This post is part of Blog Action Day 2009, a worldwide initiative started by Envato founders Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, now being run by Change.org. Blog Action Day exists to change the conversation on the web for one day by uniting thousands of bloggers around one important issue – this year, Climate Change. It’s not too late to register your blog and participate.

The Marketplaces

AudioJungle

Blog Action Day: A Greener Music Industry

Archangel Green is the first ever UK Record Label fully committed to a greener music industry. Their studio is powered by a green tariff provider, and when band “The Phoenix Rose” signed to the label they both agreed to numerous clauses aimed at making the production, performance and distribution of their music as environmentally friendly as possible. A 100% digital release, it sets new standards for how music can be produced and distributed in an environmentally friendly way…

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VideoHive

Blog Action Day 09: Climate Change

In 2007 Collis & Cyan created an initiative. One that combines the growing popularity of social networks and blogs with serious issues and awareness. Blog Action Day has a short but impressive history of uniting people all over the globe to link together, forming a massive chain of writers and readers to help raise awareness and discuss 1 common issue, we all share.

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GraphicRiver

GraphicRiver Goes Green

To celebrate this year’s theme of “Climate Change” I’ve poured through the GraphicRiver library for inspiration and selected some of the very best GraphicRiver files that celebrate the idea of ecological awareness, environmentalism, and generally going green. All these files are compiled in one helpful public bookmark collection for you to puruse: “GraphicRiver Goes Green.” Don’t forget to check out my top picks below!

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FlashDen

Blog Action Day: EcoDrive

This year, the subject of Blog Action Day is Climate Change. And on Down the FoxHole today, we’re going to be taking a look at an awesome Flash Web site and Adobe AIR application that gives some great advice on how to lower gas emissions that may ultimately help reduce the possibility of climate change.

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Tuts+

Phototuts+

Climate Change: How Photographers Can Make a Difference

Today we’ll be delving into the important topic of climate change, and how it’s effects are realized around the world. Along with a selection of hard-hitting photographs, we will begin to consider how photographers can play a part in spreading the word about climate change.

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Cgtuts+

Animate an Iceberg Turning into a Desert Island

In this hour long video tutorial, we will follow the complete process of animating a 3d iceberg as it transforms into a desert island. We will take an in-depth look at using the many complex features of dreamscape, in conjunction with hand painted displacement maps and animated the meshes, and even go over some of the more classic principles of animation.

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Flashtuts+

Blog Action Day: Create a Virtual Wind Farm in ActionScript 3

The term wind farm refers to a group of wind turbines in one location used for production of electric power. Compared to the environmental effects of traditional energy sources, those of wind power are relatively minor. Wind power consumes no fuel and emits no air pollution, unlike fossil fuel power sources.

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Aetuts+

Blog Action Day Roundup

It is Blog Action Day here on the interwebs, and I figured why not do our part in this eco-friendly awareness age? Instead of harping about how to save energy, conserve the wilderness, or protect the ozone layer, I have found a few videos across the internet that might help get the word out or make it click in your brain that the Earth really is getting older. We all have to do our part to at least soften the blow, if not erase the effects completely. Enjoy these little tasty tidbits of eco-friendly mograph goodness.

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Audiotuts+

Top 8 Songs about Climate Change

“Climate change is now widely recognized as the major environmental problem facing the globe.” (UNEP) Global warming and climate change are an important and controversial topics. They have raised strong feelings on both sides of the debate. Where do you stand?

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Vectortuts+

Organic Climate Changing Wallpaper by Ben the Illustrator

I’ve put together a wallpaper design free for all to download. It illustrates the changes taking place in our environment, and serves as a warning to start making changes now. This download is part of Blog Action Day, which this year is focused on “Climate Change.” Learn more at the jump, and download this colorful wallpaper!

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Vectortuts+

Top 20 Ways for Web Developers to Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

Climate change is greatly affected by our carbon footprint. As web developers, it may not seem that we make huge “footprints.” We read our mail and news online (no paper), communicate with instant messenger and Skype (no stamps or letters), and many of us relax by watching video or TV shows online (no renting/buying physical DVDs). As a whole, web developers do a pretty good job reducing their carbon footprint.

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Psdtuts+

Changing Actions Wallpaper by Alex Beltechi

I’ve put together a wallpaper design free for all to download free. It illustrates various environments blended together in inside the 3D text “Actions,” and serves to remind us that it’s time to start Changing our Actions to avoid continued climate and environmental issues our world faces. This download is part of Blog Action Day, which this year is focused on “Climate Change.” Learn more at the jump, and download this wallpaper!

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Other Sites in the Envato Network

Web.Appstorm

Do your Part by using a Green Web Host

The team at Envato has long taken part in Blog Action Day, and this year is no different. The topic chosen this year is climate change — and when it comes to the web, one easy way to make a positive difference is to use a green web host.

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Mac.Appstorm

How your Mac is Saving the World

While you sit in front of your screen for hours on end, perusing tech blogs and pretending not to be addicted to Facbook, are you considering what sort of impact you’re having on the environment!? If you’re like me, the answer is “Hey pal, it’s a computer not a Hummer. Back off.” Luckily however, the good folks at Apple have put a lot of time and effort into this problem for us.

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FreelanceSwitch

How Freelancers Can Run Greener Businesses

Plenty of big companies routinely announce that they’re going green — they’re encouraging telecommuting to bring their carbon footprints down or they’re putting solar panels on their roofs to reduce dependence on other energy sources.

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qTip

qTip is a free tooltip jQuery plugin that is cross browser, very customizable and includes a lot of features such as rounded corners without the use of images, speech bubbles, effects such as fade, slide and you can create your own effects too! This tooltip has five ready to use stylish themes and you can also create your own without much effort. You can also make modal dialogs, change the color of the tooltip background and define the points for the tooltip to be displayed.

• Source

• Demo

Easy Tooltip

Easy Tooltip is, as it says, very easy to use. This plugin is not as customizable as qTip, but it also has some very useful features such as tooltip coordination, assign custom id’s to assign different CSS which makes it so that you can change your design.

• Source

• Demo

Star Rating

  Star Rating plugin is a clean star rating plugin control based on a set of radio input boxes. So, it turns a bunch of radio boxes into a clean and nice star rating control. It is very easy to use because all you have to do is add the star class to the radio boxes. It offers a lot of features such as half-ratings, default rating, disabled rating for viewing purposes only, and you can assign the number of stars to display.

• Source

• Demo

Star Rater

Star Rater is a dynamic, cross browser star rater similar to Star Rating, but this plugin has a different design and it also has no cancel button. You can change the design of the stars and you can make the stars small as you want and as many as you can.

• Source

• Demo

Uploadify

Uploadify is a file upload plugin which allows a user to send files from his computer to the website server. It is very easy to use and does not require too much. It requires Flash to work. It offers features such as multiple file uploads, file upload settings, file queue handling, error handling, progress and onComplete handling. It is easily one of the best jQuery file upload plugin as it is easy to use and is also customizable.

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• Demo

jqUploader

jqUploader is another great jQuery file upload plugin that substitutes html file input fields with flash based upload widget. It also offers features as much as Uploadify and some features that Uploadify doesn’t have. It allows the display of the progress bar and percentage complete. You can set the file size limit, progress bar color, set the messages throughout the upload process, set the allowed file extensions like *.jpg, *.png, etc. so that you only get what you want. So, this file upload tool is another great file upload plugin.

• Source

• Demo

ThickBox

ThickBox is a jQuery lightbox plugin that’s very lightweight, cross browser and offers a lot of features. It is very versatile, it can display images, inline content, iframes, AJAX, flash, pdf etc., not just images. You can change the size of the modal box, add transitions, and add captions to images and gallery. The modal box also stays in the center even if you scroll the window and the modal box closes after you click on the window or press the Esc key. So, this is a very good lightbox plugin and is pretty easy to implement.

