It has been said that website design is key in projecting a
positive image for a website. However, a pretty website without
excellent and updated content is equivalent to a pretty car
without an engine. Web users browse through websites within a
fleeting moment, and anything that does not catch their eye will
be ignored. This is where enticing and catchy headers makes the
difference. Combine this with an intelligent use of colors and
you’ll have a website that is capable of attracting high web
traffic.

Simply having a pretty website with intelligent information is
not enough. The internet is a realm of competitiveness and it
takes much more effort than that to draw traffic. This is where
web promotion strategies come into the picture, such as search
optimization articles, RSS, pay-per-click, site subscription and
blogging. All of these strategies incorporate the use of
interesting and updated information in various forms in order to
channel traffic to websites.

Site Subscriptions Web users subscribe to websites for a reason.
They require an input of information that they can incorporate
for their businesses or their personal lives. Following that,
they subscribe to newsletters sent out by various websites to
provide them with a consistent feed of fresh information. This
way, they keep themselves constantly updated on the latest
changes within their industry. Website content tie in to these
newsletter subscriptions, as websites need to link their
subscribers to their website to constantly keep their customers
in tab with their businesses.

RSS Newsfeeds Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is probably one of
the fastest growing channel for information distribution in
which web users subscribes to websites that sends out the latest
information updates through an RSS feed. Therefore, websites
that provide such services will probably need to provide daily
or weekly updates to their subscribers.

Search Engine Optimization This is probably one of the most
critical reasons for fresh website content. Search engines rank
websites by sending out spiders to analyze information within
various sites and also the links that websites have with other
websites. With this, the term search engine optimization content
comes into the picture as websites need to contain a certain
percentage of optimized words in order for their websites to be
ranked higher when a user runs a search.

Well it is not Elvis, that’s for sure.

I am a firm advocate of good design but most of the time people tend to interpret design as amazing graphics and astounding visuals they tend to forget that design is the culmination of every aspect of good and effective presentation into one.

We all know that design and content have equal importance in regards to websites but if you must choose which one is immediately important, which will you choose, design or content? If you?re going to prepare an entire web marketing strategy on which of these two shall you focus on more? Why? Please defend your answer?

During my early days (around 1997), when I was still studying/learning to develop webpages, websites with astonishing visuals never fails to impress me and I?d always ask myself this, ?Man, how did they do that great graphic?? I will spend countless hours surfing the net collecting every graphically and visually orgasmic websites I could fine and I?ll try to imitate and recreate them with photoshop (Photoshop 4) and if I can?t recreate them I?ll scour the web for tutorials on how to make those visuals. Man, if I were paying for my internet connection I would be dead broke by now. It was a good thing that my internet access was free. Anyway, back to the discussion. Then it hit me, after saving a screenshot of those awesome website, saving all those wonderful wallpapers and all those banners and images, in my mind a very simple question was formed, ?When was the last time I visited these websites again?? the answer was simple, once or never. After, analyzing my thoughts I finally noticed that most of these sites offers nothing but visuals. I had spent countless hours browsing these websites and I was only looking at their visuals, why, because that was all they have. That was the only thing they can offer, visuals. I finally realized that the websites I regularly visit like Yahoo, Web Monkey, Web Developer Virtual Library, and now google doesn?t have all these WOW factor thing, they don?t have the bells and whistles of those extraordinary websites. All they have and all they offer was information, tons and tons of information. They never bothered to develop their look and their feel, what they developed was their content, their information database. Millions of people or millions of potential clients, buyers and opportunities go to these websites not to look at their remarkable visuals or presentations but to acquire what everybody need information and people pay a lot of money for information. A father will pay millions of dollars just to get some information about his long lost child but this same father would not pay anything more than 10,000 or even 50,000 USD just to look at a design, he won?t even pay at all.

