Hard disk drive

Backing Up a Business Website and Testing the Restore

Most business owners only think about website backups after something goes wrong. A plugin update breaks the site, a hosting account is closed or someone deletes the wrong page. By then it is too late to start. A working backup turns a disaster into an inconvenience.

This article explains what a website backup should include and where to keep it. It also covers the step many people skip, which is checking that the backup actually restores. The advice draws on guidance from Australian and New Zealand government cyber security agencies.

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Coloured pencils

Choosing Website Colours With Enough Contrast

Colour is often the first thing people talk about when a new website is planned. Brand colours, a mood, a feeling. But the colours you pick also decide whether people can read your pages at all. Pale grey text on a white background might look soft and modern, yet many visitors will struggle with it.

The good news is that readable colour is not guesswork. There is a published international standard with clear numbers you can check in a few minutes. This article covers what those numbers mean and how to apply them to text, buttons, forms and links.

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Growing Subscriber Lists: How Can I Grow My Subscriber List?

Are you looking to grow your subscriber list but not sure where to start?

We’ve been honing our craft in the Australian digital marketing scene for over 10 years, helping businesses like yours build robust, engaged subscriber lists.

Let’s dive into some tried-and-true strategies that will help you grow your list authentically and effectively.

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10 Web Hosting Terms Explained

10 Web Hosting Terms Explained

Even if you believe you are reasonably familiar with web hosting and how it is used, we are sure that now and then you come across a term relating to web hosting and are unsure what it means. Alternatively, you may be completely new to web hosting and when you see some of the jargon relating to it, have no idea what it is referring to.

Believe us when we say that regardless of which of the two scenarios above most closely relates to you, you are in good company because even those with firsthand experience of web hosting, such as web designers, are at a loss sometimes to fully understand some of the terminologies that web hosting generates.

It is fair to say that the world of technical subjects, including web hosting, seems to take great delight in making them seem far more complicated than they really are by inventing jargon that causes more confusion than it does clarity. To try and make web hosting somewhat clearer we thought it would be worthwhile if explained some web hosting terms to you, so here are ten of them.

Bandwidth: This is the term used to describe the amount of data that your website is allowed to use. In practical terms, it equates to the amount of data that is either downloaded or uploaded to your website. Websites that use large files such as videos require more bandwidth than those that are mainly text-based.

CMS: Stands for Content Management System. This is a means of allowing those with no technical nor design skills to create and manage websites. The most popular CMS is WordPress.

DNS: Stands for Domain Name System. This is the technology responsible for allowing websites to be identified by their domain names such as google.com, instead of hard-to-remember IP addresses.

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Single Page Website

Should I Use A Single Page Website?

If you’re a web developer or web designer then you will be familiar with one of the biggest modern web design debates: single page vs multi page websites. This debate has been raging for a few years now, and there are pros and cons for both sides of the argument.

In this article I’m going to walk through a few of the reasons why you might decide to use a single-page website. I’ll look closely at things like design features, your individual needs, and a range of other factors.

When Are Single Page Websites Useful?

Basically, single page websites are usually used by those who don’t have a lot of information to present, or who want to present a significant amount of information in a logical sequence. Some of the most popular uses for single page websites include:

  • As product landing pages, where a range of information is presented in a logical sequence, broken up by call to action buttons or sections.
  • As small business websites when you don’t have a lot of information to present. It’s more than possible to include small “about”, “services”, and “contact” sections within one single page design.
  • For portfolios, when the main purpose of your website is showcasing your work. Single page designs are great for this because they are simple and allow people to focus on your work.

As you can see, there are plenty of different uses for single page websites. However, it can still be hard to decide whether to use one or not.

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Effective Web Design

Important Elements for Effective Web Design

According to the professionals over at Web Design Perth, web design is the process of creating content that is intended to be portrayed on electronic web pages that can be accessed by the end users by means of internet browsers.

