I finally broke down and learned to implement CSS Drop Menus. For the longest time I’ve always strayed clients away from using navigational drop menus, largely because they were not search engine friendly. I recall several years ago when drop menus came onto the scene and were completely image based, and if not programmed properly, they were very unfriendly to the end user.

I’ve finally found an implementation that I like, is mostly based on CSS with very little Java Scripting and is cross browser compatible.  This technique has been around for a while but brand new to me….  it’s called Son of Suckerfish. I tried it’s predecessor Suckerfish Drop Menus but found Son of Suckerfish way cleaner looking and easier to use.  I did try a few others but the only tutorials I had any success with were the mentioned above.

Through my quest, I just just now found this CSS Drop Menu code generator based on Suckerfish.  I’ll give this a whirl some other time. If anyone has used this generator please share your experience.

I don’t have a live sample to share as I just started diving into these upon client request and will share samples as I have them.

Do you have a favorite, search engine friendly css drop menu implementation? If so share it here.

Thanks for reading.

It’s been awfully quiet around here. The workers are clicking away at the computers and we now have a new blog dedicated to creating WordPress CMS Websites, not blogs, but true content management system websites.

This new project is called CMS With WordPress (http://cmswithwordpress.com). WordPress related news and information can still be found here on this site. CMS with WordPress is a tutorial website for configuring an effective CMS, not a poorly constructed blog that is a wanna-be CMS website.

If you follow Social Media or are a Facebook user then I’m sure you’re familiar with the whole Facebook privacy controversy.   I’m always concerned about my online privacy especially on Facebook.

I don’t like to share information about myself to the world so most of my profile is only accessible to people connected to me.  Which is why I was happy to find out about this cool bookmarklet to test my privacy on Facebook. Thanks Mashable. Good thing too because there were a couple of settings open to the world that I wasn’t aware of.

The bookmarklet is easy to use… simply drag to your browser bookmarks, log into your Facebook account and click the bookmarklet. At the top of your browser page will appear a list of the different areas of your profile that have privacy settings and a color coded image of how secure your privacy is, a small explanation and a link to that setting area to make any needed changes.

Reclaim your privacy on Facebook in a just a couple of minutes. Enjoy!

I recently posted an article  that discusses what exactly a content management system is. The next topic regarding content management systems that I want to address is whether or not your small business needs a CMS. While I do think that content management systems are a great fit for most businesses, they don’t necessarily fit every small business.

Most Small Businesses Can Benefit By Using A CMS

Websites that are continually updating products, services, prices, writing blog posts,  et cetera will benefit the most from a content management system. A small business can reduce their overall website content related costs by having the ability to make these changes in house. A CMS site gives the owner the power to update text and images without having to know any code.  A content management system also allows the ability to integrate other functions sometimes through a plug-n-play interface on the dashboard.

Another good reason for moving into or creating a content management system is the wide variety of available functionality. Most CMS’s are run using a scripting language called PHP in conjunction with a Database.  You can do almost anything you want with plugins or modules, again without having to know any code.  Things like syndicating your recent posts onto the homepage or allowing users to leave comments on the site using their facebook login, posting video or audio clips and creating photo galleries.  We’re just scratching the surface on the functions available without knowing any code.

Why A CMS Doesn’t Work for Every Company

We have several clients who have maintained traditional HTML websites and I wouldn’t recommend they convert to a CMS. Two of these clients don’t have a reason to update their site except for occasional price changes. These small periodic updates run them about $200 – $400 a year which makes the conversion to CMS an uneconomical approach. Another reason a content management system wouldn’t be efficient for some small business clients is that they simply just don’t have the time or the staff to maintain their own website which is one of the top reasons a small business would want a CMS to begin with.

Even small businesses have very large and complex websites and it takes a lot of time to achieve and maintain competitive search engine rankings.  Moving a website into a content management system will likely require the site to change all page URL’s which could have an adverse affect on search engine marketing if not addressed properly with  301 Redirects.

The ability to access, create and manage your own website content is a very powerful tool. Do you think your company could benefit by using a Content Management System?

Today, one of the big industry buzzwords is content management system.  The funny thing is content management systems (CMS) have been around for years but its taken them a while to gain popularity and now it seems they are taking the web by storm.