Content development is in a much higher level than Design Conceptualization, Creation and Development. Yes, design will capture your visitor?s immediate attention. All the wows, oohhhsss and overwhelming appreciation of the design will follow it but after that what? I for once is very irritated of websites which will make you wait 1 minute for you to download their 3 minute intro just to find out later that the information you are looking for is not there. It does not only irritates me, it also makes me mad as hell because I?ve wasted 5 minutes of my time for nothing and I believe that almost all internet users especially those on dial-up have the same sentiments as mine.

Content makes the big bucks. Here is another analogy. It is like a commercial ad on TV, they?ll hype a product with visuals, graphics, amazing videos, cool sounds and they?ll even get your favorite star to endorse it but in reality it is just as good as the next product. If you ever seen that TV ad for a brand of powdered laundry soap where the speaker just places the cloth stained with grease on a basin of water and just poured some of their product and left it, and after an hour she?ll be back and it is already clean without any effort from you. I tried it, using the same product but it didn?t work. I even left it longer. It didn?t remove the grease from my shirt but it did remove the color and the grease is still there. I?m not saying that the product doesn?t really work, what I?m saying is, it is all hype just like a website with all the hype. If you have a website that has all these bells and whistles, have you ever wondered how many potential paying clients have pressed the back button or have typed in a different URL just because they can?t wait to load your website, just stop for a while and think of the dollars that you easily could have raked in only if your site loaded just a nanosecond sooner.

Websurfers are an impatient breed. Very few will actually wait until your elaborate design loads. Only those that are interested in your design will wait and look at it and who are they? They are not the paying public, they are not the CEO?s, they are not the business people and they are not the people who have the dough to pay for your services, skills and talents. They are not the people whom you are trying to sell your service to. Then who are they? They are designers, artist and creative people who are just there to steal, copy and plagiarize your hard work.

Content is KING. In fact, it is a GOD. A website with good and well thought out content can and will survive longer than an extravagantly designed one. A lavishly designed website will bring in immediate traffic but they are not quality traffic. They could even be just one time visitors but content, fresh and new (am iterating), will drive not just new visitors but will bring in more visitors which could become potential users of your site and once they become users and get hooked on your site then the big bucks will not be very far behind them (hopefully).

About The Author

Romelo Jimenez Itong is a Philippine-based web designer/developer with years of experience designing and developing websites for US and other international clients. Visit http://www.romelo.com for more information.

melo@romelo.com

If you are like me your e-mail was jammed during the “Butterfly
Marketing” promotion. I have been following Mike for quite
awhile and he is a fantastic marketer. But it does seem to be
kind of a stretch for most list owners to have been pushing such
an EXPENSIVE product. $997.00 isn’t just a drop in the bucket
for most of us.

But, I really appreciate the fact that I got to watch it reach
this point. See I first heard about this program almost 8 months
ago. It crept into his emails and other sites here and there. He
mentioned it in his speaking engagements and even taught it to a
select few.

And it started creating a little buzz. Everybody was wondering
what this thing could be that he was so pumped on getting just
right for the world to see.

So here we are 8 months later and every body that is anybody is
pushing “Butterfly Marketing.” I tried a few times on the first
day to go to his site. And guess what? He didn’t have enough
band width. And I am sure that he was setup at the max his host
could give. He created a buying frenzy on a product that he is
charging almost $1000.00 for.

He sold over 1000 copies by 5:00 pm and it started at noon. So
if we look at that he grossed $997,000.00 in 5 hours. But he had
to pay his affiliates their commission and pay for the
production of the package. So lets just say that he got to keep
40%. Well, $398,800.00 isn’t bad either for 5 hours worth of
sales.

Now that isn’t really fare to say because like I said earlier
“Butterfly Marketing” has been in the works for quite awhile.
But, when I first heard about it, it wasn’t a product yet it was
just a works in progress.

So over the last 8 to 12 months Mike has slowly put together a
program and started a buzz on his own time schedule. That’s not
to say he didn’t work hard on his program, but he didn’t rush it
either.

