The newly redesigned MarieAllenHomes.com is now live. Please check out this website for a local custom home builder.
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I know that it has been a while since I have posted anything. I am still alive and well. And blessed! Busy yes but very blessed. Until next time… Merry Christmas friends! It has been a long time since I have blogged anything, but a lot has been going on. The redesigned website for Century 21 Monticello Properties is now live although there is still a bit of construction mess to clean up. Now through the end of January, there is a cool photo contest on the site for residence of Lake Monticello, VA. I have also just completed a redesign of a website for Marie Allen Homes. As soon as the domain transfer is complete, the url will be www.marieallenhomes.com. Meanwhile, you can find it at its temporary home, marieallenhomes.leanbones.com. cvillecya.com is now live as the presence for the First Baptist Church College and Young Adult ministry. Periodically, I’ll be doing some blogging over there. (hopefully a good bit more than I do on this site) So that’s what I have been doing in web design over the last few months… Now that we are caught up, hopefully it won’t be another six months before I post something again. I am configuring the plugin Role Scoper for a site I am building. I highly recommend this plugin for anyone considering a CMS system. This plugin allows to you build on the incredibly easy to use foundation of WordPress but get much of the more granular with security rights for multiple users. This contrasts with full blown CMS systems like Joomla that start out with robust security controls but have a steep learning curve. If you do have any questions about implementing Role Scoper though, just drop me a line. I have added a Resources page with links to some of my favorite web design resources. I have used all of these many times and continue to use most of them. I will be adding to this page with any new sites that I find particularly useful. Feel free to post any of your favorite web design sites in the comments to this post. Who knows, I may add them to my list. Enjoy! My site is finally on the first page of Google search results when searching for “Abe Nelson”. That didn’t take too long. Nothing else inspirational to blog about in the web design front. All my other pursuits have kept me running around enough. One of the coolest things going on right now is Daniel learning how to ride a two wheeler. It really makes me proud watching him work so hard to learn something so difficult. Is your business or organization in need of a web site? Want to put your thoughts online in your own blog? Well where do you start? I saw a commercial on TV the other day that used the perils of several web design routes to steer prospective customers to its product. The truth is every route you could take to putting yourself on the web has its ups and down. Today I’ll try and break some of those down for you. Option 1: Have a tech savvy friend or relative make your site. This is a great choice if you know someone that you can trust. They must have a strong work ethic and be willing to hold back some of their friendly criticism so that your idea’s can shine through. Friends tend to feel like they know what you want and the familiarity to not be afraid to say it. Who knows this could be a big hit or a big miss. The strongest argument for this option is generally the money that you could save. Not to be too Dr. Phil’ish but the strongest argument against is putting your relationship at risk. Option 2: Hire someone professional to do it. This is generally the best option for a high quality site. It can be costly though particularly if you don’t have a clear idea of what you want. You might spend hours just having them try ideas before they can put your vision on the web. Option 3: Do it yourself There are so many options for do it yourself web design these days. The biggest hurdle is just wading through all of the providers and technology to decide what the best thing for you is. You could do it old school and learn HTML and hand make the site yourself, but, if its your first time, you won’t get close to professional results and you’ll probably burn up hours of your valuable time. The method that the commercial I mentioned is advertising is a template based system. This is one of the easiest. You basically just need to sign up for the service and pick a template for your site. Add in some content and your on your way. The disadvantage to this approach is that the templates lock you in to something that is never quite right and you can’t change it easily. Template sites also tend to look a little less professional than hand made sites. Of course, with each of these choices, it is important that you first decide what the site is for and how much you are willing to put into it (both in terms of time and money). For a simple personal blog, a free template based service like Blogger is probably more than enough. For a high traffic business site, it just wouldn’t do though. What could be a better way to round out this post than with a little self promotion? I guess I am biased, but whatever your web design needs are I can tailor my services to fit them. My approach to web design takes the time saving aspects of starting with templates then adding custom hand design to perfect the site. If you are looking for an honest, simple and affordable approach to designing your site, send me an email.
Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher This is an interesting blog post by Google: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/googles-seo-report-card.html Its helpful to see how Google evaluates its own SEO and what criteria it uses. Google has also posted a very helpful guide to SEO here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html A little while ago my son asked me what the Lego site was that I was on when he noticed my Lego theme. It got me thinking about the reason that I like this particular theme for my site. Building a good website is a lot like building with Legos. You need a rough idea in mind of what you want to build. It shouldn’t be too firmly established. You need flexibility to work with the pieces that you have. Your perfect idea might be available in some ASP code snippets, but if your site only supports PHP then you need to find something close enough that still gets the basic end result that you want. Be ready to work with preassembled sections of the site. There is no sense in building everything from scratch when there is a multitude of open source templates and code available on the web. Good sites are cohesive. When you’re building a house out of Legos, you could make all of the walls by randomly stacking the bricks around the perimeter. However, it will be much stronger if they are overlapped as you build. Its the same with a website. Each section/component/page needs to have a strong connection to other parts of the site. Color palettes are important. The Lego analogy for this one kind of makes me chuckle. As kids, we could never afford to custom order hundreds of grey bricks for our castles so our castles looked like rainbow colored clown houses. Granted the soldiers lining the walls did help to make them a little more menacing but… The colors you select for your website are equally important. They reflect on the level of professionalism in the site and its overall appeal. They will also vary widely based on the audience that you are trying to attract and the feelings that you want to convey to the viewer. Always build from the ground up. This is a necessity with Legos and it is important for a good site. Start with the basics and build on it. Sometimes you may find yourself going in a different direction than you would have originally planned. If you start by making some high level aspects of the design, you may find yourself with no place to put them when you are done. The last comparison that I will make is that your creations are useless if you don’t invite people to see them. What’s the point of spending countless hours building the perfect Lego creation and then setting it up on a shelf somewhere to collect dust. You take pictures of it to send to the Lego Club magazine and invite all of your friends over to see it. Do the same thing with your site. Submit it to all of the search engines and spread the word about it in traditional media. Link to it everywhere that you can. So that’s why my site has a Lego theme. The simplest of building toys reflects for me all of the aspects of good design. (Have any more Lego analogies or funny Lego stories from when you where a kid? Post them in the comments) |
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