The Guidelines

For all  website content, there are a few basic guidelines to follow. Whether it is a product description or a news article, all of your content should:

• Be directly relevant to your website.
• Be keyword rich.
• Be direct and concise
• Be closely proofread and edited
• Offer useful information. Web users are looking to be informed and to learn about their options, and they can tell the difference between an honest product description and a blatant sales pitch. You should let your products or services sell themselves by providing specific, honest information. Accuracy in the product or service descriptions will ensure customer satisfaction and encourage return business.

The Basics

While there is a great deal of flexibility about the organization of the key elements of a website, there are a few things that all small business websites should have:

Home Page - This should be a concise and fairly general description of your business. Think of this as the elevator pitch of your website. You want a brand new visitor to be able to tell the point of your business and website within a few seconds. Below this very basic introduction you can go into more detailed information if you’d like, such as…

About Us - This could be a page all about the employees at your business, just about the owner, or a general company history. Either way, this should give the viewer an idea of the ‘culture’ of your business. Give them a hint of your businesses’ personality (just try to make sure that it’s a nice one). When in doubt, a touch of humor can work wonders.

Products/Services - Now you must get into the nitty gritty of the website. You must answer the viewer’s question “What do you have to offer me?” Chances are that, if the viewer has bothered to navigate past the home page, they are already interested in finding out more about what you offer, and possibly looking to buy. As long as your home page gives an accurate idea of what your site provides, the viewer should find what they’re looking for here.

Contact Us - This page should have all appropriate contact info for your business. For a restaurant site, this should include driving directions or a good map, and a phone number. If applicable, include business hours, reservations, etc. Essentially this page should include everything that a customer looking to buy might need in order to make that purchase.

Even if you don’t have a physical location, you need to be accessible for questions or comments from potential customers. This can be as simple as a comment submission form or as elaborate as a detailed quote estimate. You don’t want to miss out on business simply because you didn’t have a way of answering a customer’s questions and your competitor did.

The Organization

Last but most certainly not least is the early preparation and careful organization of your content:

For the sake of clarity, consistency, and lack of duplication, all of the content for a site should be written and organized outside of the website before you even complete the design. If you put off creating your content until the last second, you may realize that you need to make major changes such as creating new images or completely reorganizing your navigation, and that you’ve just wasted hours of someone else’s time and your own money. This becomes more important and potentially expensive if the site requires special modifications.

Beyond preventing the hassle of having to redo completed work, writing your websites’ content beforehand allows you to organize exactly what your business and your website is about. This will help you to balance the content between pages or by subject, get rid of any unnecessary or weak content, and make sure that you haven’t forgotten anything important. This also means that you will have the time to have another person edit your work or to put the content away for a while – ideally a few days to a week – and return to it later for editing with fresh eyes.

Last, but possibly most importantly, you absolutely need to have all of your content organized beforehand if you’re not going to be populating your site yourself. While you might know exactly where you intend to go with half-written content, and vague instructions, it can be very difficult to translate those intentions to the person who will be wresting with your content, and this can lead to misinterpretations, frustrations, and delays.

You’re going to write the content anyway, aren’t you? So, save yourself a few headaches and complete it all beforehand. In the end, the time and planning you put into it will be reflected in the quality of your content and the speed with which your site can be taken live.

What’s the difference between Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox? How often should I update my browser? How do bookmarks work? What does that button do? Ok, now I’m just having fun, but with so many different browser options out there, it can be easy to get confused or frustrated, especially if you have to use more than one. The solution: Browsers 101, all the basics in one simple guide. Let’s get started!

The Major Browsers

Recent stats show that 43.5% of web users use Internet Explorer (IE), 29% prefer Firefox, 13.9% favor Chrome, and Safari is last at just under 7%. As time’s gone by, these various browsers have adapted themselves to mimic the favored features of other browsers, making the differences between them, for the most part, a matter of preference. While this information may soon be out of date, here’s a look at each of the current versions of these four browsers showing the same website:

The Details

Here’s a closer look at the functional differences between the four browsers:
NOTE: the address bars in these pictures has been shortened to show the important parts in more detail

The Parts of a Browser

While all browsers are a little bit different, there are a few elements which they all have in common:

Status Bar
The status bar used to show all sorts of load speed information, but with the pervasiveness of high-speed Internet, this is function now simply tells you that a new page is loading. The location and the format of the status bar is very different depending on the browser:

IE - it is a swirling icon and the message “connecting” on the page tab.

Chrome is the same as IE, except the tab shows the name of the website which is loading.

Firefox - it is a small gray bar at the bottom of the page which shows the URL of the page which is being loaded and then the status “done” when finished.

Safari - the address bar fills up with blue from left to right as the page loads while displaying the URL.

Color-coded features:

Address Bar (Yellow)
This is the box at the top of your browser window that displays the entire URL, or Web site address.

Title Bar (Brown)
The title bar is at the very top of your browser window; in IE, Firefox, and Safari it is the blue bar at the very top. Chrome has no title bar, as the tabs are at the very top of the page. This bar displays the title of the Web page; for example, you should see “Web Browsers 101″ at the top of your browser window unless you’re using Chrome.