So if every single package that he sells is from affiliates,
(which it’s not.) and he only sold 1000 (Which he has already
sold more. Today’s count he has 237 left out of 1500.) then Mike
has made a minimum of $33,233.33 per month over the last year
and he gets it in one lump sum now. This is on top of what he
normally makes. Which I can tell you is a very sizable amount
would make most people very happy. But, that doesn’t make any
difference. He could be unemployed

So with out spending a fortune we can take home some very
valuable information.

Let’s look at what we have learned so far. 1. Don’t quit your
day job. Mike continued doing what he always does. Day in and
day out he has a routine promoting his other products and making
a living the way he makes his living.:-)

2. Take your time and create a product or package that is
something that you can be proud of. If it takes you a year and
you only make $10,000 per month. That wouldn’t be all bad.

3. CREATE a BUZZZZ. I know that you may not be a big shot like
Mike, but he wasn’t always a big shot either. And so what if you
have to drive a new Cadillac instead of a Lamborghini. Create a
buzz where ever you can forums, blogs and every other way you
can think of. Get a basic website up that allows people to opt
in for more information.

4. DON’T QUIT!!! Can you imagine putting so much time into
something and then quitting? What if Mike had said after 8
months “Forget this. I’ll never get it done.” As ridiculous as
that sounds I have done it and I don’t know of a single person
out there that hasn’t. This has cost me thousands of dollars.
Not to mention over the years probably months and months of
wasted time.

So I am not telling you not to buy Butterfly Marketing but
perhaps the very biggest and most valuable lesson to be learned
here is not from his package but from his actions.

Something that I learned in the military is to lead by example.
Well, we have a number of leaders on the Internet that we can
learn from just by watching what they do. Don’t pass up this
valuable opportunity.

This is a series of 3 articles. In the next article we will take
a look at how Mike’s affiliates handled their promotions, and
why this is different from any other promotions that have been
done online.

As a seasoned search engine marketing professional, I’ve optimized hundreds of Web sites over the years. A vast majority of the time, I’m brought into the Web development process late in the game. Rarely am I brought in at the ideal time: during the planning phases of a site design or redesign. This oversight typically means higher costs and delays in the development process.

Due to this fact, my team of search engine optimization (SEO) professionals has adapted to engagement during any phase of a W eb site’s lifespan. Based on past experiences, we’ve identified critical touch points during the site development process where W eb designers and optimizers must collaborate. Each of the following W eb development steps involves one or more touch points: site planning and specification, site architecture, wireframes, design comps, beta testing, site launch and maintenance.

Site Planning & Specification

In an ideal scenario, a company looking to create a new site, or redesign an existing site, should engage SEO professionals from the very start. The planning phase usually determines site objectives, functionality and content. Building a search engine-friendly W eb site should be one of the objectives. As such, the site functionality (or code) should be clean and content should be keyword-relevant. For example, Flash, frames and JavaScript are not inherently search friendly, and should be used judiciously. Content should consist of HTML text containing keywords relevant to each pages’ theme. If one of the W eb site objectives is to be search engine friendly, the site specification should be reviewed and approved by an SEO professional.

Site Architecture
During the architectural development phase, the W eb design team typically determines the overall size and shape of the W eb site. Two important elements of site architecture to search engines are the navigation and URL structure. Ideally, the W eb site will have at least one set of HTML-based navigation that can be easily “read” and followed by search engine spiders. From a content perspective, the architecture should include a site map and custom 404-error page. For the URL to be SEO friendly, it should be keyword-loaded (i.e. www.bmw.com/5series/M5) whether it is dynamically created or not.

Wireframes
More advanced site developers often include wireframes, or early design comps, that illustrate task flow and information architecture. Even though this phase does not address creative elements or code, it does illustrate basic page layout and contents. As such, a SEO-friendly Web site should include HTML text and navigation (often in the footer).

