Fridge vs Avocado Green, Stainless Steel, White…

Running Car vs Paint Colour, Shape window tints….

3 bedroom home plans vs spacial environment and finishes inside and out

Having worked in the construction industry for years before taking the design career by the horns has helped a lot in web design. A single building is drawn by an architect,  many engineers and a designer. The architectural drawings describe how it’s built, the engineering describes what size pipes, wiring, supporting walls etc. And the design drawing give the finishes. They almost always all work together at some point in the planning process.

Creating a web site can be just as complicated as house construction.

The web developer is like the architect. If there is no final wire frame (plan) in mind then that becomes part of the solution. The developer must create a website that allows for the design to be altered by the user.

The web designer brands, colours and re-shapes the functioning website.

If you hire a designer to develop your site, hopefully they will contract out the hard coding parts and not attempt to do it themsleves.

If you hire a developer to design and brand your site, hope fully the same will apply as above.

Very rarely do both co-exist in one person with any degree of success. It’s a simple fact of left brain right brain thinking.

No where in this post is SEO mentioned. That’s because SEO not just part of website construction alone and has nothing to do with branding and design. If SEO is important to the website owner (and who wouldn’t), it get’s built in as part of the development. It is then taught to the owner on how to use it, what content to write and where to put it. If SEO is the most important thing on your website list, don’t ask for it last.

Think of it this way:

A website is a bricks and mortar storefront, (Really it is the new store front of today but that’s entirely another post). How easy the door swings open is how easy it is for search engines to index. But here’s the kicker, (and a big giant ass kicker to some), if there is nothing inside your store worth going in for, then no one will go in, including search engines. It’s not that simple but close.

More and more people who understand this concept are winning the SEO battle. They treat their websites like a real store on a real street. They make it look good, inviting, social and interesting to the niche they want to attract. They change it up, keep it clean and easy to get around. The more people who visit the website, or should I say: The more crowded the inside of that store becomes the more popular it becomes – to search engines too. Go figure: it’s just . like . real . life.

If you see a crowd of people in a store, you go in, even if the door is a little hard to open. You are going to find your way in.

Not a believer yet?

Why then do I come up 2nd or third on a Google Search typing in the words BC Ferries Assured Boarding? Because it’s more interesting than the boring static government regulated website. People comment here creating more activity. You go there because you have to, you come here because you want to.

I found a great article that lists the importance of SEO techniques and other factors considered when everyone else is trying to shoehorn a site into search engine existence. The highest ranking factor is popularity among other things. but here are some of the things I found listed low on the SEO importance list that you may find interesting.

HTML Validation to W3C Standards is of minimal importance (a good thing for this site – let me tell you)
Server/Hosting Uptime minimal importance
Use of XML Sitemap(s) 29% minimal importance
Social Media/Social Graph Based Ranking Factors minimal importance

Surprisingly

Geographic Location of the Host IP Address of the Domain 57% high importance (wouldn’t have thunk it)

Check it out yourself at http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors/

We’re all familiar with blog posts and one of the familiar parts is seeing a number of  links at the bottom of every post wanting you to “share-this-article”. They are called Social Bookmarks. People who are active in the blogosphere push those buttons because it nice. It’s a new social etiquette like letting others on the elevator first or holding a door for someone, clicking those links helps the blog owner increase search ratings. Bloggers and commenter’s are usually one and the same and we have our blogs we like to visit. They become friends.

This blog has never been about search rating but it is fun to watch traffic after blogging some opinionated article and experiment with different forms of SEO. I never added any social bookmarking links because they are ugly. (but who cares about my opinion). A few clicks for the sake of ruining the look of my page wasn’t worth it.

Enter the Sexy Bookmarks Wordpress Plugin found during a search for client work over at TribalYell. As soon as I found it I knew it was a winner and it would soon be on my blog too. Easy to install like any plugin in the latest versions of Wordpress. Click “add new” in your plugins menu, search for “SexyBookmarks” and click install. Go to the admin section for Sexybookmarks and choose which bookmarks to display. Enjoy.

So now you see them, Feel free to click on them. The makers of the Sexylinks plugin will thank you.

I don’t know why my friends are sending me this stuff. I love all my clients.

How much does it cost is a common question for a design business’s email inbox supplying websites to Realtors. Of course no one minds answering. It’s what we signed up for in this line of work. But there is no easy short answer to the how much question because everyone is different – or are they?

Almost all inquiries about how much a website cost to design and build are coming from people without any branding what-so-ever. It seems a common trait in the real estate niche but for a small few. In any other business there is a plan in place but in real estate the end result is the plan and most web designers working in this real estate niche are creating the visual branding as part of the web-design and including it in their price.

