Free Article Database

If you want to spice up your presentation, you can use advanced editing effects such as scene titles, bullet points, menus and elaborate backgrounds. They give your presentation an air of professionalism, and they can make your content stand out from that available from other direct sales sites. These types of advanced effects are also usually inexpensive to produce, depending on the editing software you are using. They don’t take much time, either. In addition, your viewer will be grateful for this as well, since once you place an effect into a sequence of footage, it can stand screen throughout so that your viewer can look at it and study it as he or she wishes. It’s the best way to get the best of both worlds, both the advantages of text that are time independent, and the impact and drama of video, too.

Because these advantages exist, first-time editors tend to use too many effects in a single presentation. Avoid this temptation, because of the reasons discussed earlier. Too many effects can be confusing for your viewer and make your presentation either too complicated to understand, or cheap, hokey and incomprehensible.

When is the best time to use advanced effects? One rule of thumb is never to use advanced effects simply for their own sake.

In practice, this means several things. First of all, let’s say that your product is a new piece of software that produces graphics with new innovations. In fact, your presentation shows a screenshot of this particular software in use. Because of this, it’s easy for you to do overlay menus and effects, so you fill up the entire screen with them. You label every interesting new feature all at once. Then, let this complicated overlay play on in the background while your presenter is talking about great features of a new program.

The problem here is that advanced effects — and especially overlay graphics — give the viewer something very information-dense to look at and to read while the presenter is talking. That is well and good, but:

IF the viewer is spending too much time deciphering and reading your overlay graphics and not spending enough time paying attention to what the presenter or audio track is saying, your presentation is lost. That audio track is key to your presentation, and you want viewers to pay attention to it. Therefore, give your viewers one thing to focus on (your presentation) and leave out other things.

Instead, use overlay graphics in the following way. Take the same example, above. As your presenter talks about feaures of your program, you can add the overlay graphic for each feature (and just that feature) to the footage you produce.

With this, the viewer will look at that feature as the presenter is talking about it. He or she will read the information the graphic and then he will be paying attention to what the presenter is saying once again. This is not only an elegant and simple solution, but it actually helps clarify what the presenter is saying because it gives visual enhancement to what is being talked about. Once the information is on the screen, you can leave it there for the rest of the speech or take it down, depending on what you want to do.

These types of special overlay effects can be fun, but you should also use them prudently. If your presenter is talking about a new CD that you’re trying to sell, for example, you can use your editing software to add animation as he makes a certain gesture. It is funny, somewhat cheesy, but certainly gets attention. It can also be distracting if you use it too much. So if you plan to do this kind of thing, do not do it more than once or twice during a video.

Chromakey effects are different, because you will need to be filming chromakey footage right from the concept stage onward. In other words, you can not use chromakey effects lightly, if you are going to film all of your footage against a blue or green screen.

However, you can make sure that your chromakey effects blend in as much as possible. If you can, use existing photographic backgrounds, such as large and clear images of your product. You can use anything thats not blurry, avant-garde, or visually distracting, though. Above all, make sure that your presenter or product is clearly displayed against a chromakey background. It looks hokey at best to have your presenters red top disappear against a sunset background or have similar color-related difficulties occur.

Read more from Leon Edward on internet home business, marketing, website design and home basd businesses online at his blogs and website

Leon also presents personal development training and awesome Success University business opportunity.

It’s hard to compete with a multinational website design company with a team of experienced designers all with degrees in Graphic Design. Well it is if you are trying to create a new site design for another boring multinational website monolith.

But who needs a complex high budget presentation. Who wants to spend days and weeks getting that boring Contact Us page just the right shade of blue?

If you want to recreate a sense of head-banging, crowd-surfing, pogoing, moshing energy filled rock. Then just limit yourself to 10 minutes and just get the energy flowing for an instant from the heart website design.

Also anyone can type “grunge template” into Google and download a supposedly rocking website design. But think about it. Its not going to be original is it. You’ve got to go for it and do it yourself.

Get inspiration yes but don’t just copy. Be original.

You’re going to need Photoshop or some design package like the Gimp to do this and a bit of guidance from a tutorial.

But the basic idea is to create a “Custom Brush” that you can use to paint just the right background. Custom Brushes let you paint whatever pattern you want, wherever you want. Just use your imagination to create something a bit rough looking. Then use it on a large section across the top of your website, for example where the header would go.