Design Comps
The design comp phase addresses template design refinements, including layout, colors and imagery. In this phase, the design team should understand the impact of using HTML text for page headers instead of text graphics. In addition, the copywriter should be made aware of the impact of keyword density, proximity and relevance on each page. The programmers should be aware of the impact of their choice of platform and code on SEO-friendliness.

Beta Testing
All sites should undergo a thorough quality assurance testing phase prior to launch. During this stage, the SEO professional should review the site on a page-by-page basis and provide specific recommendations on ALT, META and title tags. In addition, they should review the copy to ensure it is properly optimized.

Kent Lewis, President, Anvil Media, Inc.
With a background in integrated marketing, Lewis left a public relations agency in 1996 to start his search engine marketing career. Since then, he has focused on helping clients solve business problems via the Internet. Lewis founded Anvil Media, Inc. in 2000 to help clients enhance their Web site performance, increase their visibility and generate sales online. He was also Director of Marketing and Business Development at goodguys.com, an online electronics retailer. Lewis is creator and Editor-in-Chief of Anvil, a free monthly e-zine and is an adjunct professor at Portland State University. He speaks regularly on emarketing-related topics at industry conferences like Search Engine Strategies. Lewis sits on the board for Portland Advertising Federation and is actively involved in local charitable organizations. He recently founded Anvil’s Annual Get SMART Gala event to raise awareness for children’s literacy. Lewis received Portland Business Journal’s Top 40 Under 40 Award in 2004.

Don’t you just love web acronyms like LOL and WYSIWYG?

It took me forever to remember that LOL means “Laugh Out Loud” on the internet since it meant “Lots Of Luck” in my previous life.

Then I started seeing WYSIWYG. This acronym was easier to remember once I found out what meant because I’d never seen anything like it before.

WYSIWYG means “What You See Is What You Get” and didn’t exist as a programming term until the internet. (Us “older” programmers can tell you that you had no idea what we were going to get when we ran a newly written program the first time - we just hoped it would run.)

Just like our mouse gives us “point and click” capability, WYSIWYG editors give us the ability to put things on a web page where we want them and the HTML code “just happens.” So unless you were a web programmer in your other life or can learn new programming languages quickly, you should either be using a WYSIWYG HTML editor or paying someone to create your web pages.

Now a few years ago if you wanted a WYSIWYG HTML editor you had to buy 1. If you were lucky, you may have found 1 for less than $100 but usually the prices started around $200 and went up.

Today, you can get good WYSIWYG HTML editors free. They may not have all the features as the ones you pay for but they have more than enough to get you started.

Recently I downloaded and tried one of the free WYSIWYG HTML editors and it impressed me enough that I’ve included it as a free resource in our membership area. Using this free editor you can do all the the “13 HTML Basics” I mentioned in an earlier article and a whole lot more. (The article is archived in our membership area.)

While the free editor didn’t have all the same features as the version of FrontPage I purchased, it did offer the most commonly used ones.

In fact, most of the features not available with the free WYSIWYG editor aren’t really necessary to those just learning to use HTML because …

• Many of the missing capabilities can be done manually -
  like checking your page in different browser types.
• Most people don’t need or use many of the missing items
  and some really increase the amount of time it takes for
  the page to load into a browser window.
• It’s recommended to not use some of the capabilities like
  custom defined colors and WordArt because they don’t
  display the same across all browser types.

Here’s another acronym for you, YGWYPF - “You Get What You Pay For.” Only in the case of free WYSIWYG HTML editors, you can really get a lot and pay nothing.

——————–

Susan Carroll owner of http://www.friendswhocare.us has formed a global community of online business people through her weekly newsletter.

Susan recently finished a free report about adding automatic content to your website that search engines can see. It’s available at: http://www.friendswhocare.us/content.htm

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.

