webdesignability.com

Website building with NVU

Terry Dunn — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:04:15 +0000

If you’ve ever used a ‘full-blown’ HTML editor, such as Dreamweaver from Adobe (or Macromedia before it was bought out by Adobe) or Expression Web from Microsoft, you’ll know they are not easy software tools to master.

The price you pay, apart from the cost, is a steep learning curve as you attempt to use the features the sales page had you drooling over. The Industry standard HTML editor most professional website programmers use is Adobe dreamweaver, but did you know you can get a ‘dreamweaver look-alike’ for free?

NVU is an open source HTML editor and it’s excellent. It’s a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor with visual design mode and code view, so you can design your webpage and tweak the HTML code simply by switching views. It’s called a web authoring system, but I know it as a HTML editor.

Nvu makes creating web pages as easy as using a word processor and rivals such programs as Adobe’s Dreamweaver and Microsoft’s Expression Web, only for free! With Nvu’s built-in site manager, connecting to your website and making changes is a snap.

Downloading and installing it on your PC is easy. The download page has several options as it’s available for Apple and Linux operating systems. If you choose full installer, it does everything for you. When it’s done, open up the NVU icon or use the start menu. Our featured video this week is a short 9 minute tutorial on building web pages with NVU.

It shows you the different view modes and works on a ’squeeze’ page. This is just a simple web page to promote a free report or giveaway in return for your visitors name and email address, which is added to your prospect list. The video will give a feel for working with NVU.

Even if you don’t program your website but use the services of a professional programmer or freelance web designer, you are likely to save both time and money by learning some basic HTML and how to tweak your webpages. There are many times when I’ve needed to make small changes to the HTML code on my websites.

If you’re not familiar with HTML, here is an excellent HTML tutorial. It’s from w3schools, part of the w3c working group who set the standards for HTML, CSS, accessibility and much more. So you know it’s accurate and it takes you through learning HTML in a step-by-step sequence.

When your page is ready to be published, NVU can also upload the changes to your website with site manager. Or you can use another excellent open source FTP program called filezilla. Filezilla is easy to install and simple to use. And if you don’t yet have a webhost there are plenty to choose from. Perhaps even too many.

Visit web hosting geeks for advice on the top providers. From my own experience I can recommend hostgator and also 1and1 hosting. Both have proved to be reliable and very affordable. Hosting doesn’t have to be expensive with so much choice.

Creating youtube videos

Terry Dunn — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:34:35 +0000

I think it’s fair to say that everyone knows about youtube. Here are just a few facts to boggle your mind. 100 million videos are viewed every day. 65,000 new videos are added every day. Google bought youtube in 2006 for $1.65 billion and youtube is in the top 10 most popular websites in the world.

So, as a webmaster and marketer could you benefit from making and uploading videos to youtube. Absolutely! It’s a powerful traffic source, which for some bloggers and marketers, is the main source of traffic for their blog or website. But you might say ‘I haven’t got the time or the skills to create youtube videos’. Well, it’s quicker and easier than you might think and today I’m going to give you some tips.

You want to create videos and feature them on youtube to get you noticed and give you as much traffic you can get coming back to your main website or blog. There are a number of techniques to achieve that, but I will let Gideon Shalwick tell you how to do it right. Gideon runs the ‘become a blogger’ program and uses videos on youtube to great effect for himself and for his students too. Watch his 18 minute video on ‘7 killer tips for optimising your youtube videos‘. Or watch our featured video.

Okay, so what do you need to do to create a video for youtube? What are the steps? See this simple article from ehow. The easiest way to record a video is using a webcam. I have an inexpensive webcam from Logitech. It sits on your desk or perches on your screen and records you talking at your computer. This ‘talking head’ style of video is popular with video blogging. It’s quick and simple to do.

If you want to record a tutorial with screenshots captured from your computer, you can use camtasia. It’s a clever program and can be used for showing people how to use software, reviewing a website or using a web-based application, for example. You can record both your onscreen activity and your voiceover commentary. But it comes at price. If you want almost the same functionality for free, try camstudio. It’s open source software and it’s good.

