversion but as a service to visitors.

Websites that are selling products and services should make a phone number obvious and not hidden on a bio page or underneath a long contact form not only as a service to consumers, but because offering another layer of accountability and offering to answer the phone if someone needs you is a great way to improve conversions.

Click here to read the full KISSmetrics study.

In the beginning…
Web 1.0 was all about basics. With this first iteration, social networking was merely a dim glimmer in the minds of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and MySpace founders Tom Andersen and Chris DeWolfe. Back then, websites provided information with little opportunity for user interaction and feedback — a one-way process dubbed “read-only”. The most interactive user activities involved chat and instant messaging.

Then web 2.0 came along and introduced the world to blogs, social-networking sites, and a host of self-publishing tools. Articles are now accompanied with “comments” tools, and any hack with a computer can create a blog. Content exploded on the web, and a considerable portion of it is created by average users.

Booming web audience
The first decade also saw a tremendous leap in the growing number of online users. Mobile devices have also made 24-hour access to the web — anywhere, anytime — readily available: Simply sit at Starbucks and read email, check the news, and browse the web while sipping a Frappucino.

 What Web 3.0 holds in store
What industry analysts foresee for the next version is a more personalized and easy-to-use web, eliminating several steps from your online searches to make them quicker. Hence, your computer is ‘smarter’ and can better understand what you are searching for. According to PC Magazine, “the Semantic Web is a place where machines can read web pages much as we humans read them, a place where search engines and software agents can better troll the Net and find what we’re looking for.”

For example, if you are planning a weekend getaway to a mountain lodge and you want to make sure that there are convenience stores nearby, you wouldn’t have to conduct separate searches for lodges and stores. The web would simply deliver search results for both and categorize it in such a way that you would know which places are more convenient. What web 3.0 then promises is a more personalized, faster method of search that is tailored to your needs. And experts predict that this could also simplify the current problem of sifting through pages and pages of irrelevant web search results.

Virtual world: Others also speculate whether web 3.0 will eventually develop into a virtual world. Writing in About.com, Daniel Nations explains that it’s a possibility that Web users would eventually be able to walk into virtual buildings and stores online.

What this means for your computer
With every technological advance, older gadgets are eventually replaced by new ones. While web 3.0 doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll need a more powerful computer, the average lifespan for most computers is still 4 to 5 years and that isn’t expected to change. You can have your computer in top-notch shape as web 3.0 approaches by doing preventive maintenance to keep it healthy with help from programs like Computer Checkup Premium or System Mechanic.

Computer Checkup Premium, for example, cleans registries, removes clutter by clearing out temporary or unwanted files, and helps your hard drive run more quickly by rearranging data to remove fragments. It also speeds up your computer and ensures your PC’s hard drive is operating at its maximum potential.

WWW and information overload
One drawback, some say, to these web technologies is that they could make it easier to rely on the web to do the bulk of your work for you. Once upon a time, the fear was that television would dull creativity and mental stimulation, and now the worry is that the Internet has replaced TV in this regard.

As Chris Christensen, a computer executive and host of the Amateur Traveler podcast, says: “So we will hear stories about people for whom the web becomes an obsession. But that is no different from the couch potatoes who did not make good decisions about their TV habits.”

As we write this, tech experts are busy working on the advancement and improvement of an ever-evolving web. As the New York Times explains, “Their goal is to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion.”

Purchase this action script for $3.99.  Click the buy now button and once your payment is processed you will have access to download the script.

STEPS TO INSTALL ACTION SCRIPT

1. Download and unzip file
2. Open Photoshop
3. Drag file “Ebook Action Script” into Photoshop

THAT”S IT!

Questions to Ask a Web Designer before you hire them.

The following is a list of questions to ask your website development partner.  The purpose of this line of questioning is to identify any potential red flags before it is too late.  The website development industry is littered with failed projects.  The best way to become one of the statistics is to do your homework up front.

