Getting the right domain name(s) is the second step in our Six Steps to a Successful Web Site.

What’s a Domain Name?

Every computer that’s connected to the internet is identified by an IP Address. IP addresses look like this: 72.21.210.250. IP addresses work great – if you’re a computer. But for a human, it’s not so easy to remember, and seeing that address doesn’t tell you what site that will take you to.

To solve that problem, we have domain names. Computers don’t need domain names – people do. It makes it easy for us to find the web sites we wan. So instead of having to remember 72.21.210.250, you can just remember amazon.com.

But how does that magic happen? How does my computer know that I want 72.21.210.250 when I type in amazon.com? The answer is Domain Name Servers or DNS. There are domain name servers all over the world. They hold a simple database that matches domain names with IP addresses. So my computer doesn’t actually know – I type in amazon.com, and my computer asks the nearest domain name server which IP address it should go to. If the nearest domain name server doesn’t know, it will ask the next domain name server, and so on, until an answer is reached, and then I’m sent on my merry way. Luckily for us, most of the time computers can do all of this asking and answering in less than a second.

Two Part Name

Each domain name contains two parts: a domain name and a top-level domain name, or TLD. In amazon.com, for example, amazon is the domain name and .com is the TLD.

Even thought more and more TLDs are being introduced all the time, the best choice is still .com. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of all the TLDs currently available and what the restrictions are for each. For example, .museum can only be used by registered museums and .eu can only be used by businesses, organizations and individuals located in the European Union.

Choosing a Domain Name

If you’re just starting your business and haven’t registered a name yet, you’re in a great position – you can check each of the potential names you’ve thought of for your business to see if a matching domain name is available.

If your business already has a name, the first domain name you should check is your business name. For example, if I owned a dog-walking business named Walk That Dog, I’d first check to see if walkthatdog.com was available. If it was already taken, I’d have to get creative and figure out a way I could incorporate the name of my business or my primary product or service into my domain name. There are some really great services online that will help you with this process. Here are a few of my favorites:

• http://domai.nr/
• http://www.123finder.com/
• http://www.pickydomains.com/
• http://www.nameboy.com/
• http://www.bustaname.com/
• http://www.domainsbot.com/

Take your time picking a domain name if your first choice is taken. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of brainstorming time to come up with a great alternative. Try to include some keywords about you or your business in the name. Keep it as short and and easy to spell as possible so that people will have an easy time typing it in. Make sure it’s as different as possible from your competitor’s domain names – you don’t want anyone confusing you with your competition!

Don’t Stop at One!

Also, keep in mind that are no rules about how many you can have. Multiple domain names can be pointed at the same web site. So if you think up two really great ideas, go ahead and register them both.

If you or your business has a hard-to-spell name, then consider registering all the possible misspellings of your name. For example, my name is Natalie MacLees. Natalie is commonly also spelled Nathalie and Nataly, and don’t even get me started on MacLees – I’ve seen McLees, McLese, McLeas, McLeese, MacLees, Macklease, Mackleez, MacLese, MacLeaz, Makleze, etc. If I wanted to make sure that anybody could find nataliemaclees.com, I’d go ahead and register as many of those misspellings as I could afford and point them all at the same web site. Just for the record, I’ve tried to avoid that whole mess by registering nataliemac.com – it’s shorter and easier to spell and remember.

Registering a Domain Name

When you’ve got the name you want, you’ll go to a domain name registrar to purchase the registration of the domain name. Most of the time that should cost you about $10/year. If you’re being charged significantly more than that, then do a little research and find out what’s included. Sometimes hosting, email services, etc. are included, but not always necessary. Make sure you know what you need so you don’t pay for services or features you won’t end up using.

Be aware that when you register a domain name, you’ll be asked to enter contact information for the owner, a billing contact, an administrator contact, and a technical contact. All of this information is published to a public database and is searchable and viewable by anyone. If you’re registering a domain name for a business, be sure to use the business address and phone number rather than your home address and personal phone number. If you’re registering a domain name for personal use, be as smart about it as you can. Is there a PO Box you can use instead of your physical home address?

Some domain name registrars will also offer you a privacy service for an additional fee. If you opt for this option, the contact information for the privacy company will be published to the public database instead of your own information. This can be a great option if you don’t want your personal contact information made public, but be sure to read the fine print carefully. Sometimes the privacy company is actually the owner of the domain name instead of you.

Be on the Lookout for Scammers

Because your name, email address and address are published to a public database when you register a domain name, it’s easy for companies to contact you with sales and offers for your web site. You’ll have to learn to ignore the piles of spam emails from fake SEO companies with false promises of promoting you to the front page of Google.

