The sites purpose is to allow people to write about what they ‘spot’. Whether they are walking through a park and see a squirrel or witness a major political event, i-Spotted allows people to inform the world of their encounters.

The site is live now and will gradually be getting better, with comments being added and various other features.

So spread the word and lets see what happens!

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This is my first blog since early September. I have had a lot going on with University and website design and have been unable to post. This made me think, how often should I post a new blog entry?

I wanted to be able to post entries on a regular basis. The only problem with this was that I saturated all of my resources early on, making it much harder to keep up with my schedule of a new entry every 1 – 2 days.

How did it affect my traffic?

Whenever I write a new blog entry, I always try and submit the article to around 8 – 10 social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Delicious and Technorati. It helps to get backlinks (of a low quality but nevertheless a backlink) and also helps to drive traffic to your site. I have had great success with DZone where one day an article hit rank 2 in Google’s SERPs and drove around 500 unique users to my site in the space of 10 hours.

On a normal day where I wrote an article, posted a few comments on blogs and forums, I would receive around 100 unique visitors per day. Personally, I think that is an acceptable level of traffic for my first few months of work. However, as soon as I stopped writing articles for over 2 weeks (my current situation), the traffic would drop down to around 30 – 40 visitors per day.

So how often should you actually write a new article?

I think the key to this is to not saturate your resources. Don’t go out and write 5 articles in the space of 3 days if you then have no more articles to write. I am now going to TRY and write 2 – 3 articles per week, as well as keeping a journal of what other articles I could write in future.

You may be sat there writing one article and suddenly think of a great name for another. Note it down and write the article another day.

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10) Blogged – Chatter

Similar to Twitter, the chatter page on Blogged allows anyone who is following you to see what you are “chatting” about. Great for those who are following you, not so great if this is a low number! I prefer Twitter just because of how well known it is.

9) FriendFeed

Another one like Twitter, FriendFeed displays any messages you post to your “friends”. As I said before, I do prefer Twitter for the larger audience and the use of Trending topics but in saying that, I haven’t had change to use FriendFeed that much.

8) Twitter

Twitter is a great place to announce any new blog posts. Whoever is following you can see the tweet and is then able to click on the link. The only problem here is getting people to follow you. In order to announce your article, you have to actually have people following you. I try to use Twitter on a regular basis for new and old articles – while trying not to spam and annoy those following me! The trending topics in Twitter are good to use because the tweet is published to a large audience.

7) Stumbleupon

This site has been built based around a great idea. Articles are randomly (Or so I believe) chosen and displayed to the user. This gives your article chance of appearing to a great variety of users. However, with the number of articles on there, the probability is low. Nevertheless, still submit!

6) Delicious Bookmarks

Delicious is a site where you can add your favorite bookmarks. It is a great way to share your articles and anything that you find interesting. Delicious allows you to see how many others have bookmarked the same address. Similarly, you can see who has bookmarked the site.

5) Propeller

Similar to Digg and other article sites, Propeller allows the visitors to decide which articles get more publicity. The user can either “prop it” or “drop it” where “propping it” will raise it’s position and “dropping it” will lower it’s position. From looking at the home page, you only need between 10 and 20 “props” to appear on the popular stories. This can be great for traffic and for gaining subscribers to your blog.

4) Reddit

With a Google PageRank of 8, Reddit is a great site to submit your articles to. Popular articles will appear high on the home page while a list of categories allows the user to browse articles relating to their interests. The submission of an article is extremely easy with Reddit and I have never had a problem with them. I highly recommend submitting here.

3) Technorati

Technorati has a PageRank of 9 and is a great site to submit your blog to. You can see straight away from the Home Page that the intention of the site is to discuss what people are saying in their blogs. Articles that are submitted to Technorati will appear more often if they get more attention. Therefore you need to get some visitors to begin with in order to get more visitors – as usual. I have always submitted to this site and will continue to do so.

2) Digg

I am sure everyone knows what Digg is. An extremely popular site to submit articles to. Article sare ranked on whether people “digg it” or dislike it. Recently, Digg have changed their position on links so that they are “no follow”. Not a problem if you are not after “site juice”, the traffic you receive will still remain the same.

1) Dzone

My favorite at the moment is Dzone. Dzone advertises itself as “fresh links for developers” which is great for my blog because it is website-development related. I have received a lot of traffic from Dzone and it always appears on my top list of referrers. I recommened a submission to this site!