Remember the goal of a website project is to have the following three elements match up as closely as possible:

1. What you think you are buying
2. What your website designer thinks they are selling
3. What your website designer actually builds

The biggest single key to success in a website project is allocating the time to go through the planning and discovery process.  This process will help you narrow the gap between #1 and #2 above.  The second key is to police the process to verify that #3 above (the end product) matches #1 and #2 above.  Finding a company or individual who has extensive experience in doing this will help a lot.  Here are some questions that will help you find that company.

Setup Pricing Questions

• Do you have a standard, published way to estimate website projects?  What is it?
• Can you give me a line item breakdown of your setup fee / initial development estimate?
• How much of the total price is for graphic design work?
• How much of the total price is for functionality (software) development (includes training)?
• How much of the total price is for content (preparation and loading)?

Ongoing Pricing Questions

• Can you give me a breakdown of the total cost of ownership I will have the website?
• How much am I paying for hosting?
• How much am I paying for software licensing, maintenance, and support?  Is is a flat fee or hourly?
• How much I am paying for ongoing content changes?  Is is a flat fee or hourly?

Experience Questions

• Do you have a documented, repeatable process to plan and build websites?  Give me a written overview of the process?
• Have you built websites like the one you are proposing to build for me?
• Can you provide 5 website addresses of website you built like the one you are proposing to build for me?
• Can you provide 5 references from companies you have built website for?
• How many software driven websites have you developed?
• Can you give me a list of at least 20 websites you have built?
• How will I report and track issues / trouble tickets?
• What are your office hours?  How can I get issues resolved after hours?
• If you (the primary contact) decides to not do website development anymore, who will support my website?

Software Questions

• Who owns the Intellectual Property rights to the software in my website?

10 Must Ask Questions

1. How will I be charged?  By the hour or by the project?
2. Can you provide a detailed breakdown of what I am paying for?
3. Are there any future costs once the website design is completed?
4. Will I have the easy ability to edit my website? If not, how much will edits cost?
5. Will I own the website?
6. Will I own the domain name?
7. Will I have all the access information to all accounts related to the website?
8. What information am I responsible for giving you?
9. How long will it take?
10. Can I have 3 clients that you have designed websites for?

Here’s some pretty cool stuff that just might make you want to use WordPress.com.

Follow these easy step to download and song you want for FREE.

1. Visit http://aimini.net/

2. Search for music

3. Click on song choice

4. Copy embed code

5. Paste embed code into text editing program and copy embed code in the location below

<object width=”380″ height=”120″><param name=”wmode”
value=”transparent”><param name=”movie”
value=”http://b.6.a.c.aimini.net/player/mp3/?file=http://b.6.a.c.aimini.net/play/?fid=cA6brkqbqYHKVjdp9hiE&auto=yes&repeat=yes”><embed

src=”http://b.6.a.c.aimini.net/player/mp3/?file=http://b.6.a.c.aimini.net/play/?fid=cA6brkqbqYHKVjdp9hiE&auto=yes&repeat=yes”
width=”380″ height=”120″
type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”></embed></object>

6. Paste copied url into browser address bar

7. Select download location

8. Play and enjoy

Ask your typical real estate agent about their online presence, and they’ve certainly got a website. Ask your typical real estate agent about WordPress, and most won’t know what you’re talking about. If they have heard of WordPress, chances are they think it’s simply a blogging platform, maybe something to use in conjunction with their main site, if at all. However, WordPress can provide the kind of unmatched flexibility, affordability and power to provide a comprehensive, all-in-one real estate solution for even the most demanding of agents.

Real Estate and Web 2.0

Before we discuss the advantages of using WordPress for a real estate website, we have to determine what goes into a successful real estate site and marketing campaign in the age of Web 2.o. Gone are the days of monolithic marketing messages designed to convince the client of an agents’ prowness. You can’t expect to be taken seriously with a gaudy, clumsy website full of mismatched images and animated gifs.

