Free Software For Struggling Web Designers

Here are a few nifty programs for the thrifty web designer. They answer the question: What do you do if you can't afford $300+ for the popular tools but you don't want to use war3z?

(Note: Because some web publishers don't like having links to web sites in their articles, I've omitted them here. The following softwares can be found easily by typing their unique names in a search engine.)

1. NVU Web Editor.

Alternative to: Dreamweaver, Frontpage.

This is a pretty good web page editor, and is easy to use. Quite full-featured. Turns out good-looking web pages which display properly in FireFox and Internet Explorer. It has Source Code, WYSIWYG and Preview tabs which make editing a snap.

My only minor gripe is it doesn't support the display of Server Side Includes on-screen, because I use these [grin]. That would be asking for too much, I fear, as no other editor besides Dreamweaver supports this, as far as I know.

For people who want Word-For-Windows-For-The-Web, this is a nice alternative to FrontPage.

2. GIMP Image Editor.

Alternative to: Adobe Photoshop, PaintShop Pro.

This is a good image and photo manipulation package. I used it recently to make up a set of passport photographs. It did a fine job, but you need to examine all the nested menus; I found I was saving in a compressed format, when I didn't want to do that.

If you're used to Photoshop, the learning curve is slight. Like with any other software, you just need a bit of patience to discover where your favourite tools are. Give it a chance before your ADD kicks in(!)

3. OpenOffice.

Alternative to: Microsoft Word and Excel.

Now, this suite of programs is some of the best freeware available. People who know nothing beyond Microsoft will find these programs easy to use. Probably there are some minor compatibility issues with the more advanced 'features' of Microsoft softwares. If you are working for a Fortune 500 company, let them cough up the Microsoft licence fees and pay for being finicky.

For thrifty ol' you, OpenOffice is a steal, especially if you just want to open and manipulate a few Word and Excel files. There 's also the strange satisfaction in hitting the 'uninstall' button on the Microsoft Office Suite.

4. Opera.

Alternative to: Internet Explorer, Firefox.

Ah, Opera, the also-ran of the browser wars. A handy thing to have installed if you want to quickly visit a site 'in disguise' i.e. display a different User Agent string and cookie profile.

This is a browser you need make no excuses for; it works a treat, and has all the features of its competitors.

5. SimplyMepis.

Alternative to: Microsoft Windows XP and Vista.

This is the only Linux operating system I can get to install on my old Dell Latitude. It is very easy to install and operate. It was a delightful surprise when it found my cable modem, when Windows couldn't. I clicked on the Firefox icon and bingo! internet access.

Burn the ISO image to a CD and you can try out SimplyMepis without installing it. You can use it to diagnose problems with your PC, or get at files if Windows is giving you grief.

See also Damn Small Linux. Burn this to a CD, and you have an emergency operating system if your PC throws a wobbly. It will run quickly from the CD.

The key selling point of these is that they're free, and have been developed independently of Microsoft products, and thus have less code bloat and 'eye candy'.

6. Ashampoo Burning Studio and CDBurnerXP.

Alternatives to: Nero Burning CD Rom.

These programs will help you burn your SimplyMepis ISO image to a CD. This means that when you boot up your PC with this disc in the CD drive, your PC will read it as an installation disk, or you can just browse the contents.

Nero is a fine software, but if you just want to bring the odd CD, try out these free alternatives.

Conclusion: The free softwares above are great if you want to be frugal, or just set up a PC for someone else, get the praise, and not have to ask your pal to fork out cash. Your PC can be free of bootleg or overpriced software. You can be free from labouring with commercial products, that have been bloated with unnecessary features, just to keep paying corporate customers happy!

About the Author

T. O' Donnell is a credit broker running insurance and merchant account web sites in London, UK.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

How to Design a Site That Will Attract Traffic?

Are you planning on having a professional website built for your business and would like to know the best way to design a site that will attract traffic? There is little point building a website that looks great but is not search engine friendly as you will never get found. You don’t want to spend hundreds of pounds on a flashy website if no-one will ever find it. The best advice is to have a website built with SEO (search engine optimization) in mind or spend as little as possible on a website but as much as you can on SEO or site promotion.

Here are a few points that need to be considered when having a website built:

Download speed – fast download or people with not stay
Search engine friendliness (SEO) – without, your site will be like needle in a haystack
Simple Navigation
Simple colour schemes (not multi coloured)
Ease of updating the site
Contact details on every page

The above points should be remembered and made clear to your web designer. When users visit your website they expect to find the information they are after quickly and easily. They will also expect your home page to be interesting and self explanatory of what your website is about. Visitors will not stay long if they believe that your site is not offering what they are looking for.

There are known hot spots in web sites and one of them is having your contact telephone number on every page at the top right each page. Also a form on every page is important, especially if you have more than 5 pages. Professional websites often have hundreds of pages to draw in traffic, each of these pages will be consistent with the rest of the design and the phone number and a contact form on each page.