• Source

• Demo

 FancyBox

This lightbox has an awesome design and can enhance your website’s look. This tool also has the ability to display images, html, videos, inline content etc with title and captions just like ThickBox.  The content loads very fast and you can add transitions just like Thickbox.  You can choose options for the lightbox such as zoom, image scale, padding and you also can customize its css. You can have a gallery and the neat thing is when you go near the right side of the picture and when you click there, it goes to the next image and the same goes for the previous image. So, this tool is another amazing jquery plugin and can also enhance your design.

• Source

• Demo

Easy Slider

This plugin has features like autoscrolling and continuous sliding. You can easily add “go to first” and “go to last” button, optional wrapping markup for control buttons, and change the settings and choose the ones which best fits your need. The coding is not too difficult either.

• Source

• Demo

Coda Slider

Coda Slider is another cross browser slider that allows a user to slide featured content. Each tab is assigned a different class, so you can give each one a new look. You can create cross-link controls. It is not as fancy as Easy Slider, but this is also very easy to use and implement in your website.

• Source

• Demo

jqDock

This navigation menu allows your website users to easily navigate your website.

• Source

• Demo

 jQuery Accordion

This is a plugin that creates an accordion menu.

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• Demo

jQuery Validation

This is probably one of the best  jQuery form validation plugin available. It allows the user the set the number of characters required or a message will be displayed at the side specifying the required number of characters. If the email address or URL is not in the right format, it will display an error message. Your can also use the autosuggest feature in the username, check radio buttons (for Terms & Conditions) and make it so that when a radio box is checked a new set of options appears.

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• Demo

jQuery AlphaNumeric

This plugin, instead of displaying a message, shows precisely what was done wrong; it actually restricts the user from entering certain characters. Suppose, in the username, you only want to allow numeric values. This plugin would restrict a person from entering such characters.

• Source

• Demo

TableSorter

This is an excellent cross-browser table plugin, as it’s name suggests, sorts tables. It turns a standard HTML table into sortable table without page refreshes. It adds THEAD and TBODY tags to make it happen. You can sort many types of data including text, URIs, integers, currency, floats, IP addresses, dates and also you can add your own.

Demo
 

QuickSearch

QuickSearch is a table plugin which serves the purpose of filtering large sets of data. It supports tables, paragraphs and lists and you can edit the search string. This plugin makes it easy for a user to easily find what they are looking for without have to search through the whole list.

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• Demo

jQZoom

This is a cross browser image magnifier plugin. You can add some options such as reverse zoom, zoom without lens, title, custom positioning, and transition effects.

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• Demo

jCrop

jCrop is a cross browser and powerful image cropping plugin. It makes it so that you can easily integrate image cropping directly into web applications. It offers a lot of features such as aspect ratio plugging, thumbnails, API features such as animations, callbacks for selection and also supports CSS styling.

• Source

• Demo

Miscellaneous

jMaps – jMaps is a jQuery plugin that provides an easy API and makes it really easy to implement Google maps into your website. It is fairly simple to use and offers some neat features such as markers, Google adesnse layers, traffic layers, search directions etc.

• Source

• Demo

jQuery Pagination – This is a pagination jQuery plugin that creates navigation elements so that you can go from one page to another. You can set options for the number of items per page, number of navigation links shown, number of start and end points and labels. The neat thing is that the all this happens without page refreshes.

.

• Source

• Demo

DatePicker – This plugin has features such as allowing multiple years, range selection, clear selection, custom day to start the week, custom widget and custom design. It already has a sleek design and is pretty easy to fit in your web application.

• Source

• Demo

Which Ones di we Miss?

Why Use Online Backup?

As the owner of an online web hosting company, I know how important it can be to have a backup of all your information from personal files to client files. I’ve lost plenty of important data including website backups, tax information, and web designs over the years. I now use multiple online backup services to ensure that all my data is 100% secured.

Dropbox

• Website: getdropbox.com
• Rating: 5/5
• Pricing: $9.99 per month for 50GB (2GB Free Trial)
• Works With: Windows, Mac, Linux

Dropbox is one of the easier online backup services I have seen around. It offers automatic updating among files on all computers that are connected, as well as sharing with other users using Dropbox. Dropbox offers a free 2 GB service, then after that, services start at $9.99 per month for 50 GB.

Jungle Disk

• Website: jungledisk.com
• Rating: 3/5
• Pricing: $0.15 per month per 1GB
• Works With: Windows, Mac, Linux

Jungle Disk is one of the most well known online backup services – as it is run using Amazon and Rackspace servers. It works just like another hard drive on your computer. All your files are encrypted using a key that is only known to you. Jungle Disk offers a pay as you go service for only 15¢ per GB that you use. It provides accessibility on all your computers and public access to authorized users.

Sugar Sync

• Website: sugarsync.com
• Rating: 3/5
• Pricing: $4.99 per month for 30GB
• Works With: Windows, Mac, Mobile Phones

Sugar Sync is one of the few online backup systems that offers support for mobile phones. It’s one of the cheapest systems I have seen offering 30 GB for only $4.99 per month, and it offers real time updating of files. Sugar Sync is one of the only services that offers streaming of music from your phone and browser.

Mobile Me

• Website: me.com
• Rating: 2/5
• Pricing: $99 per year for 20GB
• Works With: Windows, Mac, iPhone/Ipod Touch

Owned by by Apple Inc. Mobile Me allows you to sync all your emails, calenders, contacts and more together for a yearly price of $99. Mobile Me comes with 20 GB of disk space and 200 GB of bandwidth. It’s the only online backup service that supports use with the iPod Touch.

Box

• Website: box.net
• Rating: 4/5
• Pricing: $9.95 per month for 5GB
• Works With: Windows, Mac, Linux, Mobile Phone

Box is one of the most business oriented services that I have seen offering services such as comments, branding options, file embedding, user permissions, and more. Box offers you the option to have multiple users when purchasing business accounts to allow your staff to access files and work more efficiently.

IDrive

• Website: idrive.com
• Rating: 3/5
• Pricing: $4.95 per month for 150GB
• Works With: Windows, Mac

IDrive is by far the cheapest service that I have found. It offers 150 GB of disk space for just $4.95 per month for a personal account. However if you need a business plan, services start at $9.99 per month for 50 GB of disk space. IDrive offers you the option to create multiple users for free online Box as well as allowing time line restores and restoring of files up to 30 modifications ago.

SkyDrive

• Website: skydrive.live.com
• Rating: 1/5
• Pricing: Free (25GB)
• Works With: All Operating System That Support Web Browsers

SkyDrive is owned by Microsoft, and offers 25GB of free online backup services. The primary downside is that they do not offer a desktop application to easily retrieve files and backup new files; you are instead forced to visit their website, login and upload using a web based form. SkyDrive accepts files no larger then 50MB.

IBackup

• Website: ibackup.com
• Rating: 3/5
• Pricing: $9.95 per month for 10GB
• Works With: Windows, Mac, Linux

Owned by the same company as IDrive, IBackup offers less features and targets web developers and businesses who wish to backup databases and servers that contain important information and client data. IBackup supports Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems unlike IDrive giving companies a larger option for operating systems.

Livedrive

• Website: livedrive.com
• Rating: 3/5
• Pricing: £39.95 per year for 100GB
• Works With: Windows – Mac and Linux coming soon

LiveDrive offers automated backups, accessibility from anywhere in the world, file syncing, and sharing. LiveDrive offers you the option to play your music, edit your files, watch your videos and Facebook integration from anywhere in the world using their simple web based portal. It’s also one of few backup services that supports FTP access, version history and local caching.

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While this is nice and convenient, most users would rather not have to check their item feed a few times a day to see if anyone has commented. While I know this is an issue/feature the devs may work on for the future, we can fix the issue utilizing third party scripts and services. Today, we will have a quick look at 7 RSS to email/sms services you can use to automatically get informed of comments on your item!

1. Feed My Inbox

I’ve started with one of the best services I stumbled upon while doing research to write this article. Feed My Inbox is dead simple and completely free to use. You simply enter the website or the feed URL that you wish to receive updates on and you nearly done.