Designing, of any nature, involves the collection of ideas and implementing or arranging them in an aesthetic manner using guidelines provided.

Here are some important elements Web designers always keep in mind:

Layout:

This is the manner in which the text, ads and graphics are arranged on the Web. The main goal is to aid the viewers in locating, at first glance, the information they want.

It also includes maintaining the integrity, consistency and balance of the design.

Color:

The choice of colors is heavily dependent on the clientele and the purpose of the website. Designers can go for multi-colored or black and white designs based on the functionality and requirements of the client.

Depending on the purpose, you could be conveying the outlook of a brand, person or organization, using colors that are considered “Web-safe”.

Graphics:

Web Design can be effectively enhanced by using graphic elements such as icons, clipart, photos or logos.

Their placement is paramount when user-friendliness is in question, and should work with the content and color of the page, also making sure it is not slow to load or congested.

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Small Business Website

5 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs A WordPress Website

If you own or manage a small business, you might have thought about building a website to help you develop an online presence. If you don’t already have a website, and haven’t thought about having getting a professional one, then you should be!

Fortunately for you, it’s never been easier to build a website than it is today. Beginner-friendly content management systems and software like WordPress mean that anyone can build their own website, regardless of their experience and skills, however it is a good idea to consult an SEO expert.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a short list of my top five reasons why your business should build a WordPress website. They include:

  1. A Website Will Help You Find Customers

Even having a small skeleton website can dramatically increase the amount of customers you have. This is true regardless of the type of business you have, and I’ve worked with plenty of small businesses who have grown by developing their online presence.

For example, if you’re a plumber in “City X”, having a website will help you get found when people search for something like “plumber in City X”. This will help drive new clients to your business.

  1. A Website Will Boost Your Credibility

If you have a website associated with your business it can dramatically boost your credibility and make you appear a lot more professional. Ultimately, building an online presence is one of the best ways to build your credibility and attract a range of new customers.

  1. A Website Will Give You A Competitive Advantage

If you operate in a competitive niche with numerous other businesses, then you should be doing everything you can to gain a competitive advantage for you and your business. Building a website can give you this advantage, especially if you can get it to the top of Google using relevant keywords within your website content to help Search Engine Optimisation.

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How to Take Your Logo From Average to Great

How to Take Your Logo From Average to Great

A logo is the ‘face’ of your business in the world. From the colours chosen to the design elements to the words you choose to use, each part has the potential to be memorable. And memorable is good. If you pair a memorable logo with good advertising then you are more likely to get an inbound inquiry or sale than a comparable business with a less eye-catching logo.

And if you pair a good logo with a great product, service or customer experience, then you are on your way to establishing a strong customer brand.

Unfortunately, for many small and medium sized businesses, their logos let them down. They are forgettable, or badly designed, or have obvious flaws (like appearing blurry or pixelated on screens). There are plenty of reasons for that – SME’s don’t have huge budgets to spend on designers and logos, and often, they don’t even know how they could improve their current branding.

This article is here to help with that with some simple, practical ways to create a better, more memorable logo.

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Marketing Strategy

The Most Common Ways to Break a Google AdSense Ad

When your website marketing strategy has ad revenue as the end goal, you have to expect that the game isn’t going to be as easy as you at first think it will be. Ad revenue is a very thin margin even in the best of scenarios. It takes volume to make it grow. And countless website owners have gotten frustrated or impatient with their ad revenue and gotten themselves in trouble by trying some dumb trick or another rather than engage a professional digital marketing agency.

Here’s a list to avoid being a statistic and having Google ban you:

Excessive keyword stuffing

Number-one with a bullet, people still try this nonsense today. Google already knew it would happen when they launched way back in 1997. These sites get found and blacklisted sometimes within minutes of posting! Trust us, Google knows when a search term is repeated just to pull in a search engine and focus an ad. That is why they are Google.