• The Back and Forward Buttons
  As you navigate through web pages, your path is traced linearly by your browser and can be recalled by the back button. It does exactly what the name suggests; it takes you back a page. The forward button works the same way, it will take you to a page you’ve visited and have moved back from. If you have not used the back button you cannot use the forward button and it will be “grayed over” or dimmed slightly. The same dimming will happen to the back button if there is no page to return to. This generally only occurs on the home page or when you open a new tab.
• The Stop Button
  The stop button is fairly self-explanatory; it stops your browser from loading a page. If you realize you’ve clicked the wrong page link or if a page is taking a very long time to load or isn’t loading at all, you can use the stop button and then the back button to return to the previous page.
• The Refresh Button
  The refresh or reload button reloads the web page you’re currently viewing. If you’re having trouble loading a page, something is not displaying correctly, or you’re waiting for changes or updates on a page, the refresh button is your friend.
• The Home Button
  Your “home page” is the first page you see when you start your browser program. It can be whatever you set it for (yours, of course, is Snoitulos Ten, right?). It is the web page from which you move out onto the web.

Favorites Bar (Green)
A favorites/bookmark bar shows the favicon and name of a site. This is generally located below the address bar and above the tab bar. You can also add folders to the bar to aid organization. You can add links to this bar by clicking on the favorites button. In Firefox and chrome, this button is a star located on the far right of the address bar, in IE it is a star and the title “favorites” on the far left of the favorites bar, and in Safari it is the plus sign on the left end of the address bar.

The favorites bar can be further customized by editing the name of the site as it displays on the bar. This can be accessed by right clicking on the icon and selecting ‘rename’ or ‘edit’ or ‘properties’. You can use this to either re-name pages to suit your convenience or to remove the text entirely to save space on the toolbar or if you’re familiar with the favicon and have no need for a page title.

Tabs/New Tab (Blue)
In browsers which use tabbed browsing, there is usually a button to the right of the open tabs which will open a new tab. The exception is Safari; the new tab icon is to the right of the google search bar.

Search Bar

I haven’t marked this feature in the images above because it’s pretty easy to find; it’s the little white bar with the word ‘google’ in it,and it is simply a way of getting to the search engine more quickly. The exception to this rule is Chrome. Because this is the google browser, the address bar is the search bar. If you type something into the bar which is not in the URL format (www.something.com/org/edu) it will automatically take you to a google search page.

Display Window
The Display Window is just a fancy term for your browser work space; it’s the frame through which you see this website right now.

Scroll Bar
If you’ve ever been to a website that you had to “scroll down” to read something, then you’ve used the scroll bars. They’re just navigational/directional aids. They’re over there  →. While they may look different in various browsers, they work the exact same way, except for one small difference; in Firefox, the directional buttons are both at the bottom of the page instead of on either end of the scroll bar.

Other Features

Autocomplete

I’m sure you’ve noticed that as you type something in the address or search bar the browser helps you by bringing up past versions of the same URL or word. A drop down window appears below the bar and you can click on the various options and be taken to that site without having to remember or type in the whole URL.This feature has the added bonus of allowing you to reach a website without having to use a search engine. This might be a matter of saving a few seconds, or if the site you’re trying to reach isn’t highly ranked on search engines, it can be the only convenient way to get to a site.

Add-ons
These features are numerous and varied, and they can be found to suit just about any user’s needs. Some of the most popular add-ons are AdBlock, Dictionary, and email checkers. These all work a little differently depending on the developer and the browser you use, but they all have the same basic purpose: to make your web browsing experience easier and more personally satisfactory.

Here are a few of the add-ons I use in Chrome (which, in Chrome, are actually called extensions):

First off, to find these extensions, I click the wrench icon (the settings button) and then click tools, and then extensions on the drop down menu. This brings up a list of all of the extensions that I am currently using. On the bottom right of this page is a “get more extensions” link. This brings me to the Chrome web store (you could also, of course, have searched for the chrome web store, but I prefer this method. It’s more direct). From here you can search from any number of useful or amusing tools.

Getting add-ons is similar for the other browsers, In IE, under ‘tools’ there will be a link for ‘manage add-ons’. In Firefox, you click alt to brink up the controls, click ‘tools’ and then ‘add-ons’. In Safari, click the cog icon on the far right (where the wrench is in Chrome), then click ‘safari extensions gallery’. While there are an almost endless number of add-ons, be cautious when downloading from an unknown or uncertified developer (this goes for everything you download, not just add-ons). Have fun searching through these, there’s something for everyone.

A Final Note: Updating your Browser

1. Login to Gmail
2. Next to your email address in the upper right hand corner, click on the Options button, then select Mail Settings
3. On the General Settings tab, scroll down to the signature settings.
4. Type in your name, address and other contact information.
5. To add the Facebook Icon, click on the image button (looks like this Then copy and paste this image link into the Image URL Field: http://www.snoitulosten.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/facebook-small.jpg then click ok
6. Repeat this step for Twitter using this image link: http://www.snoitulosten.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/twitter-small.jpg (BTW – here is the link for Linkedin if you want it: http://www.snoitulosten.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/linked.jpg )
7. Now that you have the images inserted, you need to hyperlink them. To do this, first click on the image you want to link to highlight it, then click on the hyperlink button (looks like this:
8. After you click on the link, a dialog box will open. Copy and paste your Facebook or Twitter link into the Web Address field, then click ok.
9. Do this for all images in your signature.

Here is the video instruction set if you’d rather see it in person:

Be sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the screen and save your changes. Then send yourself a test message (or send me one patrice@netsolutionsna.com) and we can verify that the links go to the right place!

We’ll post more image options in the near future so you can add in YouTube, Linkedin, etc.