For more help and expertise on screencasting visit Leigh Blackall’s blog on screencasting and watch the video on ‘how I do a screencast’. Then visit wikieducator and read the step-by-step instructions from Leigh on creating a screen recording using camstudio.

Now that you’ve created your masterpeice how do you upload it? Here is a short instructional video from youtube to show you how it’s done. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much easier and inexpensive creating your own youtube video is than you may have thought.

Happy recording.

Launch formula marketing

Terry Dunn — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:31:24 +0000

I couldn’t write fast enough. More terrific advice, tools, tips and techniques were coming at me faster than I could write them down. And I wanted to write it all down as it was all excellent advice from already successful Internet business owners, marketers and speakers. After 3 days of Robert Puddy’s LFMpire Builders Workshop, I had reams of notes.

Back in early May I decided to attend an Internet marketing conference or workshop. The LFMpire builders workshop came highly recommended to me. It was hosted this year at a hotel in Bristol, a short drive from where I live. And I’m so glad I made the decision too, because I have learned so much as well as making new friends.

Robert Puddy organises the workshop every year, usually in a different city. This year was an great line-up; Alex Mandosian, Soren Jordansen, Donna Fox, Amit Mehta, Justin Brooke, all very successful Internet marketers. Alex mandosian gave a presentation on teleseminar secrets. Tahir Shah told us how he grew his business. Soren Jordansen gave us an inside look at his membership websites. Donna Fox, a really engaging speaker, revealed the 9 principles of ethical persuasion. Amit Mehta talked about affiliate marketing and Justin Brooke showed us how to get not just one, but all of the SERPs (Search Engine Results page) entries on the first page for our chosen keyword.

And there were about 100 attendees too. So it was a lively 3 days with plenty of socialising, eating, drinking and asking lots of questions. The question and answer sessions and the case studies were excellent. If it’s hosted in the UK again, I will definately go. I can recommend it.

In future posts I will reveal more detailed advice, tools and tips I captured from the best speakers, using my copious notes. It will be worth waiting for. If you want to learn a little more watch the featured video. It was made back in March, but Robert talks about the real benefits of attending marketing workshops and what they can do for you.

If you want to learn more about Launch formula marketing, visit Robert’s Launch formula marketing website.

Creating a wordpress blog

Terry Dunn — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 20:31:38 +0000

With more than 100 million blogs on the Internet and hundreds more being created every day, blogs are hot! And they are a terrific way to attract traffic and search engine love. But where do you start? Read this article for a comparison of different blog engines before you make any snap decisions.

Most people start with blogger. It’s very easy to use and setup. And you don’t need to worry about hosting or domain names. Best of all - it’s free. But once you’ve got your feet wet and your new publishing empire is taking off, you may be looking for the next step.

Watch this week’s featured video for a short discussion on why you should be blogging with wordpress. Listen to Lisa from 2createawebsite talk about her experience with blogging and wordpress. I chose to share this video with you because I agree with her and there is no ‘technobabble’ from Lisa. She explains it all in a clear and simple way.

And if you’re keen to learn more, the wordpress site will keep you busy for a long time…

Does a CMS save time and money

Terry Dunn — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:00:21 +0000

Faced with the task on designing and developing a new website you have choices, perhaps, too many choices. If you’ve employed a professional web design service, or you are a competent web designer, you may use dreamweaver or expression web, or another HTML editor, or you could use a ready-made CMS.

A CMS or Content Management System offers many advantages; it’s easy to add content to your website, they are often search engine optimised and very popular with google, there are many useful features and functions already built into the software that would cost a lot of money for a web developer to write for you and best of all, most of them are open source software, so they’re free.