One of the hardest scams to spot is the mailed domain name registration renewal. It will come in an official-looking envelope, often printed in red, white and blue, and will have a fake bill for around $50 to renew your domain name. Careful inspection of the notice will reveal ‘This is not an invoice’ or some such in fine print somewhere. Remember which company you’ve registered your domain names with and pay renewal fees only to that company. Throw away any other notices you receive.

Why Are So Many Good Names Taken?

Sometimes, finding a domain name is an incredibly frustrating process – all the names you can think of that are short, easy to spell and relevant to you or your business are taken. Why is that? Buying up available domains has become big business – it’s called domaining and the people who practice it are called domainers. They buy up dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of available domain names. Then they’ve got two main ways to make money from them – either resell them at a considerable markup to the first person who’s interested, or park the domain and fill up the page with ads that generate revenue every time somebody clicks on them.

I’ve purchased domains from domainers for as much as $900. There’s no real guideline for the price – it’s worth whatever you’re willing to pay, so be a smart negotiator when buying from domainers. As of this writing, the most expensive domain name purchase was the sale of insure.com in late 2009 for $16 million. As you can see, sometimes domain names are big business – be prepared to walk away if you can’t afford the domain name you really want.

Now That You’ve Got It,  Guard It Carefully!

Domain names typically have to be renewed each year. Make sure that you stay on top of your domain name. Your domain name registrar will likely email you multiple notices that the name is due for renewal. You can also often set up your domain name to renew automatically with the fee charged to your credit card each year. Just make sure that when your card expires you remember to log in and update the information.

One simple mistake can lead to you losing your domain name. It can often be expensive or impossible to get it back, so pay careful attention. After it expires it goes into a sort of limbo period, and can often be recovered for a few hundred dollars. But once that limbo period expires, it’s open season. Anyone can grab the domain. Domainers are infamous for grabbing domain names as they expire (for around $10), then turning around and offering to sell them back to the original owner for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Manage your portfolio of domain names diligently. If you’ve got multiple domain names, add it to your calendar to log in once a month and check on them – make a note of any that are expiring soon, and update your billing information as needed. Also keep the owner, administrative, technical, and billing contact information for each updated. This is the only way your domain registrar can contact you if one of your domains is expiring – and you want to make sure you get that message!

1. Avoid black hat SEO tricks

Chances are, if you own a web site, you’ve been contacted by SEO agencies promising to get your site to the front page of Google or to increase your traffic 1000%. What they never tell you is that the results will be temporary, and by the time you discover that your site has been blacklisted from Google and other search engines, they’ll have disappeared along with thousands of your dollars.

SEO isn’t magic – it’s mostly common sense. Stick to a few simple rules, and you’ll be happy with the results.

2. Everyone will experience your web site differently

Never assume that the web site you see when you open your web site is exactly what everyone sees. With the rise of mobile browsing, this is more true now than ever before. There is a tremendous variety of monitor sizes, screen resolutions, operating systems, browsers, and devices out there. Your web site won’t act and look exactly the same on all of them, nor should you expect it to. What is important is to make sure that everyone can get to the content they need, no matter how they’re viewing your site.

3. Always look for ways to engage

Publishing a simple brochureware site or broadcasting news updates through Twitter won’t get you nearly as far as actually engaging with your audience. Look for ways to make it easy for people to initiate a conversation with you. If you’ve got a simple brochureware site, set up a Facebook fan page where your fans can gather and talk about you. Enable people to add comments or testimonials to your site. Look for any way you can to create a community around your business or your ideas to keep people interested, to make them feel heard, and to make them feel welcome.

4. Knowing HTML does not make you a web professional

HTML was purposefully designed to be simple and easy to learn. Anyone determined enough can sit down and grasp the basics in a single afternoon. On one hand, this is wonderful, because it has empowered almost anyone to publish publicly-available content. On the other hand, it’s bad because it’s opened up a lot of business owners to paying non-professionals with a basic HTML knowledge to build their sites. Before you pay someone to build a web site for you, make sure they’re a professional. Even though HTML is the backbone of the web, there is so much more to learn to be able to build truly dynamic, wonderful, cross-browser compatible, professional, search-engine-optimized web sites.

5. Content is king

I don’t even have enough fingers and toes to count the number of clients who have thought all they needed to do to have a web site built for their business is write me a check and wait a few weeks before it would magically appear. Your web designer probably knows next to nothing about you and your business. All of that information that’s going to be available on your web site? You’re going to have to provide it. In fact, it should be one of the first things you do.

Sit down and think about a) what you want to tell your customers and potential customers about you and your business, and b) what your customers and potential customers want to know about you and your business. Sure, there will be some overlap, and that’s a good thing. There are the basics, like hours of operation, contact information, pricing, services and products available, physical address (if relevant), what payment types you accept, etc. But just as importantly, there are the reasons they should want to do business with you and what sets you apart from your competition. Think about everything you want your web site to include, then work with your web designer, and possibly a copy writer or copy editor, to get it all organized and into a structure that’s going to make sense for a web site.

