domain names | choosing a web host | applying for an ABN

Domain Name |

Choosing a domain name can be tricky. Think carefully about your choice – your domain name will be synonymous with you and your practice and it should reflect this. It will appear on your business cards, as a link from your other web 2.0 endeavours and you will refer people to your website…what do you want it to say? Domain Name Tools is a useful collection of tutorials, tools and tips on the subject of choosing a domain name.

You can choose to think globally and register a .com or let people know immediately that you are based in Australia with a .com.au. Many people ask which is better. The answer is neither – it comes down to personal preference. Aside from the difference that I have just mentioned, price may also be a factor in making this decision if the global vs. Australia choice doesn’t make it for you. Usually a .com can be bought MUCH more cheaply than a .com.au. Purchasing a .com through an American host will usually cost you up to $20USD – but some are FREE when you sign up for web hosting. However, a .com.au cannot usually be purchased for under $60AUD and is renewable every 2 years.

Usually you can register your domain name with your web host but if you want to purchase the domain name first and decide on a host later, you can always move it afterwards. This also applies if you change hosts at any point – your domain name can be shifted from one host to another.

Web Host |

The first question you might be asking is ‘what should I look for when choosing a web host?’. There are numerous web hosting sites out there and everyone offers slightly different packages. As an artist/designer, you may have require some different options to those that are provided by regular, ‘run of the mill’, commercial web hosts…so look around, do your research and make an informed decision.

Free web hosting – a few notes
There are many free web hosts out there…but are they really free? Think about the trade off. These ‘free’ web hosts don’t cost you anything up front but they raise revenue by placing advertising on your website to cover their costs. You will either be slugged with compulsory banner advertising or by popup advertisements – both of which are annoying and detract from your site.

Why would you go to the trouble of building a site and then host it with a free host? It does not serve to enhance your professionalism or your status as an artist or designer. Hosting on a free site like this will downgrade your site and your work – it is not an advisable way to go.

Web space

How big is your site? How much web space do you want/need? Your site alone at this point probably won’t exceed 10Mb…but will it still be this size in a year from now? In 3 years from now? In 5 years from now? You won’t be able to answer these questions right now but it is worth considering the options available to you. You will need different things depending on the nature of your site – for example: as a photographer you may have hundreds of images on your site, or you may want to showcase sound files or video clips. Think about these issues as they will help you to determine the web space that you need.

We are well past the days of 10Mb hosting plans but ask yourself if the package you are looking at has enough space for your needs? Will you be able to expand your site as your career develops? Many web hosting companies offer a range of different packages. Check to see if there are upgrade packages available through the web host you are looking at. Will you be able to upgrade your plan quickly and easily as you grow?

File type and size limitations
Make sure there is no maximum size on the files that you can upload. In the past web hosts have also been known to restrict the file types that you can upload to just the basics – HTML and GIF/JPG files. These restrictions are obviously no good to you if you want to load sound files and video or if you have used flash. If you come across hosting services which have restrictions like this cross them off your list as they are not providing a true hosting service.

Data Transfer Traffic/Bandwidth allotment
Data transfer (sometimes referred to as “traffic” or “bandwidth”) is the amount of bytes transferred from your site to visitors when they browse your site. Look at the bandwidth allotment offered by the hosting service. 2-3 GB traffic allowance per month is usually adequate for new site just starting out.

Don’t always believe web hosts that advertise “unlimited bandwidth”…usually the bandwidth allotment is hidden in the fine print and if your site uses a lot of it, you will suddenly receive a bill for having “exceeded” the “unlimited bandwidth” (not a nice surprise when it is not within your budget).

Reliability and speed of access
You need a host that will house your site on reliable servers. A site that is frequently down will lose visitors and annoy potential customers. Slow access is equally frustrating. It is false economy to make a decision based on price alone. Cheap hosting often comes at the expense of server reliability and performance. Not only should the web host be reliable and fast, it should guarantee its uptime (the time when it is functional). Look for a minimum uptime of 99% or 99.5% – again, this is sometimes hidden in the fine print.

Backup
Look for a host who can provide a regular, daily back up of your data. Good hosts will have back up systems in place to guard against network or power failure. The last thing you want is to lose your data or to have your website go down for a long period. If you can find out if they have more than one connection to the internet, in case one of their connections goes down.