Now, this is not a difinitive list. This is my list. I will submit to these 10 submission sites – and more – once I have written an article (as with this one!). A great way to do it if you are using WordPress is to use a simple plugin. The one I use is “Add to any” which places a button at the bottom of my articles. I simply click which site I wish to submit to and the plugin does most of the hard work.

I hope you found this useful. Do let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Regards

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It acts as the “splash page” for any incoming visitors or potential customers. The first page they see cannot be boring or plain, it has to stand out. Information has to be easily accessible and not 3 – 5 clicks away.

So to try and retain those visitors and lower your bounce rate, I’ve suggested a few things that you might like to include in your homepage!

5) Contact Details

Someone may have simply typed your name into Google when trying to find a phone number or email address. Why not make it easy for them to get it?

A simple telephone number, email address and actual address in the footer of the page can help. It may increase the bounce rate (which you don’t want) but it will increase the contact you receive!

4) Latest <Insert Here> and Updates

Update your content! Search engines love it. On every site I create, I always try and include a dynamic element on the homepage. Here is a small list of suggestions:

• Latest News
  Just a snippet of the latest news article. Invites your visitor to learn more about the company and browse your site.
• Latest Update
  Enables your visitor to learn what you are currently involved in.
• Latest Blog Entry
  Great for keeping the updates content-relative. Your blog will be relevant to your site and so displaying the latest blog entry opens up a whole new area for the user to dive into.
• Rotated Feedback
  Show the visitor how good you are! Using a rotated feedback system can show your visitor why people have chosen you in the past (Just don’t lie!)
• Tip of the day!
  If the genre of website allows this, do it. Visitors will like the suggestion and it will be encourage them to read more.
• Latest Vacancy (If applicable)
  If your company has vacancies, the homepage is a great place to advertise.
• Latest <Insert> For Sale
  If you’re selling or hiring something, let the visitors know. Once they know that you have 1 item for sale, they will want to see other things for sale in case there is a bargain to be had!

This list isn’t definitive but is just an idea of what can be included.

3) Links (Depth 2- 3)

Links on your hompage are a necessity. Without links, the user is stuck and will more than likely leave, something that you obviously do not want! Links help by guiding your visitor to other pages of your site, areas they may not know about.

Do not confuse these links with the main navigation links. The depth of these links can range from 2 – 3, meaning to get there without using this link, the user would have to click 2 – 3 other links.

For example, you have posted an article in your blog about the “Top 10 ways to grow cabbages”. For the user to get to this article, they would have to either:

Click Blog -> Scroll and Click the article
or
Click Blog -> Click Category -> Click article

Wouldn’t it be easier if the user could click once and be straight there?

Of course, this cannot be the case for every article or page you have but it is a good technique to use to a certain limit. Some suggestions are:

• Links to popular articles
• Links to new articles
• Links to categories

Once again – this list is by no means definitive, just suggestions.

2) Relevant Content

Your homepage is going to get crawled by all of the search engine bots out there. You need to let these bots know that the content of your site is relevant and up to date.

Your current keywords need to have a high density within the page (I tend to use 3-8% as a guideline). Make sure they are placed well and not stuffed. Steer clear of black-hat methods like hiding keywords and stuffing, this will only work against you.

A good and relatively easy way of doing this is explaining to the visitor who you are and what you do. The keywords you have chosen are bound to pop up and with some careful consideration, can appear more often!

A good keyword density calculator can be found at www.seochat.com.

1) Links (Depth of 1)

Similar to the previous listing, but what I believe to be the most important part of a homepage are the first level links.

These are links that link to other main pages within your site. For example:

• About Us
• Contact Us
• For Sale
• Our Services
• Blog
• Other relative pages

These links should allow your visitor to access the other main sections of your website. They need to be visible and easy to find. What is the use of having a set of important links if the user cannot see them or know that they can click on them?

I find myself using navigation bars a lot of the time. They are simple to create, look good and do their job to a high level. They appear central and high in the page, just below the company name or banner. You don’t always have to use navigation bars.

There are hundreds of ways to link to other pages…

You could incorporate the links into your banner…
You could animate them to make them stand out…

As long as the links are clear, visible and stand out, your user should have no problem accessing them.

I hope you found this article interesting. There are hundreds of things that could be included on the homepage, this is just a list of the ones I believe are important.

I am sorry I mentioned links twice, but I believe both are important enough to deserve it!

Jack

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Searching for “top website layouts” displayed my blog at about rank 2 in the UK and rank 6 on dot com.

You have NO idea how happy I was – it seemed all of my hard work was paying off.