Then over this header background use the Text tool to write the name of your site or some slogan. Use a good font. I can’t recommend one really as its your design. Just go with whatever looks good. Then apply some effects to the text. Perhaps an “Outer Glow” effect set to Blue would look good.

That’s the header done. Now mark out some other sections of the template design like a menu and main content area.

You can use Motion Blur on sections of the design again with the colours of your choosing and the odd splash of colour with bold pinks and blues.

The whole point of a Grunge Template is that it will look a little rough around the edges. Remember that memorable is good but unreadable is bad. You mustn’t go too far with your artistic feelings as you aren’t creating a work of art. You are creating a website design that has to be accessible and have good usability. Make the menu stand out clearly and the content be readable. Black text on a black background isn’t going to get you far!

Remember, Don’t be a lamestain.

Rock On.

Mike Kay is a website designer located in Liverpool, UK. Find out more about grunge website templates at designertuts.com.

Businesses often want to create their website themselves and just want some guidance on what to do and of course how to do it as cheaply as possible.

You can do it for free but you will have fewer headaches if you spend a little on getting a decent hosting package (see later).

So this is my recipe for 1 simple basic business website.

All you need is

1 tech person
1 internet connection

I would recommend you should choose a website designer to be that tech person (preferably me!) but whatever you decide here’s what needs to be done.

1. Decide what the website is for.

You need a clear idea of what the website is for. “I just want a website” isn’t good enough. “I just want a website that lets people find out how to contact us and see what products we sell and find out a bit about the history of the company” is a good start.

2. Decide who your audience are and why they will come to your website.

Don’t make the mistake of creating a website for yourself. It’s not for you its for your customers. You need to think like them. What do they want and how will they want it presented.

3. Learn some basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Accessibility facts.

The biggest problem businesses have is that after they put a lot of effort into creating their website, they type “home made cakes” into Google and where do they appear in the list of results? Nowhere! This is a huge subject and I can’t tell you what to do in a paragraph.

Accessibility. It is now the law in many countries that you must make your website accessible to all. Like SEO this is also a big subject that can’t be explained in a paragraph.

4. Choose a website design template.

Search for an Open Source Web Design site and you will find thousands of free website designs.

Choose an XHTML 1.0 Strict design that uses CSS and download it.

Check the license file or read the text on the webpage. The designer will probably say that you must keep his or her copyright statement intact.

5. Change it to match what is right for your company.

To edit a website you can use the simplest of editors e.g notepad on windows but it is best to use a dedicated website editor.

6. Fill in the content i.e. your words and images.

Type in all your textual content and insert any images

7. Choose a web address.

You are going to need a website address. Think up a good one and check if it is available. Wait until you get your website hosting sorted out as companies often give a free domain name with the hosting.

8. Choose some web hosting.

Choose some web hosting. i.e. somewhere to put your website. You can find free hosting but I wouldn’t recommend it. Paid for hosting costs little and is easily worth it.

* Sign up and wait for them to email you the technical details of how you get your site onto their computers. As part of the sign up you can also usually register a domain name. i.e. the web address for your site. Make sure you put the correct name and address details here as it can be tricky to change later. The person you specify will be the legal owner of the domain.

9. Upload your website.

To upload your website you need an FTP program or if you are using a dedicated website editing application the function is likely to be built in and named “Publish” or something similar.

Good Luck.

Mike Kay BEng Cert Web Apps (Open) MBCS is a website designer located in Liverpool, UK. Find out more about free business websites at merseyinternet.com.

You have it all figured out: the flash on the front page is beautiful and pertinent to the site, your images are lovely and fit well, your articles are well-written and SEO’d, and you even have your SEO marketing plan set up. Everyone who sees it agrees that your site is professional and slick, well-written and informative.

So why isn’t anyone coming and why aren’t they returning when they do come?

Web site design is deceptively easy to learn, but difficult to master. Professional librarians with PhDs are often hired for the very large sites, just to keep them organized and searchable. Even smaller sites often are harder to navigate than they should be. And hardly anyone does their internal SEO structuring properly.

To tell you everything you need to know would take a couple of books, but some simple things will make your designing life easier and help you create pages that are both beautiful and friendly.