Email, Auto-responders, POP3, Mail Forwarding
Email addresses at your own domain, like artistname@yourdomain.com, is something most people want. Does the host provide this? Can you set an email address to automatically reply to the sender with a preset message should you be away (called an auto-responder)? Can it be automatically forwarded to your current email address? Can you access it via a web browser if need be?

A Control Panel
A control panel will allow you to manage different aspects of your web account yourself such as setting up an auto-responder. Smaller hosting firms often require that you contact their support staff to perform this type of task. A control panel allows you to do it yourself as the need arises.

Technical support
Does the technical support function of your potential host operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (24/7), all year round? Just because a host advertises 24/7 support does not necessarily mean it is so. Test them out by emailing at midnight and on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, in their local time…see how long they take to respond.

FTP, PHP, MySQL, CGI-BIN access, SSL, .htaccess

Some hosts do not allow you to install PHP or CGI scripts without their approval. Since this means you have to wait around for them to do it this is not good service.

PHP and MySQL: WordPress is run using PHP and MySQL.

“.htaccess” is needed if you are to customise your error pages or to protect your site against bandwidth theft and hotlinking.

You will most definitely need FTP access. If the hosting provider only allows you to design your page with their online builder, rule them out.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption: You will need SSL if you plan to have a shopping cart on your site.

Subdomains and virtual hosting
This is for those who are thinking of selling web space or having multiple domains or subdomains hosted on one account. This could be an advantage to a group of artists who want a common site with individual sites and domains for each artist like a virtual artists co-operative. Look to see if the host can provide this, and how much extra that they charge as you never know what direction your creative life may take you in.

Server
Initially you will be looking for a shared server not a dedicated hosting service.

Price
Look at the Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Payment Plans. My advice is that to begin with pay monthly until you are sure of their reliability. When you have found a host that you are happy with take advantage of the discounted annual plans.

Set up costs

There are plenty of good hosting companies that have no set up costs. Don’t be taken in by those that do.

Money Back Guarantee

Many providers offer a 30-Day money back guarantee so that you can try their service risk free. Look for this option so you don’t get stuck with a service that doesn’t suit your needs.

Research

Check out the reviews written on sites like:

CNET Most popular Hosting Plans

Top rated: best hosting top 10

You might also like to read Web Hosting Tips For Beginners

The Web Hosting Show has done a piece on Secret Taboo Topics in the Web Hosting

Jonathan Bailey has written a great article about some of the issues to consider in 10 Rules for Finding Good Domain Hosting

Vistainter.com publishes a huge number of hosting company reviews

ABN |

You can make your application for an Australian Business Number (ABN) online through the Australian Business Register.

You might first like to read the entitlement page.

web 2.0 technologies | a brief list

This morning I would like to offer you a brief list of some popular web 2.0 technologies being used by artists and designers in professional practice. Some of these we have spoken about before and some will be new – the hyperlinks will enable you to browse through these sites more thoroughly and the list will hopefully prove to be a valuable resource for you in your future endeavours.

Blog Hosts |

Blogger

WordPress

Live Journal

Squarespace

Typepad

Tumblr

Gather & Promote Online (social networking) |

Facebook

MySpace

Twitter

Klimt02

Design21

NAVA

Artabase

Sell or Show Online |

Etsy

Art Flock

DeviantART

BigCartel

MadeIt

Leeloo

Radici

Flickr

YouTube

Manufacture Online |

Moo

Ponoko

Spoonflower

CafePress

RedBubble

Engrave Your Book

This list is by no means exhaustive – there are many more web 2.0 technologies out there that you could certainly make use of – this is just a snapshot to get you started. Please feel free to leave comments about other web 2.0 technologies that you are aware of so we can add to this list.







designing for the web | colour & text

Following is a compilation of some useful resources to get you thinking about your use of colour for the web & your choices regarding text…

10 colour contrast checking tools is a great resource to help you improve the accessibility of your design for the web. It provides links to some interesting and useful sites which will allow you to test your choice of colours for adequate contrast in different ways in order to meet accessibility standards.

