Brisbane Web Designer

5 things to remember whenever you add content to the web

dan — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 03:04:05 +0000

I regularly get calls from clients who have updated their websites only to find that the formatting is playing up and they are spending hours trying to get it right.

Here are 5 rules to keep in mind any time you add anything to your website CMS or the web in general.

Never copy and paste directly from Word, if you have content in Word use the “Paste as plain text button” or the “Paste from Word” or just paste it into notepad first then into the site – this will strip all of Word’s terrible code.
If the formatting ever breaks, copy the content out into notepad, turn on the HTML code view and delete all of the code so you have a clean slate. Then go back to normal view and paste the content back from notepad into the normal view. Sometimes code just gets corrupted (often because you have pasted from Word) and it can’t easily be fixed, you just have to start again.
Don’t ever change the font size or colour. It is the job of your website’s stylesheet to manage font sizes. If you find yourself changing them there is something wrong with your template. Either that or you are addicted to using multiple colours and your site will end up looking terrible. You should just change the style – i.e. ‘Heading 1′ ‘Heading 2′ etc. Changing font sizes will often break stuff within a web editor.
Don’t worry too much about how it looks in the editor itself, use it as a guide only and test it in the front end of the site and make sure it looks good there. Sometimes the back-end editors won’t include the same styles that are included on the live website so they should be used as a guide only.
If you get stuck just call your web developer, it will always be easy for them to fix the code via code view.

Happy content creation!

Brisbane Web Designer is a blog by Dan Norris a passionate small business http://awebsitedesigner.com.au">Web design expert from the Gold Coast, Australia. Read this full post here 5 things to remember whenever you add content to the web

Choosing a local web designer

dan — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:41:49 +0000

These days you can hire a web designer from anywhere. Outsourcing has taken off no doubt so why choose a Brisbane web designer?

I still find there are a lot of businesses who want to stay local.

My business is now based on the Gold Coast but I was born and started my web design business in Brisbane and because of the proximity we have maintained a good healthy client base in Brisbane.

My business also works a lot with clients from other cities (and even countries from time to time). And while working remotely works very well for us, it’s not really the same thing as ‘offshoring’ or outsourcing as it’s become known.

We offer a personalised, local, friendly and professional service. We drop everything when our clients need us to and we are a team, not an individual freelancer. For these reasons there are a lot of businesses that are happy to engage us ahead of cheaper contractors but I thought I’d go into a bit more detail in terms of the reasons.

These days the web is increasingly complex. It’s not a case of finding a developer who can code. For your site to work, your provider needs to understand your business and understand your market. Communication is critical and in a lot of cases it helps to be local.

If you are evaluating providers, have a look at past examples of their work. Look at the quality of the design and pay attention to how the site is structured and how it would appeal to the customers of the business. This insight is critical there is no point having a website that is not appealing to your customers, it will do more harm than good.

Ask for references from other local companies who have worked with them if you are unsure whether they are suited to your market. Most local web design companies will have worked with other companies in Brisbane or around Australia and shouldn’t have any problems giving references. We happily give references for any capital city in Australia – well actually maybe not Hobart, don’t think we’ve done any work there (any Hobart companies listening?).

In terms of the technical skills web designers need to know a lot these days. Here’s a sample:

How to develop themes using popular CMS platforms like WordPress or Joomla!
How to configure newsletter subscription forms (critical for building a list of potential customers)
How to encourage engagement through the site
Perhaps setting up videos to engage visitors (videos are exploding right now)
Facebook, Twitter and Google + integration
Ability to develop interactive contents like forms and forums.
Programming with languages like JavaScript and PHP (which are used on pretty much every website these days)
Working with website security.

You may not need all of these things on your site but it’s important for a web designer to have a decent knowledge about things like this and possibly a lot more.

These technical skills are hard to acquire and it’s hard to stay on top of things as things are changing so quickly. Sometimes it’s hard to find someone who isn’t local that has this broad level of skills.

In general to build an effective website you need to have a good process as well. A local Brisbane web designer should have structured procedures for constructing sites that are tailored specifically for the local market.

Local knowledge also helps a lot with the search engines. In Brisbane and around Australia for example there are loads of local directories you can be added to which may not be known by non locals. These can be a great source of backlinks.

Well I might not have convinced you but I have at least outlined some of the reasons why you might consider a local web designer.

8 features of great small business websites

admin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:37:08 +0000

It’s hard when you are setting up your website to know where to focus your efforts. In writing this little ebook I wanted to help small business owners understand the main things that make up a great website. They are mostly simple things and most of them are things that the small business owner themselves can influence or implement entirely themselves.

The book is also supported by our ‘website review checklist’ which allows the business operator to easily measure their site against the 8 features covered in the ebook.

I hope you enjoy the ebooks and if you do then please feel free to share them.

8 features of great small business websites	Website review checklist

Download now	Download now

How to build yourself a free world class website

admin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 07:32:31 +0000

One of the great things about the modern web is small business owners can do more and more themselves. While a lot of business owners are in the habit of updating their sites themselves, when it comes to setting up the site originally it’s still fairly rare to go it alone. What is more rare is small business owners building their own sites that are actually good!

However it’s certainly possible and while there is an oversupply of free ‘website builders’ which only really help business owners build sites that do more harm than good, there are also some great tools available.

While the tools exist however, it seems there isn’t a lot of really straight forward instructions on how to go about it.This is the reason I wrote ‘How to build yourself a free world class website‘. It is designed to help small business owners who want to go it alone, not only build a site but build a world class one.

The ebook is supported by a number of WordPress training videos to provide you with a step by step run-down of exactly what you need to do.

Download now

Free ebook The Website Starter Guide launched

admin — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 06:52:21 +0000

Download now

I wrote the Website Starter Guideto help small business owners who are just getting started and don’t really know where to start.the intention of the ebook is to provide small business owners with what I believe they need to succeed online and that is:

A basic understanding of the fundamental aspects of getting up and running online
Some help in choosing the right company for them to partner with.

Click on the left to download (no registration required) and please feel free to share this ebook if you find it useful.

I would also love you to comment below with any feedback or discussion points on the ebook.