Underground Web Designs Blog

It’s pretty common knowledge that having a blog can be a huge boost to your online business, but where do you find the time to write in it? Did you know you can automate many blogging tasks, so you don’t have to spend extra time doing them? If you take just 30 minutes to set them up you’ll never have to worry about them again.

1. If you have a wordpress blog, turn on the Askimet pluggin. Every wordpress blog comes with this pluggin included, just log in to your wordpress admin area and activate the pluggin. In order to activate it you will need a free account at www.wordpress.com, which you can get in a few minutes. Once you have your wordpress.com API key and plug it into the Askimet pluggin, Askimet goes to work protecting your blog from comment spam. If you’re just starting out as a blogger comment spam may not be a problem for you yet. In this case, Askimet is a preventative measure. As your blog gets more popular you’ll soon have almost as many spam comments as you have spam in your inbox. Take preventative measures now by setting up Askimet so you NEVER have to deal with comment spam on your blog.
2. Batch your posts. Have you ever sat down at your computer and felt like you could pump off 3 or 4 posts all at once? When you are in the mood to write make use of your post time stamps to save yourself some time over the next few days. Most bogging platforms allow you to edit the time stamp on your posts, and if this time is set to a time in the future, your post will not be published till that time. Next time you feel like writing 5 posts all at once time stamp them into the future and watch your blog update itself over the next week without any help from you!
3. Make use of Aweber’s Blog Broadcast feature and your blog’s built in RSS feed. Every good blogging platform should automatically provide you with an RSS feed of your posts. Make sure that it is easy for people to subscribe to your feed. Put a big button in a prominent possition on your blog that links to the feed. People who subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed will be automatically notified of your new posts as soon as you post them — without you having to lift a finger! Another powerful way to get the word out about your blog is to use Aweber’s “Blog Broadcast” feature (this only works if you have people on your Aweber subscriber list). Simply input your blog RSS feed URL, the number of blog posts to include in each e-mail, and the template you’d like to use and you’re set! Now every X number of posts your loyal subscribers will get an e-mail letting them know what you’ve recently written about… all without you doing anything except write the posts!

Technology was meant to make our lives easier, and in the world of blogging it has certainly come a long way toward doing that! Following these three tips will help you avoid hours of checking through spammy comments, allow you to write when you feel like it and still post consistently, and help you broadcast your blogging efforts without lifting a finger. Never do manually what you can automate!

It seems like every time you check the technical section of the news you see something about yet another “social networking” or “social bookmarking” service. As a business owner you may just shrug and move on, if you read the technical section of the news at all. Social media isn’t something you can just ignore though, especially if you want to get the most from your website.

Social media sites –sites that facilitate communication between peers– are among the largest websites for a reason: people like to talk to eachother and share their opinions. Now, your business may not be in the area of social networks, or even in the area of communication. That’s ok. No matter what your area of expertise is, social media is still an important concept for anyone who does business online (and if you have a website, you do business online).

How can you use the popularity of social media to boost your business and increase sales? Well, it’s both simple and difficult. The concepts are simple, but pulling them off can be easier said than done. The best way to leverage social media is to get people talking about your product or service. A good first step is to post fun, interesting, or educational videos on YouTube, and be sure to leave the comments open. Another good idea is to start a blog. Blogs are very easy to create and maintain, and best of all they provide a place for people interested in your topic to agree, disagree, and discuss what you write about.

There are some people that think that since social media is so powerful they should throw everything they have at it, in as many places as they can. Others will even offer their “services” to put your videos, articles, or links on hundreds of social media sites. Beware of such “spam” tactics. Remember that the power of social media is in people talking to each other and sharing things they like. If you post something on one popular site such as YouTube, and people like it, they will tell their friends to come check it out. If you put a video on 100 video sharing sites and nobody likes it, your reputation may well be tarnished.

If you remember that social media sites are the ultimate democracy then you will be able to make full use of them to grow your business and sell your products. If you forget even for a minute that anyone can (and will) make it known to the world if you mess up, you’ll soon find out that social media has a downside as well.

One of the first steps to getting a website is choosing a company to host your site. This process doesn’t have to be hard, and can be made all the easier if you know what to look for. Cheaper is not necessarily better when it comes to web hosting. As you evaluate hosting companies, keep the following five tips in mind:

