Feb
8
Beware of Free Themes
Filed Under Blog Design | Leave a Comment
Free themes – where would we be without them? Employing more designers, but that’s not the point. The evolution of free themes, Wordpress themes in particular, has been a godsend for many bloggers – myself included. With the hundreds of free themes available, some bloggers have created blogs around displaying free themes. This is great – a one stop shop for free blogs, somewhat organized by type and design. What isn’t so great is when these free theme bloggers hijack free themes and embed their hidden spammy links.
How can we avoid this? A good rule of thumb is to always download the theme directly from the author’s website. Before using any theme, always check the footer for any code that seems unusual. Compare it to the default / classic theme if needed. Some of these spammers will embed their links under the auspices of a ‘license’, and if removed, it can de-activate your theme.
Here’s one offender to avoid:
www.wordpresstemplates.com
Jun
21
‘Grunge’ seems to be the latest design trend to be taking over the interwebs.
SmashingMagazine suggests the grunge look is for websites with “more natural and subtle colors“. Here we present a few sites that use the grunge look, but as the post suggest, with bright, candy colors.
Rollover to see preview:
http://www.oneprayer.com
http://www.futureofwebdesign.com
http://www.erguvanplatin.com
http://www.graphics.net
Resources for creating your own grunge design:
Grunge Fonts
How to create Grunge Effects in Photoshop
Cool Grunge Brushes for Photoshop
May
30
Web Design Color Swatches
Filed Under Blog Design, Design General, E-commerce Design | 2 Comments
Ever get ‘creative block’ when you’re just desperate for inspiration, and need that little boost to get you started? Check out these graphic color swatches. Feel free to use as you wish. Post what you come up with and send me a link.
Apr
29
All About Site Structure
Filed Under Blog Design, E-commerce Design | Leave a Comment
This First, lets start with the two types of site structure – physical and virtual. Both types are important for different reasons. Physical site structure is important to show search engines structure and organization; Virtual site structure is important for users to be able to navigate the site. Lets look at two examples.
Physical site structure: we have a homepage, or index – with 4 categories. Within each category are 3 pages. the directories and URL’s should look like a family tree:
http://www.mysite.com/
http://www.mysite.com/category1/
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page1.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page2.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1/page3.html
This is important so that search engines can not only better navigate your website, but can also put more ‘weight’ on certain pages. In this case, a search engine (SE) would see the index page as most important, then a category page, then the lowest level pages as least important. By placing all pages at the top level, or in the root directory, such as below – SE’s will assume all pages are equally important.
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page1.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page2.html
http://www.mysite.com/category1-page3.html
Virtual site structure: Regardless of physical site structure, google can also follow the links on a website. If a site’s navigation can show SE’s a structure, SE’s can better understand the importance of your pages, and better index your website. This can be done via a sites navigation, and/or by using breadcrumbs. To use navigation to show a virtual structure, A website can display the main categories, sub-categories, and pages within the subcateories within the main page or within the main navigation, as shown on Jcrew.com. In this particular instance, I’ve clicked “womens”, then “sweaters”. On this page, you can also see which subcategories fall within the category “sweaters”, which is within the category “womens”. Hopefully, you haven’t used javascript or ajax, and SE’s can properly follow your links.
Sample of “silo’ed” navigation:
Home
Category_one
Category_two
Category_three
-subcategory_three_a
- – page-one.html
- – page-two.html
-subcategory_three_b
-subcategory_three_c
- – page-one.html
- – page-two.html
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Mar
13
SEO basics checklist.
Filed Under Blog Design, E-commerce Design | Leave a Comment
New to SEO? Not so new to SEO? Here are a few items that should be at the top of your ‘to do’ checklist, regardless of your SEO savvy.
- Meta & Title tags
- Internal page linking
- XML sitemap uploaded & ping’ed
- Links to authoritative, external websites
- Google & Yahoo! local profiles, if applicable
- Directory submissions listings (geographic / topic specific)
For a more extensive checklist, click here.