Head over to FeedMyInbox and enter your item feed (mentioned above) and your email address. Once you have subscribed, check your email and click on the confirmation link to activate service for that RSS feed. You’re done, you’ll be receiving updates once every 24 hours.

Pros

• Super simple to use, takes seconds.
• Free.
• Works on website and feed URLs.
• Even if the feed is updated twenty times in 24 hours, you will receive only one email (this completely depends on your preferences, also listed as con below).

Cons

• You only get sent updates once every 24 hours to reduce spam and email clutter. Now, if you are a huge power user like Epicera, you might think this is great and just check your daily email and be on your way. However, if you are like me and don’t have that many items to your name, you might want to find out more often than once every 24 hours.

2. RSS 2 Email

RSS 2 email is a completely free of charge software product that allows you to integrate RSS feeds to be sent to your current email client of choice. RSS2Email is open source and works directly with your email client to allow you to get notifications and bridge the gap between your email client and RSS feeds.

RSS2Email runs on both Windows based and UNIX based systems, and can read any RSS or ATOM feed along with provide update notices directly in your mail client.

Pros

• Runs on Windows and UNIX
• Compatible with POP and IMAP servers
• Free and open source
• Handles any RSS or ATOM format, including non English characters

Cons

• Not a web based service, you must download and install the software on your computer and configure it with your current email client of choice.

3. Blog Alert

Blog Alert is another very simple and free web based RSS to email application. Blog Alert doesn’t even require any kind of download or account setup, just enter the feed and your email and off you go.

One thing to note with Blog Alert is that you need to make sure that you enter the RSS feed URL, not the feed of the website. While some tools are able to auto detect the feed, Blog Alert does not offer this.

Pros

• Simple, takes seconds to get working.
• Free.

Cons

• Lack of information, on the home page it says it will let you know every time the feed is updated, but will this cap out at a certain amount of times?

4. NewsGator

NewsGator is a Microsoft Outlook specific product that aims to integrate RSS and email. If you use Outlook often or at work, NewsGator might be the best choice for you in the long run.

You can get RSS alerts, updates, and feeds all from withing Outlook using NewsGator, and I must say out of all the services listed so far, NewsGator looks to be the most polished piece of software. If your an Outlook person, give it a go and let us know your thoughts!

Pros

• Integrates into Outlook, a very popular email client.
• Very well polished from what I can tell.
• Receive updates, add new feeds, and read feeds all from Outlook.

Cons

• Microsoft/Outlook specific. Does not work with other email clients.
• Not free, cost $29.

5. Reblinks

Reblinks- RSS to Email gateway is another free web service that focuses on simplicity and functionality. Go to the homepage and enter in the feed URL and the email you want the updates sent to, and click submit. Go have some bacon and tea, come back and check your email. That’s about it!

Reblinks is still in Beta so there may be some slight issues or bugs, but nothing too bad from what I can tell.

Pros

• Free.
• Simple and easy.

Cons

• Reliability? Considering it is in Beta this is something that needs to be thought about before you depend solely on this service.
• Again, lack of information on the website page. Are there restrictions? How often are updates sent?

RSS to SMS

So far we have looked at some great software products and web apps that allow you to send any RSS updates to your email address. But in this day and age we don’t always have our laptops on hand when we need it. For the last part of this article we will focus on services that allow you to send RSS updates straight to your cell phone via SMS. Imagine being notified instantly on your phone when your out with friends when someone has made a comment (hopefully a positive one).

6. PeekFeed

PeekFeed is a very nice looking RSS to SMS service. PeekFeed is completely free and sends any RSS updates you have set straight to you on your mobile phone.

To get started, just head to the PeekFeed homepage and create a new account. Once you create an account, you can set all of your user settings and add the feeds you wish to get notified about. PeekFeed even allows you to choose how often you get updates. You can choose by the minute, hour, day and so on.

Pros

• Free.
• Easy to use and receive.
• Customized update settings (minute, hour, day etc).

Cons

• None that I can see!

7. Pingie

Last but certainly not least, is the very popular RSS to SMS service, Pingie. Pingie allows you to enter your phone number, email, and the website address to start instantly receiving updates.

Pingie has been known as a reliable RSS to SMS application for a while now, and even allows you to check the status of all of their servers on their status page. Out of the two RSS to SMS applications, Pinige seems to be the one most people use.

Pros

• Free.
• Simple and intuitive UI.
• Reliable and open, plenty of information on the site for you to browse.

Cons

• Again, I’m not sure. Perhaps that you may have to pay for the text messages received, but that is no different than any other SMS sending service.

That’s all the programs we have for now. Hopefully, that clears up any issues or struggles you may be having to easily get updates on your items feed and comments. Are there any applications out there you use that I neglected to mention? I’d love to hear your input!

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1: Write Semantic and Valid Markup

It’s important to write meaningful and semantic markup so search engines can easily extract and classify what’s relevant on your page. That includes two key practices:

1. Use proper headings and listings.
2. Always validate your markup

I can’t stress enough those two points. There have always been a debate about if you should use the <h1> tag for the logo/title of your page or the post title (if you are building a blog), but the important thing here is that the information in your page must be presented hierarchically, using all six heading tags
if possible.

2: Optimize your Title and Meta Tags the Correct Way

Back in the day, meta tags were the first thing you had to take care of when dealing with SEO. Because Google and other search engines don’t rely on them anymore, you only have to focus on the description meta tag, because that’s the one which will be displayed on the results page under the title.

Your title tag is very important to search engines, and like your meta tags, should be different for every page of your site. It must be relevant and descriptive to the content of the page, and shouldn’t be too long -but enough to describe what your page is about. For example, instead of:

<title>John Smith's Shop</title>

Something better would be:

<title>John Smith's Fishing Supplies - Find the best fishing supplies in California</title>

If you are using WordPress, there are many useful plugins for managing title and meta tags in your blog. I recommend the All in One SEO pack, it’s easy to use and works out-of-the-box.

3: Always Use alt and title Attributes

The title attribute, besides making a site more accessible, serves the purpose of telling search engines about the topic of the site you are linking to, so try to avoid things like:

To see all of our fishing boats, <a href="#">Click here</a>

Instead, use…

<a href="#" title="View all of our fishing boats">View all of our fishing boats</a>

The alt attribute is basically the same, but for images, it’s the way of describing our image to the search engine.

4: Maintain your CSS and JavaScript files Externally

Search engines usually ignore CSS and JavaScript files, but even if they don’t (Google’s algorithm changes), placing your CSS/JavaScript in external files will help the crawler find your content faster.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<script src="functions.js" type="text/JavaScript" charset="utf-8"></script>

5: Use Google Webmasters Tools

You can make Google do a lot of work simply by adding your site to Google Webmasters Tools, that is linked to your Gmail/Google account. It shows you how Google crawls and indexes your site to help diagnose problems. You can see all internal and external links pointing to your site and which search queries are driving the most traffic. Also, it lets you configure things, such as a preferred domain name for your site, with or without www, so it knows is the same site and page rank doesn’t get divided.

6: Keep your HTML Simple

Build your site using only the necessary markup and make your layout as simple as possible (no tables, of course!). It will help the search engines to index it easily. And that brings me to my next point:

7: Avoid Frames

Frames make your site load slower and makes it difficult for the robots to crawl it.

If you must use frames, always offer noframes content and be sure that each frame has a descriptive title.

8: Use JavaScript Only for Progressive Enhancement

You must ensure that your JavaScript only adds new layers of enhanced functionality and your site works with JavaScript disabled, specially when dealing with navigational elements, such as menus.

The search engines should be able to read your navigation as a nested list to index it properly:

<ul>
	<li><a href="home.html">Home</a></li>
	<li><a href="shop.html">Shop</a>
		<ul>
			<li><a href="boats.html&quot;>Boats</a></li>
			<li><a href="supplies.html">Supplies</a></li>
		</ul>
	</li>
	<li><a href="about_us.html">About Us</a></li>
	<li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
</ul>

And then you can format it as a fancy drop down menu using CSS and JavaScript.

