Web Class Blog

The image and graphics classes scheduled for this summer will require that you have some kind of Image Processing software. The class is NOT software specific – we will not be teaching you to use PhotoShop, or other popular image software. Rather, we’ll be teaching a set of common skills and techniques which are common to this kind of software.

Suitable software means something that is capable of producing professional quality graphics. We recommend one of the following:

Free Software

• The GIMP is about the only free one that is worth using. Others that we have tested simply could not do even basic tasks to a level that was acceptable. The GIMP though, is fairly flexible, and surprisingly functional, and will do to learn a good range of basic skills, along with some higher end professional tactics. You can download it from the net, free.

Commercial Software

• PhotoShop Elements is our number one recommendation for people with a limited budget, who need a range of good features.
• PhotoShop is the top recommendation for professional level graphics production, if you can afford it.
• PaintShop is also highly functional, and will do the job nicely.
• Painter, or Painter Essentials will work – but it is designed more for artistic use, and works quite differently. The learning curve is not the same as for regular paint  software.

There are a range of less functional software titles out there – but many have missing functions where they limit your ability to do essential tasks.

We will also discuss working with a graphics tablet in the Intermediate class. Our preferred tablet is the Wacom table – pretty much any one will do, and even a small one is a huge advantage for anyone who wants to create computer generated art. If you do not wish to paint, or do photo retouching or altering, then a Wacom won’t be of much use to you. Wacom tablets often come bundled with some version of PhotoShop Elements or Painter Essentials.

Graphics are pretty demanding on a computer, but most graphics software can run on even a limited system. It will be SLOW, but it will work.

The use of Adobe Illustrator, or other Vector Based Graphics software will not be covered. This kind of software operates on very different principles, and is used for different purposes.

One of the finer points of web design involves the use of colors. The eye does things to colors when they are in different environments.

Colors show up differently between monitors and print – most people who work with graphics quickly figure that out. And they quickly figure out that colors also look different from monitor to monitor. There will be variances in hue, saturation, or intensity.

But what they do not figure out easily, is that a color that is in a large block, will look different than a color that is in a thin line – even when you use exactly the same color. Or that a color on a contrasting background will look different than one on a white background – even when the color code is identical.

Experience teaches tricks to compensate for what the eye does – because on screen, it is not what it IS that matters, it is what it LOOKS like it is! Perception is often different than reality, and perception is the thing that matters most.

Using lines or boxes in certain ways can make them look warped also, even when they are not. It can be an interesting effect, but if unintended, just makes things look odd. A good example is at http://www.megafamilies.com – Look at the sidebars. They appear to curve in toward the darker blue headers boxes.

Adjusting for this kind of illusion means that you have to see what is, instead of assuming that because it is precise, that it is right! Sometimes we assume that if we want it to look the same, we need only MAKE something the same, and we don’t understand why it does not look the way we want. I find it interesting that people will know that something doesn’t look right, but won’t know why – so they won’t change it, even though they could easily experiment and figure out how to make it look right.

The eyes often play tricks on our perception of colors and space. Learning to compensate for those adds an extra level of polish to a site, bringing it into the realm of the professional.

Early in the days of the web, colors were limited. Web design was fairly clumsy, and site colors tended to be basic. The web developed a fashion of its own – we saw web pages evolve from one design style to another. We now have the ability to use colors in ways that could not be done several years ago.

This has opened new possibilities for site coordination, and design styles. Many designers though, still start out using older design styles, merely because they are simple. And many new designers have a hard time understanding some of the differences between an ok design, and one that pops.

Usually, when a site design isn’t quite right, the thing that is wrong it really a small thing – just a single color that is a fraction of a shade off – one element in the design that doesn’t quite fit – a contrast that is too bold.  It is often very small, very subtle variances that mark the difference between ho-hum and WOW.

When using backgrounds, gradients, or accent lines, very subtle colors often lend a polish that strong ones cannot. Sometimes the subconscious will send the message of enhanced design, even when the difference is not highly noticeable.

Using more subtle elements in the design puzzles some people at first. They don’t understand why you’d want to wash something out so much that it was not noticeable. But something that is noticeable is often a distraction.

We had a site visitor complain about how distracting a background around the outside of one website was. It didn’t have high contrast – it just looked like draped fabric. But the contrast was just enough to make the background attention-getting. We turned the contrast down even further, eliminating some of the highlights, and the site immediately coordinated better.