With the prevalence of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, it may seem like blogs have become obsolete. Some publications advise amateur wordsmiths to not even bother creating a blog, claiming that adding anything to the already super-saturated blogosphere will inevitably become white noise.

The problem, however, lies not in the audience but in the uncommitted writer. Considering how easy it is to make a blog — most can be set up for free in less than five minutes — the blogging trend caught on with the masses very quickly and so many unattractive, uninteresting, and useless blogs were created that the numbers became inflated.

Those blogs whose writers have a specific purpose, especially blogging for business purposes, have been much more successful and met their purpose better than something like a kitten fan page, and for good reason. Because business blogs have a specific focus and an — admittedly smaller — but more interested and dedicated audience, they cannot be as accurately tracked with statistics as mass-appeal general topic blogs are. Generalized blogs have the advantage of appealing to a greater audience, but they are at a major disadvantage when it comes to keeping a reader’s attention long-term. They are also at a disadvantage in that they have no specific purpose, which often leads writers to stagnate and just stop posting.

It’s not blogging is dead, it’s that not everyone with access to a computer can write something worth reading. For these people the limited lengths and guaranteed audiences of social media is a better option. But this doesn’t make the blog useless or obsolete, and the numbers agree; according to a recent eMarketer study, 53.5 % of the online population in the U.S. (122.6 million people) read at least one blog every month.

In fact, most bloggers (up to 75%) believe that blogs are being taken more seriously as sources of information now than ever before and 74% of self-employed bloggers say that their blog has proven valuable for promoting their business. Commitment and longevity in blogging pays off, since 68% of successful bloggers have been posting for 2-6 years.

So then how, in a full-to-the-brim blog community can you make your blog successful? A business blog has the advantage of a specific purpose a continual stream of topics which will help to keep the blog fresh and thriving for as long as the business is, but only if it the writing is up to business standards.

1. First and foremost you have to know your subject and audience, and gauge the content of your blog accordingly; a business blog is going to require more time and effort than most to be interesting and substantive, but the possible rewards vastly outstrip those of a blog about kittens.
2. The next thing to focus on is the layout and design of your blog (but remember that writing quality needs to be your first priority). Because the blog is such a fluid medium, there’s no reason for yours to be boring or unattractive. A proper understanding of the CRAP principles can also work wonders. The challenge lies in finding a balance between readability, navigability, and attractiveness. A clear layout and a subject-based archive of past posts as well as the standard chronological one can be very effective.
3. Also, highlighting new posts, either through including new posts in existing weekly newsletters, having a specific mailer just for blog updates, or using an outlet such as Google Reader will make it effortless for your readers to keep abreast of new posts and can increase readership dramatically.

Now that blogging has moved out of its infancy, things are changing; the blog format is established, audiences expect higher quality content, and readership is more specialized. But that’s no reason why a blog cannot be informative or successful, it just means we’ll have to try a bit harder.

The basics of the C.R.A.P. principles are:

Contrast – Elements that aren’t supposed to be the same should be very different. Making the only slightly different confuses the eye and causes the reader to see a relationship that doesn’t exist. Using differing elements on a page draws the eyes to appropriately grouped elements and allows for proper scanning.

Repetition – Continuing formatting and styles for the entire document to create and maintain a cohesive feel.

Alignment – Everything on the page needs to be visually connected to something else, nothing should be out of place or distinct from all other design elements. Clean lines create peace.

Proximity – Proximity creates related meaning: elements that are related should be grouped together, whereas separate elements should have enough space in between to be easily distinguishable. Never underestimate the use of white space.

For more information and examples, visit:
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/blog/revive-the-crap-principles
http://thinkvitamin.com/design/how-crap-is-your-site-design/

1. Open the document that you want to turn into a PDF

2. Go to File > Print

3. From the printer drop down, instead of printing to your default printer, you will want to print to CutePDF instead.

4. Select where you want to save the PDF, name it and you are all done!

The Favicon appears as a mini-icon next to your web address in most browsers. It also appears next to the website name in your favorites list.

Step #1 – Upload your video to YouTube. I will not bore you with the details of this task, if you do not know how to upload your video here is a simple video guide on how to upload a video to YouTube.

Step #2 – Once your video is uploaded, you need to retrieve the code for the video from YouTube. As you can see in the screen shot below, you need to click on “< Embed >” button first. Continued after screen shot…

Step #2 (Con’t)
Once you have clicked on the “< Embed >” button, several new options become available. You can select the size, border color, and other display options. Once you have configured your options, you need to copy (CTRL + C) the code so you can add it to your website.

Step #3 – Login to your ProFusion Products Website, and navigate to the page you want to add the video to. Once there, click on the < X > button. Continued below screen shot…

Step #3 (Con’t) – Clicking the < X > button opens a small window, this is actually the code of your website page. In this example there is no other content on the page, but if this page had text already you would see code displayed here.

Step #4 – Paste (CTRL + P) your code into the new window. Then click the “Apply” button and then the “OK” button. Continued below screen shot…

Step #4 (Con’t) – Once the code is inserted into the page you will NOT see the video. You will simply be shown a dotted outline of where the video will display along with a red x. This is fine, it is simply a placeholder for the video.

Step #5 – Save the page, and then go to the frontend of the website and view your video. That is it! You are all set to start showing the video to friends, relatives, colleges, and clients!

Lucky for all of us, there are numerous websites that make finding images just a little bit easier. When I am writing a blog post, I am often thinking about what type of images I can use to complete my exhaustive vocabulary (sarcasm), after all a picture is worth a 1000 words. After my text is complete, and I have considered what type of images I am looking for, I visit a few stock image websites that have plenty of royalty free images to choose from.