I decided to leave it and come back later – just to see how many people would actually visit it. Around 6 hours later, it topped at about 350 and then began to slow down – I wondered why?

I checked the Google Search Engine Results again and to my surprise, not even on page 3! My blog post on dzone was there on page 2 but nothing about me. Why was this? From everything to nothing in about 5 hours? It slightly annoyed me but also put me in the mood to find out why – back to Google!

What I searched for…

“disappeared out of google search engine results”

and here’s what I found…

As we all know, Google crawls our websites and indexes the pages that we provide. We also know how big Google actually is and how many sites it has to index. This means that while Google crawls and indexes site, it cannot maintain a single index that is referenced when a user searches.

This explains why my site appeared for so long but then disappeared later. The server that was dealing with my requests may have had an “older” version of the index and therefore was not supplying me with the results I wanted.

I got this answer from a post found here: Google Answers.

is that it…?

Well we know that Google like to keep things under-wraps. This makes me think, are Google actually telling the truth? It makes perfect sense what is being said, but could it be wrong?

I decided to do a bit more searching and find out what other people thought.

I had read a post the other day regarding the so-called “Google Sandbox”. (The blog can be found here: Blog Business World)

I didn’t really know what was meant by the Sandbox effect (In general I do but not in Google Terms) so it was time to visit my good old friend Wikipedia.

The Sandbox Effect – Explains that the Sandbox is used for temporarily placing new domains at the top of the results page and to counter some techniques used by SEOs when promoting new sites;

…placing them into what is referred to as its “sandbox”, in an effort to counter the ways that search engine optimizers attempt to manipulate Google’s page ranking to bring sites to the top, by creating lots of inbound links to a new web site from other web sites that they own before creating that web site…

It seems that there are multiple answers out there for why Google may drop new sites in and out of the Search Engine Results. Personally, I hope it is the earlier of the two because I will hopefully be back to my previous position (plus or minus a few places depending on other indexed sites).

Has anyone else found the same problem? Let me know – It would be great to hear of other peoples experiences.

Jack

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Tools that can be used in Linux when designing Websites

I moved over from Windows at the beginning of my University life and I haven’t moved back. Ubuntu has everything that I need…

- Emails are read online at Gmail
- Music is Streamed from a radio station
- Open office is used to text documents
- Firefox for web browsing
- VLC for media

There’s nothing else that I really need to do…or is there?

What about designing websites – something that I have taken a great interest in lately and even begun part-time work around.
So – to help some people out there who may be thinking of switching over to Linux, I’ve compiled a list of programs that can help on your day-to-day design work.

PHP – CSS – HTML Editor

After doing a lot of Java Coding for a University Project and using the Netbeans IDE, I decided to stick with Netbeans and do all of my PHP/CSS/HTML coding with it. I haven’t looked back since.

Netbeans is a great development environment and can be used for a wide variety of programming languages. It has a built in FTP Client, meaning files can be right clicked and uploaded. There is no need to save, locate the file, move the file over to the server as Netbeans does this for you.

As Netbeans is coded in Java, it can be run on virtually any platform, meaning it can run on Linux (as it is doing now on my desktop!).

Although this is an advantage, it can also cause a few minor problems when running Netbeans. I have found that on the odd occasion it will crash, nothing serious but rather annoying.

Graphics Design

This is there area where a Windows or Mac machine may prevail over one running a Linux platform. The program that can be used for Graphics Design in Linux, GIMP, don’t get me wrong – is a great program, but not on the same levels as Photoshop. I have used GIMP to design the whole of my portfolio, however, after searching the web for tutorials, I have found myself looking to get photoshop. Photoshop performs better on Windows machines (you can use WINE on Linux but I don’t) meaning the options are limited for those of us running Linux.

However, there is an alternative. A Virtual Machine. If you have a copy of Photoshop, why not get a Virtual Machine setup and run it on there? (As long as you haven’t installed it anywhere else before – licensing reasons!) I use a Virtual Machine for a lot of work – including checking my websites work in Internet Explorer.

I use VMWare when running my Virtual Machines and as long as your computer has enough RAM to set asside and a decent processor, the VM should run fine. If you want any help setting this up – don’t be afraid to ask.

FTP Client

Having the ability to use an FTP Client when designing websites is essential. Moving images or files over to the web server is a necessity and has to be done quite often. Having a quick FTP Client that can establish a strong connection is a must. In Linux I tend to use the file manager (In my case, Nautilus). It allows me to type the address in “ftp://<servername>” and then I am prompted for a username and password.

