Web Design, CSS & SEO

I have finally squeezed in a bit of me time and got my own design website up and running. Lots more to do yet but finally something to see... Web Design

My first full .psd to XHTML & CSS website

www.cydenhomes.co.uk

This is the first part in what will eventually become a series of posts regarding converting a Photoshop layout into a fully functional website. I won't go into too gory details as these tutorials have been done (far better) elsewhere. My aim is to try to highlight some of the pitfalls encountered and subsequent workarounds.

If you're fairly new to using css one of the best things to do to get that much needed practice is to try and convert a photoshop (.psd) website layout into a fully functional web site.

If you're lucky the .psd will be provided with all the relevant layers still floated etc making it much easier to crop out the individual graphical elements for the final site.

The site I'm using in this example is for a housing developer in the UK and I was provided the original layout by their graphics designer. I might add at this point the graphics designer is a top bloke and has over 25 years experience in printed design graphics, ie brochures, posters advertising, flyers etc etc. He was approached by the company to design them a website layout, which he did, and a beautiful design it is too. We have now worked together on several projects and he has learned things about typical web layout expectations and standards and I've learned a hell of a lot more from him about graphics.

My problem began when I was approached to be the guy to turn it into a website, I loved the layout I was shown and was keen to get involved in the project. However, I was provided the layout as a single layered image so I had to get busy on the cutting up myself. I also had to reconstruct areas that were hidden by things that would have been floated above initially.

Oh yeah and it was provided as a .pdf file... ... I should have just asked for the files but I was new to all this back then and keen to impress the pros. I just took a screen shot of the .pdf at 100% and then saved the layout as a big old .png.

I also had to construct static, hover and visited link images for the top, graphical menu as a non web standard font over a gradient background meant I couldn't just use text links with a background colour change on hover etc.

This additional workload was going to put me way past my initial time frame so to save time on then having to write a load of css from scratch to put it all back together, then de-bug it for Internet Explorer (Grrr I hate that buggy SOB) I used tables for the basic layout...

Wrong move! Suddenly the right hand side menu was giving me a world of pain, trying to incorporate the graphics (now being chopped into tiny filler blocks etc for the tables and cells) in with the smaller real text (something in Arial finally).

With a lot of swearing, hacking and tweaking even resorting to Frontpage (OMG) and forget about validation, that was way too far gone I got a working site up and running. The thing was although the client was delighted and the site did perform very well for search I was never truly happy with it - the knowledge of what lurked below the surface had me waking in the night in a cold sweat...

So I went right back to the start, as a personal project and to teach myself more about css, and began again.

Thanks to awesome blogs and sites like CSS Tricks and a lot of Googling, Stumbling I began to figure out ways of achieving a fully css styled version of the site. I had to have a couple of chats with the owners to make sure they were happy that a couple of fonts might change but that generally it would look the same on the outside albeit certain wobbly areas would be a lot cleaner. The magic would be hidden away and unknown to all but web geeks like myself viewing source and search engine spiders.

There is also a bit of .php going on, using includes for all the menus then having to figure a way of assigning a 'current' class to the relevant link to show it as the currently viewed page. Easy enough with a menu on each page - just assign the class of the link for that page as current. Not so easy when the menus are just included from a single external file.

Thanks to this tutorial for that problem solved.

I have learned so much from this experience, I've actually gone back over some other sites I did a while ago and re-vamped them too.

The finished results are cleaner, faster loading, W3C valid and well, I can just look at them and smile finally.

How To Change Your Hotmail Password

It's been reported that thousands of Hotmail passwords have been leaked online supposedly as a result of a recent phishing attack.

If you think even for a second that your Hotmail has been compromised then you need to reset your password right away! Delay now and a hacker could get into your Hotmail and change your password, leaving you unable to access it and even worse, allow all your friends, family and contacts email addresses to be accessed by the hacker.

It takes 4 simple steps and less than a minute to change your Hotmail password, here's how:

1) Sign in to your Hotmail account.

2) Look across to the top, right hand corner of the Hotmail page. (see screen shot below)

Click on View your account

3) About half way down the middle of the page you'll see Password reset information. (see below)

Click the "Change" link

4) Enter your existing password in the top box then add your new password in the box below. A strength indicator will tell you how strong your password security is. Confirm your new password in the third box and click Save. (see below)

Enter your Old (current) password (top red arrow), then your new password below (blue arrow), confirm your new password (2nd blue arrow) then click Save... all done!

Easy :O)

RGBa Transparency Firefox v IE

Once again it's thumbs down for IE v(insert any version here)

After reading a very good post on the as always excellent css tricks by Chris Coyier I got into the really cool RGBa transparency CSS feature. A little something that had passed me by until I stumbled upon Chris's article. I've been twitting about with .png etc for a while now but this just is really cool.

If you look at the piccy up top you'll see the partially transparent hover effect working on a nav menu for a website re-vamp I'm working on.

Check out the rgba bit below, it's that 0.25 bit that does the magic and I love it!

#navMain li a:hover {
color: #778866;
background-color: rgba(187, 187, 153, 0.25);
}

I could have included a line of code for the background to change colour using a regular solid as a drop back for IE but I'm getting to the point these days were I'm thinking F**k IE!