9: Be Careful When Using Flash

Although now search engines can index flash content, they still don’t do it very well. Keep your flash to a minimum, and avoid using it for text. Don’t use it for creating menus either, you can probably make the same effects, like I said before, just with CSS and JavaScript while keeping your html structure nice and clean.

Personally I would limit the use of flash in the web to embedded videos/sound and some useful animation (like an animated infographic), but nothing more.

10: Create a sitemap.xml file for Google

To be sure that your pages are indexed and cached quickly in Google, you can create a sitemap.xml file. It’s a XML file that contains a list with all the pages on your site. It follows the Sitemap protocol like that:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <url>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
      <lastmod>2005-01-0</lastmod>
      <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
      <priority>0.8</priority>
   </url>
</urlset>

You can create it manually following Google’s help for creating sitemaps or, if you use WordPress, you can install
XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress plugin that builds it automatically and notifies Google of the changes.

11: Make a Site Map

Besides creating a sitemap.xml, you should also make a detailed html sitemap page that links to every page on your site. It helps your users and search engines find the content easily. The less clicks it takes to get to a page, the better.

A good tool to create beautiful and easy to maintain site maps is slickmap, a simple stylesheet that shows a nice site map from an unordered list navigation.

12: Add a robots.txt File to Your Root Directory

By default, search engines crawl and index everything in a website. You can block some files or folders that aren’t relevant or don’t want to get indexed by placing a robots.txt in your root folder. An example of a robots.txt could be:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /js/

The command “User-agent: *” allows the crawler to search through your site freely, and “Disallow” commands prevent it to analyze those folders.

13: Check for Broken Links and Images

If your page has links pointing to content that doesn’t exist, it will probably never be found. It’s also a fact that search engines penalize sites with many broken links, so don’t forget to use the W3C link validator tool to find them.

14: Avoid Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can be dangerous to your search engine rankings. But, what is duplicate content?

If you have a WordPress blog, you probably have a category and archives pages in your sidebar. These pages are just a collection of your posts, so you could have identical content in some of them: for example, when you have just a post in a category or in a given day, the content in that archive/category page will be the same as the post itself.

You can solve these and others duplicate content problems by using noindex, follow in your robots meta tag, using a 301 redirect or with a robots.txt file.

15: Create an Informative Error Page

If a user mistakenly types a wrong or incorrect url, it will show a default server page with an internal error message. That message is not very helpful, so instead you should create a user-friendly 404 error page that links back to the homepage, shows alternatives for navigation or links to possibly related content.

There are plenty of WordPress plugins for improving your error pages. The 404 SEO plugin gives you a smart error page that will automatically display links to relevant pages on your site, based on the words in the url that wasn’t found.

16: Keep a Flat Structure Directory

Because search engines like to access quickly and easy to any file, you shouldn’t go too deep in your structure directory. Avoid things such as:

http://somedomain.com/shop/products/boats/motor/red_one.html

and use something like:

http://somedomain.com/products/motor-boats/red_one.html

Keep in mind that any page shouldn’t be more than three clicks away from your home page.

17: Use Search Engine Friendly url Names

Search engines cannot make sense of urls with dynamic and session id names, so instead of:

http://somedomain.com/?page_id=12

you should use a meaningful name with hyphens instead of underscores, like:

http://somedomain.com/fishing-boats-and-supplies

In WordPress you can configure that in the permalinks options page.

18: Design an Effective Footer

User your footer links to help search engines navigate through your site, replicating your main navigation and linking to the most important pages on your site.

An example of a good designed footer is the one found in CSS-tricks.

19: Use Breadcrumb Navigation

Consider using breadcrumbs as a secondary navigation aid. It makes it easier for users to move around your site. Be sure the text on your breadcrumb links describes accurately the content of the corresponding page.

20: Write Good Content

Finally, forget about keywords and all that, the best SEO advice you can receive is to just write good content, interesting articles that people will like and find useful.
Ask yourself what creates value for your users.

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1. Google Analytics

In my opinion, Google Analytics is the best free stat tool out there. Google Analytics is a very comprehensive stat tool which can tell alot about the traffic of your website. It provides in depth information, and can be valuable to the success of your website.

Main Features of Google Analytics:

• Detailed graphs of your statistics
• Geographical information on where your visitors originate from
• Detailed statisitcs in general e.g. Site Usage, Bounce Rates.
• Overviews on traffic e.g. Content overview and Traffic overview
• Goals, which is a feature that measures how well your site fulfills business objectives.

Advantages

• Detailed statistical information
• Accurate statistics, along with high quality graphs
• The ability to review any date period to check out stats recorded on that date

Disadvantages

• For someone who’s relatively new to being a webmaster, Google Analytics’ sheer amount of information it gives may be slightly overwhelming to a new user.

2. WordPress Stats (Plugin)

If you’re a blogger, there’s a good change that you use WordPress! If you are running WordPress, you might want to consider using WordPress Stats.

Main Features of WordPress Stats:

• Integrates right into your WordPress installation
• Provides information on referrals, clicks, key search terms and more
• Integrates into your WordPress Admin Dashboard, so you can always keep track of your stats
• Any information recorded is instant as it happens. So if someone clicked on a page on your website, WordPress Stats would update almost instantly.

Advantages

• Minimal Setup required (Because it’s a plugin, all script lines that need to be added for it to work are inputted automatically)
• Specifically designed for WordPress websites, so it’s a stats system you can trust if your using WordPress
• Produces a graph which updates as hits are recorded. This is displayed on both the blog stats page and WordPress admin dashboard.

Disadvantages

• It’s only for WordPress
• Not as in depth as others, but does its job well.

3. Woopra

Woopra is a bit like Google Analytics, because they both provide similar statistic information to their users. It is slightly unique as it is split into two services: a desktop client program and a web server application. You are also able to track single users and where they go on your website in seconds. Features like this are valuable to your website success and show how good your content is.

Main Features of Woopra:

• Live Stat Monitoring
• Provides two different services: desktop client program and a web server application
• Provides in-depth analytical information as well as general stats.
• Innovative stats system
• The new Woopra Analytics

Advantages

• You are able to see your stats on your desktop thanks to the Desktop Application
• Stats are live and update instantly.
• The Woopra API
• Because of the API, there are a handful of plugins to integrate Woopra with blogs and other website services.

Disadvantages

• Woopra is currently BETA (So there are bugs that are yet to be found or are being fixed)
• Requires a bit of time to fully setup.
• When Woopra is out of Beta, free and paid plans will be in place, so this may hint that some systems are going to be limited to free users.

4. Alexa Web Information

Alexa, is a bit of a different stat system, it’s what you could call a public stat system. Why public? Because every website in its crawl list is viewable by anyone, which means anyone can look at another websites statistics. Not only are they public but they also have there own traffic rank system to list websites in there crawl list. In some peoples views someone would consider Alexa as not worth mentioning, but I believe it provides some useful information.

Main Features of Alexa:

• Public Stat monitoring system
• Provides information like, demographics, keywords, related links, and click stream information
• Uses own Alexa Traffic rank system to list websites according to those most popular

Advantages

• Once a website is crawled, Alexa will update the information automatically.
• Don’t need to sign up for an account to view any websites statistics
• Data is updated quite regularly

Disadvantages

• It’s not the most accurate system to use
• Isn’t as in depth as others stat systems
• Alexa is not a live stat service. Usually stats are updated daily or every two or so days.
• Because Alexa has its own traffic rank system it may not represent a websites true position in the web.

5. Compete

Compete provides analytical information but also allows anyone to view websites that it has collected information on, similarly to Alexa. Compete has a diverse sample of websites and works with samples of internet users and analyzes the web pages they visit.

Main Features of Compete:

• Combination of Analytics and general stats
• Like Alexa it is also a public stat system (Anyone can view website stats which have been collected)
• Branches out into different self service tools.
• Compete is based on samples of people’s internet activity

Advantages

• Valuable to a business/corporate website
• Different ranges of analytical information
• A variety of Self Service tools

Disadvantages

• It is generally not for the average user. More for the business/marketing sector
• Compete isn’t free. Only basic information is available for free users. Again this is due to Compete being aimed at businesses and not general websites.