The client is quite quick the connection only seems to drop if I don’t touch it for a couple of hours.

Whistle while you work…

I like to do something while I design websites. Whether it be browse my favorite forum, listen to Galaxy 105 or watch some tv shows or films. Either way, the ability is still there in Linux!

VLC Media Player can be used for music and videos. I tend to use it to watch films and tv shows.

I can stream my favorite radio station online using Firefox.

Let me know if you disagree with any. I would like to know what people think about the programs I’ve listed. It may help me with my work!

Jack

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The Cost Per Click of adverts on the first page is as follows:

“website design” costs £15 per click
“web site design” costs £10 per click
“web site designers” costs £10 per click
“web site developers” cost £11 per click

Now to me, that is a A LOT of money. Out of the total clicks you get in say, one day, how many people are actually going to want you to design their website?

This is what set me about looking for alternative ways to advertise my abilities and so I decided to start my blog.

I had read a lot about blogs and how they can attract attention to your work. As long as I kept my blog on topic, Google would be happy and my rankings and backlinks would gradually increase.

But what other ways are there to advertise? Here’s a few that I think are worth it…

• Forums
  I am not sure how many of you will agree with me on this one, but if you use a forum on a regular basis, why not put a link to your portfolio in your signature? You are getting free backlinks from what is hopefully a respectable forum.
  Even if you don’t use a forum on a regular basis, there is no harm in starting.
• Blog Posting
  Make some friends. Get posting on other peoples blogs. If the posts are not spam and are relevant to the topic, the author will like it. Try not to just post “Thanks, great post”. Engage the author, ask them a question, show that you are actually interested. Who knows, if you do this enough, they might become a friend and link to your site (hopefully where you choose the anchor text!).
• Directory Submission
  An easy way to get your link over the Internet is directory submission. Most of these free directories are around page rank 3 – 4 and although they are not going to bring you massive amounts of traffic, they WILL help!
• Post good – relevant articles – OFTEN!
  Make sure you update your content. Get a blog – post on it daily. It only takes half an hour, do it before you get into your work of after your evening meal. If you do this, you will get good SERPS by Google and the search engine will begin to like you! After you’ve written the article, submit it to these:

  - Digg
  - Stumbleupon
  - Delicious
  - Propeller
  - Twitter (Get tweeting it!)
  - Linkedin
  - Google Bookmarks
  - Reddit
  - Dzone
  I have had quite a lot of traffic come from these sites and it is really worth taking 10 minutes and submitting to them.

Now I know most of these techniques are just SEO techniques but they are a must for advertising any website.

If you do want to pay, however, there are a number of other websites out there:

http://www.buysellads.com

http://www.botw.org

Yahoo Directories
http://www.v7n.com/forums (A lot of people will sell links here)

There are just a few websites that you can pay (sometimes a lot)  and get your advert displayed.

Thanks for reading,

Jack

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At home I normally use a better setup, my home-built quad-core desktop with dual 24″ monitors. (Yes, I did get identical, I had to)

Where would I be without these 2 monitors? The setup is perfect for designing websites. On one screen I can have a maximised Netbeans screen, allowing me to view a large amount of lines of code, while on the other screen I can have a 1920×1200 resolution view of the website I am designing. There is no need to be switching between applications, a simple right click upload on Netbeans means I can drag the mouse over to the other screen, refresh and my changes are there.

One of the other benefits of dual screens comes when using a Virtual Machine. I run Ubuntu on my desktop and so using Internet Explorer is only done (Without WINE) through a Virtual Machine running XP. This means that on my 2nd screen I can run Firefox and Internet explorer, the 2 main browsers I have to consider. There is no more need to run my desktop and my laptop at the same time, I can simply run the Virtual Machine when I need to test the website on IE.

It’s all well me saying that dual monitors are all that – but do they really improve your work rate? Do they actually make you work better?

Microsoft investigated in their article “Two Screens Are Better Than One”, Microsoft found that using multiple screens can increase the users productivity of between 9 and 50%. Not only is it better to have a multiple screens, but it is also cheaper to buy 2 smaller screens rather than buying 1 large screen.

After using multiple screens for a while now, I do not believe it would be possible for me to work well without 2 screens. I may even move on to tri-monitors!

On a site note – they’re great for ‘watching while you’re working’! I can sit in front of my computer, watch my favorite episode of Family Guy while doing my work – what could be better?

