Learn More About Your Audience with Google Places

January 25th, 2012

Track keyword searches, see visitor trends, post your business hours (and more) with Google Places.

With Google Places your can track keyword searches, see visitor trends, post your business hours, services, contact information and more.

Adding your business listing to Google Places is free. A mailing address is required.

You can add photos, create special offers for your clients and specify the services you provide as well as your geographic area.

It is also possible to use Google Places in conjunction with your Google AdWords campaign to develop marketing strategies.

You can also offer special promotions, post live updates, respond to reviews and discover insights about how your business is perceived on the internet.

Google Places can help you discover more about your customers so that you can tailor your web presence to their needs.

Contact Chicago freelance web designer Christopher Merrill if you have questions.

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Render Your WordPress Blog for Mobile Phones

January 19th, 2012

When websites are formatted for cell phones, users don't need to zoom in to read text links.

MobilePress is a WordPress plugin that will render your WordPress blog on mobile handsets, with the ability to use customized themes.

The MobilePress plugin will detect when your webpages are being viewed on a mobile phone and reformat the pages so that users will not need to zoom in so as to see the links: this makes website navigation easier on the small screen.

When viewed through a mobile phone, the MobilePress plugin defaults to a simplified format, with links displayed in larger type. Users can opt to view pages in regular format, if they like.

A hidden bonus: your regular users will be more inclined to access your website while on the go — and when users visit your site more often, your rankings with the search engines will go up.

You can replace the title of your blog when being viewed on a mobile device: for example, you can replace “My Blog” with “My Mobile Blog.” Making your blog description specific for mobile phones is also possible. See MobilePress plugin for further documentation and installation instructions.

 

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How to Refresh or Reload a Web Page

January 11th, 2012
Refresh icon

Look for this icon to refresh (reload) your pages so as to make sure you are seeing the most recent version.

During the development process, from time to time, it may be necessary to REFRESH pages in your browser so as to make sure you are seeing the most-recent version of your web pages on your screen.

To do so, look for an icon similar to the one indicated by the red arrow in the image to the right and click on it. Making this selection will force your computer (usually) to bypass your cache (cache refers to web pages you have downloaded previously) and load the most recent version of the web page.

In some cases (if updated pages aren’t downloading for you even after refreshing), it may be necessary to clear your cache. For more information on clearing your cache and/or refreshing/reloading web pages, see Wikipedia:Bypass your cache.

If you are reviewing your website and making changes often, it is a good idea to get in the habit of clicking on the refresh icon regularly, just to make sure you are seeing the up-to-date pages on your website.

Refreshing is also useful, in general, when reviewing sites that you come to often and use routinely.

Questions? Contact Christopher Merrill at 773.755.2536.

 

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Twitter Over Capacity

December 31st, 2011

Twitter Over Capacity

It happens to the best of them: a server receives too much traffic at the same time and a traffic jam occurs.

There is an overall maybeness to the internet that many people find disconcerting.

But remember: a website is not like a piece of mail you receive in your snail-mail mailbox. While every copy of a printed brochure looks identical, websites display very differently under different conditions. Add this to the fact that servers are constantly attacked by hackers, along with the reality that servers can and do go down every now and then, and you have a very, very different world from the one we are used to in which printed information is shared in book and magazine form.

Technology dazzles, and then it irritates.

And then it dazzles again, and then it irritates again.

If you are new to owning a website site, take a breath — and remember that the internet is a different animal. It’s likely that you will find many of the limitations a website comes with annoying — however, the reward will come in time, if you are both diligent, and patient.

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Creating a Child Theme in WordPress

December 24th, 2011

Creating you own WordPress child theme will preserve your style sheet when you update your WordPress release.

If you have chosen an open-source WordPress theme for your new WordPress blog, it’s a good idea to create a “child theme” based on the template you have chosen, so that when you update your WordPress blog, your theme will remain intact — otherwise, whenever you update your WordPress blog (and updates to WordPress are happening all the time!), your style sheet and php files will be replaced by that particular WordPress theme defaults.

Commonly referred to as a child theme, your new WordPress template will be based on the changes that you made to the original WordPress theme that you chose when you developed your WordPress blog.

WordPress.org provides documentation on how a child theme works and what you can do to set up your own WordPress child theme.

Whenever you update your WordPress release, it is highly recommended that you back up all of your WordPress files, including your child theme, as well as the database you have created for your WordPress blog. WordPress blogs commonly use MySQL databases — consult your hosting provider on how to download and backup your database.

Consider creating backups on multiple drives or use a file-saving vendor — you can also backup your files onto disks and store the disk(s) in a safe deposit box.

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“Just the Facts, Ma’am” – Form Follows Function (Really)

December 16th, 2011

Search engine ranking was the driving force behind the design of this new website.

Newly launched lincolnsquaretherapist.com was built from the ground up with organic search engine optimization as priority.