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In this article, we’ll review ten web typography tips that will bring your typographic design skills to the next level.

1. Leading

Leading is the space between lines of text and probably one of the more commonly known elements of typography. Leading will greatly effect the readability of your text content. Leading will need to be changed based on the type face, size, weight and measure (covered next) used.

I generally stick with about 2-5pt’s larger leading than font size depending on the type face, size, etc. and how it feels reading it.

2. Measure

Measure seems to be overlooked quite often in many of the templates I review. Sometimes I forget about it too though which is why articles like these are always a nice refresher.

Measure is the width of your text. If it’s too wide then it makes it harder for readers to visually travel from one line to the next. If it’s too narrow then it will be too much eye movement from one line to the next.

This will be a little harder to show you at a normal font size so I’ve reduced the font sizes for the example below. I see this issue most commonly with templates that have really wide content columns.

I’ve heard different ways of approximating the appropriate width for text measure such as multiply the font size by 30 to get pixel width (10px font size X 30 = 300px measure width) or using approximately 80 characters as a max width. I like to read a test paragraph and adjust as necessary until it feels right.

3. Text Alignment

On the web it’s not a good idea to use justified text alignment. It will space out the words awkwardly and make it more difficult to read. Yes, the left and the right sides will be flush but readability is more important.

In the example below you can see it doesn’t look terrible but you’ll notice the first line is much more crammed together than line two and three. The test text and Photoshop didn’t provide an ideal example but when you’re dealing with more real world text in a browser, things can get pretty ugly with justified text alignment.

4. Create a Strong Hierarchy

Creating a strong visual hierarchy is very important for readers to be able to quickly navigate from most important content to least important and gives them a sort of scaffolding to quickly find specific content they’re looking for. It gives a design structure and a logical flow of presented information making it feel more inviting for visitors.

Visual hierarchy using typography largely depends on size, color and spacing. The example below (Pacifica Theme Forest template) uses large, bold headings for primary content (left column) and smaller headings for secondary content (right column). Less important text content uses a lighter color and/or lighter weight.

For more information on visual hierarchy, read “Visual Hierarchy in Web Design“.

5. Serif and Sans Serif

If you’re less experienced with typography in design, it’s a much safer bet to use serif fonts for headings and sans serif fonts for body text. If you’re not sure what a serif is, see “Serif” via Wikipedia.

Serif fonts at smaller sizes don’t display well and can make body text uncomfortable to read. Using sans serif fonts for headings is fine too, it will just be a little less attention grabbing and will depend on your design. The example below (minimo Theme Forest template) is a great example of custom serif font headings and sans serif font body text.

This example (Atlantica Theme Forest template) uses serif fonts for both headings and body text. The body text size is probably a little too small for being a serif font but it still looks nice and can obviously be increased by buyers. This is a great example of using all serif fonts in a template.

6. Plan For Font Size Increase

Those of us with great vision often forget about those with not-so-great vision. As a result, we forget to ensure our templates will scale properly with font size increases. If you style your typography correctly and create a solid layout, this won’t be an issue.

Example: A List Apart – Default font size.

Increased font size two levels in Safari.

As you can see, it scales nicely without breaking anything and without headings with overlapping line-heights, etc.

7. Start Using Styled Quotation and Apostrophe Marks

Instead of using straight, boring quotation and apostrophe marks like this.

“It’s boring”

Use the prettier, styled quotation marks like this.

“It’s sexy!”

• Left quotation is &ldquo;
• Right quotation is &rdquo;
• Apostrophe is &rsquo;

I have to break myself of this habit as well.

8. Use a Baseline Grid

Grids aren’t just for structural layouts you know. Establishing consistent typographic vertical spacing helps keep the page balanced and proportional throughout your template. (Image via A List Apart)

For more information on this, read “Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid“.

9. Limit Your Font Faces

Don’t use more than three font faces in your design and preferably stick with two. With two font faces you can create plenty of variations to fill your needs. If three are needed, use the third sparingly so you don’t add confusion to your design.

It’s also a good idea to limit font sizes and colors to minimize reader confusion and keep consistency.

Now that I’ve said that, once you’re experienced enough, you can break this rule. It takes skill and practice to do it right though so if you’re not already a font expert, I’d stick with this rule for your production work.

10. Use “Whitespace” Appropriately

“Whitespace” (aka negative space) is the space between elements like bodies of text, columns, etc. This can be broken down to the smaller elements as well.

I’ve placed red in just some of the areas utilizing whitespace in Theme Forest’s blog design. You’ll notice the whitespace is balanced nicely throughout the page.

Giving your website elements enough whitespace is important and very helpful in creating a well balanced design. Be careful that you don’t over do it though because too much whitespace use the wrong way can be just as bad as too little.

For more information on whitespace, read “Whitespace” via A List Apart.

Conclusion

There’s a lot that goes into typography and it can make or break a design. If you’re not that familiar with typography or other ways it is used in web design, it would be very beneficial to take some time to dig deeper and learn more of the ins and outs.

Typography is an art and skill that takes time to master, but as I said at the beginning, it’s one of the most powerful (if no the most) tools designers have.

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Domainr

What: Pick a original domain name with other TLDs, in the del.icio.us fashion
Cost: Free
Link: http://domai.nr
Why:

Desirable .com domain names are scarcer than profitable investment banks. But Domai.nr makes finding pithy URLs easy by querying 280 top-level domains and another 2,014 second-level ones for domain hacks, turning real English words into unique and memorable Web addresses like del.icio.us, internetfamo.us, gee.ky, and iamthewalr.us. Plus, it’s free. — Wired

Are My Sites Up?

What: Check whether your websites are up or not and get noticed when they go down.
Cost: Free for up to 5 sites; $25/$50/$75 per year for premium services.
Link: http://aremysitesup.com
Why:

When your websites go down, shouldn’t you be the first to know?
Our free plan will check up to five of your sites at least 25 times per day. You get unlimited email and SMS notifications and we will do our best to tell you WHY your site was down by providing the HTML status error code.

Our premium plans offer significantly more features: Faster site checks, an iPhone application, RSS feeds, Twitter integration, Keyword search, premium-level support, and more!

All for just one dollar per site per year (or cheaper!).

Templatr

What: Create a simple design with little or no effort.
Cost: Free
Link: http://templatr.cc
Why:

It should should be easy to create an individual Design with the templatr. With a little experimentation you will be able to reach the desired result much more quickly than with endless written explanations.

Color Scheme Designer

What: Select color schemes and save them for later use.
Cost: Free
Link: http://colorschemedesigner.com
Why:

If you are making a website – and who isn’t lately – you need to make a theme for the site. I an not stylistically inclined and am also colorblind, so I have a couple tools that I use when building sites that help me with that side of things. One of them is ColorSchemeDesigner.com – a really great tool to help you get your colors right. — james R Sullivan

CSS Sandbox

What: Experiment with CSS styles in real time
Cost: Free
Link: http://aurelio.net/css-sandbox/
Why:

A toy.
A teacher.
A live demo.
A quick reference.
A web application.
A single HTML page.

The CSS Sandbox can be described by all these sentences.

It’s a simple and quick web toy that lets you explore CSS in real time. Just click and see the effect instantly, no Reload needed. It’s fast and funny!

Once you’re satisfied with the style of the Sandbox, roll your mouse over the handy CODE button. A panel will pop, showing all the necessary CSS code to apply that formatting to your own site.

Typetester

What: Compare screen type
Cost: Free
Link: http://www.typetester.org
Why:

The Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen. Its primary role is to make web designer’s life easier. As the new fonts are bundled into operating systems, the list of the common fonts will be updated.

BrowserCam

What: Cross Browser Compatibility Testing Tools
Cost: 24 hours free trial; prices vary from $20 to $1000/month
Link: http://www.browsercam.com
Why:

See your web design on any browser on any operating system. Check javascripts, DHTML, forms and other dynamic functionality on any platform. Not just yours. Use our bank of testing machines remotely to test your website.