Jack

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5) 3 Column – 1 Header (+ Footer?) Fluid

3 Column 1 Header Fluid Layout

This layout allows for a large amount of content to be displayed on each page. Perfect for a website that has a lot to say about itself or advertise. The 2 outer columns have the same width (for example, 25%) and the central column accounts for the remaining percentage. This ensures that it fills the full screen of any resolution the website is viewed on. Great for a variety of users, ones with large screens and also small screens. The reason for me putting this layout so low down in the ranking is because it is fluid. I know users moan about having large screens and website designers not utilizing all the space. However, if the width is kept fixed, the look of the website is the same on all screens.

I hate going to a website and seeing the main column stretch all the screen and few lines of text there are stretch with it.

4) Single Column with Footer

Single Large Column Footer

This layout seems to be widely used for websites that have a gallery that needs to be splashed in front of the users eyes as soon as they hit the site. The size of the single column allows for high detail photographs and images to be displayed to the user. If there are not too many links for the website, maybe it is a single page website that is simply advertising a product, the footer can be used to contain links to smaller pages based around the website.

However, if there is a need for links, they can be hovered over the large images. The reason I put this one lower down in my rankings is due to the lack of usability. There is not much space for content and so designers may find it difficult to get great search engine results.

3) Single Column with Header

Single Column with Header

Very similar to the previous layout, this one replaces the footer with a header. The header can be used for a navigation bar. I am currently in the process of designin a website with a layout similar to this for a windows company. The large column is used to display a set of large photographs with text hovered over the top on a transparent gray background. I especially like this more than the previous due to the use of a header.

Although, this and the previous layout could be combined and the use of a footer and header would allow for important links and second order links.

2) 3 Column, fixed width with header

Fixed Width 3 Column Header

One of my personal favorites is the fixed width, 3 column layout. Similar to one of the previous layouts, this layout allows for a large amount of content to be displayed. However, unlike the earlier 3 column layout, this layout has a fixed width and so should look the same on all browsers.

If the width is chosen correctly, the layout will look great on all resolutions from 1280 to 1920. I would only use this layout though if I had a large amount of content to display. With a low amount of content, the layout would look bare and empty. This is what leads on to my number 1 layout.

1) 2 Column, fixed width with header

2 Columns, fixed width with header

This layout is my favorite out of the set I have listed in this article. It allows for important content to be displayed in the larger column and secondary information to be displayed in the smaller column.

Information that could be included in the larger column ranges from blog posts to site news to latest offers. The smaller column can be used for information that is not important but still relevant. For example, the top 10 blog entries, the most read articles etc. I have used this layout in most of my websites, as you can see from my portfolio and will always consider this layout first before any others.

I hope you find this article interesting. If you agree or disagree with me, please leave me some comments, I look forward to hearing what you think. Also, let me know what you think are some of the best layouts you have used.

Jack

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After reading what others thought should appear in the footer on a page, I thought I would write about what I think should be there.

There are in no particular order.

Second Order Links

Do you have any links that aren’t of enough importance to appear amongst your “main navigation”? If you do, why not place them in the footer? They are acessible from every page and do not intrude on the look of your site. Here’s a few examples of what could be listed.

• About us
• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions
• Postal Address and Country of Origin
• A simple link back to the website designer
• A link to the home page

Blog Links

If your website, like mine does not have the blog as the main page, why not link to a few of the “Top Articles” or the “Recently Viewed Articles”. As long as these articles are relevant, I believe they should help with the keywords and their density on each page. Not only does it help with keywords, but if a user gets to the bottom of your page after not clicking on anything, they may find something of interest amongst the results in the footer. This in turn could decrease the “bounce back” rate of your site as the user is still active and has not left.

Be careful when adding blog links, if the blog entry is not relevant, it could play havock with the keywords on the main page by lowering their density. Why not pick a relevant category and add the ones which have been recently read?

Jobs

I am sure you have all come across websites that offer jobs. If the site has vanacies which do not need to be filled quickly, you could add a small link to the jobs page in the footer. Once a user has finished reading the content of your site they will get to the footer and if the content is good enough and there are jobs available, they will more than likely have a look.

Back to the top

This is something that quite a few websites I have visited have included in their footer. It is simply a link that takes you back to the top of the page. This makes it easier for the user visiting your page to return to the main area of the site where the links reside and hopefully extend their stay.

Feedback

It is always good to know what other people think of your website. A feedback link would allow them to actually tell you what they think. Whether this be a javascript pop up (for those with javascript enabled) or a seperate page. People may not use it often but on the odd occasion they do, you might get some helpful tips.

Well there’s my list. I hope you enjoyed what I had to say.

I look forward to any comments.

Jack

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