MakeOwnWebsite.net » Potential

Questions To Ask A Potential Web Designer

Admin — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 16:32:27 +0000

For an individual or a corporate to get due recognition and develop their business, they will need to let others know of their existence and what they do. This is possible either through PR activities or by creating a well planned out website.
For a website, seeking the professional guidance is the ideal solution and some questions that needs to be asked of the potential web designer could be :
1. Experience
How many years has the web designer been in this line of work? This will give an idea about aware he or she is of current advancements in the field, such as Ajax, table-less layouts and Web 2.0 design styles.
2. Samples of their past work
What are the sites they have created? Ask them for samples or URLs that you can take a look at to build confidence in their capabilities.
Look for designs that are stylistically similar to what you have in your head. Even better, ask if the designer has ever done work in your particular industry.
3. Industry exposure
What kind of industries have they been involved with? Who are their clients?
This is so you can judge their ability to understand your industry and create a site that will suit your needs.
4. After sales service
What kind of service do they offer clients once the site is up and running? Do they help in updating it if any changes need be made or in acquiring more web space and so on?
5. Visibility through search engines
Do they help in getting your company website listed in search engines or provide a full search engine marketing service?
Having a pretty website is all very well, but you need people to visit it. Ask the designers if this is something they have practical experience with.
6. Copyright and security issues
Will they make sure that the data and images used on the site are copyrighted and protected so others cannot copy them? And the security settings which will be useful while monitoring the traffic.
Also, try to ensure that you have details of where they have licensed images and photographs from. This may save you problems in the future.
7. Duration
How much time will they require to do the design, layout, and upload the same? This will give you good insight into whether they are efficient or not. A good web designer should not take more than a month, but this also depends on the time dedicated by the client.
8. Fees and charges
While hosting your site on a domain, you need to pay registration charges which will be a one time payment.
What will the overall cost in designing a website, with say a minimum of about 5 pages and couple of interactive links? The base charges levied for such a site would be around £300-£500 and every additional page will be an extra charge.
Does the designer’s fee include designing, editing, and installing required software?
9. Links and Animation
Do they also help incorporating links to other sites through this and putting in flash animation videos or pictures?
10. Online shopping carts
For companies looking to sell products and services online, check the designer’s portfolio for examples of real, working ecommerce websites.
11. Ownership
Who will own the design, logo, and images that have been used on the site? Make sure to let them know you will be the sole owner so that you can move the site to another host if necessary.

Richard James works for Just Web Designers, a site that allows companies to receive fast quotes from up to 4 web development and ecommerce design companies in the UK.

Do You Want to Neglect a Large Proportion of Potential Worldwide Customers Just Because Your Web Page Load Time is Slow?

Admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:29:55 +0000

An important aspect of website design is to reduce web page load time to the lowest possible. A slim trim website design is in some ways like an attractive athletic woman, so let us call this article “A website weight loss programmer” that will help you make your web pages load much faster.Why is it so important to reduce website load time?A website has global reach but Internet connection speeds in various countries are not the same. A lot of dial-ups and slow broadband connections still exist. Recently published research has revealed that unless massive amounts are spent on improving Internet infrastructure, the average global connection speed may show a dip by 2010. Even for those who do have high-speed connections, the total number of relevant websites on the Internet is growing fast for the help www.video-web-wizards.com. This directly translates into less time spent by the viewer per web page. Generally speaking, patience is a rare commodity in today’s world of reducing resource-to-consumption ratios. Do you want to neglect a large proportion of potential worldwide customers just because your web page load time is slow? If not, then follow the steps below to reduce website load time.Women usually work on trimming the hips, shaping legs and removing cellulites in various places. Similarly, I have classified below “website weight loss programme” into three ‘broad’ categories: Graphics, Code and Other Factors. Please note that you should meticulously follow as many steps as you can to take the redundant fat out of your website design and reduce “website loading time” to a bare minimum.WEBSITE WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAMMEA. TRIM the Graphics (Slim hips:-)1. Avoid Graphic Heavy or Complicated Web DesignWebsite designs that use many images (especially those with special effects) generally take a long time to load. What if a good looking website keeps loosing valuable visitors just because its web pages take too much loading time? Try to be discrete and use less number of images / graphics while maintaining the look and impact of the website design. Remember that text links are easily read by search engines and load faster than graphic buttons. Sometimes it is also possible to move large images from an important page to a section like “Gallery” to reduce web page load time.2. Use Only Optimized ImagesOptimize each image in editing software like Photoshop. There are different image formats like GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF etc., so try to save images in the appropriate format. As a rule-of-thumb, GIF is more suitable for uniform color images and JPEG for real world scenes. GIF saved at 256 colors should be reduced (as much as possible) to 128, 64 or 32 colors without comprising image quality. To reduce website load time JPEGs should be saved in the lowest quality possible without spoiling picture impact. You can also use PNG if you are sure that your users are using newer browsers.3. Specify Image DimensionsWhile inserting images in HTML always mention height and width attributes. This helps the web browser to know the image size before loading it. The browser will then reserve the area for the images while rest of the web page design continues to load, thereby reducing website loading time. Do not use the height and width tags for image size reduction.4. Pre-load Your ImagesYou can pre-load some heavy images of the next pages (that can be reached by clicking on links within the current page) by defining them at the footer of the current web page. For example, img src=”nextimage” height =”1″ width=”1″ inserts a 1×1 pixel image in the footer that is read by the browser when the code above it has been read. Thereafter, while your visitor is viewing your main page, images of the next page will continue to download to the viewer’s PC in the background and will reduce subsequent web page load times. This is not recommended for direct Adwords landing pages because Google has recently announced that high web page load time will negatively impact the landing page quality score.5. Optimize Flash FilesAnimating important stuff can make an impact on the visitor. If possible, avoid animated GIF images in website designs; instead use Flash with discretion. Always use optimized flash files. There are so many ways to reduce Flash loading time that I will be covering this in a separate article.B. TRIM the Code (Shapely legs 1. Remove Useless Code:While using an HTML generator, some extra or empty tags get inserted in the code, for e.g. breaking spaces, block quotes, unnecessary extra space, blank lines etc. Even if you hand-code HTML, always manually check your website design code and remove the empty or unnecessary HTML tags for the help www.web-audios-plus.com. Use appropriate DOCTYPE and close all HTML markup elements. The browser will then have less work to do matching elements. Clean coding of a web page will not only reduce website load time but also increases your text-to-code ratio and search engine spiders do not have to spend time deciphering irrelevant stuff.2. Use of Shorthand External CSSCSS helps make your website design code compact as well as clean and its proper usage helps reduce website loading time. Define common font styles, images etc. (used in a set of web pages) in one single external CSS. By doing this, you will not have to insert the same tags again and again on different pages – just call the CSS and apply that particular class. With all your repetitive stuff defined in the CSS file, the browser won’t have to read each single tag all over again. Always use External CSS file and remember to remove extra, unused styles from it.Use smaller class names and shorthand CSS instead of putting each CSS attribute in its own line.For example:”body{background: url(“image.jpg”);background-color: #cccccc;background-repeat: repeat-x;}”Above code can be written as below when using shorthand CSS:”body {background: #cccccc url(‘image.jpg’) repeat-x;}”A properly created small external CSS file will substantially reduce website load time.3. Use External JavaScriptIf you must use JavaScript, merge small common JavaScript files into a single external file and then (for newer browsers) you may compress it. This will reduce website loading time and you don’t have to write the script on each web page – the web browser has this file in its cache and won’t have to download it each time another web page loads.4. For Table Based Website DesignAvoid unnecessary nested and full-page tables. If you insert a table inside another table, it increases web page load time because the browser has to read the content located in the innermost table. Avoid unnecessary nested tables, instead divide your page into different sections like header, body, footer etc. according to your layout and use a different table for each section. Your browser will be able to load your web page a bit faster.5. Use Table-less Website DesignsEvery time when a website is opened, the browser has to first scan tables and then load the content of the page which increases the website loading time. Using CSS and DIV tags you can avoid tables altogether and reduce website loading time substantially.C. OTHER factors that reduce website load time (remove the cellulites:-)1. Host on a high-end server with fast connectivity to decrease website loading time.2. If you have a database driven website, it is faster and more secure to place your content on one server and your database on another. Consider SSI for common page elements, AJAX for page refreshes and Jar compressed files that load faster into the temp.3. Avoid background music files and if it is very necessary to use them then use highly compressed music file formats. Avoid having much stuff on your website loading from other websites and reduce the number of HTTP requests.4. Adding a slash at the end of a link like domain.com/contact informs the server that this is a directory page and it does not have to waste time working out what kind of file exists at that address.5. Using fewer redirects, Iframes, PhP and database queries also helps reduce website loading time.