Today, agents must master the ins and outs of marketing to the search engines and social media crowd, and they must also have a sleak, feature-rich website with all the bells and whistles, professionally designed to impress and convince that client that they know what they’re doing. Let’s face it, clients want someone savvy enough to represent themselves well online, especially those sellers who hand over their most important investment. Also, real estate agents are not hard to find. How you stand out in the crowd, and if you’re found at all, can make a world of difference.

The Fundamentals of a Real Estate Website

All in all, there are a few basic fundamentals for having a successful online real estate presence. On the marketing side, it includes great search engine marketing and optimization, social media integration, blogging, and general community and link building.

When it comes to a real estate website, it must look great, provide all the information people need, have a search function or IDX solution built in, show off those beautiful listings, and capture leads. A tall order indeed, but not impossible. This is where we turn to WordPress, because there is no other platform that can do all this at the same level of affordability, ease of use, and flexibility it offers.

The Advantage of WordPress and how it Pertains to Real Estate

• Marketing – As an original blog platform, WordPress naturally communicates extremely well with search engines. Pages and posts can be indexed by engines almost immediately, and there’s also a large amount of great plugins available to improve search engine optimization. Social Media can easily be integrated into WordPress sites, so there’s no excuse not to connect with potential clients through every medium. Setting up social networking and bookmarking is as simple as a few clicks. The ease in which posts and pages can be created lends itself to more frequent content creation, and as every SEO knows, content is king. Keeping your WordPress website updated with fresh, relevant information is a snap. Finally, blogging has proven to be a valuable tool to build an audience, rank higher, and capture leads, so we know WordPress has all the bases covered there. When it comes to marketing, WordPress is an out-of-the-box solution that has few competitors.
• Web Design – One of the best features of WordPress is the active theme community. Premium themes enable you to have a gorgeous site in just a few minutes. Many premium real estate themes come pre-loaded with great options for displaying listings and have additional features like photo galleries, maps and advanced search functionality. Customizing a theme is much easier than most people think, and in some cases it’s not even necessary to know any code at all. There are also plenty of resources out there for the do-it-yourselfer, as well as a wealth of affordable design and customization services. Setting up WordPress, installing it and hosting it is easier than most platforms, requiring just a few steps and some basic info. WordPress can even be used to host an IDX solution so users can search the MLS on your site. In summary, WordPress provides both the power and flexibility to achieve anything for your web design, while keeping the management and setup as simple as possible.
• Affordability – Finally, there’s the question of price. As an open-source platform, WordPress is free. You’ll have to pay for a domain and hosting, and professional themes and customization could also run extra, but when you compare it to any other solution, WordPress will always be more affordable.

1.  Don’t use background music on your web pages!

Some web designers like the idea of a little background music to set the mood of the page. In special cases like say an MTV or Disney website, this can work. But for most websites this is just a bad idea for a two reasons:

1. Music files are typically pretty ‘heavy’, and take time to download. Most surfers will not think that it’s worth the wait. Besides, many computers simply don’t have sound capability, so it seems silly to force these people to download something they can’t use.
2. Unexpected music/sound spewing forth from ones PC can be very annoying and potentially cause problems.

If you want to have music on your web site, make it an option that the user can turn on and off. A good way to do this is with a Flash movie; most browsers come equipped with the Flash plug-in and the Flash supports compact MP3 files.

Of course, if you just want to give users the option to hear some piece of music, like your bands latest tune, or a sound clip from an interview, the easiest solution is to create an MP3 of the audio, and then create a link to it.

2.  Don’t use Internet Explorer’s scrolling ‘marquee’ tag.

Internet Explorer came out with the infamous ‘marquee’ tag in version 3. This HTML tag (that only works in IE), allows you to create a stock quote like horizontal scrolling display of whatever text you put in-between the tags.

There are options in using the tag in terms of how the text is animated, but in a nutshell, you get animated text scrolling across your page. Some web designers like it, but most surfers don’t. Scrolling marquees make your page look cheap and take away from the rest of the page.

Tickers like that make sense when the information it displays is constantly changing. Stock quotes are a great example of when you might use a marquee display. But for static text, it is just a bad idea for the most part.