Let it's die hard core of users miss out on some really nice touches and details in modern websites. At the end of the day, as long as the site remains usable, F**k it!

I know it isn't a big deal in the scope of things but good grief, when is IE ever going to catch up with browsers like Firefox for standards? This has been written time and time again but a company like Microsoft really should be booking their ideas up and trying to really out do the other browsers, rather than just say they are.

Rounded corners... without farting about with a load of markup, hacks and graphics - another area that's is incredibly easy to implement yet isn't supported by IE... why?

Come on Microsoft, book up or frack off!

Realtime Affiliate Marketing On Twitter

Ok ok, I'll hold my hands up. I've kept pretty clear of Twitter since it came out as I didn't really see the point or more to the point didn't see any benefits of using it.

Twitter has grown up a bit since I last tweeted and the other day I got an email out of the blue from Dean Hunt who I have exchanged a few emails and ideas back and forth with in the past.

The mail got me into looking at a relatively new phenomenum phemonimum phanimonium thing with regard to promoting affiliated products or indeed your own products and services to people in the here and now who are looking for exactly what you have to offer.

Using traditional search engines is great for finding things but due to the complexities and often time involved in search engine ranking it's often easy to find out dated things, albeit quickly.

Realtime Affiliate Marketing or as I prefer to call it, Harold - is the process of using certain techniques to find recent tweets from people looking for what you have to offer.

If you sell or promote let's say an AdSense Help eBook :) you could go to http://search.twitter.com/ and enter a search for AdSense Help eBook however you'd be swamped with all of the tweets that mention any of the words AdSense, Help and eBook. We want search results that show tweets featuring all three words... together.

Introducing the twitter search quotes operators aka lefty and righty " " <-- that's them.

Ok, so now search again using lefty and righty like so "AdSense Help eBook"

Not so many results to sift through however we're not there yet. That search would bring up any tweets including those from people selling or promoting their own AdSense Help eBook. Possibly useful if you wanted to check out competition however so don't dismiss it.

To find people who want our product we need to add another search term in, what about if we searched using "I need" "AdSense Help eBook"...

or "I need" "Adsense help"... etc etc

To help you in your trials, Twitter kindly provide a list of all their useful Twitter search operators

Have a go, you can do it with zero followers and it's got to be better than spending months building followers and blindly tweeting all day on the off chance one of your followers buys something.

Now please buy my fracking AdSense Help eBook :O)

10 ish Top Internet Marketing Tips

Horrible, red headline in bold Times New Roman, maybe Georgia if the ability to alter the font is present in marketers repertoire...

Learn how I make a pile of cash by conning people who are just trying to make a realistic income online.

Dear Friend <-- urghh Cringe!

1) Find a product to promote -> link to Clickbank

1b) Loosely suggest some techniques to find a niche market without giving any real advice...

2) Photoshopped Clickbank earnings report pic - show $1,967.77 per day like this:

Why say $2000 a day when $1967.77 is so much more realistic...

3) Build your opt in list - state how vital this is without giving any advice how.

4) Set up a Google AdWords campaign and again give no advice but offer Opt In - via a really non-naff float in java pop over box - for your FREE report on how to do nothing but buy a load more useless crap to make you no money.

5) Emphasize how clever you are

• with
• some
• bullet
• points
• possibly
• made to look like ticks...

6) Then show a stock photo of a Ferrari and hope the poor frackin' sod reading your crap is so caught up in the hype they'll fall for it, buy it but be too embarrassed to demand a refund.

7) At this point bring in the series of phoney/JV testimonials and tell the reader how frackin' stupid they are to have not clicked BUY yet.

8) Offer some worthless FREE bonuses, worthless because you're now giving them away as they didn't sell in the first place...

9) Use some crappy little javascript to display a countdown to your limited time offer... 3... 2... 1... Oh look the price is still the same.... 3.. 2... 1... and again.

10) BUY ME OR A KITTEN WILL DIE button...

Easy, make millions every second on autopilot without getting out of bed, turn your PC into a cash machine on auto-pilot yawn crap BS!!!!

Wake UP!

Frack the gurus, they're full of sh*t!

Real world... write about something you know about, add some Google AdSense, other people will be interested in your interests, earn a few pounds/dollars/etc... don't fall for the cack, these GURUS lie their asses off to make quick bucks from people.

BTW if you want to know how to make the most from AdSense, buy my eBook - there's no BS in it just useful stuff - you decide! AdSense Actuality

OOps I nearly forgot the sales clincher... the real signature...

Best Keywords? Google Will Show You Them

Dear Internet Marketer <--- OMG! Don't you hate that? no more

Ever want to know what kind of volume of results you might get against any particular search keyword or phrase?..

Google has kindly produced a very useful free keyword tool but what about this... now they even help you with their basic search. Type in a keyword and you'll see a drop down of suggestions.... GREAT!

Looking above you might have wanted to write a blog or article about lighting a fire but instead go for lighting farts... much more response :O)

Ok, not so great if you're Gordon Brown...

POLITICS FAIL