6. Your web site is never finished

Most of us are quite used to print design projects like brochures, business cards, and signs. Once they’re printed and delivered to you, the work is done – there’s nothing else to do. But a web site is never finished. There will never be a point where you can just relax and stop thinking about your web site. There should always be new information to add, new features to think about, and content to update. Plus, you can work consistently to keep the web site’s look and feel evolving so that it never feels stale or out of date.

7. You get what you pay for

That’s not to say that you have to pay through the nose to get a simple and professional site done. Just be wary of anyone whose price is extraordinarily cheap. Unfortunately, you’ll find out later why the price was so low. Then you’ll be in a situation where you need to hire someone else to fix the problem or scrap the mess and start from scratch if it’s bad enough. And the money you spent on a cheap fix turns out to be money wasted.

8. Take the time to plan before you start

Even though you’re really excited and raring to get started yesterday, do spend a few days or even a few weeks working with your web developer to plan the site properly. Discuss your budget and the features you’d like on the site. Don’t start work until you have a nice road map of what’s going to happen when, and what the due dates are for different things. Remember, you’re providing all the content, so you’ll have just as many deadlines as your web designer does.

Keep in mind that if you fail to meet your deadlines, your web designer is held up from being able to do any further work. That’s going to delay the entire project and keep things from running smoothly and on time. Also, keep in mind, that if you make major changes to the plan after it’s in place and already in the works, that that’s going to run into extra time and effort for your web designer and extra time and money for you. Make sure the change you’re requesting is worth it.

9. Speak up if you see problems

I’ve had an alarming number of clients who find a problem on their site, such as a broken link, slow loading times, or something out of place in their browser who don’t tell me about the problem. After they’ve been experiencing the issue in silence for days, weeks or even months, they fire off an angry email about the broken item and demand an immediate fix. You’d never sit in a kitchen with a stopped up sink and just expect a plumber to show up, so don’t expect your web designer to somehow know that your site has an issue. As soon as you notice something amiss, let your web designer know so they can investigate and fix the problem as soon as possible.

10. Bugs are a normal part of the process

When you’re building a new site or adding a new feature, you should expect that the first try is going to have a few problems. That’s a normal part of the programming process. There isn’t a programmer on earth who can code up something perfectly on the first try. And what’s more, you can expect that occasionally, fixing one bug is going to cause another one. I’ve seen a lot of clients who throw their hands up in the air and roll their eyes when something doesn’t work on the first try, but that’s perfectly normal, and you should expect it. Work with your web designer to get it all figured out and working the way you want.

Typesetting for the Web
by Zeke Franco

Zeke will cover the fundamentals of the art of typography and then will cover some ways to implement beautiful typography on your WordPress blog.

Typography is important because presentation is important. Good typography can reinforce the meaning of your text, can help move your reader beyond your words deeper into your meaning. Your site visitors need to be able to understand the message you’re communicating – if your text is too small, too large, or cramped together, your visitors will have difficulty reading.

Typography on the web has mostly been confined to a small set of web-safe fonts, but now that has changed. Learn to take advantage of all the latest technologies and take your site to the next level.

Zeke is an interaction designer and Front End Developer. He specializes in UX desgin, semantic HTML, CSS, jQuery, and web strategy. Basically – he designs, simplifies, and builds the user interfaces of web sites.

Zeke’s presentation will be followed by a Q&A.

A $5 fee/person helps to cover the costs of the venue rental, food and drink. If you’re paying cash the evening of the event, exact change is much appreciated. Make checks payable to Purple Pen Productions.

Get more information and RSVP at Meetup.com

Hosting is just the first step in our Six Steps to a Successful Web Site.

What is hosting anyway?

A web site is nothing more complicated than a set of files, with possibly some data stored in a database. Some web sites are only one file or a couple, while others are hundreds or thousands of files. Hosting the web site simply means putting those files on a server and making them available to anyone with an internet connection. A server is just a computer – not so different from the one that sits on your desk – with some special software installed that allows it to handle requests to view those files.

When you pay for web site hosting, you’re just renting space on a server to store the files that make up your web site so that your site is accessible from the internet.

Types of Hosting

There are some variations on these themes, but these are the three basic types of web site hosting available from most web hosting companies:

1. Shared Hosting

With shared hosting, you share a web sever with dozens or possibly hundreds of other web sites. This is ideal for small web sites or web sites that don’t get a lot of traffic. The biggest advantage of shared hosting is the price – you can often buy shared hosting for as little as $4 to $6 per month.

