That WEBSITE Designer

Whatever your skills, whatever your interests, everyone has the ability to be creative in their work. However, we can often lose our motivation and drive to create, making it difficult to stay focused on a particular work plan or project, especially in web design. So what is the best method for staying motivated?

The key to maintaining your own motivation to be creative is actually a long term effort. Starting out can be tough, and in most cases the most difficult part. But with the right methods and consistency you will be able to reach a point where staying motivated is easy. It is a simple case of knowing when to make the right choices at the right times.

Obviously everyone is unique and each of you will have your own methods and actions into being creative. But here is the chance to read something that offers some possible methods and solutions when getting motivated and staying motivated.

The main things to take into consideration are:

Set goals

• You will find it is a lot easier to stay motivated when you feel like you’ve reached a target. Give yourself something to achieve and break the work load down. If it is a large website project you are working on, set yourself mini goals so you are reaching targets every few hours or days rather than spending weeks trying to get the lot done.

Small bite-sized objectives

• As mentioned briefly above, set yourself up for more success than failure by being realistic in goal setting and come up with small, bite-sized tasks to start with. As you complete more tasks, start making your goals more ambitious.

Build a creative workstation

• Whether you design websites at your desk, in a dark room or a home office, you need to assign a place to yourself where you can be creative. Once you’ve decided on that place, use it! Each creative task and success you achieve in your ‘creative workstation’, will slowly train your mind to be creative within it. When I first set up my creative workstation it took me about 3 months for it to click in my mind that it was actually my workstation but as soon as I enter now, I can focus my mind that I’m ready to work.

Walk away, but don’t quit!

• Whatever you do, you must always remember to never give up on a website or problem. Put them to one side for a while but always come back it later on, even if it means coming up with a theory for solving the problem. These problems build confidence and develop a nice portfolio.

Find your creative time zone

• Just like your body’s sleeping and eating times, there is also a best time when your body can be most creative. For me, the best time to be creative used to be late at night, now-a-days it’s usually between midday and late evening. Although I do have a creative burst where I get most work done after 9pm. Your main objective is find out when you are at your most creative side and start using that time to your advantage.

Using the right tools

• When being creative designing websites you need to ensure that you are using the right tools for the job. The ‘right tools’ doesn’t necessarily mean the best tools but being creative can be difficult enough, therefore, the idea is to make the job / project as easy as possible. For example, my best choice design software has got to be ‘Photoshop’, you may make this more difficult by trying to use ‘mspaint’ to come up with some amazing graphics. It’s something you just don’t do!

Following progress

• One of the key points in being creative is to follow your own progress. As mentioned in step 1; the main objective is to break the task down into smaller parts. Therefore, after a few weeks working on a project look back and see how far you’ve come. If you don’t stop every so often to see where you were a couple of months ago, and where you are now – do it! You might just surprise yourself on how much progress you’ve made and how your creativity has grown.

Get out of the house

• This may seem a bit like the step where you walk away from your work and come back to it later, but there is a fine line between setting aside some work and actually taking a break from your workstation. Whilst a creative workstation can often be the best practice, it sometimes helps to go somewhere different to work. It can provide a different level of ideas and influence your creativity and work.

Work through it

• You may think that it’s pointless trying to force yourself to be creative when you’re ‘not in the mood’ but often it can work in your favour. It may feel difficult to start with but as you gain momentum you’ll find your motivation returns almost every time! After all, you have nothing to lose; you get the job done and you’re still producing quality work / websites. It may not seem like they are of good quality but you may still be working the same as you usually do, you’re just in the wrong state of mind to realise.

Cheap Web Design UK

Articles on Designing a Website

There is no doubt that website redesign can be necessary for anyone. Here, we will take a much closer look at some of the things which you should be sure to take into consideration when you decide to have your website redesigned. Read on to learn more about this, as well as why website redesigning may be of importance to your website.

Who is it the Most Suitable For?

There is no doubt that a website redesign can be suitable for just about anybody. It is probably the most suitable for a company or business that is looking to improve their success. It is also suitable for a company that is looking to get the best results out of website promotion or website optimization. Of course, if you just have a website which can use some readjustments, considering a new website design can be a very good choice for you.

