Archive for the “Web Development” Category
 Digital Web Magazine posted a nice article comparing Photoshop to Fireworks through a debate by two groups of designers each supporting one of the programs. Photoshop has always been the industry standard for digital image editing, even though it was primarily made for creating print material, while Fireworks on the other hand was specifically made for creating web friendly graphics. It is possible in theory to do almost everything you do in one of these in the other, so which one should you use?
I have personally been a Fireworks user for years, I had never gotten into Photoshop and Fireworks never gave me a reason to force myself to go and try and learn Photoshop seriously. Fireworks was in fact made just for web design and it does that one thing extremely well. In addition to this, the introduction of CS3 has provided tighter integration between all of Adobe’s Creative Suite, so it is now easier than ever to juggle from one program to the next so you do not need to use Photoshop just because you are working on a project with other people using Photoshop.
I personally think its best for new web designers try using fireworks before photoshop, You would end up never trying photoshop. I’m not sure if you can say the same for photoshop most photoshop users tend to use fireworkws quite often.
What about you guys, do you use Photoshop or Fireworks, and why?
BTW Digg this post please 
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There are plenty of free ways to build an average photoblog, but if you have dreams of creating one that meets your needs and not just the masses, check out Pixelpost 1.7.1. Updated earlier this year with a bunch of new features including an Install Assistant, this MySQL/PHP-based application is a free download and needs only a modicum of technical knowledge and some server space to use.
Everything is tweakable and functionality can be extended with a number of free downloadable add-ons for everything from the ability to use PayPal to let visitors buy photos to adding histograms to images to an Adobe Lightroom exporter. All of them have easy-to-follow instructions for installing them, too.
If you’re not the tweaking type, simply pick one of the available templates (also free) and start publishing your photos.
To see what I mean, pop over to GatheringOfPixels.com (click the skull above the photo at the right to see “before” shots) or any of the Pixelpost featured photoblogs.
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Well I’ve been kinda busy these days with my new project which is a shoutcast/web dev/web hosting service, currently we have only launched our shoutcast hosting platform, we got some of the cheapest prices in the industry, it like we are giving away free shoutcast hosting.
We expect to launch our web hosting platform in the coming months. I’m expecting a lot out of this we are live for only a few days and already we are a success.
So next time you need shoutcast hosting you can check our prices at www.clarionmedia.com/shoutcast.php .
About Shoutcast : SHOUTcast software allows users to set up their own Internet radio servers using provided software. The output format is supported by multiple clients including the widely popular Nullsoft Winamp. Current uses include listening to music as well as live broadcasting of events for the average person.
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Here’s an oldie but a goodie. Confounded by trying to track down fancy-looking WordPress themes? Check out this Web-
based theme editor that lets you tweak every nook and cranny of a theme then spit it back to your server to go live. You can add columns, change fonts and backgrounds, even throw in a customizable tag cloud–all with no coding experience required. All you need is a little creativity and some working knowledge of drop-down menus.
While some WordPress themes have excellent built-in support for doing this right from the WordPress dashboard,
many more don’t, and trying to figure out all the little things like text color is made far easier with a WYSIWYG editor than with WordPress’ built-in editing tools.
Advanced users can throw in graphics or design elements they’ve hosted elsewhere on their server (as long
as it’s got a URL to link up to), and when all is said and done each bit of the theme can be grabbed as an individual file to whatever theme you’re currently using. This is an easy way to try out new fonts and colors without making a mess out of your existing style.css file.
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Google announced on Friday the release of a number of updates to its Blogger publishing platform–well, sort of. The updates have gone into Blogger in Draft, the service’s beta platform, with the expectation that they’ll eventually become full features.
The updates will seem a bit humdrum for people who don’t use Blogger, but for those who do, it’s a set of important baby steps toward shaping the service to fit customer feedback. That’s especially important for Google, as this is one niche of the Web where Mountain View doesn’t have a huge lead: there is tough competition in the blog-publishing market, especially from the likes of WordPress and Six Apart.
Blogger users who want to be on the cutting edge will now be able to set their default “dashboard” to Blogger in Draft, and have the Blogger in Draft blog bookmarked as an easy reference. There’s tighter integration of Google Gadgets, as well as a number of minor fixes to a recently redesigned dashboard.
But the “by popular demand” features are likely to gather more interest: five-star rating options on posts, much like those of Pownce; a revised post editor interface; support for Google Account logins and OpenID in comments; and perhaps most importantly, the ability to back up blog posts on a computer or export them to another blog.