With shared hosting, you’re at the mercy of all the other web site owners that are sharing your server. If any one of them makes a mistake with their web site or suddenly gets a lot of traffic, then all the web sites are in danger of slowing down or becoming completely unavailable. Think of what would happen on your own computer if you were running dozens or hundreds of programs at once. You also don’t often have access to modify or change settings on the server.

2. VPS or Virtual Private Server

With a virtual private server, you’re still sharing one server with several other customers, but in this case, there’s software in place that helps keep the different web sites separate from one another. You’re better protected against what your neighbors might be doing on their sites.

You also usually have a lot more control over the server – you can change settings and install software if you like. Of course, that’s only helpful if you know what you’re doing, so you might also look for a managed VPS account, which would include customer support services to help you change settings or install new software.

3. Dedicated Server

With a dedicated server, you actually have your own physical server all to yourself. You can do whatever you like with it. You won’t be affected by anyone else’s web site no matter what and your own web site won’t impact any neighbors. If your web site really grows, you can even have multiple dedicated servers.

Just like VPS servers, these are sometimes also available as managed accounts – giving you access to a server administrator who can help you adjust settings or install software.

How to Choose Hosting

What do you need?

First, you need to figure out exactly what you need. What kind of web site will you have? If it’s a simple brochureware site, then a shared hosting account is probably sufficient. If you’re going to have e-commerce or generate revenue directly from the site, then you should probably consider stepping up to at least a VPS.

Also, identify which technologies you’ll be using. Many web sites these days are built on open source software like WordPress and Drupal, which require PHP and a database of some sort, usually MySQL, so you’ll need a web host that offers those technologies. If you’re building an application in Ruby or Django, then you’ll want to look for a hosting company that specializes in hosting sites built with those technologies.

This question will also help you answer the Linux vs. Windows question. Some hosts offer both Linux or Unix hosting and Windows hosting. Which you choose depends on what technologies you’ll be using to build your site.

How much support do you need?

Next, figure out what level of support you need. Keep in mind that your web site will go down – it’s inevitable. Computers break, hard drives wear out, blackouts leave areas or cities without power, etc. Think about the impact of your site being down. If you’ve got a busy e-commerce site that generates thousands of dollars in sales every hour, your web site being unavailable for a couple of hours could cost you a lot. The hosting package that you pay for should be commensurate with that impact. Don’t host an e-commerce site that pulls in thousands of dollars every hour on a shared hosting account that costs you $5/month. That’s like trying to run an incredibly busy four star restaurant with a microwave and a hot plate.

Make sure you can upgrade to the next level

Then, make sure the hosting company makes upgrading easy. If you’re just getting started and not getting much traffic, it might make the most sense to go with an inexpensive shared hosting account at first. But make sure that your hosting company makes upgrading quick and painless. You should be able to call them at any time and request an upgrade to the next level of service if your site grows or starts getting a significant amount of traffic.

Look for great customer support

Finally, and most importantly, make sure the hosting company you choose has a stellar customer service reputation. Always look for live 24-7-365 support. Search Google or Twitter to see what people are saying about the company. Call their customer service line a few different times at different times of night and day to see how long it takes to get to a person, and how helpful, knowledgeable and friendly the customer service representative is when they come on the line. That will give you a really good idea of what kind of service you can expect when you’re panicked at 3am because your site is down and you’re making a big presentation in the morning.

Wrapping Up

Now you should know enough to make an intelligent decision about buying a hosting package for your web site. You can always get recommendations from other site owners or your web site designer or developer, but always make sure to do at least a little legwork on your own to make sure the hosting company fits and will offer you great service when something goes wrong. You’ll also know that if you suddenly become a blogging superstar, that you’ll be able to upgrade your hosting service accordingly in just a few minutes time.

But it could all be dangerous trap.

To be clear, I’m not saying to avoid these third-party services all together. Just be careful about which ones you choose and how you use them. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

Own Something Yourself

Having an online presence spread out over several sites and services is great – you’re in more places and you’re meeting your audience where they are. But make sure you own a home base – even if it’s just simple site with 1 or 2 pages. Have a domain name that’s a short and as easy to remember (and spell) as possible. That way, no matter what’s going on with the online services that you’re relying on, you’ve got a constant, permanent home.

Know Who Owns Your Content and Contacts

I know, I know – the terms of service pages on these sites are long and boring legalese. But read them carefully before you trust too much of your data and community to them. Do you maintain control over your own content? Can the site or service you’re posting to use your content for their own purposes? Do you have control over how the content is displayed and to whom?

If you’re using a service to build a community or contact list, understand if those contacts are yours, or if they are customers of the service you’re using.

Make Sure Your Content is Portable

If a year or two down the road you’re not happy with the service you’re receiving or things change, how easily can you take your content with you to a new service? Remember that everything you post to a third-party site or service resides on their servers, not your own. If you decide to set up a blog of your own or move your email service to a new provider, make sure you can easily export your contacts and posts to move to a new server.