Below is my review of the Stock Image websites I use most often.

1. Google Image Search – Rating 2 out of 5

   This is a quick hit or miss, there are often not a lot of images to choose from that you can manipulate for your website. For those of you familiar with Google’s Image Search you will know that with every search typically 1000′s of results are returned. However, just because an image displays does not mean you can use it. What you need to find are images that artists have indicated can be used for commercial reproduction and manipulation. In order to do this, you need to change your search filters to exclude images that you cannot use. To make this change you first conduct a Google Image search, and then click on “Advanced Search.” This will bring up a new page where you can define certain search parameters. One of the last options on the page is usage rights, I change this value to “labeled for commercial reuse with modification.” This indicates to Google that you only want images that you can manipulate and reuse on your website. Results of this type typically return less than 100 images. Sometimes you get lucky, most of the time you move onto the next option.

2. iStockphoto – Rating 4.5 out of 5

   This is in my opinion the most cost affective, quality image search location on the web. Their photos are high quality, relevant and there is a large selection to choose from. Most images that you would use on a website or blog cost $1, if you are trying to use them for printing, they will run $5-$20 which are all very reasonable prices considering the other options available to you. iStockphoto also has a feature called “Lightboxes” which allow you to gather a group of images together, and then you can email them to other people for review. So often, when I am trying to narrow down to the final image to use on a website, I will create a Lightbox with a few images in it, and then email it to decision makes of the website. Allowing them to view the images, and voice their opinion on which images is the best.
   
   To create a Lightbox on iStockphoto.com is pretty easy, simply sign-up for an account via the link in the top right corner of the iStockphoto.com website. After your account is set-up, each image you search for will have an option to “Add to Lightbox” if you have not created a lightbox, or want to create a new one you will be prompted to do so.

3. Big Stock – Rating 3.5 out of 5

   While Big Stock is not as popular as iStock or Google images, it still packs a powerful punch. The images are roughly the same price as iStock, and there is a little less variety, but overall it is a nice tertiary option when you cannot find the type of image you are looking for on the other two sites. One thing I notice about Big Stock is when you need a high quality image for printing you can get them a little cheaper at Big Stock. You need to purchase one of their larger credit packages to get the price lower, but when starting a business, $189 which gets you 140 credits goes a long way towards building out a quality website, along with a few print brochures.

By using the resources above you should be able to find the right image for each and everyone of your blog posts or website pages. Do not forget that a picture can tell a thousand words, so what are you missing out on by not including any images or the wrong image?

If you are anything like me, you despise spam or anything that remotely resembles spam. In my effort to remove it, I will go to great lengths to report a spam email, website or comment on my blogs. As a hosting provider Net Solutions and ProFusion Products also go to great lengths to ensure our clients email is relatively undisturbed by email spam.

That being said, some spam still gets through, and one place I notice a lot of consumers complaining about spam is from their WordPress blog. Most of these claims are due to a lake of education on what can be done to avoid spam on a blog. Once your blog is properly configured you can eliminate spam registrations and comments completely. However, this is done at a cost.

Before we can eliminate spam from your blog, let us first look at the source of spam, and then we can evaluate how to remove it.

1. The primary source of spam is via comments to your blog posts. Spammers have built automated routines to scour the internet looking for the specific code related to a WordPress comment box. The spam routine then auto-submits a comment typically with a link back to the spam website. Ultimately spam bots go through this effort, to try and generate traffic or links to their parent website.
2. The other source of spam submissions is during the registration process. Depending on how your blog is configured you may require visitors to register before they can comment on your blog, or before they can become a member. This form can also be discovered by Spam routines, and the spammer can then become a member of your blog.

Both of the above scenarios trigger an email to be sent to the blog administrator indicating a comment has been submitted or a user has registered. Often times the submission is composed of complete gibberish, making the administrator leery that something has gone wrong with the application. In reality, nothing is wrong, the spam routine simply enters gibberish in an effort to see if the submission process works. Often once they know it works, they will return with a second spam bot to complete the process more professionally with more detailed information.

Now that we understand how spam is caused on a WordPress blog, let us look at what the built in options are for eliminating spam.

• From the admin panel of your blog, if you go to Settings and then General, you will see a list of options. One of the options is “Membership” with a check box for “Anyone Can Register” by checking this box you allow spam bots and regular users to register on your website.
• From the admin panel of your blog, if you go to Settings and then Discussion, you will find numerous options that control the hoops people need to jump through to comment on your blog. If you want to lock down the site so no one can comment simply uncheck the box for “Allow people to post comments on new articles”
• Another option in that same section of the admin panel, is a combination of the two items above. The first option would be to not allow anyone to register, and then in the second screen select “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” This way you can control who can add comments. Now, if you have someone you want to allow to add comments, simply login to the admin panel and add them as a user. This allows you specific control over who can comment on your blog.
• There are numerous other variations that you can control from the settings > discussion admin section of your blog. Try using them to see if you can configure your blog to meet your website visitors needs while reducing the volume of spam.

Now the important piece to understand when making the adjustments above, is the configurations that eliminate spam also eliminate the ability for your average website visitor to make a comment. So if you want visitors to your website to be able to add comments, then you need to be aware that spam submissions will also come along as an unintended consequence. If you do not want visitors to comment, then you may as well lock it down so that spam bots cannot complete the forms either.