A header was made more polished simply by putting a very subtle gradient behind the text and image. The gradient was not something that you’d look at and really even see that it was there – but it changed the feel of the header to lend it more elegance and a message of class.

When putting a border around a page element, a color that is only a little different than the page background will define the area, in a way that is not overbearing. This is NOT something you want to do with text – text requires good contrast. But with accents, go ahead and play with subtle colors!

The message of elegance is often made more successfully to the subconscious mind than it is when it is openly stated. Like the shopkeeper who runs around hollering that he is honest, in comparison to the one who just behaves that way.

So when the site doesn’t look right, try less, not more if you want the design to have impact. Learn more about this in the upcoming Image Processing for the Web series.

A simple HTML website requires few choices – there are limits to what you can do with it, so all choices have to be confined to those limits. Beyond the options for a basic site though, the choices become more complicated.

When you require features that are more advanced, and when you require a combination of those features, the choices can be very confusing. One person says “use this!” another person says “use that!”, and sometimes the people who are telling you that don’t really know what it is that you need, or what the real risks are of the solution they are recommending.

See, most people who use CMS or other script software use something because someone else recommended it to them, and they are familiar with it. They don’t want to learn to use something else, even if that something else is better. They have not done the research they needed to do in the beginning, and may in fact, be going about getting things done the hard way, since they didn’t search out the best solution to do what they needed done in the first place.

For example, we have a client who needed the following:

• A website with an article database, and a shopping cart style catalog, with NO actual cart functions.
• A second website with article database functions, and full shopping cart functions.

This seems simple enough, except we really wanted them to go into the same structure if possible, so that training and maintenance were streamlined.

CRELoaded will do the shopping cart part just fine. But the article database functions are weak, and not flexible enough to do what we needed. CRELoaded could not be made to do the catalog only function without custom programming – something we wanted to avoid. We also needed some specific search functions which would be difficult to achieve with CRE.

Joomla excels at the article organization, and VirtueMart has a good catalog function, and even contained the search function we needed. The cart features were weak though.  In order to make it work, we’d have to spend a lot of time tweaking and troubleshooting – but we could avoid custom programming.

Our choice came down to using one platform for both sites, or using one platform for each site. We ended up going with the Joomla and VM setup – because by doing it that way, we could completely avoid custom programming, long term the maintenance would be streamlined in having to only keep up with one software set, and because we could share templating between the two sites. It was easier to make Joomla and VM do what we needed than to try to warp CRELoaded and make it into something that it was not.

This was one of the more complicated choices we’ve had to make. Because there were other more subtle issues that influenced the choices one way or another. We did look outside these two solutions, but there was nothing else that met our primary criteria for using a system:

1. It had to be well supported by an active developer community.
2. It had to be well used by an active user community.
3. The developer community had to be concerned about both security issues, and usability issues.
4. The platform had to have reasonably easy modules and extensions for expansion options.
5. It had to be sustainable – that means the security patches had to be fairly simple to install, or at least, simpler than the alternatives.
6. It had to do 90% of what we needed out of the box – we did not want to have to install extensions just to get basic functions.

So there were really three major steps to choosing the platform:

1. Assess the needs on a feature by feature basis, and determine how the features had to interact with one another.
2. Select the possible software for the job, based on general criteria (our minimum standards for any software) and specific features that were close to what we needed.
3. Refine the choice to the best one, by analyzing the degree of simplicity and sustainability in implementing each of the possible choices.

A good deal of it has to do with understanding how software works, and what the various feature limitations might be. But no matter what your level of experience, when you do a thing the first time, you take a risk that you might run into an unsolvable problem if you do not verge into custom programming. No degree of experience can prepare you to know the outcome of every single combination of functions.

The day after I began writing this article, another prospect came along. The functions that she needed to have combined were very complex – this kind of site isn’t one that anyone out there within her budget, would be able to say with confidence that they had done anything exactly like it. The combination was very uncommon, and highly specific. But with a good grasp of the possibilities, and an understanding of the interactions, we can predict fairly well what the potential problems will be, and how well they can be overcome.

The point of all this is, that good planning, careful consideration and exploration of the proposed platform, combined with experience, can save all kinds of time, and trouble. When you choose a platform, you are choosing a set of long term limitations, maintenance and upkeep tasks, and potential headaches. If you get the right one, the advantages are maximized, while the headaches are kept to a minimum. And that is worth a little time and research.