Internal Site Structure: Usability and Navigability

The way your site is linked together, page to page and level to level, is incredibly important to how the search engines look at it and how your human users get along. If you have beautiful Flash navigation bars and a search box, it may look elegant to you but it is NOT searchable, and search engines will not give you proper credit for the site. It is also not friendly for visually-impaired users. At the very least, include a text-link menu at the bottom to take users to all the sister pages to the one they are on.

By the way, a good rule of thumb is to think about how a blind text-dependent viewer would see your site and design for that person. In essence, web spiders, the little programs that document your site and help search engines rank it, “see” your site just like a person who is visually impaired. Makes you think a whole different way about that pretty Flash, doesn’t it?

On with internal links. Bread crumb links became a standard of Yahoo! in 1997, and are still very useful today. These links are found at the top of a page and work as a map for the viewer back out to where they were originally. The deeper your site, the more useful bread crumbs are. They look like this:

home : category level 1 : category level 3 : this page

with each level but the last linked back to the main page for that category. You see them used frequently on catalog sites:

home: clothing : girl’s : pantsuits : pink lamb pantsuit

By using these subtle links, you make it easy for your visitors to move back out to any level they want. And if you have these links at the top, with linking at the bottom to sibling pages, you ensure your user can get anywhere they need to go with about two clicks. In large sites, this isn’t practical, but in medium sites it can be a godsend.

Also make sure you use a robots.txt file to protect your private stuff: raw images, CGI-bin, and anything you just don’t want out on a Google search. This tiny text file goes into your site’s root directory and only takes a minute to set up. If you have a large and complex site and you want to ensure that it’s thoroughly searched, you can use a sitemap file, an XML file (you can use it even if the rest of your site doesn’t use XML) that ensures web spiders map every part of your site you want them to.

Lastly in site usability, make sure that on every single page your user has a simple means to contact you, preferably a link to a Contact Me! page. This is often included at the bottom of the page, but some webmasters find it works better somewhere else. Just be sure it stands out in the page.

SEO: Your Site and Your Campaign

Search engine optimization is the life’s blood of web business. If your site is not optimized, it is not visible. While Google has done a number of things to keep you from cheating by keyword stuffing, using gateway pages, and using invisible text, there are many, many things you can do to make your site SEO friendly and ensure that your ranking is as high as is possible.

Start with the rule of thumb from the last section: the blind man, Every single important element on your page should use alt-text to label it, and each one can use a little SEO. That butterfly jumper on your girl’s clothing page? Label it in alt-text girl’s clothing butterfly jumper.It’s that simple. If you have a database-driven site, you can simply ensure you include an alt-text column for each item’s description and include the right HTML in your page templates; if your site is smaller, you’ll need to label each image by hand. You don’t have to label every image, mind, but each label is going to give you a little boost.

Use pertinent anchor text for each link. If you’re linking to girl’s dresses, that phrase should be used as the link to the other page. This is a way of getting a keyword bump for free the search engines assume that this page will be about girl’s dresses. The worst link: the lazy man’s “you can find it HERE”, linking the word here.

Avoid overusing Flash. This is one of the most common errors made by people who are excited about beautiful web pages. Get this one thing straight: a site entirely designed as Flash may look impressive, but it is harder to navigate and will not be picked up well by the search engines, no matter what trick or workaround you use. It fails the blind man’s rule. Use Flash sparingly, and as a way to enhance your site, not to impress visitors. One of the few places that uses it well: the Ikea website, where great Flash is used to demonstrate things like putting furniture together. Another good one: Discover.com, where components are often designed in Flash and embedded in HTML pages.

Try not to use duplicate text. The search engines see this as spam, and it can end with your site being penalized. Instead, use unique text on each page.

Finally, optimize your entire site, not just the home page or the articles section. Your site, if it’s like most sites, can be entered at any level. Assume that your reader may come in anywhere, and design accordingly.

Randy Zlobec, Search Engine Marketing Expert and owner of a Myrtle Beach Web Design company specializing in search engine optimization and web site design services.

Fonts are a subject that most of us don’t necessarily give a great deal of thought to. But that some of us obsess over. In a way I think sometimes it’s probably the online equivalent in terms of ‘coolness’ that being a trainspotter in the ‘real’ world is! In other words, some people are big into typographics and the wonders of fonts. While other people just don’t see what all the fuss is about. They have their arial, times new roman or verdana. So who needs more?