Another option that is available, for the more advanced user of WordPress is to look into third party tools that allow you to add CAPTCHA code to your website. CAPTCHA may mean something to you when you think about that funky security code you have to complete when submitting for something online.
You can see an example CAPTCHA code in the image to the right.

CAPTCHA is great, because spam bots typically cannot complete it, while your average website visitor can complete the CAPTCHA code. That being said, not everyone is average, nor is CAPTCHA code created equal. Some people simply find CAPTCHA too difficult and quit as soon as they see it, others try to complete it but fail a couple times and then quit. So adding CAPTCHA can lead to a decrease in user comments and registrations.

If you are interested in adding CAPTCHA code to your blog, you need to find a 3rd party plug-in for WordPress or build your own. Keep in mind that each of these plug-ins are developed by a 3rd party, and not supported by WordPress, Net Solutions or ProFusion Products. If you elect to add this code to your site, you are responsible for the outcome, and any support would be provided by the inventor of the 3rd party code.

Two very popular CAPTCHA code options are listed here, with links to the download page where you can acquire the software. If you need help installing the code, or configuring the options please contact your system administrator or website hosting company.

1. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam – This is what we use on the Snoitulous Ten blog
2. Simple CAPTCHA This one is also popular on the internet

Best of luck to you in your effort to eliminate spam!

Basically, an avatar is a small image of you, or something representative of you. Often times people use avatars as an iconic representation of how they manifest themselves in reality. However, regardless of how you see yourself, often the forum or the environment will control what type of avatar is appropriate. If you are on a business forum, perhaps an image of yourself, or professional photo is appropriate, but if you are on a social forum a little more creativity would be acceptable.

Here are a few examples of avatars I found on the internet.

Real Cartoon Characters	Fantasy Cartoon Characters	Provocative Image Avatar	Funny Animated Gifs	Strange Animated Gifs	Text Based Avatar

As you can see there is a large variety of avatars you can use for your forum or blog image. The important point is to be creative, and do not take yourself to serious.

Once you find the image you want to use, the hardest part is getting it re-sized to the dimensions set by the website. Using an image resizing tool can easily help you do just that. I recommend the image resizer found on the ProFusion Products website as it makes life far easier to re-size your avatar image.

Selecting a domain name is one of the most important pieces of building a website, yet most people skip right over it selecting their business name, or the first domain that comes along. While that method can be successful, taking a few minutes to do some research can go a long way towards finding the perfect domain name for your website. By following the steps below, you will find a great domain name, but also a domain name that can actually generate results in the search engines.

Follow the steps below to get the ideal domain name for your business and for search engine optimization.

1. Consider someone who is searching for your business or service via a search engine. What words are they most likely to use to find you? For the sake of this exercise, assume they do not know your business name.
2. Take that keyword/phrase and type it into Google’s Free Keyword tool, and allow synonyms which are a checkbox below where you type in your keyword. Now click the “Get keyword ideas” button.
3. Once the results are generated, scroll down and use the download all keywords via CSV (for excel) option.
4. Open the results, and sort by “Global Monthly Search Volume” to get the keywords with the largest search results at the top.
5. Once this is sorted, copy all the values in the keywords column that have at least 200 global searches.
6. Paste the results into Notepad, and do a find/replace for spaces. Remove all the spaces in between the keywords. For example, if you had the keyword “big blue widgets” once the space removal is done it would look like “bigbluewidgets”
7. Now go to Go Daddy’s Bulk Registration Tool, and enter the phrases you have remaining.
8. I would recommend you select only .com domains as options. However, .net would also be an acceptable option. Now click the search button.
9. Go Daddy will produce a bunch of errors at the top for any domain that is already taken. If you scroll down, what will be left in the input box are the remaining domains that are available.
10. I copy and paste this list into excel or notepad for easy comparison. If you find a domain name that works for you then go ahead and purchase it. If you find more than one option that works for your business, go back to the list Google generated and select the one that has the highest global search volume.

Happy hunting! We look forward to seeing your business at the top of the search engine rankings.

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/find-the-perfect-domain-name-for-search-engine-optimization/feed/ 2 http://www.snoitulosten.com/using-twitter-and-facebook-icons-in-my-email-signature/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/using-twitter-and-facebook-icons-in-my-email-signature/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:50:42 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=191 Update: Here’s a link to a handy video Patrice made showing how to do this in Outlook: http://www.viddler.com/explore/ProFusionDemos/videos/16/

I frequently get asked how to put the little Twitter and Facebook icons into an email signature with links back to their respective accounts. If you are using Outlook 2007, here are some basic instructions for how you can add these icons to your signature.

 

 

1. Open Outlook
2. Click on Tools
3. Click on Options
4. From the tabs, click on “Mail Format”
5. Click on Signatures
6. Click on the New Button
7. Give your signature a name (Company name will do)
8. Then in the Edit Signature section, type out everything you want included in the signature. My signature has my name, title, logo, address, phone, email, web address and Twitter/Facebook icons.
9. To add the images to your signature (we have attached the Facebook/Twitter icons to this post for you to save and use in your own signature) click on the “picture” icon (which is the 2nd icon from the right)
10. After you click on Picture, a browse wizard will pop-up and will allow you to browse your hard drive and add your twitter/Facebook icons to the signature.
11. Once you have the images in the signature, click on one of the images to highlight it. Then click on the “hyperlink” button (it should be the last button on the right)
12. In the address field at the bottom of the hyperlink window, type in your Twitter or Facebook address (depending on which image you are linking)
13. Click ok
14. Repeat that until you have all your images linked to the right web addresses.

