Building Websites

Four CPanel Tasks Beginners Should Learn To Use

1 Comment » Written on February 22nd, 2011 by
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Four CPanel Tasks Beginners Should Learn To Use

When you create your first site, there’s a good chance you’ll be hosting that site on a server that uses Cpanel as its control panel. CPanel is great but it can be a little intimidating to a newbie. You’ll likely find it easy enough to locate and handle some tasks, such as setting up a new email account, but others may not be so obvious. Rather than focus on showing you how to use every feature of CPanel, I want to touch on just four tasks that you’ll probably need to understand at some point, but aren’t already obvious in … Read the rest

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How To Create and Add A Favicon To Your Site

No Comments » Written on February 14th, 2011 by
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How To Create and Add A Favicon To Your Site

When designing your site, you probably spend a lot of time working on the logo, color scheme, and the overall look and feel to ensure that you project just the right brand image. In the process, don’t overlook the tiny little favicon that appears next to your URL in the browser’s address bar, and next to your site’s name in a browser’s favorites / bookmarks.

A favicon may seem minor, but it’s like the dot over the “i” character. Your branding just isn’t complete without it, even if it can technically function without it.

People are inundated with data these … Read the rest

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SEO 101: The First Baby Steps In Learning SEO

No Comments » Written on February 8th, 2011 by
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SEO 101: The First Baby Steps In Learning SEO

Although learning all the nuances of search engine optimization (SEO) can take years of experience, the basics are really fairly simple to understand. For many websites, and probably yours, these basics can often be enough to generate relevant, targeted traffic from search engines.

Three Broad SEO Goals

  • SEO Goal 1: Make sure the search engines know that your site (and each of its pages) exists. Search engines prefer to discover sites and pages within those sites via links from other pages and other sites on the web. Therefore, to achieve this goal, make sure someone links to your site from

    • … Read the rest

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Custom Error Pages – Why You Should Customize and How To Do It

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Custom Error Pages – Why You Should Customize and How To Do It

We’ve all landed on website error pages. Sometimes they don’t say much more than 404 or 500, and other times they give us funny or useful information. Here’s why you should make sure you customize your site’s error pages (at least the 404 Not Found ones), and how to go about doing it.

Why You Should Always Customize Your Error Pages

There are several reasons why you should never let your visitors land on a default error page.

  1. The default pages offer no real information, confusing some visitors, and annoying most others.
  2. It’s like inviting a guest into your home,

    3. … Read the rest

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Build A Site From Scratch Or Use A CMS?

No Comments » Written on January 17th, 2011 by
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Build A Site From Scratch Or Use A CMS?

This question often comes up: Should I build a website from scratch or just use a CMS instead? The answer is yes – to both. For many practical, real life business purposes, it’s best to use a CMS. The more popular CMS applications have a proven track record, are pretty flexible, quick to set up, easy to manage, and come with large communities of support. On the other hand, they may not be as flexible as you might need them to be. They may not handle special case uses that you require, and they may not play well with other … Read the rest

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How To Edit A Web Template

No Comments » Written on January 13th, 2011 by
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How To Edit A Web Template

Beginner website owners often create their first sites by downloading a free web template. Once downloaded and unzipped, they are sometimes left wondering what to do next. Their first question is usually something like, “How do I edit this thing and put my own content in it?” The easy answer is to tell them to open up the HTML files in a text editor like Notepad (but not a word processor like MS Word).

The better answer is this:

Use A Good Text Editor

Open up the file(s) in a good text editor. That automatically eliminates Notepad, as Notepad … Read the rest

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Use These Website Elements To Establish Trust With Your Visitors

No Comments » Written on January 5th, 2011 by
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Use These Website Elements To Establish Trust With Your Visitors

As in the brick and mortar world, legitimate business, product and information websites must fight for attention, not only from other legitimate sites, but also from a stinky pile of scam, spam, and junky websites. Users are are rightfully wary when deciding to part with cash or information on websites, so establishing a level of trust with users is extremely important.

But how can you establish trust with users who have never heard of you before? You’ve never had an opportunity to prove your trustworthiness with a first-time visitor, so you’ll need to engender a feeling of trust within that … Read the rest

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10 Website Design DOs and DON’Ts

No Comments » Written on January 4th, 2011 by
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10 Website Design DOs and DON’Ts

Many sites make some huge mistakes in their web design, and most site owners never even realize it. But these types of problems can be serious impediments to your site’s success. Here are a few things to consider when building or analyzing your own site. Hint: Have someone else look at your site with these things in mind as well. You may be too close to your site to be able to analyze it objectively.

  1. Navigation should be clear, organized, and simple. Don’t use images for navigation. Don’t use flash or complex dropdowns. Make sure everything is organized into logical

    2. … Read the rest

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Planning A Small Business Website

No Comments » Written on January 2nd, 2011 by
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Planning A Small Business Website

Before you jump into the design of your new small business website, you should first consider 3 vital questions.

  • Who is your target audience?
  • How will they find your website?
  • How will you convert visits into sales?

Sound obvious? Maybe so, but if you’re excited about having a website, you’ll very likely be focused on design and functionality, and forget all about the real reason to put your small business on the web – to create more business!

So let’s tackle each question, one at a time.

Who is your target audience?

Here, it’s important to narrow down your market. … Read the rest

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