3.  Do keep the structure of your web pages consistent throughout your website.

Some web designers get bored with what they’re doing and decide to create a different structures to their web pages within same web site. A classic example is found in the way navigation works on different pages; one page may have the navigation menu across the top of the page then on the next page it will along the right side and so on.

People like things consistent, so your web pages should be too. That’s why all windows programs have the same look and feel; the same goes for the Mac programs.

4.  Don’t create automatic pop-up windows!

JavaScript pop-up windows are probably one of the most annoying things you can do to someone visiting your website. If you want to annoy your visitors go right ahead.

Pop-ups are typically used to present ads and other ‘non-core’ material to users. If you use pop-up windows, you have to learn how to integrate those elements into your main pages and forget about pop-up windows.

5.  Do use standard styles for your navigation.

Sometimes as web designers we may be tempted to use some funky navigational system. Things like navigational links arranged in a circle, or some sort of freaky 3d cube that you have to rotate to find the web page links; this serves only to confuse people.

Big companies like Apple and Microsoft have spent a tone of cash to figure out what types of navigation works, and what they found is that left side navigation and top navigation is what people are used to.

6.  Don’t automatically resize a visitor’s browser window.

Some designers will come up with a style is that looks best with a particular screen size, so they will use JavaScript that will resize the users window to fit that size. This is another surefire way to tick people off; people will typically set their browsers to the window size they are comfortable with.

If your style requires such precise window sizing to work, you need to change your style! There are many factors that can affect the screen real estate that visitors may be viewing your web pages with (window size, screen resolution, browser text size), as such you should strive to create fluid and flexible page layouts because it is not possible to control all those factors.

7.  Do make you web pages viewable at 800 x 600 resolution.

Many web designers have computers that can display higher resolutions like 1024×768 and 1280 x 1024. They design there pages to fit in that resolution, when someone hits those pages with a computer that can display only a maximum of 800 x 600, the visitor has to scroll to see the page properly.

Scrolling web pages vertically (top to bottom) is ok, as long as it’s not more than two and half pages or so. But scrolling horizontally (side to side) is really bad and annoying to visitors.

In a nutshell, you want to design all your pages these days for 800 x 600; they make up about 40% of the web audience!

8.  Don’t automatically redirect visitors except in very special circumstances.

Sometimes web designers will use JavaScript or other ways to automatically redirect visitors from one page to another for various reasons. This can confuse people, and it can cause problems with the search engines. If you want to send people to another page, create link with a little explanation as to where they’re going.

The general theme here is that you should not try to take control away from the visitor except under special circumstances.

9.  Do create a custom 404 ‘Page not found’ page.

We’ve all seen them, 404 pages. On websites that are served by Windows servers it is a plain white page that has this text:

Not very friendly and not useful to visitors, since the page itself doesn’t give you much information. The solution is that you can create your own 404 page and have that appear instead of the practically useless one that you see above.

A 404 page is just an html page like any other, you just need to ask your host to set it up so you can use your own home made 404 page. A good 404 page will be clear to the visitor that they found the right website, but just not the right page. 404 pages should include a link back to your ‘home’ page and maybe the site map page. If you have a search engine built into your site, then include the search too.

10.  Do create a site map page.

A site map is a simple web page with text links to all the websites sub-pages organized in proper categories; a lot of people will use a site map if they can find one.

11.  Do keep your web pages under 60k in size.

Web pages can be made up of text, images (GIF, JPEG and PNG) and multimedia content like Flash movies and QuickTime video etc. When you add up the size of all those elements in kilobytes, you get the total amount of kilobytes someone will have to download to see the entire page. This is typically referred to as simply the ‘page size’.

If someone has to wait over 10 seconds to see your page, you are probably losing most of your potential audience. High speed Internet is growing steadily, but the majority of surfers are still on old 56k dial-up modems. That means that you are begging for trouble if your pages are over 60k.