The open source movement is an unstoppable express train. There is now many excellent software tools and systems available and it’s all free. The more well-known examples are the Linux operating system, Wordpress blog software and Apache web server software. And the most popular software platforms are stable, with hundreds, or even thousands of developers worldwide working on the code. The downside for technophobes; you will have to pay for service and support, usually to a 3rd party company.

For a blog-based CMS, Wordpress would be my choice. It’s hugely popular, very flexible, stable, easy to use and install and has the support of thousands of plug-ins, templates and designers familiar with the platform. You can use one of hundreds of free templates or buy a premium templates for between $50 and $150 (approximately). And wordpress isn’t just for blogs; it can be used for almost every type of site with the right template or design tweaks.

Joomla is an award winning CMS. It’s easy to use and install, free and extensible. Like wordpress it’s a blog but it lends itself particularly well to providing a platform for all manner of websites. It has a strong developer community and professional looking but free templates. So, it’s an all-round web development platform, but with a blog.

Drupal is less well known but very powerful CMS. Much more than just a blog, it’s a highly configurable, open source multi-function software platform. I’ve used it and I must admit it took me a while to undertand it, but once I did I marvelled at many of it’s powerful features; blog, forum, news aggregator, polling feature, shopping cart, membership capability and much more. It has tons of plug-ins and plenty of pre-designed templates. And there are some great sites built around drupal.

So, if you want a dynamic site, where you plan to add lots of content, a CMS will save you time and compared to employing a web designer, it’ll save you money too. But there is a learning curve. Personally, I would recommend Wordpress. It has the shortest learning curve and can fit almost any site design you can throw at it

Easy way to write copy

Terry Dunn — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:52:57 +0000

What could be worse than staring at a blank piece of paper, knowing you have to come up with the greatest sales copy since sliced bread? Possibly nothing, other than public speaking…I always think the easiest way to complete any complex task is step-by-step using a checklist. But not any old checklist. Because to make the task not only easy but statisfying, here is the ultimate cheat sheet of 50 of the best resources on writing great copy, ready for you to steal. It includes,

Writing headlines
Making your copy readable
Focus on your reader
Simple techniques; show don’t tell
Building a relationships
Email marketing
The best bloggers and copywriters
The subtle art of persuasion

And you can find the 50 best ever copywriting resources at GrokDotCom.

Read “Ogilvy on Advertising” by David Ogilvy. He was a copywriting genius. His book is an excellent guide for new and seasoned copywriters and not at all like a textbook. It’s more like a one-on-one session with a mentor.

As chosen by voters, this was the best answer to the question “what is the best way to learn copywriting; what’s the ultimate learning resource?” in Yahoo Answers. I can also recommend a quick course in copywriting by Robert Bly.

Home page design problems

Terry Dunn — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:55:41 +0000

Is there a problem? Surely it’s simple…isn’t it? A logo, navigation, a welcome message, that’s all you need? Yes? Well, perhaps it’s how the average home page is designed, but do you want to be average?

Actually a homepage must achieve a lot in a small amount of space, ideally the space above the fold, so the visitor doesn’t need to scroll down the page. After all, it’s the page that everyone sees, and It’s considered to be the most important page on your website by the search engines too.

So, what is it we want to achieve on the homepage? It does depend on the purpose of your website, but typically you will want to include the following,

Identity - what is this site about and why should I stay here?
Navigation - what does the site have to offer and what will I find here?
Site search - a simple search box so I can find what I want
Teasers - short content teasers to entice me inside the site
News - latest industry news or timely content
Specials - special deals, discounts or introductory offers
Sign-in - access to members, accounts or customer pages
Copy - sales copy showing the benefits the visitor will gain

And to help your visitor you needs to show him where to start. This is especially necessary if your site has so much to say your visitor could be easily overwhelmed by all the choice.

Don’t forget to establish some credibility and trust. All good copywriters have several techniques they use. For example, well known branded logos and images, testimonial letters or stories and case studies by other people.

Okay, you see the problem now? That’s a lot to achieve in such a small space. So there’s more to this than meets the eye.