It takes a few steps to get all the icons loaded in the way you want, however, not having to type in your signature each and every time will save you lots of time and save your recipients time if they are trying to look up your contact information. Promoting your Facebook Fan Page or Twitter Account in a signature is a great way to get your Social Media efforts in front of everyone that you touch base with via email. These icons can also be added to your website. Just reduce the size to 30 pixels x 30 pixels and then add them to any page on your site. We added them to the vertical column section on the Net Solutions site. If you are using the ProFusion Ultra Internet Solution as your website provider, you can see how to do this by watching our Introductory Webinar. Click to Download Social Media Icons If you’d like to host the twitter and facebook icons on our blog and link them into your site, use the URLs in below in your signature: Twitter: http://www.snoitulosten.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/twitter-small.jpg Facebook: http://www.snoitulosten.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/facebook-small.jpg Here is the corresponding video to this instruction set:

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/using-twitter-and-facebook-icons-in-my-email-signature/feed/ 89 http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-use-the-project-management-system/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-use-the-project-management-system/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:36:20 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=119 Last week I discussed Communication, Why is it so hard? ; we analyzed a few very important items that all of your PMS posts should include. This week we are going to look into enhancing your PMS posts to emphasize important features.

Net Solutions North America makes every effort to allow you contact with our Developers and Graphic Artists. This allows you greater control and input in the Website Design and Creation.

Providing unedited & unapproved control to our clients is a double edged sword. While it is quick and efficient to get changes made to your site, it also has the potential to overwhelm our lead developers with hundreds of emails every day. With that in mind I have created a few tips and tricks to organizing your posts more effectively to produce a more readable post.

Below is a summary of my favorite tips and tricks. You can use these symbols around your word/sentences to add emphasis to the post.




Here are a few more tips/tricks to enhance your posts:
1. When creating a new thread there is a link: “Message body: (Show extended message body)” below the Title and the Category. By clicking on this link you are able to create a two part post. The upper section should be a summary of what you require, the lower section can then be used to cut and paste an email correspondence, or a summary of an IM thread, or other information that should be posted for reference but does not necessarily require the reader to process immediately.

2. On the right hand side of the PMS, is a link to “formatting guide” this will change the layout of the PMS screen to show formatting guidelines for your PMS post. This can be used as a reminder of what you can do to enhance your posts.

3. Stay current on your projects status by subscribing to the project RSS feed. If you go to the overview section of the project. In the upper right hand corner is a link to the personal RSS feed for this project.

4. Change the color of the text in your post. Do this by starting your sentence with “%{color:red}”then place your text here and finish with a “%” symbol.
Example: %{color:red}Blog’s are Wonderful!%

Remember, not every post needs to be bold and colored red, but the occasional word or sentence will add emphasis to what you are trying to accomplish.

Tune in Next Week for Shane’s Update on Organic Search Engine Optimization

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-use-the-project-management-system/feed/ 2 http://www.snoitulosten.com/google-base-how-to-use-google-base/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/google-base-how-to-use-google-base/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:32:05 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=113 Last month we reviewed three free features of Google: site submission, sitemap and maps. These are all essential to anyone interested in getting indexed by Google and more importantly found by potential clients.

This month we are going to look at another free feature of Google called Google Base

As described by Google:

“Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content, which we’ll make searchable on Google (if your content isn’t online yet, we’ll put it there). You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they do related searches.”

Google Base is a must have for any eCommerce website, but is also very valuable for any service related business as well. The first step is to create an account with Google Base, if you created an account with Google last month to submit your site, sitemap and maps you can use the same account this month.

The next step is to select a category for your products to be added to or you can create a new category. I would suggest for your first use to select an existing category. Following the category selection you will need to provide details regarding your item, from the title through the overall description. Google also allows you to upload a photo, and provide basic contact information.

The final step is to indicate the how long this item will be valid for, the maximum is 30days. The nice part about the expiration is once your ad expires, Google sends you an email asking you if you want to renew it. With a simple click of a button the ad renews for another 30days. Your ads are editable at any time, simply log in and edit your ad. Google Base also allows you to control a few options under the settings tab that will assist you in providing your potential client more information about your company (URL, Email, and description).

Google base is a great way to enhance an existing business, promote a seasonal item, or reach a new market. Once you get comfortable adding a few items, you will find more and more reasons to add Google Base ads for more then just products and services.

Stay tuned next month when we discuss the advantages of Google Adwords

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/google-base-how-to-use-google-base/feed/ 0 http://www.snoitulosten.com/branding-with-employee-images/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/branding-with-employee-images/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:22:09 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=103 Most companies choose to introduce themselves and their employees through their Website on the About Us Page. This page is typically used to help visitors get to know the business they are visiting and the people who represent it a little better.

Pictures of employees can help visitors connect with the business more quickly; it makes the website seem a bit more personal and warm. An employee’s photo with a friendly smile can tell a visitor a lot about a person that the bio can’t and can help build rapport.

Photos of employees and owners help tell the world the company message and promote the company brand, whether fun-loving and professional such as
http://www.netsolutionsna.com/content/company/team.asp
or strictly professional: http://www.itssimplyplaced.com/content/about_/the_team.asp

A website works as part of your company’s brand which is a permanent voice or message that your company communicates to the public. A brand rarely changes – it should always be consistent, clear and personable. Using a Website as a portion of your company’s brand and people will come to know, trust and visit your site because of who your company is.
Branding isn’t just promotional because no matter what the trend is at the time your brand should always be the same, just as your attitude towards your potential customers will always be the same.