12.  Don’t center everything on your web pages.

Centered text on pages is just hard to read; just think about having to read a book where all the text was centered! Print rules have been refined for well over a hundred years now, and they work well. When in doubt about layout, think about how they do it in print.

With that in mind, for western cultures, left justified text (text that is lined up on the left side of the page) is the way to go. You can center major titles or something similar, but do it very sparingly.

13.  Don’t rely on JavaScript to work on your pages.

The last statistic I’ve seen, about 10% of people on the web can’t run JavaScript or they have it turned off! That basically means that you can’t use JavaScript for key features of your website; key features like JavaScript enabled drop-down menus for navigation.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use JavaScript based menu system, but it does mean that if you do, you should provide an alternative like simple text links at the bottom of your pages, or a link to a site map so that people can still navigate your website.

Part 3 …

1. Don’t use busy backgrounds on your pages:

You can create a tiled background on your web page by taking an image (GIF, JPEG or PNG) and using it in your body tag like this:

<body background=”myBackground.gif”>

This will cause your browser to tile the image across the web page. There are two things wrong with this:

1. You want to do all your styling in CSS.
2. Background tiles are usually bad news.

Once upon a time tiled backgrounds where all the rage on the Internet; these days most have understood that it’s just a bad idea. It can work if your tile image is not noisy and is a solid color, but if you use tiles that are of say a picture of your dog or some other bold image, it will make your page unreadable.

2. Do end your URLs with a forward slash in your links:

Ok, this point is a touch nerdy so bare with me … this little point will help speed up things a little as far as your user is concerned. If you have a URL (web address) that does not specify an exact page, then you want to trail the URL with a forward slash:

<a href=” http://www.dwssite.com/ “>Creating Killer Web Sites</a>

In the above link, you will notice that after the ‘.COM’ I placed a forward slash (/).

If the link were pointing to a particular page, I wouldn’t add the forward slash at the end of the address:

<a href=” http://www.dwssite.com/ articles/index.htm “>Creating Killer Web Sites Articles Page</a>

-

By adding the forward slash (as in the first example), we remove a step that otherwise the web server and browser would have to take; removing this extra step can give you a speed boost. So to sum it up:

If your link is pointing to a particular file (an html page or a PHP page or an ASP page etc …) you don’t want to use the trailing slash. But if you are pointing to a directory like:

<a href=” http://www.dwssite.com/ articles/”>Articles</a>

Then you want the trailing slash.

3. Don’t set your type to all capital letters in your body text:

Using ALL CAPS in text is good for emphasize and title elements, but don’t create long sentences or paragraph in all caps … it’s just hard to read.

Just compare this paragraph in all caps:

-

USING ALL CAPS IN TEXT IS GOOD FOR EMPHASIZE AND TITLE ELEMENTS BUT DON’T CREATE LONG SENTENCES OR PARAGRAPH IN ALL CAPS; IT’S JUST HARD TO READ. JUST COMPARE THIS PARAGRAPH IN ALL CAPS:

-

4. Don’t have more than a few words in italics:

Italics are one way to draw attention to text, but it makes text harder to read. Using italics for one or two words on occasion is good, but if you go crazy and start using italicized text all over the place, or for long sentences or paragraphs then your looking for trouble!

Just compare this paragraph in just italics:

-

Italics are one way to draw attention to text, but it makes text harder to read. Used for one or two words on occasion is good, but if you go crazy and start using italicized text all over the place or for long sentences or paragraphs then your looking for trouble! Just compare this paragraph in just italics:

-

5. Don’t have more than a few words in a bold case:

Sounds like the last two. Nonetheless it is still valid for the same reasons in that the text is harder to read, and then loses its point. Remember that setting text bold, italics or in capitals are all ways to bring attention to the particular words, if you’re making everything same, it loses it’s impact.

6. Don’t use <h5> and <h6> tags:

These tags will make your text smaller than the browsers default size and make it bold. This combination will result in text that is really hard to read.

