Now, before we start, I want you to keep in mind that I’m not a professional video producer and this video was produced quickly so don’t expect Hollywood-style production values.  With that said, enjoy the video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7fsMQx4xAA

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2. 10 Questions To Ask When Choosing A Web Host.

If you rely totally on someone else to do every little upgrade to your website, you’re at their mercy.  If they’re out of town, or otherwise unavailable, your site updates don’t get done.  This could mean missing an important update or promotional item.  Worse yet, it could mean leaving a potentially embarrassing mistake or outdated information on your site for an extended time.

Even if you are using a CMS or blogging platform, you should still know basic HTML.  It comes in quite handy for adding or editing links and other items not automatically incorporated into your platform.  For example, this site is built using the WordPress platform.  When I wanted to put the welcome box on the front page (that’s the box with my photo in it), I started with a text “widget” (WordPress term) and used some simple HTML commands to add the photo, align it to the left and format the text the way I wanted.  Had I not known about the simple “tags” to set this up the way I wanted, and had I been forced to wait for a web designer to do it for me, I would have been stuck.

Now, how exactly do you go about learning basic HTML?  Well, there are a few ways.  Perhaps the easiest would be to download an HTML editor that offers both a WYSIWYG view as well as a plain text code view.  The one I highly recommend is CoffeeCup’s HTML Editor.  Once you have the editor downloaded, use the WYSIWYG editor to create a simple webpage.  Then, click over to the plain text version to see how it is rendered.  At first, it may look very confusing until you come to realize that HTML is really made up mostly of command tags.  Most commands contain an “open” tag and a “close” tag.  For example, if you want to center some text, the HTML command would be: 

<center>”This text is centered.”</center>

and the result would be:

“This text is centered.”

In the example, <center> is the start tag and tells the HTML browser where to start the command.  The close tag, </center> is basically the same command again with a “/” between the left bracket and the command.  It’s not really that hard at all.

Let’s try another quick example.  This time, we want to put some text in bold type.  To do that, the command would be:

 <b>”This type is in bold.” </b>

and the result would be: “This type is in bold.”  In this example, you could also use the <strong></strong> tags instead of the <b> and </b> tags.  There are reasons why they are different, but that is beyond the scope of this article.  My personal preference is to use the <b> tags.  This is due, at least in part, to the fact that it requires less typing.

If you want to get into it a little further, I highly recommend a great book by Dr. Nicholas Longo (Founder and CEO of CoffeeCup Software).  It’s called “My Website Is Better Than Yours.“  This book may go a little too in-depth for most readers, but you will definitely learn the basics.  When reading it, take the “grocery store” approach.  That is to take what you can use and leave the rest on the shelf.   As of this writing, the e-book version is still available for $19 from the online store section of the CoffeeCup website.

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Building a site from scratch is fine, if you’re in business as a web designer.  Web designers and webmasters are two different groups of people.  Sure, some folks belong in both groups, but they really have two different sets of goals and responsibilities.  A web designer creates a “look” for a website.  A webmaster keeps the site running and updated.  This site is about empowering new webmasters.

Don’t misunderstand me, you do want your website to be unique.  That’s for sure.  That doesn’t, however, mean that you have to start from a blank screen and do every little thing yourself.

Most web designers frown on using templates for sites.  Me?  I love them.  After all, my business is to design functional  and informative websites.  That’s what I do.  That’s what all good webmasters do.

The trap that a lot of new webmasters fall into is that they spend so much time designing and coding their new site, that they never have time to update it or promote it.  Soon, when they haven’t seen any increase in traffic or any signs of “life” from their site, they start to lose interest in the project.  Once this happens, another potentially interesting website goes by the wayside.  Don’t let this happen to your site.

It is for this reason that I build almost all of my sites using WordPress or another CMS application.  Furthermore, I do tend to use templates for my sites.  Sure, I customize them a bit, but I don’t start from a blank screen.  It would be very easy for me to build my own WP themes, but it would also be very time consuming and, friends, time is the most precious thing we have in this life.  After all, once gone, you cannot recover one single second. 

Now, if you’re going to use templates, you can find a bunch of great templates for free at the WordPress website.  Of course, you’ll also find some really bad ones there as well.  That’s the chance you take when you go the free route.  As for me, I like to purchase professionally-made templates.  Of course, they cost more (anything costs more than “free”), but, in the long run, they’re worth it.  I have found that paid templates usually tend to work more reliably than their free counterparts.  In short, they do what they’re supposed to do.  If you’re building a personal site with few “bells and whistles,” a free theme will probably work just fine.  On the other hand, if you’re building a commercial site , and you want smooth functionality and the look of professionalism, you can’t beat a well-made professional theme.

