We come across a good number of web re-design clients who have sites that automatically play music. Some of them are basic and do not even include a way of turning it off or pausing the music.

Depending on the website, it may or may not be a good idea to have music on it. But you should always include a way to turn it off. And if possible, do not automatically have it start. Keep in mind that some people may be visiting your website at night when others in the house are sleeping. They visit your website and hear a sudden loud blast of music that wakes everyone up. Not to mention, it may give someone a heart attack.

Put these things in mind when you are creating your website. Careful planning is needed to make sure you do not turn off any of your potential customers.

In addition to the above you will want to put serious thought into the music playing in the background. You will not want punk rock playing on a business themed website. It is always best to go with mellow, low toned music that is universal. Universal being that it is music heard by a majority of the population on a daily basis when they go on an elevator, or are on hold on the phone. Choosing the wrong music might offend someone and they will remember that you are the place wih the bad music.

A template tag is code that instructs WordPress to “do” or “get” something. There are various tags that make a template work, or display data to your visitors.

For example: <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?> will display the name of your blog. This tag is used mostly in the header, which is where you see on top of the page.

Template tags are extensive and not all of them must be used when you are creating a custom theme. You can find all of the tags at http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags

When creating your custom wordpress theme just remember that the tags you include decide the fate of your end-user so include them wisely. Wouldn’t it suck if you accidentally forgot to include the categories tag? Nobody will be able to find your posts!

To answer a question, inserting rollover text into a web page using dreamweaver cs3 is easy. It is a matter of some simple css work. Unless of course you are using graphics then you are probably working with rollover images even though it looks like text.

When using dreamweaver you will notice on the right side panel an area for css. You right click on that area and create a new class, or a new stylesheet if none has been added yet. You then set the properties for the text. IF it is a link then you want to set the standard, visited, and hover properties or you will end up with one of those ugly purple links after it is clicked on. The visited attribute tells the browser to reset that style to the standard setting so it looks the same after it has been visited. The hover attribute lets you show underlined text or a different color text. There are other goodies but I am not getting into all of that right now.

If you are working with rollover images then you need to insert image elements, then select rollover image. You would select the standard image and the hover image along with the alt text and a name for the image being called in the javascript. Simple as that.

Good Luck!

CSS (cascading style sheets) is a language used to style web pages. With css you can position elements, change font sizes and colors, and create dropdown menus without messy javascript cluttering up your code.

This post will cover rollover text links. In your stylesheet you will have a class that you created for the navigation text. For this example let’s call it .NavText from now on.

You will notice that if you add a link to that text, your text will no longer have the style you created for it. This is because you created the style for the NavText but you did not create it for a linked item. To create these styles you would insert the following style code.

.NavText a {      //This is for linked items. It shows the same as original style.
samestylesasNavText;
}

.NavText a:visited {    // This shows original style after the link was clicked.
samestylesasNavText;
}

.NavText a:hover {   // Here I added an underline for when you mouseover the link.
samestylesasNavText;
text-decoration: underline; }

Notice that I added the ‘hover’ style underneath the others. If you were to place that style in between or before then it would not show the desired result. This is because the style on the bottom overrides the ones above it. That is why it is called CASCADING style sheets.

I noticed that we have visitors looking for this information, so here it is. When you are thinking of redesigning an old website, but you are worried about losing PageRank, there are steps to take to minimize or eliminate the risk altogether.

The first thing you have to understand is that if you are significantly changing content then you run this risk. Text content is what search engines are looking for and if you add or remove alot of it during the redesign then it is a significant change. Try to add new content after you have launched the redesign and gave it time to settle. 2 weeks sounds about right.

When you redesign sometimes you change filenames to be more search engine friendly. If this is the case then you have to tell search engines where that page has moved to. You would use a permanent redirect form each of those urls to the new page url so the search engine should transfer this easily. Your PageRank usually gets transfered to the new page as well. If you do not provide the redirect then you will lose that PageRank for the page already indexed by Google.

Try to give your images the same filenames if you can. It is a small item but it adds up in the end. Use the same anchor text too, then change it later after the launch just like you did with text content.

These are the basics, but if you follow them carefully then you minimize the risk of losing PageRank.

As someone who spends a good amount of time online, I see wannabe web designers out there that charge rediculously low rates for their services. It is ok to advertise promotional rates for work that will take a couple hours to do but when you consistantly put your brand out there with a reduced rate, you are telling your customers what you are worth.

Many web designers go to school for graphic design, and html which costs money to attend. Other professional designers learned on their own and spent many hours becoming an expert in their craft. Because of this, you have to assume that the designer is worth more than a few dollars an hour for a website.

The problem comes in on websites like Craigslist.org which is a haven for cheapskates posting computer gigs where they ask for a high quality product and have only $25 to spend. Some web designers who desparately need work actually answer such a crazy ad. I recently came across a post in a forum on OpenDesigns where some joker posted that he needed a redesign on a dynamic gaming website and he had $25 to spend along with a link credit on the website. First off, let me clear this up. A link credit is expected traditionally. A designer owns the actual work, therefore you have a license to use the website that you contracted the designer to create. You do not own the design though, meaning that you can own the actual content on the website but the design and coding is licensed to you unless specified otherwise in your design contract. That being said, a link credit is not a payment. Additionally, you should have seen other designers jump into that post telling that guy not to be cheap, and to use an open source template because $25 will not cover a redesign. To be honest with you, most designers charge you just to open up photoshop or dreamweaver.

I also notice many people telling designers in their gigs that they want a free mockup. A mockup is a design layout created in photoshop that shows what the website will look like. A mockup is just an image, usually a JPEG. The actual mockup process is lengthly. You have to create all of the graphics in photoshop and depending on the intensity of the graphic nature of the website it can take hours! Why on earth would a designer do that for free hoping that you will pay them to code the website?

All of the above issues are a direct result of student designers or low budget designers that answer such ads and work on the client’s terms. As a designer, you set the terms. You specify that you charge $35 an hour or whatever. You specify that mockups are billable. You specify that the payment terms such as a deposit and escrow are a requirement. As a professional in your craft you have a responsibility to honor others in your industry.

I have been active in various forums and blog dicussions about web design and marketing. A common issue that seems to come up with inexperienced designers is how do you align your page container using nothing more than css.

With tables it is very easy. You would simply use a <table align=”center”>. With css it can be very simple as well. You would still float your DIV left, but in the body class you would set the body-margin left to between 200-250. This will make your main container appear in the middle of the browser. The value would depend on the width of the main container. This obviously is a non-issue with a fluid design that uses a width of 100%.

If any experienced designers would like to add on this with a separate solution, feel free to leave a comment below.

Most people who own a service based website have static pages. These are pages that have to be edited in the html code in order to display changes. Because of this it makes it hard for non-designers to update their website with new content.

If you notice, this content you are reading right now is posted in a blog. Our website has static pages so we decided to integrate a blog. The blog allows us to write new content using a simple administration interface and post it instantly for you to see.

When you install a blog for a static website it goes in a new directory. A standard blog installation is pretty ugly though. They will not automatically match your existing design. Because of this, it is necessary to incorporate your existing design from your static pages into a blog template. That way the entire website looks the same no matter where your visitor goes on your site.

Incorporating the design into the blog theme is rather simple. You just create a new theme directory and copy an existing theme into it. Then you insert your design into theme pages, and insert the blog code into the right places where you want items displayed. It may seem intimidating when you first have a go at it, but with patience and some general knowledge of css, php, and html you can get it done pretty quickly.