Why is the Best Website Designing Important?

There are a number of different reasons why making sure your website experiences the best website designing can be very important to its overall success. The reasons are as follows:

* It can improve your websites overall appeal to anyone, through some of the best website graphics and styles.
* Website promotion can be a whole lot more effective, due to the new appeal of your website.
* It can help you pick out some of the best wording for your website, in order to make sure that your website optimization is top notch.

Why Can Website Redesigning Be Important For a Company?

Although you may have heard that it is true before, chances are that you may not know why a new website design can be very important for a company website. Well, for a number of different reasons.

* When people can easily understand how to use a website, they will be a whole lot more likely to use a service.
* The overall appeal, as well as how professional your company’s website looks can be a huge determining factor as to how successful your company may be.

Know What You Want to Improve About Your Website

One of the main keys to getting the best website redesigning is knowing what it is that you want to improve about your current website. For example, do you want to get rid of those lousy graphics and have a graphic design company replace them with their professional graphic services? Or do you want to make sure that everything that it is on your website sounds professional enough? No matter what the case, it is important to have a good idea of what you would like to improve beforehand.

Know What You Want to Keep About Your Website

One of the main keys to getting the most through website designing is knowing what your website’s strengths are. For example, do you like the way that everything is worded, but you simply do not like the way that it is laid out? If this is the case, all you will need is a new layout. Or perhaps you just want to make your website easier to understand. No matter what it is, you should have a good idea of what it is that you like about your website as it is right now.

Have Ideas in Mind

Having the right ideas in mind can be very important for you. It can make the entire process of redesigning your website go a whole lot smoother. Chances are that you will also probably have a much better chance of getting what you are looking for if you have some ideas of what you want beforehand. Otherwise, it will be completely left up to your website designer. It is safe to say that; overall, brainstorming can be very helpful to anyone.

Know How Well it Grabs Attention

One of the main keys to having the ultimate website promotion, as well as the ultimate website optimization, is making sure that your website grabs attention. Chances are that if the design of your website is boring, people will not become overly interested. However, if you make your website interesting and very stylish, chances are that you will begin to see much3 better results.

If you do not know whether or not your website grabs attention right now, you should make sure that you ask several people what they think about your website’s appearance. If they like it, chances you will not need to change much but if they do not like it, you could end up needing a complete website redesign.

Understand The Purpose of Your Website

The most important thing about having the most effective and well designed website may be understand what the purpose of the website is. For example, if it is intended to advertise a company, you should know that. If it is used to sell your company’s products, you should be able to freely identify that.

Whether these are the purpose of your website or if it is just used to teach others about your personal interests, you should have a good idea of what your website is supposed to do. This can make the website redesign process go a whole lot easier.

Improve the Content on Your Website

There is no doubt that the content of your website is probably the most important thing. It can completely determine how effective your website promotion or website optimization will be. Not only do you want to make sure that the content on your website flows, but you also want to make sure that the content on your website also sounds credible. This is especially important if you have a company website, in order to ensure the sale of your products or services.

Hire The Best Website Redesigners

Although anyone can redesign your website for you if you pay them to, not everybody will be able to do the same job. It is important to make sure that you hire the best people to transform your website through website redesigning. In order to find the right company, it is important to find people who are experienced in website designing, and who will also cater to your needs.

Although you may find a website redesign company who will offer you cheap services, the most important thing is quality.

Quality will determine the complete success of your company, or overall effectiveness of your website.

Rajesh V. Tavakari, Senior SEO of Website Promotion & Ranking-Services. Offering affordable Website Submission Services and Website Designing Services for higher ranking since 1998. You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice, author name and URL remain intact.

Articles Website Design

There are many conflicting theories about color and layout of a website, however I would like to list a few rules that will help you improve your website visitor experiences.

I have seen literally hundreds of landing pages and websites that have great sales copy, are promoting quality products, and have a lot of potential to be a great, but the page looks horrible. Today we are going to focus on the readability and layout of a website.