A website has one hurdle to overcome when a visitor enters – it has to show the brand and the personality of the business in the virtual world. This can be done by building a Website that is clean, clear, concise and most importantly personable.
Photos of employees on the Website can also help the visitor connect with employees they may talk to later – they will feel that they know the employee and feel they have something in common. People will deal with a company or individual that they like and can identify with.

Customers will come back because they like the brand; they like what is being put out to the world and in most cases photos on the Website of people who work for the company help create a relationship with these people.
There are a few instances when photos of employees are not placed on the Website. Companies who deal with sensitive issues and policies may not want to show the employee photos in order to protect them from the public that may disagree with the company’s stand.

In this case the brand will stay consistent and clear by telling the world the message in a confidential manner. This will display a strictly professional image and create a brand identity of a different manner.

No matter what type of brand you attempt to display to the world, personable and warm, or confidential and strict it is important to always remain consistent and concise in your message. Whether or not employee photos are placed on the Website or left off helps to deliver that message.

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/branding-with-employee-images/feed/ 0 http://www.snoitulosten.com/what-makes-a-great-email-signature/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/what-makes-a-great-email-signature/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:13:02 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=94


Email signatures are a direct representation of both you and your company. If you are a loose light hearted company it may be best to reflect that with an image or a funny quote. However, most businesses reside in the realm of relaxed professional; as such we have the following guidelines for your signatures.

1. Must Haves: Name, Company Name, Phone Number, Email Address and Website (if available, if not get one!).
2. Optional: Fax, Alternate Phone Number (Cell Phone), Instant Messenger Contact details, Company Logo, and Alternate Email Address
3. Advertise – Your signature is a reflection of you and your company. It is also an advertisement that people see every day. How often are your emails forwarded to others that may need your services/product someday? Be sure your common methods of contact are obvious and accurate.
4. Accuracy – Double check your email signature for accuracy. Often times we forget when we change addresses to update our signature with the current information.
5. Have a separate signature for responses. How many times have you sent an email to someone requesting a simple one word or one line response and when you get it back it has a 10 line signature and a small response to your question? When responding to an email, use the additional feature that allows you to have a separate signature. The person who sent the email obviously already knows how to contact you. Simply include your name and phone number in your response signature.
6. McQuary Limit – this is an unwritten rule that your signature should be 4 lines or less; each line containing less than 80 characters. This is more of a guideline rather then a stead fast rule. This limit was imposed before the 90’s as a way for Usenet users to avoid additional bandwidth charges. With increased technology and decreased cost for bandwidth it is more a method to avoid human waste (time) from reading your signature.
7. Company Requirements – Many companies have lawyers that get paid far too much money to create pointless rules and guideline. One of the many things they love to do to fill billable hours is to define what a signature should include. In this instance your hands are tied, and the volume of your signature is probably so vast you are embarrassed to hit send. If you are employed by one of these companies you probably are not reading this post because you are too busy reading the newest company memo on sexual harassment and how to use the break room.
8. Professional yet Creative – this varies greatly depending on the nature of your business. If you are a dentist, accountant or lawyer understand that people really don’t want to talk with you so keep your signature short, sweet and professional. If you lay bricks for a living, people will be glad to know you have kept your humor knowing you will not be able to bend over in 20 years.
   1. If you are witty, consider adding your favorite quote: “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds” ~Albert Einstein
   2. Small Promotional offers – keep it short and sweet, perhaps just a promotional code.
   3. If you are a brick and mortar store perhaps an image of your store in the signature that could help people recognize your store.

Email signatures are easy to create, and as such they are easy to screw up. Be sure to follow the guidelines above to keep your signature short and sweet, yet affective. Many people have asked what my signature looks like, so for the sake of full disclosure:

Primary Signature	Response Signature
Shane O. Angus Net Solutions North America, LLC. 2801 Meridian Street Ste. 201 Bellingham, WA 98225 360.738.8188 888.932.6762 ext 704 shane@netsolutionsna.com www.netsolutionsna.com	Shane Angus 360.738.8188 888.932.6762 ext 704

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/what-makes-a-great-email-signature/feed/ 0 http://www.snoitulosten.com/creating-effective-contact-us-pages/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/creating-effective-contact-us-pages/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:10:32 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=92 Creating a contact us page is essential when building an online presence through a website or a blog. It tends to be the page on your website with the least content, but is one of the most highly visited by your clients. Internet users have become accustomed to looking for a contact us page when searching for contact details like a phone number or address. Many website owners don’t give a second thought to the contact us page after it’s built. We ask you to give your contact us page a second glance with these best practices in mind.

What should I include on my contact us page?

General Contact Details

Telephone Number – Individuals often inquire as to how many phone numbers or what type of phone numbers should be included on the contact us page. Certainly the main office number and the fax number should be included. Beyond that additional numbers should be provided only if someone is available to answer them during the normal business hours.

Physical Address – Many businesses have moved to only providing an email and phone number as a source of contact, especially if they don’t have a physical office the client can visit. However, by providing an address you provide them the assurance you are local.

Email – In today’s modern world you need a contact email address. Even better it should be a domain name specific email address. For example, if your website is located at www.domain.com, your email address should be shane@domain.com rather than shane@yahoo.com or lovebug@yahoo.com. By having your email address as a hot link (changing shane@domain.com with mailto:shane@domain.com) clicking on the link opens the user’s email system with the To: line filled in with your email address. This helps avoid typos and other mistakes by the user.