Have a Backup Plan

Free online services like Facebook and Twitter have no contractual obligation to continue operating. They could be gone tomorrow without warning. Just ask the people who were relying on the Magnolia service that went belly up overnight and left them all without access unexpectedly. Make sure that you’re keeping your own copies of the content you post or use a regular backup service. SitePoint outlines methods for backing up your social media content in their article, “13 Tools to Back Up Your Social Media Content“.

In Conclusion

Using various social media sites and third party services can be a great way to get up and running quickly and at a reduced cost. It’s also a great way to meet your audience where they already are – on Facebook and Twitter, for example. Just be careful about which services you use, how you use them, and make sure that no matter what, through it all, there’s something that you own that’s uniquely yours and completely under your control.

But, Search Engine Optimization isn’t everything you can do to promote your site. SEO is just the beginning. Don’t spend a bunch of money and time on building a SEO site only to let it lie unused without much traffic. Here are some other important strategies for promoting your site and getting traffic.

Local Tools

People are relying on the internet more and more to help them find local businesses – restaurants, hair stylists, pet sitters, etc. Make sure you’re easy to find. Both Google and Yahoo offer easy ways to list your business on their maps so that customers searching your neighborhood for your business will find you.

Social Profiles

Chances are, you’ve got a number of public profiles with social networking sites – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Make sure your web site is mentioned in all of your public profiles. Make it easy to get to your site when someone finds you online.

Participate in the Community

No matter what topic you’re interested in or what business you’re in, I can practically guarantee that there’s a thriving blog community around it. Use blog search tools like Google Blog Search to find blogs in your area of interest. Head over and read the articles posted. When appropriate, leave professional, respectful comments. Comments left on other blogs can nearly always be set up to link back to your own site. If the other faithful readers like what you have to say, you can be sure they’ll follow your link and check out your site. The bonus is that you already know they’re interested in the topic.

You can also participate by having a professional blog of your own, either as your business web site, or as a part of your business web site. If you’re not much of a writer yourself, you can hire either a copywriter to write your articles for you, or you can hire a copy editor to take your notes and rough drafts and turn them into polished articles.

Traditional Media

Just because we’re in the midst of a web revolution, don’t discount traditional media. If you do any kind of advertising – television commercials, radio spots, newspaper or magazine ads, etc. – be sure that you’re always mentioning your web site address. People who want a little more information will have an easy way to find out more about you without being worried about being intimidated by a sales pitch. Also, make sure that anything you print for your business, from business cards to catalogs and brochures, has your web address printed on it.

Email Signature

No matter how you handle your email, there’s a way to program a signature automatically to the bottom of your emails. For your professional email, make sure this includes all the relevant contact information for your business along with,  you guessed it, your web address.

Newsletter

Many businesses create a free email newsletter for their customers and potential customers. To encourage people to sign up, ask them to sign up in person when they visit your business or make a free online offer for those that sign up from your web site. Be clear about what people can expect when they sign up – will you email updates, new product information, coupons and deals? How often?

Once you’ve built an email list to send your newsletter to, be respectful. If you said you’d send out newsletters once a month, don’t start sending daily emails. Don’t add people to your list without their permission.

In Conclusion

No one can deny that Search Engine Optimization is important, but don’t forget that it’s not the be-all and end-all of driving traffic to your site and getting new customers. SEO-only strategies fall short because they market only to the people who are already looking for you. Of course it’s important that those customers find you, but it’s even more important to get your message out to the customers who don’t even know you exist yet. Look for new opportunities to promote your site and business – you’ll find them nearly everywhere you look.

1. Hosting

The type of hosting account you’ll need for your web site depends on what type of web site you’ll be building and how much traffic you’ll be getting. Often, web sites get very little traffic in the beginning, but with the proper planning, that traffic can grow. There’s no need to pay for an expensive hosting account at the beginning unless you anticipate getting a lot of traffic to your site really quickly.

Your hosting account does matter – you need to know that if you run a successful promotion that sends a lot of traffic to your site in a very short amount of time, that your site will hold up to the traffic and you won’t find yourself with a broken or temporarily unavailable web site just when you need it most. You should also make sure that your web host has fast and friendly customer service available 24-7-365 because you never know when you’ll need it. Ideally, they should also run and keep regular backups of your site so that it can be restored quickly and easily if anything happens.

For more information on hosting, please see our article, “Hosting Your Web Site Demystified“.

2. Domain Name

Your domain name is the address where your customers will find your web site. It should be as short as possible, easy to remember and type, and it should contain the name of your business and/or the name of your most prominent product or service. That not only helps people remember or figure out what address they should visit if they want to find your site, but can help search engines find their way to you as well. Choose your domain name carefully, and don’t hesitate to buy multiple domain names if more than one name fits and is available. They can all be configured to point at the same web site.

