You know it; I know it… the web is full of awwwwwful websites.

Do yourself and everyone else a favour -

DON’T get your site done by your mate down the road who has done at least one website in his spare time and is quite happy to bash out yours for a discount.

Why Good Design Pays

If your content is excellent but no-one can find it, it might as well not be there.

If your site looks like it was built by your little sister for a school project, people will turn up on your site and then promptly leave.
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Many people will have heard of blogs but not have a very clear idea of what they are.  Before I discuss the various merits of blogging, I think a quick blog description shall be required…

Wikipedia has this description:

A blog (a contraction of the term “web log“)^[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
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Slicing is the process of taking a design, be it a photoshop file, or flat image, and cutting it up so it can then be coded into a web page.  The process typically involves both the cutting of the design into individual images as well as the coding.  Usually a single web page will be produced for each page of design which typically results in a home page and a content page.

Recently, companies have realised that this time consuming process can be outsourced to trained professionals, and there are numerous slicing companies on the net who will take your design and hand you back ready-to-go web pages that you can finish building your site from.
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If you’re thinking about a content management system for your new site, you could do far worse than WordPress. In fact, let me rephrase that in the positive: WordPress makes a fantastic CMS.  Here are some reasons why…
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• You can install pre-made themes that you can then customise easily with the WordPress control panel (the dashboard).
• Create your own designs and integrate them seamlessly with WP.
• There are a wealth of plugins available to make WordPress function as a top quality CMS. I’ll post more on these soon.

I recently built a new site for a lovely lady who had gone to an SEO company to get her existing site a bit more exposure.  They took her money, and all they really did was add some keywords and a meta description and plonk some FREE tracker script at the bottom of her site.

They even contacted her claiming to be GOOGLE! Talk about dodgy.

It’s a little bit like taking your car to the mechanic’s. If cars are something you don’t know a lot about, you can really get fleeced – you often feel like you have no choice but to listen to what they say and pay what they ask.
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