Altering the results of an ad click

This is an unexpected one, but lately some site owners have attempted to monkey with the ad click results in ways like framing the ad target site or redirecting it. Huge violation of TOS, and it’s happening more as AJAX methods get more sophisticated.

Colour masking

It is true that Google allows you to customize the colours of an ad unit to your taste, either making it stand out in contrast of blend in for aesthetics. Some site owners get cocky and set things like the ad unit’s text or link colours to the webpage background colour, or set it into a CSS div with the alpha set to transparency and then using absolute positioning to have different content behind it… There’s a million ways to pull little tricks to hide an ad, and they all spell “TOS violation” and get you banned.

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Did You Know About These SEO Quirks?

According to SEO Perth Experts, a post that wins the prize for the most technically detailed SEO advice ever is this one; Search Engine Land shares these discoveries about punctuation quirks.

Honestly never heard of most of these. Dashes vs. underscores, pipe characters, using only lowercase… How did it take this long to be discovered?

To explain about the underscores part regarding “Google was written for nerds by nerds” – Computers have always had a problem with the space character in the name of anything, because the space is how we tell the computer that a new name is starting. This is especially a problem in the early days of computing, in programming languages, and general file system tinkering. So there evolved work-arounds to keep it human-readable: One of them was called “camel case” where you write all one word using interspersed capitals (WordWideWeb), another was alternating upper-and-lower case (worldWIDEweb), one was using underscores for spaces (world_wide_web) and so on. Underscores became the dominant convention, so you’d want to avoid underscores unless you want them taken literally. Now memorize all that and bewilder your bar mates with this trivia!

Landscaping Company On Social Media

Marketing Your Landscaping Company On Social Media

Social media is one of the most powerful digital marketing mediums in the world. This is especially true for fields like landscaping, where much of the work that is completed is visually appealing and easily captured in photos and videos. As a landscaper, you should be leveraging a social media strategy to market your business and bring in new clients regularly.

However, it can be hard to get started on social media, especially if you own and manage a small landscaping business. How do you know what accounts to create, what sort of content to post and how often you should be using your social media pages?

Let’s have a think about a few of these questions:

Why should you be using social media for your landscaping company?

The simple truth is that a huge percentage of people use social media on a daily basis. Facebook reigns supreme, with billions of users throughout the world. However, it is closely followed by things like Instagram and Snapchat, and you should be using all three of these as a landscaper.

If you’re not using social media, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to advertise your business for free. A lot of landscaping companies gain new clients through their social media pages – especially through their Facebook business page – without spending a lot of time or money.

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Video Production

Open Source Tools For Video Production

It may be painful for those of us ‘old school’ web entrepreneurs to admit, but the days of a text-based web are numbered. And with it, a text-based marketing strategy for your online business. Video content is becoming the medium of choice, the one people pay attention to. As this Cisco white paper in May 2013 states, 69% of web traffic will be video content by 2017.

Video Production
This is actually good news, because it’s a great time to join this bandwagon.

Remember that in the early days of television, air time belonged to the brave souls who ventured out into that frontier when it was still taking off. As you’ll see in this list, the barrier to entry for video production and promotion of your web business is actually a lot lower than you think.

Avidemux is one of the most popular open source video editing applications. It runs on Windows (both 64 and 32 bit), OS X, and Linux. It has a nice balance of being simple enough for a novice to use, but having some nifty features anyway, including built-in codecs (is that a sign of relief out there?), and support for formats such as AVI, MPG, MOV, and FLV. Avidemux review. Avidemux introductory tutorial. The project is also live and kicking as of this writing.

Kdenlive is another strong contender, but it is only available for Mac OS X, Linux, and BSD, leaving out Windows. It is also a more sophisticated tool aimed at higher-end production, but at the same time more complex. It has a wide range of image effect filters, including support for masking, blue screen, distortions, color and blur filters, and more. On the audio side, it also has support LADSPA, SOX, and other audio APIs. It seems more aimed at animation work. A hammy Kdenlive review. A beginning KDenlive tutorial.