Did you know that approximately one in twenty people have some form of colour blindness? I can hear you thinking…’interesting fact, why do I need to know that?’ – well, many designers don’t take this into consideration when they are designing for the web. It is not deliberate insensitivity to those with colour blindness – but thinking about the impact of your choice of colours in terms of meeting accessibility standards for users with visual impairments of any description is a very good idea. If you take a screenshot of one of your html pages and save it as a jpg you will be able to upload it to this Colour Blindness Simulator and check your design against three colour blindness conditions.  Alternatively you could make a colour swatch of the colours used on your website (saved as a jpg) and upload it to see what the contrast level is like for someone with these forms of colour blindness. Checking this will allow you to correct your design and choice of colours if necessary to make your site more accessible for all viewers.

Skout is a fantastic list of resources ‘for designers by designers’ – and it can keep you busy browsing for hours. It is an enormous resource list of fonts (both commercial and free), colour tools, icons, stock photography and illustrations, patterns and textures, tutorials, wallpapers…the list goes on. Best to go and have a look around for yourself!

This morning I will show you a way to create a colour group in Illustrator based on an image – this would be one way to give yourself a colour palette to begin working with on the web. Another option if you are ever stuck for colour inspiration is to use a palette generator, and there are numerous generators on the web – one that I have discovered recently is this Palette Generator provided by Big Huge Labs. This particular browser based palette generator allows you to upload a photo and create a palette based on the colours in the photograph. It is a helpful tool that may enable you to produce a colour scheme for your website, especially if you are drawn to the colours in a particular image. Hexadecimal codes are generated for the colours in the palette at the same time which allows you to easily transfer them into your design in Dreamweaver.

web design theory

I touched briefly on some aspects of web design theory in my presentations last semester and we have certainly discussed individual designs on a one-to-one basis, but today I’d like to delve a little further into planning your site and some design theory surrounding choice of layout, text and colour. So let’s get into it…

Designing for the web

A good place for any designer/visual artist to start when thinking about their professional representation on the web would be with Charley Parker’s How to Display Your Art on the Web. This is a 6 part series (not including the very amusing introductory post that started it all entitled How Not to Display Your Art on the Web) that Charley, who describes himself as ‘a webcomics artist, cartoonist, illustrator, web site designer and Flash animator’, has published on his blog. The advice and opinions that Charley imparts is aimed specifically at illustrators, gallery artists, cartoonists, comics artists, concept artists and other visual artists who wish to present their practice in a professional manner online.

Start by reading the tongue-in-cheek post How Not to Display Your Art on the Web – this is the original post that started a public call for more information, and thus led to Charley writing the 6 part series that follows. This original post is clever, if not a little cheeky, and hopefully no one has actually taken it literally! It runs through some of the common pitfalls of web design including “free hosting” (there is always a catch – usually annoying pop-up advertising), intro splash pages, “clever” websites that have a completely unusable navigational design, “arty” illegible thumbnails, the use of Flash to design your site, browser specific designs (that favour one and leave out the rest), creating non-descript links, the inappropriate use of sound, and watermarks – to name a few.

After you’ve had a good laugh with How Not to Display Your Art Work on the Web, please move onto Planning your web site for a more detailed look at thinking about the purpose of your site, creating a site map, and considering navigational structure, home page layout, links and methods of contact.

Once you’ve had a read through this post I would advise you to move on to Designing your web site and Preparing images for the web. After you have read through all of this information you will probably feel as though you’re on overload but this is a great resource that you can return to again and again – definitely one to bookmark!

Who are you designing for?

It is imperative that you know who your target demographic is and who you are creating your website for. Given that I am asking you to design your sites in a professional capacity, your target audience will be rather different than if you were designing a personal website. Chris Garrett has written an interesting post,  How To Create Pen Portraits and Understand Your Target Audience, detailing a method (known as pen portraits) that you could employ to build a complete picture of your reader/viewer. As Chris writes, it’s all about ‘…serving the needs of your readers in the way they will most accept and benefit from.’ If you can visualise your audience and write/design directly to them you’re half way there! Chris reiterates this with the sentiment, ‘If we only ever do things how we would like and about things that interest us we can never grow into markets outside our own echo chamber.’

Page layout

How do people view sites…and how do we know? You will read in various places that certain designs or styles of design “work” as layouts for easy viewing. Where do these claims come from? These statements are usually based on research. Eye tracking is one technique used to determine and learn about the way that users make sense of what they see on screen. So what is eye tracking? This video, produced by Etre (a company specialising in usability, accessibility and findability), explains it.