When I call on businesses offering my web design and hosting
services, the first question I ask, naturally, is “Does your
business have a web site?” If not, then I ask for the person in
charge of these things (for my niche, usually the owner) and
give my pitch.

It’s 2006, so you would think that they would jump, but it’s not
that easy. The small independent businesses that don’t have web
sites (and there are a bunch!) would have had one already, if
they thought they needed one.

It’s my belief that businesses offering any product or service
needs to have some sort of presence online. Newspaper and
magazine readership is down. There are 500 television channels
in some markets, and commercial-free satellite radio also. The
conventional ways to advertise are not reaching as many people.
Your new customers are online, shopping, looking for something
to do, or a new place to go. They get addresses, phone numbers,
coupons, menus, and can even make purchases without walking
through the door of your business.

Although I could list several reasons why your business needs a
web site, I’ll stick with the big three.

1.Affordable advertising that’s available 24/7/365

This is the biggest reason, by far. A web site is a billboard
available to everyone all of the time, at a cost that is
considerably less that TV, radio, or newspaper ads. After the
initial design cost, you pay hosting fees, which will run most
businesses between $40-$70 dollars a year, and you pay for your
domain name, which runs between $10-$30 a year. That’s it. If
you find the design cost prohibitive, you can design a great
looking site yourself with several available software or online
programs. The best thing on the advertising side is email.
Imagine all of the emails you send having your name and your
business name in the address! Not only is it more professional,
it’s viral advertising if your emails are forwarded beyond the
person you sent it to.

2.Control your expenses

On sites I create, I always suggest an online coupon for two
reasons: it provides incentive to visit your site often, and it
gives you a great way to gauge the traffic on your site. When
you control the coupon like this, you save money. No printer, no
artist, no postage, no newspaper or magazine ad. If they want
the coupon, they will print it themselves on their own printer.
People also forward links like this to friends and family,
creating a mass mailing, word of mouth effect that costs you
nothing. You can also control expenses with an online store.
Sell your products 24 hours a day with a fully automated store
that accepts credit cards and doesn’t take breaks!

3.Google

The way we retrieve information has changed drastically in the
past few years, thanks to Google. The Google search engine is
the third most visited web site, with millons of web page
searches each month. The reason I mention this is because they
have reached number three, and will soon be number one, without
any conventional advertising! Google is all you need to say when
describing the power and potential of the Internet. There are 16
billion web sites out there, and number 3 got to number 3 by
word of mouth. That still amazes me.

Now, I can’t promise you the traffic that Google has, but I can
tell you this: If your business is not online, you can reach
customers that are for just a fraction of what you have paid in
the past for advertising and promotions. A great web site for
your business can save you money AND make you money, which is
the bottom line for small business owners like us.

What’s in a nickname? Nicknames are pretty important in the eBay
world. You can use your nickname that you buddies gave you at a
wild high school party and sure brag about it to your buddies.
Your buddies will all know forsure and maybe they just might get
thinking it’s cool. Just maybe…

But, we not trying to sell to our buddies. We want to sell to
the world! Here are some must do’s and dont’s when picking your
nickname for eBay or Yahoo!.

#1. Try to use your domain name as much as possible. If it is
already taken, Put a word or something infront or behind the
nickname. For example you want “todayauctions.” Suppose this is
gone. Now go for “todayauctions22.” Play around with this.

#2 Don’t use your first name. This is the grand rule….You may
think that this builds brand awareness but it doesn’t. How many
Steve Smith’s are out there?

#3 Catchy names may or maynot work. Unless, your domain is the
catchy name already, I would stay away. The idea is to match
something that you either have existing or soon to be
existing(ie website or business name).

#4 Changing your name will show that you have changed your name.
Some buyers may see this as an identity change and maybe trying
to hide something. Only change if you absolutley have to.

#5 Don’t settle for a medicocure name…give it some thought.
Write down a list. The name can be very important. Don’t settle
if you have a website URL at www.coolphonestoday.com and get a
nickname of “ilovejane.” Pointless if you ask me.