Content management systems come in all shapes and sizes from large enterprise applications to free open source platforms. And in between those are  the different types of content management systems for creating blogs, websites, e-commerce shopping sites, auction sites, directories  and the list goes on.

So what is a content management system? I think I like Wiktionary’s definition best…

“A computer software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content, especially for loading to a website.”

In other words, a content management system is a software application that is installed on a hosting server. It has a control panel or dashboard that is accessed via a web browser. From the control panel you create your content, format it, insert pictures or video clips and publish it to the web.  All the data and parameters set from the control panel or dashboard are stored in a database. A CMS allows business owners to maintain their own website content without needing to know any code which reduces costs by not having to pay an expensive web developer to make those changes for you.

However, depending on which CMS platform you are using there may be software maintenance costs to keep the software up-to-date and secure. Be sure to ask about maintenance costs if you are considering an open source CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and others.

One attractive aspect of a content management system is that it separates the content and the programming from the design or layout which makes it easier to change the look and feel of the website without having to update every single page.  Generally, the site design is  handled by a small group of files but this does depends on the CMS you are working with.  What this means is that it won’t cost nearly as much money to do a full site redesign.

Search Friendly Web Design proudly employs WordPress as our content management system of choice.  WordPress is the most search engine friendly, user friendly and customizable solution on the internet. Contact Us for more information about setting up a WordPress CMS for your website.

Image via Boagworld.com

I’m fairly new Twitter myself… at least as an active user. I’ve known about Twitter for some time now and as you may already know Twitter is the hottest topic in the Social Media Sphere. So instead of regurgitating what’s already been said 10 times over I figure it would just be easier and more practical to share the articles I read to help get me on my Tweeting way.

So a great place to start with learning about Twitter. I suggest the following article by Tim Andren.. the Definitive Guide to Twitter. Its a great breakdown of what it is, what its used for and why. Along these same lines is another tutorial.. the Beginners Guide to Using Twitter.

Once you get the hang of what Twitter is all about and you have now started Twittering on your own.. this useful guide to ReTweets via Mashable is a quick and easy read and will take your Twitter to the next level.

So now we’ve got the basics down… you’re tweeting, retweeting. Now its time to link your website &/or blog to Twitter. Via Smashing Magazine… 15 Useful Twitter Hacks and Plugins for WordPress. If you are just looking for a plugin recommendation for your WordPress Blog…  We use Twitter Tools and really like it.

Hope this helps… enjoy!

Some good stuff on creating rounded corners with css for your website.  Check out http://www.roundedcornr.com.

Use the RoundedCornr engine to generate the images and CSS code for…

1. Basic Rounded Corners
2. Rounded Corners with a Gradient
3. Rounded Corners with a Border
4. Single Rounded Corner Image

And here are a couple of great tutorials on rounded corners with CSS.

http://kalsey.com/2003/07/rounded_corners_in_css/

http://www.cssjuice.com/25-rounded-corners-techniques-with-css/

Enjoy

1. Don’t Cut Back On Marketing

Restructure your efforts but don’t stop or reduce marketing. If there was a time that a business owner might have more time to spend marketing, I would think that time would be now. A growing business must realize the competition is fierce and every other business is probably as hungry as the rest. Think about trimming the fat from your marketing strategy and focus on the marketing that is currently working.

If you can get media coverage by having an interesting story for a journalist or having contacts in the field, take advantage of that. Coverage by media is a great way to let people know about your business. One diner owner is Los Angeles once experienced a decline in visitors because of road construction. He decided to give all the construction workers a free lunch and called the media to tell them about it. The media covered his story and traffic to his business immediately increased because of his “charitable” act.

2. Keep a Clean House

Take the extra effort to make sure the online marketing you have in place is clean and tidy. Don’t keep outdated content on the homepage, check for typos, broken images etc. It’s true that the first impression is lasting and it’s difficult to regain confidence once a potential customer has left your website with a bad taste.

3. Engage the Social Network

Set up social network platforms on  Facebook & Twitter as well as any other networking site that interests you. And be active in them. I know its hard to engage all the platforms but at the very minimum these 2 mentioned need to be a priority. Why? Because this is where the world is. Friends, family, their friends and family, clients, just about everyone is using a social media outlet. Get connected. Stay connected.