The Poynter Institute at Stanford University, USA performed a study (which began in December 1998) using eye tracking equipment to ascertain certain information about the way that readers’ eyes scan news websites – Where do readers go online to view the news? Which stories do people read, which stories do they skim over and which stories do they miss altogether? Do readers only view headlines and summaries or do they read full articles too? If readers hyperlink to another story do they then return to the original website or do they continue on from the link? This study and the responses do not directly relate to the way in which you would design your site, however some of the principles might. You might find that certain areas of your site receive a high amount of traffic due to the nature of the content, that certain pages are viewed more often because of the clarity or conciseness of the information, or that one hyperlink seems to attract the majority of your ‘out-clicks’. All of this information becomes relevant when it comes to the design of your own site.

Eyetrack III has published an article, What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes, by Steve Outing and Laura Ruel. This article reports on the most common eye movement patterns based on a sample of the viewing habits of a small selection of 46 people. Even though the sample group for this experiment was quite small, the information contained in this report is rather interesting to read. The diagrams included in the article clearly demonstrate the on screen zones which have a higher chance of being viewed purely based on the eye movements of the viewers. If you were to design your site with this report in mind you would certainly be looking to place the most important pieces of information in the top left quarter of each webpage and would probably work with a navigational structure at the top or to the left side of your page.

Another article to read regarding the study of eye tracking is Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design, written by Laura Ruel (who co-wrote the Eyetrack III article described above) and Nora Paul. This article showcases more clearly hot spots (portions of the page where the viewers eye lingers the longest – highlighted by colour) on pages which combine imagery and text, and shows the portions of the imagery which tend to be viewed, how they are viewed and by whom.

Tell-tale signs of an amateur website – what to avoid

Charlie Morris highlights a few things to avoid in his article The ABCs of Building a Web Site: Amateur Web Sites – the Top Ten Signs.  He makes mention of overly busy backgrounds, busy over-the-top graphics, poorly designed navigation, the use of frames, a table based look (this was especially popular in the 90′s), hit counters, the use of ‘under construction’ signs, endorsements to use a particular browser (your site should work across all browser platforms), and visually cluttered pages which contain free advertising (very often the annoying pop-up variety) – these are all tell tale signs of an amateur website and things to avoid if you can.

Designing your site

Read through How people really use web pages, published by web design from scratch – it will give you some good pointers to think about when designing your site…your viewers are looking at your site in a very different manner to the way in which you see it. Each article within this section covers a key point – your readers don’t like to look at the screen, they’re impatient and they don’t like to read but they will scan. This is how people generally use web pages, and given how impatient people are it is in your best interest to keep your website design simple, easy to navigate and communicate rather than decorate.

Another article in this series which would be useful to read is Web design basics, learning web site design. It covers topics such as the process of creating web pages, understanding web site design, principles of good design and also points to some online articles, tutorials and resources which might be of interest.

Think about your navigational structure

Heidi Adkisson’s site web design practices examines recent design practices on the web and contains good information and research (from earlier this decade) regarding choice and use of navigational structures.

tags on wordpress

You will already have heard me make mention of ‘tags’ throughout this course – and following on from my presentation in week one of this semester, it is a great idea to make use of the Tags function on WordPress. So…

What are Tags and why should you use them?

Tags are a searchable classification, as are categories (as previously discussed) – but tags even more so. Very often people confuse the terms tags and categories, and use them interchangeably…but they are definitely not the same thing. The misuse of these terms can lead to quite a lot of confusion but hopefully the following description of each of these terms will help to set the record straight:

Categories: act like an overarching filing system for your blog – and have the unique capacity to also be hierarchical (please refer to my previous post: categories on wordpress). You might like to think of categories as broad classifications for particular subjects. Categories will allow you to classify each post by subject and this will allow both you and your readers to quickly and easily navigate to the information that you are interested in. Categories are shown below each post and in the Category widget in your side bar (should you choose to show it).

Tags: on the other hand are detailed keywords or labels that you can add to each post – micro categories if you like. If you choose to add tags to your posts (and bear in mind that you have the option to add multiple tags) you are effectively adding a keyword or a label, which will make it easier for you to find that post again later (like categories) but tags will also help others to search for you. Tags only show below each post but they reach beyond your blog by assisting not only other wordpress users to find you (via searches from wordpress) but also trawlers. The trawlers will find these tags when they crawl your blog and this will assist your site to be picked up by big sites like technorati and found more easily in google and yahoo searches. In this sense, tags are great for heightening the SEO (search engine optimisation) of your blog.