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WordPress Categories And Tags

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress Categories And Tags

When it comes to building the perfect WordPress websites, experts like the team at SEO Perth Experts say there are a lot of things to think about. You have to try and create engaging, interesting content, draw visitors in, and make your site show up on Google. Doing one or two of these things isn’t too difficult, but trying to do all three at the same time can be almost impossible.

There are a lot of different things that you can do to help yourself achieve the perfect website. Learning how to use every part of the WordPress platform to optimise your content for search engines is essential. When it comes to doing this sort of thing, learning how to use categories and tags effectively is something that a lot of people don’t do.

What are categories and tags?

When you create new content in WordPress, you can label it in a number of ways. You can place it underneath an existing page, you can add it to a series, or you can simply label it by date and time. However, you can also add it to a category and add tags to it.

Categories:

WordPress categories provide a way for you to sort your content into different groups, according to their themes, topics, and what they are about. This makes it easier for both search crawlers to find their way around your website, and for readers to find more posts that they are interested in. You can display categories in a number of places, including above or below your posts. You can also add multiple categories to the same post.

Tags:

Tags give even more information about the content of your post. They basically connect related posts even more than categories. You should tag everything relevant about your post, while you usually only add one or two main categories. Categories are general, but tags are specific to your post or parts of your post.

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Choosing A Web Designer

Mistakes To Avoid When Choosing A Web Designer

As you begin to narrow down the shortlist of web designers and the time comes for your web design to become a reality, there are several mistakes that many business owners make as the process begins. If you don’t want to make the same errors and end up with a poorly designed website, or worse no website at all, then read on to discover three crucial mistakes you want to avoid.

#1 No Clear Idea Of Your Needs

Before choosing a web designer you must establish what function the website has and what part it is going to play in the success of your business. Websites can vary tremendously in both their size and complexity so it is vital you know which sort of website you need. Is it a fully functional e-commerce site, a small single page email capture site, a corporate portal or a blog?

Of course, there are other types of website so whichever it is, ensure that you choose a web design company that has a track record of creating the sort of site you want and make it clear exactly what it is you require them to create.

#2 Making Your Decision Based On Price Alone

Every business has budget restraints, especially new businesses, so it is likely that you will need to have an eye on the cost of your web design. However, this does not mean that you merely choose the cheapest quote. Remember that your site may be the first contact any of your potential customers have with your business, so the last thing you want is for that impression to be of a cheap company with no pride in how it appears to the online world.

If your budget won’t stretch to all the advanced functions and eye-catching graphics you’d like, at least go for a designer who can build you a great looking site at a cost which is value for money. Ensure that what they design can be upgraded as your business revenue increases and a budget you can allocate to improving your website further, becomes available

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Web Design Career

Web Design As A Career?

As the internet continues to evolve, web design as a career will remain in demand. Currently, web design is a hot career choice, for many creative high school and college graduate types. Although a degree is not necessary, it is not useless to have one, especially while being interviewed. The important thing is to do the necessary research during the planning stage, so that you can determine if web design is the right career for you. Typically, web designers have an artistic background, or experience in art of some kind. Before we get into the specifics of web design as a career, let’s first take a look at what web design entails.

Designers Make Web Pages Aesthetically Pleasing

Web designers are responsible for developing the general design details that make up a website. This includes, but is not limited to, the color schemes as well as the layouts of web pages. What is often misunderstood, is that web designers are not there only to make web pages aesthetically sound. Web designers are also responsible for, ensuring that the navigational aspects of a website are smooth. There is no use in having a gorgeous website, if your visitors are unable to navigate it. Web designers also need to have a basic understanding of SEO. Doing so, allows for their client’s websites to rank higher in the search engines. If this is done properly, websites can place ads that incur revenue and monetize content.

All web designers usually come from creative backgrounds, and many of them know a bit about coding as well. This is especially handy, when it is required of them to program in HTML and CSS.

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