7. Do turn off the blue borders around linked graphics:

As you know, you can turn graphics into links or in other words buttons, by wrapping a link tag around an image. By default browsers will surround the image with an ugly blue border showing us that the image is a link. Your images that are acting as buttons, should look like buttons; it should be obvious that the image is something to click on … so we don’t need the blue border.

To get rid of the blue border all you need to do is add this code inside your image tag: border=”0″

Check out an image tag:

<img src=’images/pictureWebPage.gif’ border=”0″>

You may have noticed that I snuck in another tip in this one: making your button images look like something that can be clicked on. That’s a ‘free of charge’ extra for you!

8. Do provide alternate text (using the ‘alt’ attribute of the image tag) for all your major images:

Alternate text is text that you insert in your image tags (<img …>) that is used by text only browsers. Text only browsers are used by the blind to surf the web since images won’t help them very much … the alternate text in your image tags is read by the text only browsers in place of displaying the images.

You should put meaningful information in the alternative text that will benefit those who can’t see and it will also help you with the search engines. The alternate text is inserted in your image tags like so:

<img src=’images/pictureWebPage.gif’ alt = “web page graphic – click here to view sample web page.” border=”0″>

The alternate (alt) text will also be displayed as a tool tip in Internet Explorer.

NOTE FOR MACS:

The ALT doesn’t work on the MAC, so instead you can use the ‘title’ attribute instead:

<img src=’images/pictureWebPage.gif’ title = “web page graphic – click here to view sample web page.” border=”0″>

There is no reason you can’t use both on the same tag.

9. Do make images that look like buttons act like buttons:

I think we saw something like this already! Just as I said above, button graphics should look like buttons … and on the flip side, don’t create graphics that look like buttons that aren’t buttons!

What constitutes a ‘button-like’ image?

Classically, any images with bevels or a 3d look to them are typically intended to be buttons and people will naturally try to click them. But the best way to determine what a button looks like (from your visitors perspective) is to consider your web site; if you find that your links are underlined text then any text that is underlined will be perceived as being a link or button … a little common sense goes a long way here. Another thing to do is to visit other web sites and pay attention to how they do things.

What ever you do, remember these two points:

1. Always try and make things as clear as possible to your visitors.
2. What may be obvious to you may not be to your visitors!

10. Don’t use too many colors in your web site:

Color is a way that people identify things; that is why the Coke label dominantly red and the Pepsi label is dominantly blue. Keep the color scheme of your web site limited to a couple of colors and keep it consistent across your site unless you want to denote some major section.

Part 1 …

Any marketer will emphasize on a good, easy to spell and easy to remember domain name that is similar to your business or nature of business. Domain name is the key to branding your business online.

A popular trend used to be that many business chose a domain name with a prefix ‘I’ or ‘e’ to the nature of shopping. The terminology became so famous over the internet that any body who hears the names ‘e-shopping’, ‘e-travel’, ‘i-ticket’ etc. can easily relate to the online entity without further explanation.

The other important part of domain name is their extension. Domain names are often confused by the customers because of their extensions. A typical extension varies from .com, .net, .biz, .info, .edu etc. etc. Many big business houses make it a practice to book all the extension and map it with each other so that abcd.com and abcd.net will take the visitor to the same page. However this adds to the cost and also the list being increasing daily with country specific extensions like, .au, .us, .co.uk, .asia etc coming in it is not always possible to acquire every possible extension with your name. Hence it is necessary that you promote the entire domain name to your target customers and build a brand around it.

Domain name registration starts with the process of checking the availability of the name you have short listed along with the desired extension. There are a number of domain registration websites that offer you the search function for the availability of your domain name. Once you have checked the availability, you can go forward to the domain name registration procedure from the same company where you checked the availability from a different company. Most domain registration companies offer you the ability to book your domain name online and you can make multiple domain name registration at a single go.

At the process of domain registration you will also need to mention the time for which you want to own the particular name. You need to renew it every time your tenure is near completion. Make sure that you make your domain registration in from a vendor that has a secured, certified online transaction process.