I hope that this clarifies the difference between categories and tags. Some people ask ‘which should I use?’ and my answer to this is that I don’t view these terms in isolation from one another. It isn’t a case of ‘which should I use?’ but rather a matter of using both in combination as each has its own distinct advantages.

How do you create tags?

From your dashboard you can click on ‘Tags’ in ‘Right Now’ (top centre of interface) and you will be taken directly to the ‘Tags’ page where you can add, edit and delete tags. You can also get to this page through the navigation on the left–under ‘Posts’ > ‘Post Tags’.

The tag name is how the tag appears on your post/blog and in searches. As with categories you can choose to add a description but some themes will not show it. At the top of the ‘Tag’ page you can see which of your tags you use most prominently. This is known as a ‘tag cloud’ – it provides information on which tags you use and those that are currently available, as well as showing the popularity (by use) of these tags.

Right Now in Tags

Have you ever noticed on your WordPress login screen the ‘Right Now in Tags’ section on the right hand side of the page? It gives a current list of the most popular tags being used across WordPress. The tag cloud only includes recent activity so it does change over time – what you see when you log in today mighn’t be the same as the information in the tag cloud when you log in tomorrow.

Tag Surfer

And finally, you can search through the tags of wordpress.com blogs via the ‘Tag Surfer’ in your Dashboard menu. This page allows you to selectively choose the type of information and the content that you wish to read by subscribing to certain tags that you are interested in.

RSS and other life hack tips

RSS

What is RSS and why is it important for time management?

RSS (most often the acronym for Really Simple Syndication but also occasionally Rich Site Summary) is the backbone of Web 2.0 technologies. The acceptance and growth of the internet has altered the way that we read, the way that we write, the way that we discuss and share information, and the way that we research and distribute information – and online practices commonly used today are very different to the traditional world of print.

Throughout our first semester I have been talking about ways for you to create content in relation to building your website or creating your blog…but today I will introduce you to RSS, essentially an efficient means of ‘keeping track’ and ‘keeping up’ with sites on the net that interest you and a fundamental way to consume web content.

You may have already found that once you begin to delve into blogs and changing sites that you find interesting, it rapidly becomes difficult to ‘keep up’ with everything that is happening on a daily basis. Reading all of this interesting content quickly becomes a somewhat daunting process. In pre-RSS days, you would have had to have visited every individual website or blog to discover or find any new content. RSS reverses this process – think of it as a flip. You don’t need to bookmark all of your favourite sites in folders and sub-folders in favourites on your desktop any more or trawl through your social bookmarks on delicious to find out what is new – with RSS new content is delivered directly to you via an RSS reading program known as a reader or an aggregator which allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds.

Using an RSS reader is an effective and efficient way to keep track of your research interests and more importantly, it is an extremely valuable time management tool. Both of the following articles were written in 2003 but the value of the message that they impart remains true to this day:

• Aggregators Attack Info Overload, written by Ryan Singel for Wired, makes the point (as can be deduced from the title of the article) that users are turning to the use of readers and aggregators to manage the information overload.
• RSS: Hot Fix for Info-Junkies (Growing Web standard makes it easy to get news on the topics you want), written by Eric Dahl for PC World, describes RSS as the “next Web-based time-saver”.

As an introduction to RSS, here is a great video RSS in Plain English produced by Commoncraft.

When you subscribe to a reader or aggregator, you will find that the interface is fairly similar to that of an email program – you can scan through each site/blog subscription quickly and read the posts/news/new content that you are interested in and those that are not of interest can be skipped and/or deleted. Best of all, most RSS readers are free to use and easy to learn. From your reader you will be able to subscribe to a range of feeds that interest you – right through from news to blogs, and from Flickr to podcasts.

Two of the major web based aggregators/readers are Google Reader and Bloglines. However, there are many other readers available – some other readers can be found here and Yahoo also offers a directory of readers. Web based readers are particularly useful because it means that you have access to your own personal media directory almost anywhere.