For more information on domain names, please see our article, “How to Name Your Web Site“.

3. Plan, Design, and Build

You can go it alone and use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor, or one of many tools available online for building your site without learning code, or you can hire a professional to carry out most of this step for you. If you hire a professional, be aware that much of the work will still fall on your lap – you’ll have to  provide the content for the site and teach the web designer all about you and your business so that your web site is a good fit for your business.

Your web site should be nicely designed, usable, accessible to people with disabilities and search engine optimized.

4. Marketing and Promotion

Many people get the first three steps completed and think they’re done. But they’re only halfway there. There’s still a lot of work to be done after the site is built to make sure that it’s successful.

Print the address of your web site on anything you print for your business – t-shirts, pens, business cards, postcards, brochures, signage, etc. Mention your web address in your email signature. If you have the budget, you might look at buying advertising online to promote your business, such as Google AdWords. If you belong to any social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, make sure your web address is always mentioned on your profile.

5. Metrics and Analytics

Throughout the planning and building phase, you and your web designer made many decisions about how to present information and what copy should appear on each page – but how do you know it’s actually working? How do you know which of your efforts to promote the site are successful?

You know by collecting metrics and analytics on your web site. Properly set up, analytics software, like Google Analytics, can tell you which promotions are bringing the most traffic to your site and which efforts aren’t performing as well as you had hoped. Metrics can tell you which content on your site is the most popular and it can tell you basic information about the people who are visiting your site, how long they stay, how many pages they view, etc. All of this information can be used to test new ideas, identify areas of the web site that need to be improved and determine which promotions are successful.

6. Maintenance Plan

Of course, collecting up all that information about your site doesn’t help you much unless you have a plan in place for acting on it. If you’re maintaining your web site yourself, reserve time in your calendar on a regular basis to go through your site, update any outdated content, and refresh photos. Study your metrics and analytics and decide what parts of the site need to be worked on to perform better. Figure out which marketing efforts are working best and work on improving the performance of those even more.

Developing and sticking to a regular maintenance plan is one the most crucial steps for a successful web site, but it’s also the step that’s most likely to be ignored and forgotten. Don’t let the time and money spent to build your site go to waste.

So few themes offer easy-to-use theme options and even themes like Thesis only give you limited options for many parts of the theme – to truly customize your theme, you’ve got to dig into CSS … Ack! It’s code! It’s scary! And intimidating!

In this workshop, I’ll teach you the basics of CSS, how to modify your theme’s CSS, and how to figure out which lines of CSS need to be updated. I’ll show you which things can be updated safely without breaking your theme, and which things require the attention of an expert to make sure they still work in all browsers.

By the end of the evening, you should be able to make simple theme customizations with confidence.

We’ll also be giving away two copies of WordPress Theme Design from Packt Publishing.

Please note that there are intermittent issues with the wifi at this venue, so come prepared. Please have Firefox installed, with the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug add-ons before you arrive. If you need help with this, please email me at natalie@purplepen.com. I’ll bring sample files on USB drives for you to practice on if you can’t get online.

Please also have a simple text editor installed – I recommend Notepad++ for Windows users and TextWrangler for Mac users – both are free.

If you previously paid for the CSS workshop that was postponed and have a credit to be applied, please drop me a line and let me know when you RSVP. If you are paying cash the evening of the event, exact change is MUCH appreciated.

I know that we all have emergencies and last minute issues, but please honor your RSVP and let me know if you have reserved a seat for yourself and cannot make it.

RSVP to save your seat:
http://www.meetup.com

Download the files: CSSWorkshop

Speculative design is any unpaid design work done by an individual or agency in the hopes of winning later work. Here’s why it’s a bad idea.

Good Design

Good design means design that is successful in reaching its target audience, meeting business objectives and enforcing the brand. When speaking about web sites specifically, good design is also easy to use and accessible to all. Good design is reached at the end of a process where the designer and client collaborate closely.

Good design results from the designer learning as much as they can about the business, products and services his or her design is supporting. After the designer learns about the business’s background, message, target audience, business goals, branding, and image the designer works closely with the client to produce ideas for the design. Those ideas are then tested to be sure they are usable, accessible, and supportive of the brand and image of the company. Revisions are made, and the ideas are tested again. At the end of this process, a good design is produced that is successful and beneficial to the client.

How Speculative Work is Harmful to You, the Client

Getting to see multiple designs at no cost before making your decision might seem like an ideal situation to you, but it’s actually harmful to your business and your project.