Just my thoughts!

What is “it” that Google has been looking for now? I’m sure by
now you have read too many articles about the wicked Jagger
Aftermath. Many things seemed to have changed and yet what has
really changed? We still add relevant content and links, don’t
forget the links.

The idea of a good link, is what I think has changed the most.
Nothing you read can be taken for the hardcore truth unless it
is a leak from Google themselves and even then… (who knows?)
So, what I have to say I will not say is the truth but in our
work with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) along with what some
other SEO companies are writing, this is what seems to be the
case:

Inbound links carry more weight then outbound links. It doesn’t
hurt to have a few outbound links however for relevancy, but
that is all they will get you. Reciprocal links are about as
worthless as outbound links, good for relevancy nothing else.
(you may and will need a little relevancy) What Google is
looking for now, is almost impossible for the normal webmaster
to obtain. The golden egg that Google is looking for is the
inbound link you get from a big, well trusted website that has
very few outbound links. So how do you get a backlink from a
well trusted site that doesn’t give out links to everyone?
Ummmm…… you can’t!!!

When and if the sites were to give you or you and someone else a
link from there site it degrades the value of the backlink and
their link becomes no better then any other sites backlink.

The only way to combat this is to try not to have too many
outbound links yourself just a couple to establish your market
relevancy and add as many “inbound only links” that you can.
These inbound links must have your chosen keyword (hyperlinked
to your site) in the middle of your description text. This is
what is called anchor text. Any other way can degrade the value
of the link somewhat.

Sure, this is a good way for Google to fight against people that
own or use link farms. It is also potent at stopping people from
using reciprocal links as a means to get high rankings. But, if
you are determined to get ranked on Google, it is safe to say it
can still be done. After studying how the Jagger Aftermath has
struck the population a murderous blow back in November, we have
implemented some new SEO techniques that has really brought up
Google rankings. Further proof that Google can still be a
relevant search engine. However, they still show too many non
relevant results for my liking. Most of the common people are
still going to Google to do their searches. Right now you can
take all of Yahoo’s and MSN’s user searches and still not get
the number of searches Google gets.

What is stated in this article is not to be taken word for word
this is just from my experiences and it only applies to Google
so far as I have seen. If you are looking to get MSN and/or
Yahoo the above does not apply. REPEAT THE ABOVE INFO IS BETTER
USED TOWARD GOOGLE ONLY!!

Easy That’s how you’d like life to be, right? Especially when you’re creating a website on your own. But that doesn’t mean you want the site to look severe and just functional. you want it to be pretty , smart and also respond and move when you interact with it, while saying all that you want to say to its visitors . There are little tips and Features incorporated into software just for people like you.

Love what Flash can do but don’t know how to use it ? Macromedia thought of you and built a feature into Dream weaver that lets you create cool animated Flash buttons just by entering parameters. Want to have button respond to a mouse-over but have no idea or patience to create one with graphics software? You can make a quick and easy mouse-over button right from within FrontPage. What do you do if you need to optimize 150 images within an hour? No need to panic, image ready can help you out with a little droplet. Check out the different tips that make life easier or better for you as a Web designer.

• Animated Flash Button & Macromedia Dream weaver:

Dream weaver lets you create some custom vector graphics from within the software. You can make Flash and embed them into your Web pages. There are different kinds of style that you can choose for these from the available set-play back type of buttons .Arrow shaped button, shopping cart button And so on, or make some of your own.

Making a smart interactive button is simple in Dream weaver, select insert-interactive Image-Flash Button. Form the window that opens select different button style by looking at the preview image below. Customize the button the way you want it by adding the name of the button, the Font color and font size , then specify the URL that the button has to link to . The button is saved with SWF extension you can preview the button in your browser to see if it looks the way you want.