The introduction of RSS into our lives has had repercussions on how we create and consume media and our expectations for access and usability. RSS has enhanced the range and diversity of media products available on the web and also allows the consumer to easily select the material that they wish to read and access. As you might imagine, the implications of RSS and the public being able to control and shape their media consumption are enormous. However, there is still a percentage of the population who view Web 2.0 technologies, social networking, RSS and the blogging phenomenon as a threat to mainstream or ‘old’ media, rather than considering and embracing the possibilities that this new technology has to offer.

Other Life Hack Tips

Wikipedia describes Life Hack as:

‘..anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way might be called a life hack. The term became popularized in the blogosphere and is primarily used by geeks who suffer from information overload or those with a playful curiosity in the ways they can accelerate their workflow.’

The blog Life Hacker assisted in popularizing the term Life Hack and Wikipedia covers the history of the term as ‘productivity tricks that programmers devise and employ to cut through information overload’ but the term has evolved to describe productivity tricks, tips for personal organization, and methods for efficient work processes.

The Life Hack tricks that we will discuss today (listed below) will assist you in your online working lives and may even make your University life easier as well…

Working within a web browser: the advantages

As students you are often working between stand alone computers (such as a laptop or your computer at home) and the networked computers on campus here at the university. You would be very familiar with the need to carry your work to and fro between the computer labs and your home on USB drives, CDs and other storage devices (eg: hard drive, zip drive, etc.)…but your digital life no longer has to be so complicated. Much of this tedious process can be avoided simply by working within a web browser.

Take for instance your theory essays and individual work proposals (IWPs), you do not need to carry a Microsoft Word file backwards and forwards between home and university any more – Google has developed online office tools in the form of Google Docs. With Google Docs you can easily create basic Word-style documents and spreadsheets from scratch and are able to perform tasks such as adding tables, inserting images, changing fonts, etc. – most of the commands that you would expect from Word itself. Google Docs is free and accepts most common file formats including DOC, RTF, PDF, HTML, etc. Some advantages to using this online software are that you can store and edit your work from any computer with an internet connection and a standard browser, the service is free and you are not required to install any software on your computer. The major disadvantages to working in this manner include depending on an online tool which may or may not operate 24/7 and being reliant on a service which may disappear. However, you can easily work around these disadvantages by keeping regular ‘back-ups’ of your work – which you would normally do in any case – so the inconvenience is minimal.

Another free, browser based office suite available is Zoho. Zoho offers word processing, presentation tools, spreadsheets, planning tools and note taking tools – all of which would be useful to you as students.

Note taking

In your day to day lives at university, and especially during the research phase in the lead up to essay writing, you would frequently have to take and store a variety of notes. There are free web applications that can help you to take and organize your notes, including:

• ShortText
• Yahoo! Notepad
• YourDraft

Social Bookmarking

You will already be familiar with the notion of social bookmarking, having become accustomed to using del.icio.us, and you will become acquainted with accumulating a list of bookmarks that relate to your work throughout the course of this semester as part of the research for your presentation. It is for projects such as this, as well as for collating sites of interest, that social bookmarking becomes a very handy tool.

The video Social Bookmarking in Plain English, produced by Commoncraft, is a great introduction to this notion.

Aside from del.icio.us, another social bookmarking service that you might like to look at is Diigo (previously Furl). We also discussed Ma.gnolia last semester, however it has come to my attention that the public version of Ma.gnolia closed unexpectedly earlier this year – thus illustrating the major disadvantage of using such services.

Mind mapping tools

Creating mind maps/brainstorming is one technique commonly used to generate and develop ideas. This technique allows you to visualize concepts quickly and easily and mind maps can be used in the process of designing/developing a website, planning a project, sorting through your thoughts for writing an essay – whatever it is, a mind map helps you to clarify exactly what is what.

Bubbl.us is one example of a free web based mind mapping tool. It would be very easy to create an account on Bubbl.us and be mind mapping in less than 5 minutes – the interface is intuitive and can be understood quite easily if you are already familiar with the concept of mind mapping/brainstorming. After you have built a mind map on Bubbl.us, you have the option to save it for access at a later stage, share it with someone (you may wish to collaborate on a project) or export it as a jpeg file to be used elsewhere.

Other browser based mind mapping tools include:

• Thinkature
• MindMeister
• Mindomo
• Mind42

*Note: You may wish, and I would encourage you, to look at using one of these web based mind mapping pieces of software for the mind map that I have asked you to create for your IWP.