Well, the real answer is that most websites could do with a radical re-think when it comes to their font and typography strategy. Because in reality it can play a big part in how the site looks.

Now, all of us know this intuitively. And so when someone points it out it seems as though we already ‘know that’ so why tell us again? And yet, think back to the last time that you did something as simple as write someone an email, or maybe even a letter (remember those?!) Did you use the same old verdana, arial or times new roman that you have been using for years? Or did you mix it up and genuinely do something different? My guess, and obviously it can only be a guess, because I can’t stand next to you when you type your letters! Is that you probably weren’t that adventurous when it came to the font you used.

Now, take that attitude and spread it over the internet and you have a world of websites that are all using the very same fonts. Now, this is not a slanging match against the old favorites that I have already mentioned. They are classics. A bit like Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen is a ‘classic’, or ‘Hotel California’ by The Eagles is a classic. There will always be a place for sitting back and enjoying some mellow moments with fonts that you have known, trusted and loved from when you were very first born. But, my point is that you would soon get sick of Bohemian Rhapsody or Hotel California if you were forced to listen to them EVERY DAY! Man. You would be standing up and shouting….

“Give me some NEW Music to listen too.. Please!”

And the same is true with typography. You need some new fonts to get your teeth into, because variety really is the spice of life, and font designers are constantly coming up with new fonts that really are a breath of fresh air, and well worth checking out. They are a bit like finding a new band to listen too that are really cool. They give you new ideas, a fresh perspective, and brighten up your websites and design projects with new ways of looking at the world (literally, because fonts are such a visual medium).

This means that hand in hand with the content you produce, you are also making an impact in the stylistics of HOW you present the information. Now, whilst no-one wants form over substance. I ask you. Is it too much to want both at the same time?

Keep the substance. But get some new forms today of the fresh, new font variety. It will cheer you up. Cheer up your projects and help do your bit for a more varied and interesting type laden world.

For cutting edge new fonts, firm font favorites and to download fonts visit http://www.fontsmagic.com right now

Getting people to visit the first time is less than half the battle. You’ll need them to remain on the site long enough to take an action that benefits your business for the site to be effective. A site that gets people to stay there once they’ve arrived is called “sticky.”

There are myriad ways a website can fail at stickiness. If the site fails to establish trust, people will probably leave. If the site seems shoddy, messy or unorganized, people will also leave. If the site asks too much of the user, like asking them to fill out a long form without offering any free teaser content before they can view valuable content, people are going to leave. If a site is confusing, people will leave. If a site has many broken links or “Page Not Found” errors, people are going to leave. This list goes on and on.

On the other hand, if a website offers quality content that is original, you greatly increase your chances that a visitor will stay. If your copywriting is compelling, succinct and easy to consume, people will want to continue reading. You want people to stay so you can capitalize on their presence. For example, if your call to action is to get visitors to sign up for your newsletter, they’ll need to be there long enough to accomplish the following:

1. Learn that there is a newsletter to sign up for in the first place
2. Begin to trust you as an authority in your industry
3. Get their interest piqued enough to want to learn more from you
4. Be compelled enough to actually sign up for your newsletter
5. Learn to trust you enough to feel comfortable with giving you their e-mail address

This works for selling online as well. As a matter of fact, it is even more important to establish interest, trust and authority to make a sale online because you are lacking the power of one-on- one in-person communication.

Another factor that makes a site sticky is its ease of use. People like to get maximum benefit for minimum effort. Have you ever considered the design of Google’s website? It is one of the simplest and cleanest home pages in existence. We can all learn from this. You and your Web vendor ought to be chanting this mantra through the entire planning and building phase of a new website: Clean Simple Easy, Clean Simple Easy, Clean Simple Easy. Say it over and over again.

People hate complicated websites that make them think too much. They hate feeling confused. They hate feeling stupid. They hate wasting their time. Many competing websites are a literal click away. And people have itchy back button fingers.

So to make your website as sticky as possible, create original and compelling content on a regular basis, establish trust and above all else, be sure to design it in a way that appears clean, and is simple and easy to use and to find information.