Speculative design doesn’t benefit from the collaborative process of good design. The designer does not have all the background information he or she needs about your business, your target audience, your goals, your brand, etc. to produce a design that solves all of those problems. It’s usually superficial, visually impressive work done with the aim of impressing you, the client, and not done with the aim of solving your problems.

Design is subjective – we all have a favorite color or colors and certain styles or aesthetics that we naturally gravitate toward. When you choose what you believe to be the best from a pile of speculative designs, you’re not focused on the goal of the design, just on your personal preference. You choose your favorite design, not a design that solves all of the problems and does all of the work of good design.

Speculative design is expensive – you might not think so since you’re getting it for free, but don’t be fooled. Freelancers and agencies have bills to pay and expenses to meet just like everyone else. They cannot afford to work for free. The costs that they incur producing speculative design for you will be included in your project costs once you hire the agency that will complete the work. What’s more – you’ll also be paying for all the unsuccessful speculative design that freelancer or agency did for other clients who chose not to hire them. Producing speculative work for clients increases the cost of sale for a freelancer or agency, and they’ll need to recover those funds by increasing their pricing on projects.

Work that results from a speculative design is expensive work that is unlikely to meet business objectives or be in line with a company’s branding or messaging.

Appreciating Creative Work

Companies that strive for good design and understand its value, like Apple and Dyson, produce products that can be sold at a premium and that everyone envies. Design is powerful and valuable – it can make a product a pleasure to own, can make a web site delightful to use, can communicate messages without words, and can evoke deep emotional responses.

Requesting that creative work be done for free devalues the work and discourages designers from doing their best work. You would never approach your dentist and request a free filling, justifying the request by saying that if you liked the filling, he’d win the work of doing any future dental work you might need. Neither would you justify the request by promising that everyone would see the filling and be impressed and that you’d send your dentist many new clients.

Likewise, you shouldn’t make these kinds of requests of designers. Be respectful of their work and their industry and appreciate its value. Be respectful of their right to earn a living.

Use a Portfolio to its True Potential

You might be thinking that this is all well and good, but you’ve only got so much money and time and you want to be sure you hire a designer that will be a good fit for your project, and you’re not sure how to choose between them if you can’t see what kind of work they’d do for you.

A designer’s portfolio is not just a collection of pretty pictures or links to impressive-looking web sites – it’s also a list of current and former clients. Contact the clients and speak to them about their experiences working with the designer and the final outcome of the design. Ask questions like these:

• What was the designer like to work with? What was the design process like?
• Did you have any problems working with this designer?
• How is the web site doing – are you getting search engine traffic? Are your customers able to find the information they need? Is the web site bringing you new business?
• Was communication with the designer prompt and professional?
• How did the designer handle negative feedback?
• Are you happy with the outcome of the project?

Speaking to a designer’s clients will tell you everything you need to know about what kind of working relationship you’ll have and what kind of work you can expect. You’ll understand the process that the designer will step you through and get an idea for the quality of the work they produce. You’ll know if they produce web sites that perform instead of web sites that just look nice. And you’ll be able to find the best designer for your job without asking anyone to work for free.

In this article, I’ll give a brief overview of the jobs, tasks, and considerations that go into building a truly professional and successful web site.

Information Architecture

In a writing class in college, the professor put a random collection of objects on the table at the front of the room one day. Then she picked students from the class and asked them to come to the front and organize the items on the table. Some students organized the items by color, putting everything red together, everything yellow together, etc. Some organized the items by the tasks they accomplished, grouping writing utensils in one pile, personal hygiene items in another, etc.

Once the student was done, the rest of the class had to guess what rules had been used to organize the items. Sometimes we were able to guess quickly because the system used was logical and easy to recognize. Other organization systems had to be explained after many incorrect guesses. A good information architect is skilled at pulling the information of a web site together into an organization system that is logical and easy to figure out, making it easy for site visitors to find their way around and find the information they’re looking for.

Design

Design touches our lives in millions of ways every day – the products we use, the packaging those products come in, the cars we drive, the furniture in our homes, the advertisements we see, the buildings we live and work in, and, of course, the web sites we visit. There are as many types of designers as there are types of products produced by human beings. It’s easy to think of a web site’s design as superficial, but in reality, the design of a web site can reinforce a brand message, entice site visitors toward a certain path of actions, evoke emotions, and solve problems. The design of a web site tells us whether the person or company behind it is serious, professional, and trustworthy or fun, quirky and comical.

Copywriting

Most of us are able to write – we write emails and letters and notes everyday. But it’s a unique set of skills to be able to present a body of information in a persuasive and consistent tone. Much like design, the tone or voice of the copy on our site tells site visitors as much about the person or company behind the site as the content of the copy itself. You would expect, for example, a lawyer’s web site to be written with a authoritative and professional tone, while a birthday clown’s web site would be written with a fun and light-hearted tone.