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Photoshop CS4 Tutorials Revealing Its Full User Potential

Admin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:05:12 +0000

For a long time Photoshop was considered a software program solely for professionals; however today you can find teenagers and housewives alike tweaking and editing their photos inside Photoshop. Granted, its not the easiest program under the sun to learn yet while learning the more advanced tools you can still rely on the easier, fun tools to provide what you will need to edit and enhance your photos.

While Photoshop CS4 is chock full of tools I want to go over only a few of the most often used ones to give you an idea of exactly how powerful this program is.

Have you ever wondered how the models in magazines always look so perfect? Photoshop CS4 is every professional photographers hidden secret as it comes equipped with tools such as the warping tool that allows you to manipulate your photos and, once you have it figured out, will even allow you to add or subtract weight from your subjects, among other things. Everyone complains about how they look in photographs, now you can eliminate all the complaints with a few clicks of the mouse.

Another great tool that will make your friends happy is the smudge tool. Do people complain about your zoom shots? Close up shots are always a nightmare as every facial flaw is intensified yet with the smudge tool every imperfection is easily \”airbrushed\” away. Now everyone will look as if they walked off the pages of a magazine.

Wouldn\’t it be great to have a photo of you in front of the Eiffel Tower? Don\’t save up for the plane ticket, simply use Photoshops lasso tool. The lasso tool allows you to select a particular part of the picture, you for instance, and then remove it. Next you simply paste the object, yourself, on another background, such as behind the Eiffel Tower in France.

Wish you had a masterpiece to hang on your wall? Turn your favorite photo into a watercolor using Photoshop\’s built in filters. Simply print it out on canvas and you have a museum worthy piece of art.

Worried you will forget who was standing next to you during your college graduation? Easily insert text or captions onto your photos using the text tool. Recently divorced but don\’t want to toss your photos out the window? Easily remove unwanted objects and you will be able to keep all the photos, minus the unwanted objects or individuals.

The tools I have listed are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the things Photoshop CS4 can do. Once you have maneuvered your way around the program you will find hundreds of other tasks you can accomplish using this phenomenal program. Take your time and find out how you can turn your ordinary photographs into extraordinary works of art.

Discovering Photoshop CS4 tutorials online can be a nightmare, and so many people just end up giving up on what is some very expensive photo editing software, professionally produced by Adobe. The leading promoter of Photoshop CS4 training tutorials is David Peters, who even gives a full 60 day money back guarantee, if you just can\’t get the gist of learning what is a complex piece of software. But you will be quite amazed at what you really can learn about Photoshop CS4 in little more than 2 hours, by viewing David Peters quality training video tutorials.

Did you like the idea of this article? Curious about finding professionally made Photoshop CS4 Tutorials? Well now you can by reading this FREE Photoshop CS4 Tutorial….what are you waiting for? Discover David Peters Photoshop CS4 Video Tutorials Today!