Jason O’Connor is the owner of Oak Web Works, LLC (http://www.oakwebworks.com), an Internet strategy firm that specializes in helping businesses make money with their business websites. From Web design and development to strategic e-marketing and providing free Web resources for Web professionals, Oak Web Works, LLC specializes in all-things-Web.

I think almost anyone has a website these days, have it be a wordpress type site for personal blogs, or a more professional site for your business. When I’m doing a personal website I don’t really care all that much about the template that I use. But if it’s going to be a business website and I want it to look professional and impressive, I will almost always spend a certain amount of money and a certain amount of time searching for the perfect template. I’m not talking about Myspace layouts, I’m talking about professionally done templates. Free templates just don’t have the same feel as a paid template.

So where can you get these templates from? Well just about anywhere depending on the type of template you want. There are different sites that offer different ones. Maybe you want a simple template design but you want a flash intro, or maybe you want a photography type template to show off all your photos, or maybe you want a regular template that just has a professional feel to it. You can have all this and more. Usually the sites that offer quality templates don’t charge per template. You as the buyer will buy a membership. And with this membership you can either receive “credits” to download templates or with your membership you receive templates with other things such as flash buttons, photos, backgrounds, logo templates, etc. Obviously a paid membership is the way to go. Even if its $40 or $50 you get all these extras included, so it’s well worth it in the end.

Since most of these sites have designers working on them, they also offer something called “Customized Design Solutions” or “Customized Web Templates.” These are a little more expensive but, they give you all kinds of customization choices that maybe you wouldn’t get with the other templates on the site. In case you were wondering, here are a few customized options that you can choose for your template:

- Change the templates colors

- Change the templates background

- Replace the original logo with one you supply (this is really great if you have an official logo for your business!)

- Rearranging the content on your template

- Customizing the navigation menu or bar

The prices for this service as said above are a little bit more. But again you’re getting full on customized work, and if you don’t know how to do something like this yourself, this is a great way to get it done quickly. I know when I bought my flash photography template, I had no idea what I was doing! Maybe if it was regular html I could have figured something out, but flash? Forget it. So I left it to the professionals and now my site is absolutely incredibly!

This author is a huge fan of Website Templates

The part of the market that is called web design has grown considerably over the past few years and many new businesses have entered the market along with some very big businesses.

Some of these businesses dealing in web design in Essex and offer specific services that include redesigning and changing a companies existing website as well as giving tips and advice on how to improve their website for the future.

The designing of a website includes placing text and images in the correct place as well making the website look more appealing and recoding it. The market has grown because the internet has become a much more important part of people’s lives and places certain influences on different people. More and more businesses are creating websites on the internet to advertise their products better and reach more people around the world. This means that website design companies are getting busier and busier as many businesses are looking to them to improve their website to allow more people to visit and recognise them.

Companies that deal with web design in Essex are all competing with each other as well as competing with rival companies based around the world. There is also a hidden side to most website design companies as they also offer search engine optimisation services. This coincides with the design process of a website as most companies improve the look and accessibility of a website and then improve its search engine result with a variety of keywords. This is because many different key words will bring up all the different websites of companies. This is where most search engine optimisation and website design companies will help improve the position of the website by using many different key words.

Most of the big website design companies are based in the capital London as this is where they will get most recognition for their services and will receive more business easier. Nevertheless, this does not stop the smaller businesses from other parts of the UK, for example web design in Essex, and in some cases they receive more clients due to a very good website themselves and good advertising.

It also depends on the quality of work that the business does for their clients as a poor job to the client’s website will put them off that website design company in the future. This means that it is not necessarily the reputation that earns the business clients but the quality of time and effort that they put into the work.

Most of the website design companies have portfolios set up on their own website allowing potential customers to be able to view the quality of work they have done in the past for other clients and this allows potential customers to judge whether or not they are good enough to do their website. It also allows them to judge what they have done to the website and whether it looks good or appealing. In addition, most of the companies set up downloadable packages on their websites that allow customers to set up their own websites based on the advice and tools that come in the package. These packages available are from the most popular requests of websites that they receive. An example of this would be a supermarkets website.

All of this in perspective, the website design market is growing everyday with the internet being more and more important in people’s lives and it is becoming very competitive with small businesses going against large corporations.

Design expert Catherine Harvey looks at how web design in Essex has taken off and is one of the key areas to visit if you need your website bringing up to date.