Genfavicon

What: Convert images into favicons for your website.
Cost: Free
Link: http://www.genfavicon.com
Why:

Genfavicon is a site that features an application that allows you to create an icon out of the image of your choice. Simple select your image, by pasting in the URL address or uploading the image. Then choose which part of the image you wish to make the icon by dragging the mouse and cutting the desired shape. You must then select the size of your icon; 16X16, 32X32, 48X48, 64X64, or 128X128.
Preview what you have chosen and then finalize your icon.
You can then use your icon for your webpage or any other place you would like to put it.
Making your favicon could not be easier, in three quick steps you have made an icon that you can easily paste on your webpage. — KillerStartups

Time59

What: Track time and expenses, handle invoicing and payments.
Cost: Risk-free 30 days trial, $49.95 per year
Link: http://time59.com
Why:

Be more organized with less effort. Time59 keeps track of the work you do, gets your invoices out quickly, and manages client payments. Your Time59 account can be accessed from any internet connected computer… at home, at your office, or on the road. Getting started with Time59 is easy. There’s nothing to install, just sign up and you’re ready to go.

Remember The Milk

What: Manage tasks intuitively and interact with other web services
Cost: Free. Pro account are $25/year
Link: http://www.rememberthemilk.com
Why:

Remember The Milk is the best way to manage your tasks online (obviously .

Managing tasks is generally not a fun way to spend your time. We created Remember The Milk so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience.

We offer a web application (on this site) and a number of additional Services to help you be more organized and productive.

Basecamp

What: Project collaboration tool
Cost: Free 30 days trial; from $24 to $149/month, depending on number of projects and storage
Link: http://www.basecamphq.com
Why:

Basecamp is online project management software. People can create, manage and communicate tasks, files and to-do lists. — AppAppeal

RescueTime

What: Automated time tracking and management
Cost: 14 days free trial. Solo light account available for free; Pro account upgrade costs $8/month
Link: http://www.rescuetime.com
Why:

RescueTime is a tool that allows you to easily understand and optimize how you and your team spends their time and attention. One of the most important things about RescueTime is that there is NO DATA ENTRY. You install a small application on the computers at your company and we magically track what software and which web sites are actively being used.

Mint

What: Web site analytics
Cost: A single site license is $30
Link: http://haveamint.com
Why:

Mint is an extensible, self-hosted web site analytics program. Its interface is an exercise in simplicity. Visits, referrers, popular pages and searches can all be taken in at a glance on Mint’s flexible dashboard.

CrazyEgg

What: Supplement your analytics with visuals and actionable data
Cost: Plans start at $9/month
Link: https://crazyegg.com
Why:

Analytics only give you a static interpretation of your site visitor’s activities. You may be able to tell how many people have visited your site, or viewed a particular page, but you won’t be able to gauge effectiveness of design elements, link placement or popular areas of your site. If you want to know where people are clicking on your site, and which areas could use improvement, you need Crazy Egg. Crazy Egg helps you visualize your visitors.

ConsoleFish

What: Access your secure shell server
Cost: Free
Link: http://serfish.com/console/
Why:

As a free AJAX SSH client, the consoleFISH provides web-based access to any SSH server. It can be used to bypass firewalls and proxies on a secure HTTP connection. Moreover, the consoleFISH makes it possible to anonymously open SSH connections as the IP address of the connecting web client is not sent to the remote system.

SurFTP

What: Web-based FTP client
Cost: Free
Link: http://surftp.com
Why:

Once you are logged in, you will be able to navigate the FTP server, upload files, download files, zip files, unzip files, install software, copy, move and delete, copy or move to a second FTP server, rename and chmod.

Heroku

What: in-browser Ruby on Rails development environment
Cost: Free for basic usage; up to hundreds for add ons and performances
Link: http://heroku.com
Why:

There are two sides to Heroku’s offering. The first is a completely in-browser development environment where RoR programmers can build their apps instead of doing so with software on their own computers. [...]
The second aspect to Heroku’s offering, which it is promoting with new materials on its website today, will allow RoR developers to not only build their apps with Heroku but to host and scale them there as well. — TechCrunch

Bespin

What: Open, extensible web-based framework for code editing
Cost: Free
Link: https://bespin.mozilla.com
Why:

Bespin is a Mozilla Labs experiment that proposes an open, extensible web-based framework for code editing that aims to increase developer productivity, enable compelling user experiences, and promote the use of open standards. [built using HTML5 technology]

Google AJAX APIs playground

What: Online script development tools
Cost: Free
Link: http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/
Why:

Google’s AJAX APIs let you implement rich, dynamic web sites entirely in JavaScript and HTML. You can add a map to your site, a dynamic search box, or download feeds with just a few lines of JavaScript.

With AJAX APIs Playground you can try all these functions with save & Export features! — Feedmyapp

Snipplr

What: Social snippet repository
Cost: Free
Link: http://snipplr.com
Why:

Snipplr is a public source code repository that gives you a place to store and organize all the little pieces of code that you use each day. Best of all, it lets you share your code snippets with other coders and designers. Did we mention it works with TextMate, too? It’s code 2.0.

Wofoo

What: Form builder
Cost: Free for limited number of entries and one form only; from $9.95/month for more intensive usage
Link: http://wufoo.com
Why:

Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet.

Our HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.

Dabble DB

What: Online database
Cost: Free, but data is public; all data private and secure for $8/month
Link: http://dabbledb.com
Why:

Dabble DB is a web-based application that lets you work with data on your own terms. Instead of downloading an application, you upload your data and then build your own database application. You can import existing data or just start from scratch. Extend it or change it as you go. Restructure and redefine how you organize your data on a whim.

Writeboard

What: Collaborative writing software
Cost: Free
Link: http://writeboard.com
Why:

Writeboards are sharable, web-based text documents that let you save every edit, roll back to any version, and easily compare changes.
Use writeboardto write solo or collaborate with others.

Zoho Suite

What: Productivity, collaboration and business apps
Cost: Free for personal use; pricing varies depending on the services needed
Link: http://www.zoho.com
Why:

While Google Docs seems to be the first product people think of when online office suites come up, the lesser-known Zoho Suite offers more apps and features. See how Zoho stacks up against Google Docs. — LifeHacker

Box

What: Online storage
Cost: Free Lite plan; paid plans start at 5.66/month after a 14 days trial
Link: http://box.net
Why:

Box.net serves up more than a quarter billion files every year, so we know the innovative, evolving ways that businesses use Box and we understand that the people creating content are just as important as the content itself. With this in mind, we bring together the best of traditional content and collaboration tools with the most effective elements of social software to create business solutions that not only capture and centralize the knowledge of an organization, but also connect that knowledge across dispersed teams for enhanced collaboration and discovery.

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Finalist 5: The Final Frontier

by circuitbomb

“Space. It is colorful. It is infinite. These are the voyages of the starship Envato. It’s continuing mission…”

Congratulations Circuitbomb, you’ve won US$3,500 to spend on your ultimate creative set-up!

Each of the 10 finalists have won the contents of their collection. Thanks to everyone who entered, and watch out for the next big Envato competition!

Fresh and catchy content

If you have good content, people will always come back for more. One of the most important things about content is to keep it fresh and up-to-date. But, just like Smashing Magazine, make sure you archive your content for people to refer back to.

Listen to your community

If you are already lucky enough to have a community or even just some regular users, listen to them. You can do this by emailing your users directly, setting up comment forms, live chat, or even user feedback systems such as UserVoice, which allow users to vote on site issues and functionality. By listening to your community you can determine exactly what they want.

Monitor how your site is used

Knowing how users use your site is vital. This allows you to target their needs better. The best way is to keep a close eye on your analytics data, check what country/area your users are coming from, what search terms are working well for you, and what sites are giving you the best referrals.