In addition to engaging site visitors, copywriters with web expertise will be well-versed in writing your copy to be search engine optimized to make sure your site is easy to find.

Photography

If your web site is selling tangible products, then high quality photography is crucial to the success of your business. In the online shopping world, customers aren’t able to hold your items, try them on, turn them around, or look them over closely. You’ve got to work to make up for that by providing as much information as possible about your products. One of the best things you can do is to post high-quality, clear photographs from multiple angles.

Photography is also important to service and personality businesses – where your customers will be comforted by flattering, professional photographs of you and your team. Knowing what someone looks like can lead us to believe we ‘know’ that person and to feel more comfortable going to them with our problems.

Front End Development

Front end developers work in what’s becoming known as the ‘web stack’ – HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. They’re responsible for building out all the parts of the web site that site visitors will see. They do much of the search engine optimization work on a site, and make sure the site works in as many browsers and on as many different platforms as possible.

It’s a front end developer’s job to take the designs produced by the designer and turn them into a clickable, interactive web site.

Back End Development

Back end developers are responsible for writing all the code that runs the web site on the server. Back end code isn’t seen by your site visitors, but if there’s a problem with it, it can keep your web site from working properly. Back end developers write all the logic for assembling the pages of your site from information stored in a database, processing commerce transactions, keeping track of user’s accounts and histories, and processing information entered by your site’s users.

Database Administration

Most web sites these days are dependent on a database to store all the information presented on the site and to store information about the site’s users and administrators. To keep the database organized and running efficiently, it needs regular maintenance. It may also need to be moved or copied to additional servers to support more traffic on the web site. Especially large sites or interactive agencies that maintain many sites will often have one or more dedicated database administrators performing this work. On smaller sites, this responsibility often falls to the back end developer.

Quality Assurance

Interactive agencies and software companies alike use quality assurance engineers to put any new web site or product through its paces before it’s released to the public. They make sure that everything is working the way that it should and report back to the front end developers, back end developers or database administrators if anything is broken.

Usability

If a site is usable, that means that visitors can easily find what they’re looking for and can easily identify what parts of the site they can interact with. While there are usability experts working in the field of web site development, more often than not, making sure a web site is usable falls to the members of the team building the site. The only way to know for sure that your site is usable is to conduct usability testing.

Many of us shy away from usability testing believing it to be expensive and time consuming, and it can be. But quick informal testing can be done to make sure the major parts of the site are easy to use.

User Experience

If there’s more to your business than your web site, then user experience extends beyond the web site into all the areas where your business, product, or service, might touch your customers’ lives. User experience encompasses not only the experience your customers have when they come to your web site, but also the experience they have while using your product or service, the experience they have if they need to call support or customer service, the experience they have when they walk into your store or place of business, etc. Some companies work really hard at one area of user experience, but fail in others. Strive to make all parts of your user experience as great as they possibly can be.

Accessibility

Accessibility means making sure your web site can be used by anyone, regardless of their level of ability or the technology they may be using. Oftentimes, people think that making a web site accessible is a difficult or expensive process that compromises the experience of the site for abled users, but that’s simply untrue. Making a web site accessible is simple, affordable, and straightforward, and more often than not, improves the experience of using the web site for everyone.

Community Management

A community manager helps to engage visitors to your site to become a part of your community and also makes sure that the community of users is satisfied with their experience and is not being harassed by trolls or other unwanted visitors. Many people mistakenly think that simply putting a bulletin board or message board on their site means that they’ll soon have a bustling community of people posting, but recruiting new members and retaining current members is a lot of work.

Project Manager

With so many people working together on building a web site, keeping them all on track and managing the relationship with the client is a full time job in itself. Project managers work with everyone on the team to create a schedule for the project, then check in with everyone on a regular basis to make sure things are going smoothly. They step in when things are going off track to bring everyone back together and keep the project moving along toward completion.

Without their expert guidance and people skills, many projects would never be seen through to completion.

Server Administrator

If you’ve purchased a hosting packing for your site, then you’ve also likely hired a server administrator, whether you realized it or not. Server administrators are responsible for tracking the performance of the server to make sure it’s responding quickly when visitors come to your site. They perform backups of the site and restore these backups in the event that the server crashes. They keep an eye out for suspicious activity or malicious attacks to make sure that the information on the site is secure, and they make sure your server holds up to traffic if your site suddenly becomes popular.

It Takes a Village

Building and maintaining professional and successful web sites requires many specialized skills, developed with experience and training. HTML is relatively simple and straightforward and most people could get the hang of it in a single afternoon. But building a successful web site takes so much more than just knowing HTML. Understanding the skills and disciplines that go into producing web sites gives you valuable insight into what areas you should focus on to improve your site and gives you the knowledge to evaluate the skills of any individual, team or company you might hire to do work on your site.