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You might think you don’t need search engine optimization for your blog, but playing nice with the search engines is the very best way to get organic, targeted traffic to your blog or website. The biggest problem I had learning SEO was that there is just an awful lot of information. And some of it is conflicting. As a newbie - or even a seasoned blogger who just hasn’t bothered with search engine optimization - SEO can seem daunting and deep. The truth is, it can go about as deep as you want it to. As a blogger, it behooves you to know at least the basics of how to make sure that your site makes friends with the search engines.
With so much information out there, it is hard to know where to start. Since I have been a student of search engine optimization for a long time now (much longer than I have been a blogger), I am going to tell you a secret: All the SEO training you need is available for free. You don’t need to buy a $495 video set from an SEO “guru” to learn how to get targeted search engine traffic to your blog. Believe me. I have never paid for an SEO training product] and most of my online income now comes from my ability to get my niche sites at (or very near) the top of the SERPS (search engine results pages) through time-tested (white hat!) search engine optimization methods.
This collection of articles is just a small sampling of some of the great SEO information that is available online for free. There are literally millions of articles out there that will help you through any aspect of SEO at any skill level. The majority of these articles are basic enough for newbies to follow, but contain enough specialized information to still teach the experts a thing or two (or eight!).
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Tim Nash knows his SEO and he can really break it down into easy-to-chew chunks. This article is lengthy, but it is an excellent primer in terms of both terminology and nuts-and-bolts information.
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Keyword Research and Search Engine Optimization are the old married couple of the internet. You can’t have one without the other. Court Tuttle should be your keyword go-to guy. His articles on keyword sniping are brilliant, easy to follow and simple to implement. If you really want to start making money online with a niche blog, stick with Court’s Internet Marketing School.
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Once you have read Court’s keyword sniping introduction, watch him customize a Wordpress theme that he tailor made for search engine optimization. Important Note: Since I started using Court’s free SEO themes for all my Adsense niche sites they have been indexed faster and my Adsense profits have vastly improved (from a few cents a week to several dollars a day!).
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This is just one of Danny Sullivan’s many articles for SEO beginners. I picked this one to feature here because it really focuses in on what a search engine is looking for when it ranks your blog or site.
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This site is packed with great search engine information and tools. I suggest you start with this article. It is well-organized and will give you a good foundation for both practicing SEO and talking about it. If you have ever read an article about search engine optimization and felt lost in a sea of strange terms, this article can really help bring you up to speed. When you are done reading it, take some time to explore SEO book - it is full of treasures.
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Blogger Unleashed is one of my very favorite blogs and Vic is just a human goldmine of fantastic information. The video in this post was created after Vic read some guy trying to give SEO advice who clearly didn’t know what he was talking about. Vic goes over interesting SEO stuff in this video, explaining it in his trademark no bullsh!t style.
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If you haven’t yet made it to Griz’s Make Money for Beginners blog, now would be a great time to head over there. The article linked is part of the best series I have ever read about making money with blogs. This lesson explores keywords, SEO and everything related. It is dense so be sure you take the time to really read it carefully. This information will help you endlessly.
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In this article, Justin compares the benefits of buying a new, never-owned domain to a pre-owned, aged domain. Your domain name choice can play a big part in how the search engines treat you so I highly recommend you read this article and hang on to what it can teach you.
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Chris does a killer job of explaining Google’s supplemental index and how you can save your blog from this limbo.
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Totally about thiry pages (as a Word document) this SEO guide is a dream come true for newbies. It is not too long, but it includes enough information to really get you up to speed. Once you have read this, you will be able to follow more advanced SEO articles much easier than if you just jump in cold.
This is by no means intended to be a comprehensive or “best of” list. These are just my particular favorite SEO articles right now. In fact, all the sites featured here are some of my favorites for many topics related to internet marketing, blogging and making money online. Just remember the next time you see a $47 report that promises to get your site to Google’s front page by next week, just keep in mind that there is nothing new in that report - you can get to the front page (or even the first few listings!) for free, you just need to know the right methods and put in the work necessary to get there.
If you have an SEO article or tip you’d like to share, please feel free to link or share it in the comments.
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For my first post a decided to help readers start a blog, this is a list of some tools that can help you create your first blog.
Before you can create the actual blog we need to find a good web host to host our files, I currently host with streamservers.co.uk, you can find your own host at free-webhosts.com.
Now that we’ve found our host head on over to wordpress.org and download the latest version of wordpress (our bloging software), upload this to your server and following the install instructions, now you have to find a theme to fit what you are bloging about I’d recomend wordpress.net.
I’ll update this post with more cool stuff you can do with your blog as soon as i can so check back!
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