Find out how users navigate your site via Heat maps. These help you alter your site so that it is easier for your visitors to use and find what they want. This keeps your users happy and more likely to return.

Take part in the on-line community

When you read your favorite blog or read an article of interest, leave a comment with your name, email and web site address. Ensure you are an active member of a relevant forum discussion or networking group. Make sure you are seen to be an active member of your site’s online community sector.

Smashing Magazines commenting system making it easy to take part.

Submit to directories and galleries

This should be an ongoing process as there are many local, national and worldwide directories. Your first port of call should be DMOZ.org. Following this submit to the local directories and those specializing in your sites business sector.

If you are designing web sites and proud of your work, submit your site to web design galleries. These directories such as CSS Beauty and CSS Elite feature beautiful and creative designs and ask users to comment and rate each design. Once people see your work their visitors may become yours too.

Email signatures

Whenever you send out an email, make sure you have your URL attached to the email signature. Simple idea but effective.

Business cards always at hand

Ensure you always have your business card to hand. If you meet someone needing your services it always pays to have a striking and memorable business card to exchange. It is worth spending time on your business card to make it creative and memorable, otherwise you may just be left at the bottom of the pile with the rest.

Company stationary

Put your web site address on everything; pens, letterheads, flyers, and anything that represents your company. Make sure it is clear and promotes people to visit your web site e.g. “For more information on our new product check ourwebsite.com”

Win an award

Winning an award is not easy but it can lead to a flood of visitors to your site. Even if you are a runner up, people will be curious as to who you are. The winner of the .net magazine interactive site of the year 2009, www.ecodazoo.com, received huge amounts of visits from the www.thenetawards.com site. Choose your competition wisely and remember, winning is not everything but getting your URL in front of as many readers as possible is.

Ecodazoo pushes the boundaries of 3D design on the web.

Competitions

On the flip side of winning an award, running a competition can be just as beneficial to your analytics stats. This could be as simple as designing a new logo or coming up with a new name for your latest product. Either way this will attract more users to your site and show you are giving back to your users as well as taking.

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet.

Search Engine Optimisation

Effective SEO, common sense and web standards go hand-in-hand. The idea is to create a semantic, valid code, that essentially uses the right tool for the job. This means using the right HTML tags and having a unique title and meta data for each page. Ensure search engine spiders can correctly index your site and good content is a must. Remember the most important way to climb the search engine ranks is through quality links. For full information on this see the Google Webmasters/Site owners guidelines.

Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide

Paid advertising

Pay per click advertising can drive a great deal of traffic to your site if you correctly target your keywords. Placing your banner or link on relevant sites will vastly improve the chance of you getting noticed.

The most effective advertising gets your message to a relevant audience.

Write articles

Writing articles for other sites as well as your own is a fantastic way to get noticed. SEO experts will tell you the same thing and one of the biggest sites for articles is www.ezinearticles.com. If you are a web designer, consider writing a tutorial for SmashingMagazine or NetTuts. If your sell power tools consider writing an aritlce about the best router for making coffee tables etc. Just make sure you put your URL next to your name and if it is well written people will want to know more about you.

Create a Blog

As you know blogs are big and they are continuing to thrive as people want quick useful information about a product, service or general news. Wordpress has been at the forefront of blogging and gives us the tools to make search engine friendly rich blogs with beautiful design. It is up to you to fill your blog with fresh and catchy content.

Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read (Paperback)

Online community web sites

In the past year we have seen the social community web site boom and many sites have reaped huge benefits. Creating your own Facebook page, uploading your work to Deviant Art or creating your own Squidoo page all help build your online presence.

Twitter and Twibes

We all know the power of Twitter by now and much has been said on the subject of using Twitter as a marketing tool, but the fact remains it is a very effective way of getting noticed. Get the most out of twitter by choosing one of the many tools available. Keep inside your niche area, follow people that matter to your web site, make it personal. Do not just use marketing spiel or you will quickly lose followers. If you are part of a niche area consider setting your own Twibe i.e a group of Twitter users.

Pod and Video Casts

If you have something to say and you think others will be interested then consider making a Pod Cast or Video Cast. www.Boagworld.com is a leader in this field for web design and Paul Boag has said that the majority of his new clients have come through the Podcast. Here are eight tips when thinking about Podcasting:

• Invest in a good microphone
• Reduce background noise
• Prepare but do not read as if from a script
• Follow a consistent format
• Invite guest speakers
• Have regular scheduled casts
• Enjoy the process and relax

Video Blog of David and Marc Perel discussing their passion for Web

Newsletters and RSS feeds

Users sign up for your newsletter and you have your captive audience. If used properly newsletters can be very effective tools for driving people to your site. Check out Smashing Magazines best practices article before embarking on your campaign and when you are ready use services like MailChimp to monitor its success.

Similar to newsletters, having an RSS / subscription feed of your content is another way to keep users noticing your web site. They are easy to setup and a good way to keep your users up-to-date on your web site. Make sure you keep your feeds relevant, interesting, informative and easy to find.

Ref: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/really-cool-rss-feed-icons/

Seasonal cards and e-cards

Send out cards to your clients either by snail male or to their email. Not only is this a nice gesture but also keeps your web site address firmly imprinted in their mind. Using services like Cards Direct is a quick and easy way to spread the holiday cheer with your web site address attached to it.

Run an event

Running an event is both a fantastic way to market your business and to connect with your customers, clients and experts in your sector. For example, the Future of Web Design events are run all around the world featuring many professionals from the web design community. Your event does not have to be around web design, but focused on your site and business’s sector to raise awareness of you and your site.

Alternatively you can be one of the speakers. This form of marketing has worked very well for people like Brett Welch, Danny Somekh and Folkert Gorter who spoke at the FOWD London 2009.

T-shirts with your web site address

Be your own marketing tool, have T-shirts, bags, folders etc sporting your web site address clearly.

Joomla raises peoples awareness with its online shop.

Create a phone app

Can your service be provided or product purchased using mobile phone or PDA? If so consider creating your own phone application. If you want to tap into the vast iPhone market you can consider selling your app on iPhone app store. Alternatively you can use a company like Siruna to create the mobile application for you.

Charity Work

You can donate directly to a charity or run a charity event. There are many charities out there, so choose wisely and carefully.

College and University Project Sponsorship

Many courses require a student to do a set amount of work experience or final year project. Contact your local college and or university and offer them a project that you would like their students to help on. "My final year project was to create a new search engine optimised template for a local business directory. The directory benefited from the new template tremendously and we learnt a great deal as a team."

Submitting proposals for college and university projects not only supports your web site but helps students gain real life experience in their chosen field. Here are a few examples:

Business Services at the University of Salford UK
Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design
Monash University Australia

Place your content elsewhere

Your web site is not the only place to put your content. If you sell a product you can also list it on eBay. If you are a band why not put your songs on Last.fm, If your site is about tutorials you can also submit your tutorial to other sites like netTuts. Once people notice your content they will be more inclined to visit your site hungry for more.

Give away free stuff

In the case of Vista print they offer free business cards, the cards have your logo and details on one side and theirs on the other. Here is a list of ideas you can give away:

• Pens, badges and other stationary
• Free e-books or even audio books
• Screensavers
• Desktop backgrounds

Amazon Vouchers

Sponsorship

Sponsorship can be a remarkable way of getting your web site in front of 100’s or 1000’s of eyes. When choosing a sponsorship project, keep to ones that will reflect well on your company as well as being relevant. For more information check out the following sites in the UK and North America. You can also place advertisements that you or your company is looking for proposals from individuals or companies to sponsor. When you receive the proposals have a set criteria in mind of what your looking for.

The DataPowertools.co.uk 5 aside football team.

Get in the news

The news takes many forms in today’s media but one of the most beneficial is to get your site featured on a popular news web site. One of the top five news portals is Google News. There are two ways; to be a feature or to feature news items. Either way you should concentrate on having original content, multiple authors, proper attribution and good response time. For more information check out the Website Magazine article Get Your Website Included in Google News.