The structure of a website is like the foundation for a house. There is a great deal of difference between the foundation for a 2 bedroom cottage, and a four bedroom, two bath house with a basement. You can’t necessarily start with one, and end up with the other, any more than you can start with the wrong kind of site structure, and build on top of it into something else.

Unfortunately, this is one thing that site owners are notoriously bad about. It isn’t because they are unintelligent, but because they are required to do this essential task at the point in their progress where they are least qualified to actually understand what the choices mean!

Even if you are building a simple HTML site, you still need to think about structure. But when you need more than that, it is even more critical. You have to choose between making do with manual tasks in HTML, using a blogging platform to do just a little more, using a simple CMS, a full featured CMS, a shopping cart system, other scripts such as forums, project manager, calendar, or some combination of those components.

The choices you make at the beginning, will, to a large extent, determine where the site can grow before it has to be reconstructed in a different environment. Getting it right saves you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. Getting it wrong will cost you from day one.

Good site structure lays the foundation for fluid growth, enhances marketing and SEO efforts, and makes it easy for visitors to get around and find what they need. It is worth getting right.

One of the major problems we have in working with site owners who have previously owned an HTML website, is that they have a hard time making the switch in thinking to move to a Content Management System.

They tend to still think in terms of pages and links, instead of in terms of modules and features. A CMS simply handles information and pages differently.

Instead of creating a page, and linking that page where you want it to go, you enter data into forms, and the CMS handles its placement according to how you configure the CMS.

For a few pages, a CMS saves you no time. But for a large site, it can save a great deal of time by automating repetitive tasks. For example:

If constructing an HTML site with a category, you’d create the category page, then link each page within the category to the category page. If you wanted links within each page inside the category to each other page within the category, you’d have to update each of those pages every time you added a new page.

With a CMS, you would create a category as an entity, not as a page. Any item that is then placed within that category is automatically linked into the category. For three or four pages, in a site that does not grow, this is no advantage. In a large site, with multiple contributors and rapidly growing content, it is a huge benefit.

Some features take time to set up and configure.  Instead of manually creating items each time you need to create them, you use a form to determine how you want the system to handle parts of the tasks each time. This creates a customized automation of repetitive tasks, eliminating the need to manually create items each time. So you spend half an hour to an hour, setting it up to begin with, and then you save 5 minutes each time you utilize the capacity of what you configured.

Automation operates by rules. It does very well when you want it to do the same thing each time – or when you want to offer options within a specified range of choices. If you need to be able to make a different choice each time, automation does not work. So people who are using a CMS the first time, must learn to understand how a CMS applies rules, and then determine how to use those to advantage to eliminate repetitive work where it is really important to do so.

In order to make the transition from “thinking HTML” to “thinking CMS”, you have to endure a learning curve. Sometimes it feels very frustrating and confusing – but then, at one point, it suddenly makes sense, and you wonder why you didn’t quite get it before.

And once you get it, your ability to think in terms of bigger projects, and multiple functions within a site, is enhanced. Being able to use a CMS well, opens doors for achieving things that would have been impossible within a plain HTML structure.

Protected access websites are those which require login before people can view content, or at least, certain parts of the content.

Any more, a basic membership site is pretty easy to set up. There are many options for it, and most Content Management Systems have a means of controlling member access, at least at a rudimentary level.

The advantages seem fairly clear to people:

• By making some content available only to members, you can collect member info, or charge for membership, or just limit access to a certain group of people who have a need for that information (such as wholesale customers, members of an association, volunteers for an organization, staff or trainers, etc).

The disadvantages are more subtle, but must be considered in setting up this kind of site:

• People are reluctant to pay for things that they cannot see. So you have to leave them some kind of clue as to the quality, and value.
• Search engines do not index private access content. So you lose some power from the content by hiding it away.

There are strategies to compensate for these limitations though, and guidelines for knowing how to balance the needs of visible content, with private access content.

These issues are discussed in detail in the Advanced Intensive Website Course which is listed on our Classes page.

It sounds so EASY! Throw up a website (no, no retching sounds…) and issue an invitation to your visitors to submit information to your site. There are those who try to make it sound easier than it really is, but then, they have motives for wanting you to think that (usually they want you to purchase their system).