• Easy Mouse-Over Buttons :

Mouse-over and Front Page? Oh Yes. The software has quit a few convenient features up its sleeve, one of which is “Hover buttons.” Granted, these buttons don’t have snazzy graphics they look like typical button blocks, but they react to mouse-over and you can archive it very simply. Here’s how.

Select Insert -Web component. in the window that opens , select Dynamic Effect in the component type and select the Hover Button effect on the right . Type in the text that should appear on the button, choose a font for the text, specify the URL to link to on clicking, and select the size and color of the button. In the drop-down menu for Effect, Glow is the default selection. Try it - you can select the color of the glow-check the button in preview mode-the button light up when you move your mouse over it. There are several other effects available that are worth checking out, especially the bevels quite neat!

• Cool Effects With DHTML :

DHTML or Dynamic HTML offers some cool effects that could make your Web pages stand out click? Or your page to load with a transition Effect? DHTML will do this for you along with other little tricks. After you’ve built your Web page, from the menu bar, select Format-Dynamic HTML Effect. A tool bar appears in the work area. Choose an event from the first drop down list. This could be on ‘click’ double-click.’ Mouse over or page load. Depending on the event selected here, the next Drop-Down list offers the possible effect that can be achieved , This could be a change in the color and style of the font if it is text, a border added around it , or in case of an image , you can replace the image with another one by a swap .

Most of the effect toggle Meaning if there was a font change on click, another click will change the font back to what it was before. However, some effects are one-time like the disappearing act of an image or button .you select ‘fly out’ from the effects list for this . On ‘page load’ you could have the selected text drop in word by word, or hop in, spiral in, zoom out, and so on. This is especially useful for advertisements or parts of the page that you want to draw the user’s attention to.

• Animation In Reverse :

You’ve made an animation using image Ready-may be a tween of position, opacity or effects or a manually placed and manipulated animation backwards? No need to re-tween or manually place the frames backwards; simply click on the little arrow in the animated palette and select Reverse Frames. You can also create a rubber band effect by copying the forward sequence (small arrow > copy Frames), pasting it at the end of sequence (small arrow > Paste Frames > ‘Paste after selection ‘) and then, by selecting the newly pasted sequence and applying Reverse Frames on this.

• All It Takes Is A Droplet :

Want to optimize several images with the same settings? Create a “droplet “and save time.

Open the optimize palette in Image Ready with your image open. Set the optimization to what you want-file type (JPG, GIF or PNG), quality (low, medium, high), lousiness, dither and so on while previewing the result in the “optimized” tab of the main in the Optimize palette. This creates what is called a “droplet” that contains your optimization settings. Save this droplet anywhere you want, say on your desktop.

Now drag the folder containing the images to be optimized onto this droplet. All the images in the folder will get optimized the way you specified. This may take a while depending on the number and size of the images in the folder. You can also drop images one at a time onto the droplet.

• Precise Hot Spots :

Want to link different parts of an image to various URLs? You can do this by slicing the image and assigning links to the relevant slices, but the disadvantage of this is the lack of precision: slice is necessarily rectangular. Also, slices are pieces of the image.

Say you’re working on a Web page for children about the different parts of ancient castles. You would like the parts-dungeons; moat, guard towers, and so on-to have precise rollovers and links so that the information is conveyed correctly. Rather than slices such an images and allot links, use image maps, select the polygon Image Map tool in Image Ready and outline the part you want to talk about precisely . Even circular image maps work fairly well in some areas. You can adjust points of the map edge after finishing the shape, too .in the image map palette, you can specify the URL to link to along with ALT text. To preview your work, save Optimized as a HTML file and check it in a browser.

• Optimize Your Web Graphics Easily :

Despite the cable Internet connections and high-speed modems, Web graphics are still limited speed-wise. The sites that load fastest and work most efficient have well-optimized graphics .GIF images are generally good for line drawings and illustrations while JPG ones are best suited for photographs. Besides file format, there are various factor that affect the optimized image like the ‘lousiness’-the amount of data in the image that you’re willing to sacrifice for smaller file size-the number of colors you need minimum, whether you can have dithering or not, so on .