“My web guy designed my logo” is a pretty common thing to hear when a sign guy needs the printable artwork to work with or a printshop is trying to put together the business cards and all they have to work with are crappy web graphics.

So the question how much is a website isn’t the really the question.

This is a week filled with meetings. Meetings with people who are in the business of designing for real estate. Together we will work to discover the true nature of the problem and come up with a unique solution – or two.

MyRealPage

The video embedded below is provided by myRealPage and demonstates how to connect your blog to  Windows LiveWritter, one of many free third party blog editing software available.

You can view that release here.

Mobile listing solutions are going to take over as devices become more powerful, Connection speeds increase, displays more beautiful so websites don’t have to adjust to the scale as much. The term “mobile” might even become a word of the past (when describing online versions) as everything is expected to be online everywhere all the time. It’s just going to happen.

The future of the Realtor’s website will need to be more community driven. If their farm area is a certain location then they will be expected to have everything about that location on their website, listing every single business, every event, every listing and how about rentals? Oh, but there are community sites out there already doing this you say? Not really. It cost money and takes time to maintain a site like this. The paid links are not a good representation of what the community is. After all, paid links are what pay the bills.

A community site must be free to the community it serves. As more small business owners realize how important it is to have incoming links from outside sites pointing to them, they will look to a real community site that will list them for free and allow them to log in and list themselves for free, allow them to log in and post events, allow them to log in and take ownership of certain aspects of the community site and even guest post on the community blog. And yes, there will be real estate listings with walk scores, maps and much more. A successful Realtor will own this site.

A site like this is easier to maintain and keep current than most real estate sites are today, (those that do update their sites). It’s conceivable that a Realtor would hardly have to touch a site like this other than to confirm registrations (done through email) and farm the people who have logged in to get more information on the listings. They can go back to doing what they do best.

By providing this valuable resource to the community where a Realtor does business, their perception among those who live, work, play, list and purchase in the area can become a lot higher than it is now (below that of a used car salesman at the moment).

In summery a community site must have:

• Maps with walk scores
• Free organized listings of events and businesses
• Community blog for community postings
• A registration and login for the community
• A “mobile” version

Some Realtors are already starting this.

Paul McEwan the actor, I believe, lives in London England. England for sure. On a Google search my site comes up near the top. The first Wiki comes up with Paul McEwan the Kricket Player which is the only other Paul McEwan I found when I purchased this domain name a few years ago. (I didn’t look that hard). So Paul, if you read this I suggest expanding on your Wiki… and twitter and facebook and friendfeed and a site built in WordPress (or at least something with really good SEO) and link it all together. And if you would like, I can help you with all that. In any event this free promotional post and link will certainly help too. I will add one to my side bar too.

For those of you still confused, here is a list of reasons why I am not Paul McEwan the actor.

1. He’s much better looking than me
2. I live in Canada, he lives in England
3. His representation is Rebecca Blond Associates where as mine is… none
4. He gets to play characters. I am a character
5. He is an actor. I am not (I don’t even play one on TV)

Feel free to give me some more reasons.

a. Scan your computers for viruses / malware, especially if unauthorized tweets continue to be posted in your accounts even after you’ve changed the password.

b. Use a password that you don’t use anywhere else and never use the former password on a compromised account. Create a new and difficult password unique to Twitter that consists of both letters and numbers

c. Check the Connections page at http://twitter.com/account/connections and revoke the access privileges of any third party applications that you do not recognize.

d. Avoid providing your username and/or e-mail and password to untrusted third-party sites. (Many are phishing sites offering more followers)

e. Remove any updates that you did not post personally; leaving these updates can result in your account being re-suspended.

I want to add the risk involved adding third part sites to your Twitter account. Many of these sites promise more followers. Any account that asks for your password is probably phishing.

Here is a link to the Wikipedia.org article on it.

Have a great weekend!

Don’t worry, you still use your regular email address. Only now you get the functionality of instant messaging, website integration, drag and drop photo sharing, community collaboration, website content writing, Twitter integration – oh and email too, but the list goes on.

It’s all based on HTML 5 which has become the standard for all modern web browsers which means it will not run on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) without plugins. That’s because Microsoft IE is not considered a modern web browser in most developer’s tribes.

Ambitious as hell. The demo at the Google I/0 ended with a standing ovation.

I have not done it justice trying to explain what Google Wave is here. The best explanation I have found, which I encourage you to read, is here. Register to be the first to sign up here.