1. Bandwidth. Get as much bandwidth as you can afford. Bandwidth is the amount of information people can transfer to and from your site in a month. The more bandwidth you have, the more visitors your site can support. If your site runs out of bandwidth your site will “go down” until you purchase more. For small business sites, make sure you have at least a few gigabytes, and watch how much bandwidth you use closely. If you are anywhere over 80% of your bandwidth it’s time to upgrade your hosting package, as a sudden spike in popularity could easily push you over the top and bring down your site.
2. PHP Support. Check to make sure the web hosting package you are looking at comes with PHP support. There are many web softwares (forums, blogging platforms, etc) that are written in PHP. These softwares are often available for free, but will be of no use if your server does not run PHP.
3. Server Uptime. Do some research into the hosting company you are interested in and find out how good their server uptime is. Uptime is simply a measure of what percentage of time a host’s servers operational. Remember that if a server goes down, you won’t loose your website, but nobody will be able to view your site until the server is fixed and running again. For this reason it is important that the server you choose has a high uptime rating. Usually a quick google search using the web host’s name and “uptime” will turn up some comments on whether that host offers good server uptime or not. Don’t host your site with a host that has a poor uptime rating.
4. Add-on Domains, Parked Domains, and Sub-domains. Even if your website is a simple one, you may find yourself wanting to add extra domains (web addresses) in the future. For those that don’t know, parked domains are simply domains that are re-directed to current site. This way you can have two or more web addresses pointing to the same site.Sub-domains allow you to replace the “www” part of your domain with anything you choose, so you can have mail.yourdomain.com, testing.yourdomain.com, or anything else.Finally, add-on domains are almost separate hosting accounts, though they share the same resources as your main account. Add-on domains can be handy for small side-projects that don’t really fit on the main site, but don’t warrant the purchase of an entire new hosting account.
5. e-Mail Accounts. As your business grows you will want to have business e-mail accounts that end in @yourdomain.com and in order to do this you will need to use the e-Mail account features of your web host. Most hosts offer more than enough e-mail accounts with their hosting packages, but check the number anyway. You don’t want to find out after you’ve bought a hosting package that you only get 10 e-Mail accounts with it.

Keep those 5 tips in mind as you shop for web hosting and you will avoid many costly mistakes many new website owners make. Above all, use your common sense. If a deal looks too good to be true (like some of the “free hosting” options out there), it probably is. Your website is worth the time it takes to choose a good host.

UndergroundWebDesigns.com is hosted with Bluehost.com, a solid webhost that I have used for several years with no complaints. They have one of the best hosting deals I’ve seen, excellent uptime, and quick customer service. If you’re in the market for web hosting, I give them my highest recommendations.

What is the difference between a professional website design and an amateur design?

Sometimes it is obvious. If the website uses bright colors everywhere, flashy graphics and animations excessively, or uses colors that make the content hard to read, it is obvious to all that it is an amateur design, and it’s also obvious why.

Sometimes it’s a little harder to tell the difference however. Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you’re in the market for a new website design. Though any good designer should already know and apply these tips, if you understand them not only can you seperate the good designers from the amateurs, but you can tailor your expectations to help the designer create a good, professional design as quickly and as pain-free as possible.

Professional Design Tip #1: Pick a color scheme

Color is very important on a website, but like anything else, should be used in moderation. If you have a company logo then it probably contains 2 or 3 dominant colors, and these colors should be the basis of your website’s color sceme. If you don’t have a logo and are starting from scratch, it’s helpful to have an idea of what colors you’d like to use. In a typical color sceme there will be 2 main colors and then some various shades of those main colors, making 5 colors in all. Using 5 main colors on your site will give variety while not destroying the unity of the site.

Professional Design Tip #2: Seperate the parts of the site.

One of the worst mistakes an amateur designer can make is to not clearly seperate the different parts of the site. If it isn’t immediately clear to the user where your header ends and your site begins, where the menu is, or where your copy begins and ends then they will soon leave out of confusion or frustration. This seperation can take many forms, and can be subtle or explicit. A lines between a menu and the copy may be needed in some cases, whereas in others simply changing the background color of the menu may suffice. Even a big enough blank gap can do the job. The important thing is that the user immediately understands where one part of the site ends and the next begins.

Professional Design Tip #3: Use the same few styles throughout your site.

Nothing ruins the unity and professionalism of a site faster than different sizes, fonts, or colors of text, with no reason for the difference. Now, this isn’t to say that you can’t use headlines, or even colored headlines. However, all your main headlines should be the same. All your subheads should also share the same characteristics. All your menu items should look the same. etc. People recognize things based on patterns. Because of this it is important headlines, menu items, and copy look the same from page to page, or the user may loose track of what they’re looking at.

Unity is one of the most important aspects of a professional website design, and yet often one of the most often overlooked. You may have noticed the above tips all relate in some way to unity and simplicity. “Professional” web designs are often called that because they appear “clean” to the user. The above tips will help you to choose a designer who understands how to use color, font, and layout to create unified web designs, and give you your next professional website.

Content Management Systems (or CMS’s) may be the biggest breakthrough in website maintenance since HTML, and yet many site owners don’t know what a CMS is… let alone how to use it. If you’re one of them, let me explain what content management systems are, and how you can use them to boost your web productivity.

First of all, a content management system does exactly what its name implies: it manages content.  In the old days the only way to update a website was to open an HTML file and edit the HTML code by hand. (If you were lucky, you had a HTML editor to help with this). Then, you had to use an FTP account to upload those changes to the website so everyone else could see your changes. Now, this is just fine if you’re a tecky person and are willing to learn HTML, but what about everyone else? Until content management systems came along, they were stuck hiring techy webmasters to update their sites for them.