4. Analytics?

A large number of website owners have analytics but don’t pay any attention to them. Analytics can tell you where you need to focus your efforts on item #2 “Keep A Clean House.” You can find where most people exit your site, what keywords are working best for you and which ones could be doing better. And that just scratches the surface. Run these reports and know how to apply the information.

5. Don’t Price Yourself Out of the Market

But don’t sell yourself short either. Economies have a natural cycle of supply and demand. When the supply is high and the demand is low, prices go down. During a recession, prices may naturally decrease. Be aware of your competitors pricing structures and stay competitive.

A client recently asked me…

I notice that on our website the colors change from blue to purple after clicked on. My question is When some one enters the site are all the category’s purple and then when clicked on they turn blue. However when some else enters the site are all the colors purple or are some blue some purple? 

I started to answer his question then thought it best to go beyond answering it and to also explain why.

Here is my response to the question…
When a user visits your site (industrypacking.com) the links are programmed to be blue. Once a user clicks to a page… all the links to that page will turn purple. The change in color signifies that the page has been visited and helps the user better navigate the website…

• By helping them get back to a page that has the information they found useful
• By helping them from visiting the same page twice if they’re still searching
• By helping them know which pages or content they have not viewed yet

Jacob Nielson Says…
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040503.html

People get lost and move in circles when websites use the same link color for visited and new destinations. To reduce navigational confusion, select different colors for the two types of links. 

So Why These Colors
Blue and purple for links and visited links are the default internet colors for starters. Since the dawn of the WWW links have always been blue and purple making it the most prime website usability function.

According to another Nielson article (Guidelines for Visualizing Links)…

• The color for unvisited links should be more vivid, bright, and saturated than the color for visited links.
• The two colors should be variants or shades of the same color, so that they’re clearly related.
• Shades of blue provide the strongest signal for links, but other colors work also.
• When using color to signal information, you should provide redundant cues for color-blind users.
• Never show text in your chosen link colors unless it’s a link.

Google announced the Beta Release of the their latest tool.. a new web browser called Chrome. So Google the search giant enters the browser business. Being the Google power user that I am, I of course downloaded a copy and have been playing with it for several days. I haven’t messed with many settings.. pretty much been using it out of the box for a while. I also haven’t looked whether or not it is going to allow additional toolbar widgets and such.

Four Things I don’t like about Google Chrome..

1) No Page Title Bar at the top of the browser window.. the title is truncated in the tab. As a search marketer I look being able to see the full title tag without having to go look for.. like in the source code.

2) Can’t copy off a Chrome window and paste it into Dreamweaver WYSIWYG view.. you can only paste it into the source code. I use code view quite heavily so its really not that big a deal.. more of an hindrance for those designers who rely on WYSIWYG to do their work.

3) No Google Toolbar with Pagerank and no quick option for checking backwards links.

4) No Refresh/Reload Option on the right click menu.. you have to go all the way up to toolbar.

Cool Features I Do Like About Google Chrome…

Downloads… downloads file or attachment and drops it into a tool bar accessible at the bottom of the browser window.. from the downloaded file bar.. just one click and you are opening the attachment. No more having to save downloads to you computer before opening them.

Screenshots of Browse History
This is another cool feature I like.. when I open new browser window or browser tab.. I see screenshots of the 9 most viewed website in my history. I can click one and go rightback to the site I was on.

All-in-One Search Box & Address Bar

This is only one box to enter text and it does double duty.. type in URL or a search query all in the same box. This one messed with for about a day… I’m so used to have a separate Google search box on my Google Toolbar in Firefox. I found myself always looking for my Google Toolbar but I think I’m finally used to it.

Browse Incognito

This is the option most people want at work to hide their online shopping while working because some offices do monitor internet browsing so this is the ticket… Incognito does not keep any history or record what-so-ever. Upon close it does away with all temp internet files, history, cookies.. everything. Now you surf stealth.

Element Inspector

Now this one I really find useful. highlight and element on a page and right click… one of the option is element inspectory.

Once you click the Inspect Element you get a pop-up window zeros in on the code associated with the element you are trying to inspect. This saves time instead of having to sift through the source code trying to find the element. The inspector also displays the styled properties of the element.

All-in-all, Google is a fine browser.. I can’t really say it’s better or worse than Firefox but it’s definitely better than IE (then again, what isn’t?). One thing I can say is that it is a very fast browser.

So what do you think of the new Google Chrome Browser.. take a sec to leave your commments.

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