The purpose of a landing page or website is to get your visitors to read what you have to say. Whether you’re selling products and services, or providing useful information, you need to be able to effectively communicate with your visitors for them to take the action you desire. That action could be clicking on a link, signing up for a newsletter, or purchasing a product. The size and color of your text play a huge part in communicating your message to your visitors. Having Black Text, on a white background is THE easiest form of text to read.

Using color schemes that clash, or cause the text to be difficult to read will many times cause your visitors to leave your page immediately. If you want to use a different color background or text color, make sure that readability is not negatively affected. Below are a few rules that will help you improve your website.

1. Do not use dark text with a dark background. Dark text on dark background makes it hard to distinguish text from the background color. Thus making your eyes have to focus harder.

2. Do not use text colors that clash with background color. White text on a black background has a “glowing” like affect that makes your text hard to read. Red on blue also creates a negative glowing affect.

3. Do not use large text for your main sales copy or body paragraphs. It is ok to use larger text for links and headlines, but the main text of your page should be Arial Size 2 (12pt). Arial Size 2 is the internet standard.

4. Do not waste the space at the top of the page with unnecessary graphics, flash, or banners that have no purpose. Simply listing the name of your website, or domain name is a very poor use of this prime real estate space. The first fold of your website is the most important space that you have because it is the section of the page that is visible as soon as your page loads. Do not take up this space with unnecessary graphics, flash, or banners. A Strong headline that states the benefit of your product or service is always better than a banner that has no purpose.

If you are struggling with site design or if its taking too much of your time, here’s some tools that can greatly help you.

Site Rubix: Not free but well worth the investment. Cost less than most website builders. This website builder enables you to create professional looking websites within 5 minutes, all without any Html knowledge.

DreamWeaver: This software is allows you to build visually appealing websites without Html skills, but may take you awhile to get past the learning curve that the software presents. DreamWeaver is one of the more popular but expensive website builders.

Nvu: It’s free, but will take you longer to make a website and generally the site will not look as professional.

Remember, your website serves a purpose, whatever that purpose is make sure your visitors can easily read and understand message. I hope the tips provided above assist you in creating a professional looking website that you can take pride in.

Caleb Caldwell is a full time Internet marketer and web designer. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can quickly and easily build a professional website with no Html skills, then be sure you goto http://www.siterubixone.com for more info.

Website Design Tips

Here’s a list of tips and tricks to consult at two a.m. when you’re trying to put your site to bed and that d*mn script just won’t work.

• Make a note of the error message, and type it in Google. Remove your unique paths and file names. Someone else has had the same problem, and some nice person will have posted a solution.
• If it’s a server error, repeat what caused the error. Go quickly to the error log on your web hosting control panel. Any clues there?
• Read the README file. Have it open on-screen when you’re setting up the script.
• Use a text editor like Wordpad or Notepad to edit scripts. Simply put, your editor should not change anything beyond the bare text that you type on screen. Microsoft Word will alter your formatting, with unhappy consequences.
• Avoid wrapping lines. Check that your editor is not set to do this.
• Avoid putting characters like ” , ‘ ; in if you don’t know what you’re doing.The server may read these as programming code. Apostrophes and other non-alphabet characters can be ‘escaped’ out of a script by putting a backward slash in front of them.
• Get the paths to required files correct in the script itself and in the html files involved. Telnet to your site, and use the pwd command: ‘pwd somename’ (without the apostrophes) to find where directories and programs are on your server.
• Windows (MS-DOS) may insert carriage returns which cause errors in Unix. In Perl, You need to have a line break after #!/usr/bin/perl. It appears to be there, but you may have to insert it manually via Telnet. Otherwise you may get an error.
• Permissions: Set permissions of scripts to 705 (e.g. ‘CHMOD 705 yourscript.cgi’ in a telnet session). CHMOD 606 for text files the script may need to read or write to. CHMOD 707 any file or sub-directory the script author asks you to. The rest can usually be left at the default 644.(The use of 0 here in permissions is to stop people in the same ‘group’ as you peeking at your files).
• Upload scripts in ASCII mode only, or you’ll get errors in them (the text will be shifted around if you upload in Binary).FTP files with the extensions .tar.gz, .zip, and image files, in BINARY mode only.
• Check whether you’ve put a trailing forward-slash where you’re not supposed to, or not inserted one when you’re supposed to!
• Email addresses in a script may need a backward-slash before the @ to work.
• Don’t change too many things at once. Do the absolute minimum to get the script working, then change one thing at a time.
• If you are changing the HTML code of a form page that posts to the script: Clear your browser’s cache. You may still be loading an old version of your page, with tags that your script now won’t recognise.Your ISP may also be using its cache of your web page. Try connecting via another ISP, or use a proxy service like http://www.Anonymouse.ws to view your page.
• The error ‘document contains no data’ in your browser usually means a path or a file name is wrong. It can also mean the file you’re calling is 0 bytes in size.
• Don’t try setting scripts up when you’re tired. If you’ve been working for hours, take a break, or go to bed!
• It’s a fact that, after all this, your script might have a bug. Check any discussion boards at the vendor’s website, or general webmaster forums, to see if this is a common problem. Report exactly what problems you’re having, and your server set-up, to the programmers. It’s unlikely you’re the first person to have it.