To Do lists and Calendars

I can’t speak for you as individuals, but many designer-makers and artists that I know (myself included) live by To Do lists – if I didn’t, something would almost certainly drop off the plate (so to speak). Irrespective of your workshop or specialization, there is always a number of tasks that have to be completed in a certain order to actually design & make an object or to bring any project together. You might have to source materials, seek advice, do some research, contact companies to find out material specs, locate a variety of resources for your project, you will have a process to work through in order to make the object, you would probably like to document and photograph the process and the completed work, and if you are going to exhibit the project or work you will have another To Do list all over again! To complete many of these tasks you would often be using email, searching the web for resources and contacts, seeking addresses and phone numbers…and each task would need to be completed by a certain date.

It is all too easy to have odd documents (a page here and a page there) floating in your user space at university or living on your USB stick or hard drive at home, and invariably they manage to be misplaced or lost, written over or they are simply not where you want them when you need them – they’re at home on your home computer when you are at uni or they’re at Uni on your user space when you need them at home. It makes a lot of sense and is far more efficient to store them all in one place and online – this means that they will be accessible wherever you go so long as you have internet access and a standard browser. You would want to be using more than a simple note taking tool (as discussed above) for this type of activity, and this is where the free To Do list and Calendar web services come into their own.

A simple, free To Do list web application is Ta-da Lists produced by 37 Signals, who also produce Backpack (an intranet service for businesses).

There are a number of Calendar services online. Many people are beginning to use Google Calendar as it ties in nicely with the rest of the google apps and you can access it easily from the google apps space.

Another web based calendar service that you might wish to look could be Yahoo! Calendar.

Images

You can store images online using sites like Flickr, which we have discussed. Flickr is useful because you are not only storing your images online but you can also annotate and discuss your images as well as tag them so that they can be found easily and successfully by other users.

Another image hosting web service offered by Google is Picasa. Picasa offers 1GB of space for free before you need to pay to upgrade for more storage. Similar to Flickr, you can tag images and your viewers can leave comments, however there are fewer social features than Flickr – such as groups. Recently Google have doubled the size of the images you are able upload, from 10MB to 20MB per image, so now you can house quite large images on this site.

Personalised online start pages

If you begin to use (or already use) any or all of these online services, I would suggest that you might like to set up a personalised online start page for yourself with links to all of the sites that you use regularly. The following services usually offer a way to check your web-based email, check your RSS feed, search the web and access a variety of services like your del.icio.us account and Flickr account. Basically they put all of your daily information and needs in one place…a few you might consider could be:

• The start page service that Google offers
• Netvibes
• Pageflakes

categories on wordpress

It is a good idea to make use of the Categories function on WordPress.

Why use categories? Categories can be as useful to you as they are to your readers. Think of categories like an overarching filing system which can help you to remember what your posts were about–and remember, you can add/amend and delete them at any time AND more than one category can be added to each post. Categories will allow your readers to quickly and easily navigate through your blog and will allow them to easily access information that they are interested in.

Where will you see the categories? The category will show with the post and also in the category widget (should you choose to make it visible) down the side of your blog. The category widget is helpful as it will allow your readers, once they are on your blog, to sift through your posts categorically–and this in turn will add to the usability of your blog.

How do you make categories? From your dashboard you can click on ‘Categories’ in ‘Right Now’ (top centre of interface) and you will be taken directly to the ‘Categories’ page where you can add, change and delete categories. You can also get to this page through the navigation on the left–under ‘Posts’ > ‘Categories’.

The hierarchy of categories: The other unique thing about categories is that they can be allocated a hierarchy – you can create a parent category containing sub-categories – so they begin to work like a folder and sub-folder system. For example: your parent category might be ‘wood’ and within this parent category you might break down into 4 or 5 different sub-categories titled by type of wood. ie: Wood > Oak, Beech, Pine, Cedar, Redwood.

You can also type a description of each category, should you choose, however some themes do not show show it – check if yours does.