Press releases

Do you have web site that people are interested in on a national or local level? Why not submit a press release informing the public about your new site. Simply place an add in the local paper or sector specific magazine.

Merchandising

Do you have a product that you think will sell? Why not try your hand at merchandising, but if you are new to all this you can use services like 50below.com to help setup your online store. If you do have a number of products list them on various other platforms like eBay, Froogle and Amazon with links back to your site within the product descriptions.

Solve a problem

Find a problem that affects your sites sector, create a fix and publish it. A good solution to a difficult problem is a sure fire way of getting people to flock to your site. One example is the PNG fix for Internet Explorer, this simple site received thousands of hits as it helped solve a problem with image transparencies in IE6.

http://labs.unitinteractive.com/unitpngfix.php

Adding widgets to your web site

Give your site a boost by adding news feeds, blogs, tweets, various widgets, delicious links, diggs and stumble links to your site. For the most comprehensive list of widgets try the netvibes ecosystem. When adding widgets to your web site keep in mind that they should enhance the user experience and not clutter your web site. Less is more!

Widgetbox gives you more than enough choice of widgets

YouTube channels / subscriptions

We all know that YouTube is massive and already one of the biggest way sites get noticed is through uploading or creating
creative,
fun,
shocking,
interesting
or damn right weird video.
Setting up your own channel will allow users to subscribe to you thus giving you more eyes on your content and web site
url. Making a short introduction, or a series of clips like
Expert village is a cost effective way of driving traffic to your site as well as climbing the search engine results ladder.

Free services

Having a specific free service that is useful and intuitive could attract a plethora of users. Here are some examples of sites with useful tools:

Freelancer rates calculator
Kuler colour scheme creator
Multiple browser tests
XML site map generator
Calculate your salary
Customized currency converter
Web Page Analyzer
FavIcon Generator
Instant Domain Search

Freelance Switch’s rate calculator helps people
work out their standard freelance rate.

Consultation service

If your site is a specialist in its field consider offering a consultation service. A consultation service can be done via the internet, phone or in person. You can provide this service to individuals, groups or businesses and with the power of Skype and a web cam it can be like you are standing next to them. You could even offer alternative consultation services like usability testing such as UX Roast or User Testing.

What tools are the professional online consultants using? Many online consultants use Skype because it is cheap, effective and well supported. When using any peer-to-peer communications service, make sure you set-up a separate account for your consultation service so you keep your private messaging private. Skype offers a Skype Prime account where you can register as a trainer and people can contact you for one-to-one or group learning.

Affiliate schemes

As a business, you offer rewards to Affiliate Marketers for every visit or consumer brought to the site using affiliate marketing techniques. This method allows you to attract more customers to your site by letting someone else do the hard work. You can offer different types of schemes such as co-branding, white labeling, loyalty schemes and many more.

There are hundreds of thousands of schemes available, so make yours attractive to marketers by offering high rewards for sales.

The Affiliate Programs forum contains information about 100’s of schemes and, most importantly, user feedback from people using them.

Vouchers and special offers

If you have a marketing budget, spend some time attracting users with goodies. Maybe you could offer 10% off their next subscription or a free trial to your service for 30 days. Vouchers can also attract users as you can post your voucher on of the many voucher sites.

Make your special offer loud and proud so people notice.

Become a re-seller

A re-selling service is where you sell an existing product or service such as hosting and domain names. Re-selling is a way to gain passive income by offering a quality product or service you would not be able to develop alone. This ability to give a better service will attract customers and if you ensure good customer service you might benefit from word of mouth recommendations.

Hostgator’s reseller packages offer a lot of choice.

Have a great idea

The internet has been a veritable breeding ground for creative people and ideas. This creativity has given birth to some amazing ideas that make people flock to the site. If you think you have a great idea, harness it. Turn your idea into reality, like Google’s originators Larry and Sergey, wanting to create a fast and simple search environment with Backrub in 1995 to a student selling pixels to put himself through University in 2004.

"The main motivation for doing this is to pay for my degree studies."

Create a plug-in, template or widget

A widget or plug-in is a design to enhance the platform. It is designed to entertain or make life easier for users. Keep this in mind when developing your application such as a plugin for Wordpress or a template for Joomla. Make sure people know who made it and where they can find the web site.

Theme Forest helps designers sell their work.

Write tutorials

If you are an expert in your field and you know what your talking about, choose a subject and write a tutorial on it. You can then make the tutorials available on your own site, to capture your audience, or submit your tutorial to sites such as Nettuts.

Write a book

Writing a book is time consuming and a labour of love but it can reap so many benefits as a product in its own right. It will raise awareness for its topic and author. Books like Elliot Jay Stock’s Sexy Web design, Steve Krug’s Don`t Make me Think or even an audio book like Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail have brought brand awarness and thus visitors to each of the authors respective websites.

Start a magazine or online publication

Blogging is a simplified version of creating an online magazine. Your online magazine should be much more by concentrating on different types of content, building a community of readers and exploiting various revenue streams.

When creating an online magazine make sure you know your CMS inside out. It will be the foundations of your business and web site and should allow you to make publishing the content painless. Think about how you will make the money to help you grow your site. Newsletters, RSS and forums will help you keep your readers up-to-date and talking.

If you need help with content you can look at purchasing content or invite other authors to help you get started.

Subscription service

Subscription services can help you gain a constant stream of visitors to your site as they download the latest news, music or tutorials.

If you are planning on charging for subscription use an integrated payment system like Spreedly to take the pain away of setting up payment gateways and storing Credit Card details.

Attend networking events

Networking events can be both fun and a very effective way to promote your web site. Armed with your business cards and an approachable smile you are sure to meet someone interested in your services, or who knows someone else who will.

The key is in choosing the right event for you and being prepared. Networking events are normally around certain types of business or target professionals in specific areas so choose what is best for you. Check online event sites like Facebook or Meet-up, or the local paper. If you can`t find one in your area, run your own!

Product updates

Offering regular updates to your product you can attract a consistent stream of users wanting to benefit from the new update. You should notify your users when a new update is available and this can be done via the software itself or via your web site. Consider making your updates a regular attraction for users to come back to your site and make them easy to download and install.

FireFox makes it simple to update by making it part of the software.
The user does not have to go away, download and install the update, but simply click ok

Label your work

Be proud of your work and put your logo and web site address on it. For web designers, put in your contract that the finished site must feature a back-link to your site. This may not always be possible but anyone enjoying the site you built will be intrigued to see the company who built it. For photographers, put a water mark on all your site samples and producers have your web site address on your packaging. No matter what sector you are in, there is always room for a label on your work.

Links to a sites design company can normally be found on the footer.

White label sites

A lot of sites, especially in the hotel and leisure industry, use what is called a White Lable site. This enables a successful brand to offer a service without having to build the functionality and databases itself. You can go about this two ways:

Use a white label service such as white label dating, social networking, holiday and leisure to create a site. For more information on white labling check out this article.
Allow users to use your functionality and database to create their own white label site. Lastminute.com , has created a very successful net of sites that utilise their data and functionality

Sites using Lastminute’s database / functionality can be seen on.

Konami Code

A new sensation on the web is the addition of hidden code that when users press a sequence of keys they get a hidden surprise (easter egg code). Site point and many other sites have done articles on this blast from the past way of entertaining your users. For more information goto http://konamicodesites.com/ but you will need the code to access it: up, up, down , down, left, right, left, right, b, a. Enjoy!

You`ll need quick reactions to score on this Konami game!

Best until last; social bookmarking

The last tip is also one of the best and easiest. Stemming from the simple idea of having a "Tell a friend" form on your web site, allow users to bookmark your site on the many social book mark sites, that way you are letting other popular sites do the hard work for you. Social bookmarking meta services like addtoany area a simple way for users to publish your site to their accounts on Facebook, Delicious, Stumble and many more with one click. Copy and paste their code on to your pages and your away.

That wraps it up for this article, I hope you have enjoyed the read. Some of the ideas are a little wacky but they will all help you get your site noticed.

I look forward to reading your feedback!

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