Not so anymore. Content management systems are pieces of software that install on a web server and help you manage the contnet of your site. They do this by allowing you to log in to the program and then providing you with an interface you are familiar with to edit the pages of your site. The end result is that making upadtes to a page of your site or even creating a whole new page can be as easy as editing a word document.

In fact, chances are you’re already familiar with a type of content management system: the blog. Yes, blogs are really just mini content management systems. Once a blog is set up you can easily log in and write posts, create categories, tweak settings, or re-arrange the menu. Same with a CMS. The only difference between a blog and a content management system is that CMS’s are designed to run a whole site, not just a little blog. They are much more powerful and have added features that make it easy for you to create any kind of site you can imagine.

Some of the most common content management systems available are Joomla, Drupal, and Typo3. Each of these systems is open source (meaning you can download and use it for free). They are also actively maintained and developed, so there are constantly new features being added. My personal favorite content management system is called MODx, a relatively new but very powerful and easy to use CMS. For an example of MODx in action, view my main site at Underground Web Designs.com.

As great as content management systems are, there are a few things to keep in mind when using them.

1. Because they are programs in their own right, it can sometimes be hard for a programmer to integrate a custom program your site may use with a CMS. However, more and more content management systems are using a “pluggin” interface, which can actually make adding extensions easier for programmers. Before choosing a CMS, it is a good idea to have a programmer you trust look at it, and determine how extensible it is.
2. Integrating advanced website designs (often called “themes”) can be tricky. If you currently have a website and want to keep the same design but move to a content management system, contact your web-master and ask him how hard it would be to move your current design to a specific CMS. Different CMS systems handle design in different ways, so be as specific as you can.
3. CMS systems often have lots of settings. While this is a good thing, because it gives you flexibility in how you want your site to operate, it also makes it worth having your web-master or other knowledgeable individual explain all these settings. This way you will be sure of getting the most out of the CMS, and also you can be warned which settings should be left alone

I hope this introduction has served to explain some of they mystery surrounding content management systems and how they can be used to increase your productivity in managing your website. Please post any questions you have in the comments section, and I will do my best to answer as soon as possible!

SEO has become a monster.

For those of you who haven’t thought about it recently, SEO stands for Search Engine OPTIMIZATION. The “O” being the key letter. SEO does not stand for search engine ranking, or search engine traffic. It does not mean getting lots of links or putting a site on lots of social networks. At it’s core, SEO is simply optimizing a site so that search engines can easily and efficiently crawl it.

Instead of this simple definition, time and again you will hear SEO “experts” talking about this or that linking strategy, or the latest and greatest software to submit your site to all the major search engines and directories. How does any of this fit into optimizing a site for search? Really, it doesn’t… more often than not it has to do with gaming the system.

SEO is misplaced. I truly believe that if a webmaster does his best to make his website open and available to people, he will naturally be ranked high in the search engines. Remember, search engines do not exist to bring you traffic. They exist to bring searchers to relevant sites.

If you design your site and marketing strategy to attract people, no doubt you will soon find you’re attracting search engines as well. Asking (or buying) a link on a popular blog will not only get you visitors directly, it will bring with it Google page rank. Similarly, writing quality blog posts or powerful content on your website will naturally result in Stumbles, Diggs, and other social networking attention.

In Short: attract the people, and the robots will follow. Remember, people design robots, not the other way around.

There are a lot of web hosting packages, website designs, and even internet softwares available that just plain stink. Yet, people still buy them. Usually these products and services do what they’re advertised to do, and that seems to be good enough for some people — but to really stand out, things have to be better than just good enough. There are hundreds of designs, services, blogs, and programs on the web. Today more than ever before, anyone can create something and share it. However, there are only a few things in any one field that are recognized as the best.

The “bests” all have one thing in common: They won’t stand for just being “good enough”. Whether they are products, services, or software, “bests” are constantly looking for ways to expand, and to meet needs people weren’t even aware of.

This is something that you should be aware of when you’re planning a website, approving a design, or even investigating web hosting. Good enough doesn’t cut it. Look for a host that offers way more disk space than you’ll ever need — because down the road, you’ll use it. Look for a designer that suggests things to make your site better instead of just making what you ask of him. These are the “bests”, and together they will help your site or business become a best in itself.

After all, when everyone and anyone can produce online content, you must go beyond simply “good enough” to even be heard.

I don’t know about you, but there are some types of marketing that I find just plain annoying. Some TV commercials are ok, and then some look so unprofessional, poorly planned, and just plain BAD. So what makes the difference? Ultimately, it comes down to what your focus is. There are two things you can focus on with your marketing.

1) You can focus on making the best possible product that meets a very specific need in the market, and then telling people about it.

2) You can analyze the data, crunch the numbers, come up with a product that should make you a million bucks, and then employ the latest in persuasive science to get people to buy it.

The thing is, people can recognize what kind of marketing you’re doing from a mile away. And I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to buy something that someone invented just to make them money. I want to buy something that was made because it will benefit me somehow. That’s why the best marketing really ISN’T marketing… it’s just spreading the word about a good product. What message does YOUR marketing portray?