Alpha Hosting Blog

Font Choices For Web Designers

admin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:41:54 +0000

When designing a website font decisions are always key. Whether you are choosing fonts for typeface in a masthead or styling the CSS for the pages, font decisions are numerous. It’s always good when making decisions to weigh all of your options. With even a small budget you may be able to purchase a unique or interesting font. But don’t be discouraged if you have a limited budget, here’s a great list of professional and FREE fonts for you to peruse. The Web Design Ledger actually has several good lists of font categories. Here’s the extremely elegant serif font list which shows many examples of how serif fonts can be easy-to-read.

Wordpress Cheat Sheets

admin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:19:07 +0000

Once again, the popularity of the Content Management System Wordpress has yielded a great collection of useful links for any avid Wordpress user. 13 Helpful Cheat Sheets for Building Worpdress Themes is a great list of resources that will be especially useful to Wordpress Theme designers. The best was the Advanced Wordpress Help Sheet that was a follow-up to the much used basic version of which the link seems to be inactive.

Check out the links and PDFs listed. You may even find that some are useful enough to print a paper copy version. Considering how rarely anyone does that, it’s a true indicator to a cheat sheet’s usefulness.

Branding With Web Design

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:01:39 +0000

Branding is popular topic amongst internet business owners. Whether they’re writing blogs or selling hand-crafted items, most have thought about how to brand themselves online. Here is a great article with tips when branding through web design. The article lists out important factors to consider, why they’re important, and examples of those factors being implemented effectively. Here is a selection from their section about consistency:

Consistency throughout your web design will build on the choices you’ve made earlier regarding selecting the right personality for the brand and evoking the appropriate emotions. Keep consistent colors, visuals and typography throughout to ensure your website projects a uniform image.

It’s a very informative read we highly recommend.

Planning Tools for Freelancers

admin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:03:37 +0000

Many website owners are individuals using the internet as a place to promote a freelance business. Whether it’s an online portfolio or a handmade goods storefront, many individuals are running a business online. There are many ways to organize a business in your office, but if you’re running part of it online, technology can often aid you. Here is a great list of resources and reviews of those resources for freelancers. The article runs down a list of budget and planning tools as well as shows screencaptures of many in action. The suggestions are little Mac-heavy, but useful nonetheless.

A Good Example Of Using Social Media Successfully

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:36:47 +0000

There’s often talk in the business world about how to capitalize on the popularity of social media. Will have facebook pages or twitter accounts help your business do what it is trying to do. Whether that’s selling shoes or designing web pages - the success of social media in aiding those efforts can vary. Today, however, there is a great article about how a non-profit uses social media to promote their cause. How WWF is Using Social Media for Good #FindingTheGood.

“Social media allows us to open dialogue with multiple people at once and respond to their interests,” says Sarah Desilets, who manages social networking outreach for the WWF in the US. For example, after a Facebook poll revealed that nearly a third of fans named dolphins as their favorite marine animal, the WWF was able to appeal directly to those people by pointing them to a recently developed report on endangered Mekong dolphins. By creating that more personal connection, the WWF is able to get more people engaged and grow awareness of their agenda.

Social media offers an assortment of powerful tools, especially if you already have an online presence. Check out the article to see how the WWF makes it work for them.

Good Commenting

admin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:45:35 +0000

Marketing via Social Media is a new trend online. People are using blogs/facebook/twitter to market and promote themselves and their businesses. However, this has two sides as can be discovered daily with writeups about rude and irritating marketing strategies. Case and point: How a furniture company used Twitter to market in a non-to-favorable way. (At least not to avid twitter users.) It’s important to keep reading about this area as it’s new and many business are learning the path to success. Here is a great article about the proper way to comment on a blog when you might be promoting yourself or your business.

Add something to the conversation. Often I will read a post and think ‘wow, great post!’ But go past that, highlight issues that the blogger addressed, and add your own take. You don’t have to agree completely, and you don’t have to stick with their point. If one example they mentioned reminds you of another instance from your own experiences, mention that. But try to avoid simply repeating what others have said. And this is easier to do when you…

A great article with commentary that works for business and with individuals simply trying to promote their own blogs.

Using CSS3

admin — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:44:54 +0000

This is a great article about using CSS3 to improve your webpage design. The article first discusses the unusual aversion to web page designs being stuck in the 11-year old CSS 2.1.

When we look at websites that were created 11 years ago, it’s clear that we are a thousand miles away from that era. It is quite remarkable how much Web development has evolved over the years, in a way we would never have imagined then.

So why is it that, when it comes to CSS, we’re stuck in the past and so afraid of experimenting? Why is it that we still use inconvenient CSS hacks and JavaScript-dependent techniques for styling? Why can’t we make use of the rich CSS3 features and tools available in modern Web browsers and take the quality of our designs to the next level?

The article goes on to discuss things like browser-specific designing, pondering the interesting idea that websites don’t have to match across browsers. It also points out some of the useful tools in CSS3 (like combinators) and how to use them across different browsers. It’s a great article that even provides other resources if you want to explore some of the concepts further. Great read for all designers.

Color Choices Do Matter

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:38:55 +0000

When you are designing your site, or branding your online presence, there are a lot of things to consider. Functionality and aesthetics always playing a part in every decision. Most of the time we think of things like color choices as part of the aesthetic and design of the site as a whole. But what if the color choices you make for your online brand could mean something more?

Here is an interesting article that talks about what your color choices for your brand could be saying about you. The article discusses a tool in the website Cymbolism for helping someone decide what color choices are good for their product.

It’s a new website that attempts to quantify the association between colors and words, making it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect.”

Improvement Resources

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:11:15 +0000

I think everyone hopes to keep improving their website over time. The only problem is…How? Do you focus on the design? The aesthetic? The functionality? The community? The conversation? What should get your attention? Well, if you read this article you’ll find tips to help you with all aspects of improving your website.

This article lists everything from a Bad Link Checker that will, “scan the links on your website, and on the pages that your website is linking to, and flag possible problem areas.” To a website grader,

…provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

This is definitely a good foundation of resources to act as a starting point for any webmaster to improve their site.

Something To Consider For Beginners

admin — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:42:55 +0000

Since Wordpress is an open-source CMS, it is a very popular tool. This means there are a lot of plugins developed for it and a lot of commentary given about it from people who feel like their knowledge could help others. This is seen in this article which talks about a new e-book and tutorial for Wordpress novices. The authors has this to say about the product -

I use WordPress myself, though with a slight difference I’ll explain below. I cannot count the days, weeks, months even I’ve spent learning just how WordPress really works and how to bend it to my purposes. I have three guidebooks on WordPress that I turn to continually. but it’s still been a task. I wish this package had been available when I started out.

We can not provide any insight as to the usefullness of this specific package above anything else, but we do think it’s something Wordpress users might want to look into.