T. O Donnell http://www.tigertom.org.uk is a webmaster currently developing a meta search engine in London, UK.
More Articles on Website Design

Most people make the mistake of building an initial web presence before they’ve really thought it through. That mistake then tends to linger because the established website can’t easily be changed to accommodate the changes deemed necessary after the fact. In fact, most people end up making the problem worse by building out an ineffective website rather than starting from scratch.

An effective website needs to be well thought out before construction begins. You really have to take some time with a pad of paper and start brainstorming the various elements and you need on the website and how they contribute to your business. Obviously, these elements will be different for every business but there are a few things everybody should do before they begin building out their website.

The underlying moniker for today’s internet is to “go an inch wide and a mile deep”. That means you should focus your website on a narrow topic and then build a huge presence around that one narrow topic. Not only will this help your ranking with search engines but it will help your website visitors as well.

When someone visits your website, they need to understand what your website offers and they need to understand it quickly. You’ve only got a few seconds to make that impression and a narrow focused website has a much better chance of establishing an identity in the minds of visitors and leaving them with a clear understanding of what you do.

Your website should have a 15 to 25-word positioning statement right across the homepage that concisely describes what you do in plain English. This positioning statement should be keyword-rich and should be included in your meta tags as well. In fact, that positioning statement along with a list of keywords should be close at hand whenever you add anything to your site.

Your list of keywords might be the most important resource when building your website but few people ever make such a list. Before you even begin, you should compile this list and narrow it down to a few primary keywords. You can quickly get your list together by stealing the meta tags from competitor sites and entering them into the Overture keyword selector tool, the Google keyword tool or WordTracker.com. Between those three, you’ll quickly get a list of effective and targeted keywords for your site.

Another critical prerequisite for building your site is to map out your menu of products or services ahead of time. Before you even begin, you need to know what you’re selling and all the different packages visitors can choose from. And don’t make the mistake of making all your products or services inexpensive. It’s always good to have a wide variety of price points on your website because it allows visitors to see an impressive breadth of products right away, establishing your credibility within the field.

A client is building a website around wine jelly. Yes, you read it right. He sells wine jelly and apparently, it’s excellent. And the narrow focus is ideal for today’s internet. But his menu of products was going to top out around $25. That was going to be the most expensive product. I disagree. He needs to have a much wider price range on his website and I suggested he include a once-annual 3-day retreat in Napa County including a tour of a particular winery, workshops on making wine jelly, gourmet meals including the jelly and a gift basket to take home.

The package could cost $2995 and would add a whole new dimension to his business. In reality, the package may never be purchased but its existence would show your visitors that a parallel world exists and this wine jelly is at the center of it. It adds dimension to the business. It adds credibility. Think about your menu of products before you build your website and then design the site consistent with the most expensive item.

There are millions of websites out there. Making yours stand out can be difficult but a more effective website has far greater odds of finding an audience than one less focused or poorly designed. Take some time on the front end and ensure you have it well planned out before you spend time or money on actual construction.

Tactical Execution with Patrick Schwerdtfeger (http://www.tacticalexecution.com) is a strategic company focused on growth marketing and program implementation across business markets.

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