The two theme producers that I use most are Woo Themes (who created the theme for this site – which, by they way, they have now made available for free!) and StudioPress.  I really love the work Brian Gardner (Studio Press) has been doing on some of his newest themes.  They look great.  He offers a package containing all of the themes on the site for $199.95 and I just purchased it for some new sites I’m working on.  If you are planning to create a lot of sites, you might want to consider that option as well as it would be more economical than purchasing individual themes separately.

It doesn’t matter whether you choose to use free themes or premium ones, the point is to give your site the unique and professional look you desire while preserving your most precious resource – your time.

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1. Using A Free Blogging Web Site
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Over the years that I have been building and running websites, this has happened to me quite often.  I build a website that looks absolutely stunning to me.  I mean, I just love it and I think the whole world should see it so I tell some friends and family members about it. 

They, in turn, look up the site and go “ugh” and in “ugly.”  What happened?  Was my design really that ugly?  Thankfully, my design work usually isn’t the culprit.  More often than not, it is the result of cross-browser incompaitbility.  What looks fine to me in my browser, looks strange or disjointed in theirs.  The fancy code and scripts that I think make the site “pop,” don’t show up right to them and the resulting “holes” make my site look as though it was made of swiss cheese.

You may be inclined to believe that this only happens to Internet “newbies.”  Let me assure you that it can happen to anyone.  As a matter of fact, I’m dealing with this very issue right now.

You see, I have several browsers on my primary PC that I use to check my websites.  I use IE (of course), FireFox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.  When I was configuring this site, I checked it on the various browsers and the site looked about the same on all of them.  I was pleased.  That pleasure was short-lived however when I tried to show the site to some of my friends.  When I pulled the site up for them, the ad boxes on the right hand side would not stay properly aligned.  That’s when I discovered the fatal flaw in my thinking.  I had checked the site against several different browsers, but all of the versions I used were the latest stable releases.  I hadn’t checked it on any legacy releases.  When I look at this site using IE 7 (which is what I use in my office), the site looks great.  The ad problem appears when you view it in IE 6.

If I had checked it on a legacy browser, I could have saved myself a lot of embarrasment.  Just how do you go about checking your site on multiple browsers and multiple versions of the same browser?  Well, you could install a lot of software on your PC, but I really don’t recommend that.  There’s a much easier way. 

There is a free service called BrowserShots.orgthat will allow you to see what your website  looks like on over 60 different browsers.  All you do is go to their website and enter your domain name.  They send out the request to their farm of computers, each running a different OS and browser combination.  Each computer will pull up the site and take a snapshot of it.  These snapshots get posted to the BrowserShots.org site and you get a pretty good idea of what your site will look like to your visitor.  It’s a good deal.

When I ran this site through BrowserShots, I discovered that it looks fine in the modern browsers, but starts to look strange in some of the older ones.  In IE 5 and 6, there is the ad box issue.  In IE 4, some of the navigation coding and CSS go unrecognized resulting in a site that appears incomplete.

Once you know what the issues are, you can decide how to procede.  As for me, I will take a shot at tweaking the code to make the ad boxes appear correctly in IE 6, but I’m not going to worry about the display issues with IE 4 and 5.  In looking at the visitor logs for my sites, I see that so few visitors are using those browsers that it wouldn’t be worth the time and energy that it would take to correct.  After all, it’s 2009.  If someone is still running IE 4, they should seriously consider an upgrade.  After all, IE is free.

Well, folks, there you have another item to add to your pre-launch checklist.

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1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

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By signing up with a free blogging web site, you may find it easier to get listed in search engines that you would if you were starting your own blog from scratch.  For example, google runs the free blog hosting site blogspot and crawls its pages very often looking for updates, so if you have your site hosted by blogspot you are almost guaranteed to be listed on google’s blog search engine. This easy access to search engines can take some of the work out of promoting your blog, and can help you gain a following with a minimum of marketing effort.

If your blog attracts a large readership, you may want to consider moving your site. Many people feel that being hosted by a free blogging web site gives a blog a kind of amateur flavor that is fine for a new member of the blogosphere, but is not appropriate for a high-profile blog. Having your own domain can help you make your blog feel professional, and finding a company that will host your domain is not difficult or expensive. Once your blog takes off, you will probably be able to sell enough advertising space to be able to afford to buy a domain and pay for a hosting package, and still have money left over. However, it does not make sense in most cases to invest in these glossy luxuries before you have a sizable readership.

Starting your blog on a free blogging web site is a great way to build a following before you spend any money on your blog. If and when your blog becomes popular and you are ready to take the next step and purchase your own domain, your readers will follow you to your new home. The fact that it is possible to use a free blog host like blogspost, blogger, or eponym as a kind of incubator for your blog is great news for bloggers everywhere.

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1. Static HTML Versus Blog Versus CMS.