Deleting categories: Take notice of the note beneath the category lists – if you delete a category at any stage it does not delete the posts that were associated with it. Instead, these posts are reassigned to the ‘Uncategorized’ category which is a default and cannot be deleted. However, it will stop showing in posts and in the category widget if you stop using it to classify posts.

promoting your website and blog | a few tips on google rankings

‘How do I improve my google ranking?’ is a commonly asked question and the answer isn’t so straightforward and simple. If you start to dig around you will discover that there is A LOT of advice out there—not all of which may be directly relevant to you and your situation…but here are a few key suggestions & some reading to get you started:

• Learn about Page Ranking (also referred to as PR)—what is it? how does it work? Wikipedia’s PageRank page could be a good place to start.
• To have your site listed in Google Search you can go to their Add your URL page and sumbit your URL to Google directly.
• Have a read through SSW Rules to Better Google Rankings—this site will give you a good idea of how Google Page Ranking (also referred to as PR) works. You can check your knowledge against the questions that they ask—do you use relevant keywords? do you use descriptive tags? do you link to relevant and interesting sites?
• Have a look at Charles Nixon’s 5 Steps to Increase your Google Page Rank—it contains some pertinent information but point 3 & point 4 aren’t as relevant for your website…perhaps consider them for your blog.
• Familiarise yourself with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
• Read through the suggestions on A Promotion Guide—you should be starting to see some topics/ideas/suggestions on improving your google ranking coming up again and again now.
• Take a look at the list 10 Things That Affect Your Google Blog Search Ranking—items 4 & 5 in ’5 Things That Improve Your Ranking’ aren’t integral to your blogs at the present point in time but 1, 2 & 3 are worth taking note of.

promoting your blog | blog directories

Another method of blog promotion is to submit your blog URL to blog directories. There is a wide variety of directories out there online and some, you will find, will be more relevant than others.

In order to determine if a directory is suitable or right for you here are a couple of things to consider:

• Is the directory well organised? Is the navigation easy to follow? Can you find what you are looking for easily?
• What other types of sites are listed in the directory? Are there other blogs with a similar niche/audience to your own?

After you have found a directory that is right for you, what next? You will need to follow the directory prompts to submit your blog. It is usually as simple as entering your blog URL into one or multiple categories, entering some basic sign-up information and providing a brief description of your site. Be honest and logical with your submission. Make sure you choose wisely when selecting the category/categories—remember that you want your listing to be found. Be truthful when writing your blog description—you want prospective readers to know what your blog is about and engage with you.

Here are a few notable directories to get you started:

• Technorati—of course! An enormous directory which also provides a ‘ranking’ based on a system of counting the number of unique links over a given period of time.
• Blog Catalog—another large blog directory which also offers discussion forums and groups to assist the interaction of bloggers. Blog Catalog verifies submitted URLs as being genuine before listing them in the directory—so this provides a cleaner, more splog (spam blog) free atmosphere.
• Globe of Blogs—another good site. This directory enables you to browse by title, topic or location and can make for an interesting geographical survey of bloggers by interest/topic. Globe of Blogs also verifies submissions as being genuine before they are listed, so it can sometimes take a short while before your listing appears.

For a further list of blog directories you might like to refer to Vandelay Design’s List of Blog Directories and Search Engines.

promoting your blog | things to think about

You’ve started a blog and now you might be thinking…Where to next? How do I develop a readership? How will people find my blog? How do I let people know I am here?

The key is blog promotion.

A few things to consider from the outset regarding blog promotion…

• It would be unwise to promote an empty blog. If your blog is undeveloped and has no content there is nothing to keep your readers at your site when they find you. Think about the type of content that would bring your readers back. Put some energy into establishing and developing your blog before you spend the time promoting it—write posts! Take the time to research blogs that you like and make notes about those that draw you back. What is it that keeps you interested? What do they do that makes you want to return?
• Once you have developed your blog get out there and be active in the blogosphere. Start by searching blogger and wordpress for blogs that interest you. Search for other blogs within your field or niche. Use delicious to help you keep these blogs ‘on file’ for reference later…you’ll gather quite a list! Start your interaction with the blogging community by leaving comments on your favourite blogs. Be sure to follow up any comments left for you with a reply/comment/email—at least with a ‘thank you’.
• Check your Stats regularly and pay particular attention to your ‘Referrers’. Take the time to thank them for the link.

Some blogging tips from others that are well worth the read:

Mani Karthik’s Top 5 mistakes I did when I started blogging.

Daily Blog Tips’101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006

Daily Blog Tips’ Daily Blog Tips: Best of 2007

Bear in mind that not all of these tips will be relevant to everyone, so read through this advice from others and take on board that which applies to you.