In Photoshop, to try out different optimization settings, click Save for Web . A window opens up showing the current image along with various options and menus on the right . in the image window itself, you can see two tabs: 2-up tab to see two versions-the original and the optimized-for comparison along with time needed to load the image according to various modem speeds . The 4-upshows you 3 versions against the original. These previews are useful and convenient, rather than having to manually save the image repeatedly in different ways and comparing each of them.

• Making A Banner Ad:

We’re all familiar with banner ads that we see all over the Web: a strip with an image and text that changes into another and another conveying some information. Clicking on this ad takes you to the site that the company is advertising for. You don’t have to use GIF Builder or any other graphics software to animate such an ad. You can make it easily using Front Page. Select Insert-Web component-banner ad manger. In the window that opens, specify the size of the ad, the transition effect, the number of seconds to display each image, the URL to link the ad to and add the images you’ve prepared. That’s it.

This feature could also be used you want to share a few photographs coiled also be used when you want to share a few photographs or images but don’t want the images to be save-able on the cline’s side; right-click will not work on these images. Although the images may be found in the cache, at least they won’t be able to be copied directly.

About The Author

Pawan Bangar,
Technical Director,
Birbals, (Hbirbals,Seobirbals,Ebirbals,Ibirbals)
#1047,Sector 42-b,
Chandigarh.
Cell:+91-98153-52253

email:

www.ebirbals.com

www.birbals.com

www.hbirbals.com

www.seobirbals.com

Once you have your company’s web site up and running, it is vital that you do everything possible to keep it that way. Nothing sets off alarms in a customer’s head faster than a non accessible web site or one that has features which do not work. A web site is literally your company’s window to the world and every aspect of the site; including the design, content, accessibility, ease of navigation, and uptime, says a lot about your company.

A fully functioning, attractively designed, feature-loaded web site spells professionalism and expertise, while a poorly designed and inaccessible site reflects very poorly on your business. Still, the best designed site on the web; one loaded with impressive features and clever design tricks means absolutely nothing if your customers can’t get to it because it is down. Unfortunately, if your site is hosted by some other company and resides on their servers, downtime may be largely out of your control. When your host’s servers go down, your site goes down and there’s not a thing you can do about it. There are a few things you can do, however, to ensure that your site stays up as long as possible.

Choosing Your Web Host

There are thousands of low cost web hosting services out there and they are all offering a thousand different deals for web hosting. Choosing the right one can be a daunting task, especially if you don’t know a lot about internet hosting and what you should be getting for your money. There are a few things you should look for in a web host - some of which will help you get the best deal and others which will help you determine whether you should expect to have a problem with downtime.

To cover the business end of web hosting, find out how much bandwidth and storage space you get for your monthly fee. Bandwidth is especially important because the more popular your site becomes the more visitors it will have and the more bandwidth it will use. If you are using too much bandwidth, two things will happen. You’ll be charged for anything over the amount you’re contracted for and the site could easily experience downtime due to receiving more traffic than it can handle.

You will also want to look at the host’s server information. Most web hosting services will post the specifications of their web servers on their own web sites. This allows customers to get a good idea of the host’s stability. If you don’t understand the technical jargon that these informational pages contain, get someone from your own IT department to look at with you. They’ll be able to tell if it looks like the host has a stable server system.

Check Your Site

To help ensure stability, you should check the site yourself (or make sure someone in your company is checking it) several times per day. This is the best way to make sure that everything is in working order and to resolve problems that do occur as quickly as possible. If you find that the site is down, a quick call to the host can often resolve any issues or at least let you know if there’s a problem with just your site or their entire server.

John Michaels is a freelance author for WebHostPacks.com where he regularly publishes articles on how to find a cheap web host and reviews of low cost web hosting services.