If you’re planning a little site to be an online brochure that won’t need to be updated very often, HTML is probably a very good option for you.  HTML is fairly simple to learn and there are many great software HTML editors out there.  They range in price from free up to several hundred dollars.  The truth is, however, once you learn HTML, you don’t need any of them.  You can edit an HTML page just find in notepad or some other text editor.

Now, if you want to go the HTML route, but don’t want to do it in notepad (perhaps you’d like a WYSIWYG editor), I highly recommend CoffeeCup’s HTML editor.   I’ve used it for years and have found it to be one of the best and least expensive out there.  I actually prefer it to Dreamweaver which costs hundreds of dollars. 

The big drawback to HTML pages is that you have to edit and upload a new page every time you make a change, and, if you add a new page, you have to edit your navigation on each page and re-upload those too.  That can get very time consuming and labor intensive if you do a lot of updates.

If your website will be updated regularly, you probably want to consider using a blog or CMS.  Basically, these are applications that allow you to edit your content using a back-end interface.  The system stores the data in a database and then creates dynamic pages whenever a user clicks on a link to access that specific content. 

Now, if all of this is new to you, you’re probably going “Whoa!!  There’s no way in the world that I can code all of that complicated stuff.”  Well, rest easy.  You don’t have to.  There are many fine blogging and CMS platforms freely available.  Two that I use regualrly are WordPress (blog) and Joomla (CMS).  In fact, this site is built on the WordPress platform.

What’s the difference between a blog and a CMS?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  Put simply, blogs (or web logs) started out as online diaries.  Blogs usually consist of a number of messages grouped together by common subject.   On the other hand, a CMS usually contains many of the same features as a blog, but also include other features such as message boards, community builders, etc.  So, you would think the choice would be fairly easy.  If you just want an easy way to get your message out, and maybe have your visitors leave a comment or two, create a blog.  If you want to build an online community, get a CMS.  It’s that simple, right?  Well, not so much anymore.

You see, some of the blogging platforms, such as WordPress, have expanded to include more CMS features as well.  The line between the two platforms is fairly well blurred now.

Personally, out of all the various platforms and applications out there, I really like WordPress.  It’s easy to understand.  It’s easy to install and to use and search engines love it.  What more could you ask for?  Of course, I still also love Joomla for my more involved projects.

Best of all, many webhosts offer both Joomla and WordPress as “one click instalations.”  Check with your webhost to see if they offer this.

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OPTION 1 – HIRE A DESIGNER.  This is an option that a lot of new aspiring webmasters choose.  After all, it’s easier to hire out the technical stuff so that you can concentrate on writing your content.  Let’s look at a few of the pros and cons.

PROS: 

• It’s a lot less work for you.  (At least, it should be.)
• You will probably have your site more quickly because the designer has done this before and doesn’t have the “learning curve.”
• The site should have a very professional look and feel.

CONS:

• This is usually the most expensive option.  Having even a small site custom built, can cost hundreds of dollars.  I know because I’ve been known to build sites for other people 
• You’re at the mercy of your designer’s schedule.  If your designer is sick or on vacation, you’re not getting any updates.
• You never learn how to do it yourself in case an emergency need should ever arise.

OPTION 2 – USE A SITE BUILDER.  There are many great site builders out there.  Perhaps the best known is SBI – Site Build it, but there are others.  Let’s examine this a little closer.

PROS:

• They usually have an automated system so you can build a site without having to learn coding in-depth.
• You can control the look and feel of your site, without having to try to relay your vision to a designer.
• You can make updates whenever you want.
• Many site builders have features to help you with site promotion as well.

CONS:

• Many of these site builders are still more expensive than the do-it-yourself option.
• Since most site builders use GUI (Graphical User Interfaces), you still don’t get experience editing the basic code yourself.  Should the site builder service be down, you’re out of luck.
• In many cases, you are limited in your layout to whatever stock layouts the service happens to offer.

OPTION 3 – BUILD IT YOURSELF FROM SCRATCH.  This is the option for the hearty souls out there. 

PROS:

• You have complete control over the look and feel of your site.
• It’s usually less expensive than the other two options, at least in terms of initial out-of-pocket expenses.  Of course, the learning curve and “incidentals” may eat into this, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
• You get a feel for the actual inner workings of the site, thus you are able to make updates when you choose. 

CONS:

• There is a learning curve.  Even if you are building a simple HTML site, there can be a substantial time investment in learning proper HTML coding.  If you get into forms, javascript, ASP, PHP, etc., your learning curve increases.
• You are totally responsible for the look and feel of your site.
• The entire responsibility for promoting your site is up to you.

So, which option is best?  Well, that, my friend, depends on you.  There’s not right answer that is right for everyone.  It depends on many factors such as your budget, your available time, your desire to control every aspect of your website. 

Personally, I prefer the do-it-yourself option, but then again, I am a control freak.  Only you can decide which option will work best for you.

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