Download time is another important issue. You need to make sure you website downloads to a browser in 15 seconds or less. Most people will click away if they have to wait longer than 15 seconds. Generally a website with just text will take only a couple of seconds to download. It’s when there are large images or flash files that take time to download. A website designed in Flash might look great but a search engine cannot read it, so will ignore it as they will ignore images. If you must have images and obviously some images are needed to give a page an interesting look, then ensure you describe the pictures with alt tags.

Navigation is an important factor in good web design. When a visitor comes to your site as well as being obvious what the site offers it should be really obvious and easy to navigate. An ideal website should be built so that the visitor is only ever 2 clicks away from what they are looking for. Generally most of us are used to sites having a logo at the top with page navigation either at the top of down the side. It is best to sick to this layout and ensures you have consistency throughout the website. When a visitor goes to one of your pages it helps if they know how to get back and if all pages are consistent with regards to the layout they will know where pages are without having too think much about it.

Text colours should be used as little as possible, obviously a colour scheme is important in making the overall look nice but the use of too many colours is very off putting. Stick to 2 or 3 colours only. Colours are useful for making points stand out which is useful. Text is very important as this is all the search engines can read. Search engines are just programs which analyse the text on the page. So you need to ensure you have plenty explanatory text. Use bullet points and hyperlinks within the text also as visitors will just of glaze over the most of the text but click on parts that are most interesting to them.

Search engines like websites that are constantly being updated and not just left stationary, so it’s important to have a site that you can easily update. If you have a shopping kart you might sell out of a product or have new products to add. Except for those proficient in HTML and other programming languages people will need a type of content management system (CMS) so they can edit a site. This can be costly but in the long run will save you. If you don’t have a CMS then you will have to use a web development company to do your updates for you, the cost will differ depending on the company but most will not work for less that Ј25 an hour. Over weeks and months this will build up so it is worth have the site built so that you can do all these changes yourself.

With regards to SEO it is worth finding a competent company to promote your site for you. But for those wanting to have a go themselves here are a few pointers:

If you want your site to be listed on the front page for a keyword like for example ‘computer repair’ then you need to have a page totally dedicated to those keywords, the title of the page needs to be computer repair, the body of the text need to have a high density of the keywords ‘computer repair’. As well as good keyword rich text you also need to have other websites linking to your page. This is like a popularity vote and Google will see your page as being popular and important with regards to the keywords of ‘computer repair’. Now before you go off getting links to your newly optimised keyword rich pages you must be realistic. Do a search for your chosen keywords. If there are over 20 million results, it will take a lot more than what I have just explained to get you there, even for 2 million results it could take some time. You need to find a keyword phrase that is less competitive. For instance, if your computer repair shop is in Kent then you can only really help those in your area so you should be targeting keyword phrases like ‘Computer repair in Maidstone’ or ‘Computer repair in Ashford’ and so on, covering each town in Kent. All of these phrases are very obtainable and would only take a few weeks to get there.

If you choose to find an SEO company be very careful, there are many sharks out there which offer the impossible. No SEO company can guarantee high rankings because a) search engines algorithms are always changing, b) they do not know what your competitors are doing c) some key phrases are just too competitive (sites have been optimised for those keywords for years and years - so there will be no knocking them off the top). If your competitors are paying over Ј1000 a month on promotion and your only have a budget of Ј100 a month, then your SEO company will find it hard to compete. I recommend finding attainable key phrases and working on as many different variations as you can afford. Also ensure your SEO Company can prove they can get result by asking for case studies. It can take between 6 and 9 months of promotion before you start seeing any real results.

About the Author

Carolyn is the SEO Manager of Discount Domains Ltd, experts in Professional Web Design and Search Engine Marketing.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

When To Quit Your Web Design Job

Being a full time web designer for a company would mean 9 hrs of your day dedicated to your company, and around 3 - 5 hrs more for your side business (freelance). Freelancing is a business and it will take you more than just do this, and do that kind of thing to get it going. You have to do the accounting, invoice writing and the dreaded customer support. You know you can't go forever with this kind of set up, juggling full time work and your freelance web design business. You'll soon realize that you have to pick. Full time web designer or full time freelance web designer?
Full Time Web Design Job

People loves security, no doubt, we want a better and safe future. That is why sometimes having a full time job is the best way to go. I think this is one of the best reason why people can't quit their job. It 's for the security. Being a web designer, you know that you only need to design sites for the company, day after day. And wait till the end of the month to get paid. The only thing is, you'll always hope to have an increase of maybe after a year? The good thing is you only have to work 9 hours a day for the pay check.
Freelance Web Design

Freelance web designers are entreprenuers at heart. They depend on their skills not only in design but people management and social skills. Maybe some business skills but the basics are all there, you can research the internet for that. Now, the advantage of this is that, the more you work, the more you earn. And time is flexible. BUT, the draw back is that, you are not sure of your income. It may decline or rise. There are income fluctuations, just like in real business.
Things to Remeber If You Want To Become A Freelance Web Designer

There are a couple of things I always think about before I took the plunge and quit my full time job. They are:

1. Do You have money to pay your expenses? If you quit your full time job, you have no more income source. Do you have the money to pay the bills without working? What I did was to set aside money to pay my bills for 6 months. Secure that money and quit to become a full time freelance web designer.
2. Do You feel limited, bored at work and think that work is getting in your way of improving? I always felt that doing routine work can bore the hell out of people. And the hardest part is that, you're like a robot that does things over and over and over again, without consciously thinking about it. This will stop improvement in your skills and, come on people, its plain boring, if that hits you, you know there 's something wrong with your life or you're better of doing business yourself than browsing youtube in the office.
3. Do You have a good number of clients and works to sustain your freelance web design business? If you are doing freelance web design jobs while having a full time job, it is best to have and keep clients that trusts you and those that have more work for you. When I quit my full time web design job, I have no rock solid client base, I only depended on contests to hopefully feed me. So, if you have the guts to go and try what I did, this I say to you, don't you dare, or your family will think you're stupid. Build a list of clients first and think if these clients will come back to you for more work and hopefully sustain your business.
4. Do You have a strong control of your emotions? Believe me, this one is a biggie, most people will think you're stupid to quit a high paying web designer job. Do you have the guts to control the urge to get angry? If you don't mind what other people think, you are on your way. Always remember that: "An entrepreneur stands tall against the tide of popular belief".
5. Have you prepared yourself for the worst and planned for the best? Freelance web design is a business. In business, there are no certainty. We are all at risks. Business will come and go, are you prepared to accept that fact? No one will give you pay check, you are in command of how much you could earn now. Make plans for expansion, harness your skills. Learn more skill set. These are the traits that a full time job won't teach you.
6. Don't Be Afraid To Fail! If you never failed, you never lived.

If you follow this pointers, it will help you get started in the freelance web design industry. Always remember that freelancers are entreprenuers, selling their skills, it takes a lot of confidence to sell their skills to people. If you got these trait of an entreprenuer, making money by freelance web design will be easy for you.

About the Author

The author 's web site Snoob 's Web Design Blog aims to teach people about freelance web design and give pointers for freelance designers when doing business.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Basic Considerations For Web Design

Successful web design centers around the principle of always considering the experience of the audience first and foremost. Thus, before creating a website or webpage and uploading it to the Internet, the webpage designer must consider the website 's anticipated audience and/or targeted market. What will their experience be? Doing so aids the web designer in defining the purpose of the website or webpage under construction and helps determine what content and features should be included in the design.

Who Is Your Audience?

Consider who the people are that are expected to visit the website under construction? Consider the purpose for which the audience will seek out this specific website or webpage. What exactly will they be looking for? Why? In doing so, the designer will be well served to examine the key words that describe sister pages on the same web domain, as well as competitive sites that show up for these same key words in a general search query.

Experienced web designers recommend drawing up a profile of who a website 's visitors are likely to be, taking into consideration the following variables:

* Audience Characteristics
* Information Preferences
* Computer Specifications, and
* Web Experience

Designing the layout and content of a webpage with these factors in mind, rather than tailoring its focus and function afterwards, is more likely to deliver the desired content to the targeted audience or market demographic.

What Is the Purpose?

Writing out a "purpose statement" that sets out the website 's principle objectives will help keep the focus on what the website will accomplish for its targeted audience. Is the principle purpose of the site informational, or is the website or webpage marketing a product or service to its targeted audience? What are the short-term and long-term goals for the webpage or website? Do . . . or will . . . these goals change over time? How?

The short and long term purposes of the particular webpage will determine the features and scope of the content that initially needs to be provided for the targeted audience, as well as the links and functions that need to be built in to allow users to navigate around the web domain the page sits in. As the "purpose statement" is developed, the content that needs to be provided for users will become more or less self-evident. As construction of the webpage nears completion, checking the content you have included to the page 's purpose statement will be an important check to ensure the webpage functions as it should, not only in the HTML behind the page but, equally important, from the user 's perspective.

What Content Will Users Need or Expect?

Listing and organizing the content and features that users will expect or require should be done with reference to the purpose statement for the webpage or website. Organizing the features and content of the page or site with an eye both to the audience and purpose statement will help focus the theme of the page or site. Content and features that are superfluous to the main purpose of the site should be removed. Each page should have its own focus, segregating individual purposes to separate pages will help enhance the user 's experience - provided well-defined links and navigation tools are included in the overall website design.

Now What?

Once you have set up the webpage or website, it is time to move to the beta phase. Test the site 's effectiveness and usability with a focus group that has the same characteristics as your targeted audience. If this is not feasible, at a minimum invite one or more persons who have not been involved in the planning and layout process to give it a test drive, so to speak. Feedback regarding user experience is the optimal way to tune up a page 's or site 's functionality before it is uploaded. Once your focus group has given the site or page a thorough testing ask these individuals to compare their experience to the goals and objectives that were listed in the purpose statement.

About the Author

Smith & Saunders are leaders in Web design in Cambridge, England. They have been in business since 1980 and have a proven history of creating award-winning online marketing solutions. Visit Smith & Saunders online, or call 07768 255967 to speak with a representative from one of Europe 's pioneering and most experienced Web design firm.

Article Source: Content for Reprint