Web Form – The downside of providing the email address is an increase in spam as your website gets more traffic. One way to avoid spam is to have a contact us web form rather than an email address. You can have CAPTCHA code [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha ] in order to prevent spam submissions to the form. Or you can place a web form as well other contact details in the contact us page like http://www.netsolutionsna.com/content/contact_us/contact_us.asp

Additional Details

Include a Photo – Include a photo of your brick and mortar building/office. If you don’t have a brick and mortar store, include a photo of your employees dressed in a manner that reflects the style of your company. If you are financial planners then a photo in professional attire, if you are a 70’s disco bar then break out the beads and platform shoes.

Staff Contact Details (optional) – For some smaller businesses, you can place the contact details for each of your primary employees on the contact us page. If you have more than 7-10 employees, consider a separate page for staff contact details.

Map – Google has made it very easy to link your clients directly to a map of your business and the surrounding area. Map Quest and others have made providing directions to your business even easier. The day and age of written instructions are long past, give the clients a direct link to an interactive map.

Final Thoughts

A contact us page will be visited by a large majority of your website users. Search engines love contact us information because it is usually current, and very relevant to the consumer. If you can make your contact us page simple and easy to use your clients will find it extremely valuable. So take your time, less is more, work to build the most effective contact us page you can find.

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/creating-effective-contact-us-pages/feed/ 0 http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-talk-to-your-designer-about-color/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-talk-to-your-designer-about-color/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:05:08 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=90 One of the challenges of graphic design is that it can be very difficult to express visual concepts precisely in words. It’s hard enough for designers to talk to each other, when they already have a shared background of terminology and concepts – for designers and non-designers, trying to communicate can be incredibly frustrating.

Number one tip: Use a standard color reference

I have a confession to make: I love color swatch collections.

Whether it’s paint chips, fabric samples, Pantone color match books, cosmetic guides, or boxes of Crayola crayons, I get a kick out of seeing a lot of different colors all grouped together and organized by type. I’m not the only one who loves these things. They’re intended to be attractive and enticing.

Because of this, colors are often given names which are intended to not only be descriptive, but also to evoke an emotional response. So, when the Sherwin-Williams web site offers dozens of almost-white colors, it makes sense to call them things like “Nacre,” “Nonchalant White,” “Frosty White,” “Opaline,” “Topsail,” and “Quicksilver.” But, unless you have established the Sherwin-Williams site as a reference, it is nearly impossible for your designer to know that “Nacre” is a pale ivory color (especially when, in nature, “nacre” is the term for mother-of-pearl, which isn’t ivory at all).

Similarly, very common color words can be easy to misunderstand. Turquoise, aquamarine and teal all refer to a bluish-green (or a greenish blue!), but one person’s “teal” might be another person’s “pine.”
The Pantone system, which is intended for use by designers, identifies colors by number. That’s it.
(Of course, after working in the industry for years, many designers might know that Pantone 306 C is a pretty sky blue, or that 382 C is a bright lime green.)

When designing for print, the Pantone system is your best choice for avoiding color ambiguity.

When designing for the web, try to use either an RGB specification (RGB 168, 144, 108) or a hexadecimal specification (#a8906c). If you don’t have a picture editor such as Photoshop to use for selecting colors, there are many web resources that exist to help you select the hexadecimal notation for the color you want.

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-talk-to-your-designer-about-color/feed/ 0 http://www.snoitulosten.com/mentally-exhausted-and-stoked-at-the-same-time/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/mentally-exhausted-and-stoked-at-the-same-time/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:00:01 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=84 We took 5 non-technical people and built 5 good looking websites in 4 hours last night. The website class was a lot of fun and luckily, our attendees had a lot of energy.

The class was really rewarding for me because I saw a little light-bulb go off in each of their heads at some point. You could see that each attendee was thinking about how they could use a super flexible website application to bring in more business. As they publish their sites and as we get feedback, I will post their exact thoughts and sites here.

Thanks to Shane Angus and Julie McGalliard for providing the outlines and the graphics for last nights class.

If you missed the class last night and are interested in attending the next class we are holding, feel free to fill out our workshop information request form on our main website and we’ll be in touch.

Thanks again to everyone who helped out last night and to ETC for letting us have our class in their fantastic computer lab.

]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/mentally-exhausted-and-stoked-at-the-same-time/feed/ 0 http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-add-smartermail-pop3-to-outlook-2007/ http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-add-smartermail-pop3-to-outlook-2007/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:56:56 +0000 Patrice http://www.snoitulosten.com/?p=25 1. Open Outlook
2. From tools, click on Account Settings and you will get a screen that looks like this:




















3. Click on New
4. Select Microsoft Exchange/SMTP/POP 3 and click next
5. Type in your name, email address and password. Be sure to check the box that says “Manually Configure server settings” at the bottom as shown below, then click next.




















6. Click on Internet E-Mail and click next
7. The fill out the following information on the next screen:




















8. Your incoming and outgoing mail servers are the same.
9. Then click on More Settings… and click on the outgoing server tab


























10. Check the box that says “my outgoing server requires authentication”
11. Then click ok.
12. Then click test account settings.
13. You should get 2 green check marks. If you don’t go back and make sure you have spelled everything correctly.
]]> http://www.snoitulosten.com/how-to-add-smartermail-pop3-to-outlook-2007/feed/ 6