This site was designed from the start with an emphasis on simplicity, navigability, and, most important, coded in a way that will attract the search engines to the appropriate keyword combinations for this professional.

SEO hallmarks:

  • Unique title tags on all pages
  • Unique description tags on all pages
  • Key-word rich paragraph-style descriptive text on the index page
  • Html sitemap
  • XML sitemap
  • Appropriately named <h> tags
  • Link verification
  • Length of title and descriptions tags kept within recommended limits
  • Geographic location and appropriate keywords placed throughout the website

Other features include:

  • Phone number appears in html in top banner so that people can automatically dial that phone number on smartphones
  • Address and email listed in the masthead on all pages
  • Address and email listed on all pages in the footer
  • Google map, directions, parking information
  • Dreamweaver template employed to allow flexibility in overall design
  • CSS style sheet employed to allow overall flexibility in design

Organic search engine optimization is a continuum; while these measure are by no means exhaustive, this site was assembled so as to get this new website owner off on the right foot and set up for the future!

Read more about organic search engine optimization.

 

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Use Animated Gifs as Smartphone Placeholders for Flash

November 27th, 2011

Javascript your Flash code to display animated gifs on smartphones.

Since flash swf files don’t display readily on smartphones, consider javascripting your code so that an animated gif will display in place of the flash.

Kudos to Rob McLeod at MRDesignWorks, Chicago, Illinois, for helping me to get up to speed on alternatives to flash displays for cell phones.

Animated gifs may not be as passé as one might think, especially in the world of the small screen.

A large rotating animated gif can be useful for the small-business website owner, adding visual interest to the page as displayed on the cellphone. Moreover, rotating text displayed in the form of an animated gif can be surprisingingly useful in conveying information to the first-time viewer of your website on a cellphone.

For more information see Flash files Not Showing Up on Your Cellphone.

It’s also advisable to consider posting your business phone number in html near the top of your webpages, since doing so will allow cell phone users to click on your phone number on the small screen to dial you up. For more discussion on this, see Let Your Cellphone Do the Dialing.

For more information, contact Chicago freelance web designer Christopher Merrill.

 

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“How Often Should I Upgrade my Website?”

November 20th, 2011

Question: "Will I need to upgrade my website within the next five years?" The answer is yes.

Here’s something I often hear clients say: “But I don’t want to have to upgrade my website again in five years!”

It’s understandable not to want to keep redoing your website, but the fact is that technology is constantly changing. What was true about the internet five years ago may no longer be true, especially with the development of new internet-browsing techniques.

Think of the websites that you use regularly — how many of them are the same as they were five years ago?

Users have become accustomed to seeing major websites change — just think of how often Facebook has changed its template in the last few years.

Your users are likely to notice whether or not your website is keeping pace with the times. It doesn’t take long for a website to look out of date — and clients can sense this.

Search engines give preference to websites that are current over websites that remain untouched. Your clients will be more likely to consult your website if they see that it is kept up to date.

For more information, contact Chicago website designer Christopher Merrill.

 

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Google Sitelinks Are Automated — for Now

November 11th, 2011

Some Google search results are called SITELINKS — they display links to sub-pages under the main URL of the site under certain search conditions.

Here’s an example for my site:

Google Sitelinks Example

For more information, see Google Sitelinks for Google Webmasters. Specifically, here is what Google says:

“At the moment, sitelinks are automated. We’re always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future. There are best practices you can follow, however, to improve the quality of your sitelinks. For example, for your site’s internal links, make sure you use anchor text and text that’s informative, compact, and avoids repetition.”

Regardless, it seems that the more clean and thorough your code is, the more likely it is to be broken down this way in some Google searches.

For more information, contact Chicago Web Designer Christopher Merrill at 773-755-2536 or by email at info@christophermerrill.com.

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Beware the Seagull Consultant

October 27th, 2011

Seagull consultants are never around when problems arise.

As the joke goes, the “seagull consultant” is a temporary consultant who:

  • Flies in
  • Makes a lot of noise
  • Eats all the food
  • Craps all over everything
  • Flies out– never to return

You know you’ve had a visit from a seagull consultant if — after the consultant has left, and everything dies down, things are WORSE than they were before and, more important, you have wasted money using them.

The seagull consultant looks impressive on first glance, but leaves disaster in their wake — and is never, never around to pick up the pieces (they have been paid and are gone).

To avoid being visited by a seagull consultant, plan ahead, and make sure the consultant you hire agrees to help monitor things down the road — and have them guarantee that it will be possible to return things back to where they were before they consulted, if needed.

You know that your consultant is NOT the seagull variety when, after they have done their work and made their changes, your website runs better than before — and STAYS running without problems for a minimum of six months. Don’t be fooled if everything seems terrific the week after they leave: the proof of their effectiveness is in the long-term.

For more information, contact Chicago Freelance Web Designer Christopher Merrill.

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