In reality, the process is a bit more complicated. Given the right structure and backing, this kind of site can do really well. But it comes with a set of requirements, and it requires some long term oversight and maintenance tasks which the “system” sellers cheerfully neglect to inform you of!

The first thing you need is a Content Management System. Oh, you can do it without one, but it is far less successful, and much more work. Double whammy that there is no advantage to offset.  Forget using someone’s “system” for this, and do not purchase a CMS. Chances are the one you need is free.

Next you need a set of policies, procedures, and terms of use. These can be simple, or complex, but MUST be covered! There are logical places to put these to inform your visitors of what they may do, how they can do it, and what they cannot do on your site.

After the site is set up, you must put in some content of your own – without content, it ends up being a waste of time, because NOBODY submits content to a site with no content!

You must also market the site – both to readers, and to writers. Popular sites do better – the primary reason for submitting content to a site of this type is exposure. So if your site gets no traffic, you’ll be dead in the water.

Last, you must maintain it. Both for security reasons, and for quality reasons. You cannot just let people submit whatever they want, or you will end up with a trashy site full of ads. Nobody wants to visit a site like that! And you must keep the software up to date so hackers cannot abuse your site – they will try, but if you keep the software updated, the risks are low.

When you have a simple, logical, and standardized system in place to accept article submissions, review them, and approve them for publishing, you are more likely to get article submissions. It still isn’t a way to get “easy money” (truly, nothing is), but it can be a good foundation around which to build a successful online business.

This topic, and other relevant ones are covered in our Advanced Intensive Website Course, listed on the Classes page.

Our primary clientele consists of small business owners without many employees. The business owner is usually personally responsible for marketing their business. I’m always delighted when I find a business owner who can write well, because I know the asset it is, and it simplifies the task of helping them learn how to adapt their skills to marketing and instructional writing.

Writing is an asset to a business in three primary areas:

1. Marketing. If you can write, you can produce good ad copy, web page copy, article marketing, text ads for online marketing, email newsletters, published brochures and much more.
2. Communication. A good writer can communicate better with customers, employees, and contractors. This helps business run more smoothly.
3. Documentation. Strong writing skills help a business owner create a good plan to clarify their vision, to document policy and procedure for their business, and to create training guidelines. All of these things help to move a business forward and enhance the sustainability of the business through growth phases.

Many business owners are better writers than they think they are. Their writing needs only a little polish – and with time, they can learn that.

Practice also makes a huge difference. As we DO, we learn to do better. I can sit down and whip out an article for a blog or article marketing, which is 90% accurate, in about 15 minutes. When I began writing regularly, that took an hour and a half, sometimes longer, and my accuracy level on the first draft was much lower. If you write once a day, to an audience, for ANY purpose, your writing skills will improve. If you have a professional review your writing periodically, and give suggestions on improvements, you’ll gain skills faster.

Have the confidence to try. If you can produce a single page of writing, on a specific topic, without getting lost by the second sentence, then chances are, you can learn to write well for your business. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you just have to be able to DO it.

Good writing skills will enhance your business, and you’ll never regret having developed them.

Blogging gained speed and swept the internet world about a year ago. Currently it is still strong, though it has a lot of competition in the social networking arena.

Originally, search engines paid more attention to them, but no longer do. Some people say they do, but independent tests with our websites and blogs show that regular websites actually get indexed and get traffic faster, all else being equal. Blogs do have some options for getting traffic, IF you work at it, that websites don’t though, which can help to put them ahead for people who work them.

Blogging is very much a popularity contest. If you gain a following, blogging has great power. If you don’t, it fizzles and fails to ever lift off.

So why blog?

To do it, you gotta love writing. If you don’t, then it isn’t for you.

You also have to be able to produce writing on a regular schedule. If you don’t, then it doesn’t work, because one of the elements central to blogging is frequent and fairly regular updates.

If you fit that profile, and if you have a topic that is contemporary and timely, blogging can be a great way to either promote a business, or create one. It works best for social people also – those who enjoy interacting with other bloggers.

So why blog? Because if it suits you, it is a lot of fun. And when done right, creates a good web presence, or helps promote other websites.

Get out and start reading blogs, and commenting. If you are bit by the blog bug, you’ll know. If you aren’t, then let it go and don’t feel guilty!