With consumers turning to the web more often for directory information and purchasable goods, all kinds of businesses have decided to leave their own footprint online. One of the best ways to display information, set up e-commerce or attract new customers is launch your own web site. Unless you majored in information technology or web design, you’re probably going to need a little help setting up the site though.

When you look for a web designer, there are several things you need to consider. For example, do you need them to be local or are you comfortable communicating via email or phone? If you prefer meeting face to face, there are probably professionals living in your area. Consequently, San Antonio business men who like to work with people face to face should look for San Antonio web design companies.

Once you’ve found a couple web design companies to choose from, look through their portfolio to get a feel for their style and the quality of the work they do. If you like their designs and you recognize some big clients on their site, they are probably pretty reliable. You should also pay attention to the services they provide because it requires many different skills to create a successful website.

On one hand, you need creative individuals who will generate aesthetically pleasing layouts, color schemes, content, pictures and designs. This could require anything from copywriting to Photoshop and designing skills. You will also need programmers who can make the webpage function the way it should. When you talk to the programmers, make sure they use coding language that every browser can read. If you don’t want to pay for making regular updates, you should also look for a company that offers a content management system. This is essentially a do-it-yourself tool that allows you to update the website whenever you want. And finally, you need a host and address that people can use to find the finished product.

Creating an attractive and functional website is only half the battle of getting your name online though. After all, even the finest product is essentially worthless unless you can generate traffic to that site. That’s why you should also look for companies who know how to create search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) for your business. This involves using tools like online ads, key word targeting, profiles, blogs, articles and more.

Boss Creative is one of the best San Antonio web design companies you can find. If you don’t care about working locally, hire them from anywhere in the country. To see their portfolio and learn more about their reputation, visit http://www.thisisboss.com/. The author, Art Gib, is a freelance writer.

If you have a business website, its design is extremely important. Undoubtedly, you want a website that is visually appealing. It’s the main reason why the web-designing business has grown in the last decade. Savvy web-builders with a flair for graphic design are in high demand. However, catchy graphic design is only one element to running a successful web business. In fact, sometimes graphic design can actually hinder a website’s ability to reach its intended audience. It’s important to choose a web designer who is artistic as well as search-engine friendly.

The statistics vary depending on which expert you believe. However, it’s safe to assume that about fifty percent of your website’s visitors will find you via a search engine. Therefore, a high search-engine ranking is vital. Your site must rank in the first page. Otherwise you’re unlikely to garner any traffic at all from that search engine. If you can land in the top three listings, your chances increase dramatically.

The problem with many websites lies in their graphic design. Search engines cannot index the graphics on a page. They can only crawl text. If a page is loaded with graphic design or pictures but has little text, search engines will ignore it. No matter how visually appealing the website may be, it may get largely overlooked. A balance between graphic design and text is essential to achieve a good search engine ranking.

Sometimes web designers get carried away with the graphic design element of a website. Consequently, they downplay or ignore the only element that search engines can index. Website owners end up with a flashy site that can’t be located on the first ten pages of a search query.

What site owners should aim for instead is a balance between graphic design and text. Graphic design should enhance but not overpower any given page of a website. It should be thought of as the background, not the focus of a web page/site. When you plan your website, keep these things in mind:

* Strive for 300 to 700 words of text per page. Less, and there may be too few words to index. More, and search engine robots may get overwhelmed. The text should be one solid block. You can have smaller blocks of text elsewhere as long as there is one large block on the page.

* Keep pictures small. If you need to put pictures on a page (i.e. a web catalog of products), use thumbnail versions. This leaves more room for text. It also helps your pages to load faster. Visitors who want to see larger images can simply click on the thumbnail version.

* Avoid flash player. Flash player is a favorite of some technically-savvy web designers. It may be fun for her or him to put his flair for graphic design to work this way. However, some visitors cannot view flash player images. Flash player video cannot be indexed either. If you feel the need to use flash player, make it optional for your visitors to click on. Make sure there is still text on the page that can be crawled and indexed.

Remember: Balance is the key. Graphic design should never overpower or choke out text on a web page. Impressive graphics and images are useless if your audience can’t find your site in the first place.

Get professional web design and graphic designs in Los Angeles or read domain reviews and other topics.