SiteMast - Atlanta Website Designers

February: Did you know?

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:25:00 +0000

February was named after the Latin term februum, which means purification.
It is the only month of the year that can pass without a single full moon.
National African American History Month, Library Lovers Month,
National Bird Feeding Month, National Cherry Month, to name a few!
Dates to know: Feb. 2- Groundhogs Day, Feb. 5- Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 14- Valentine’s Day,
Feb. 20- President’s Day, Feb. 21- Fat Tuesday.

WordPress Support Forum

admin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:57:49 +0000

Need some help with something in WordPress? Don’t forget they have a great Support Forum, where someone has probably already asked the same question that you have!
WordPress Support Forum

Websites go dark in protest of anti-piracy bill

admin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:34:50 +0000

If you have noticed censorship bars today on Google, Wikipedia, WordPress, etc, check out this article from CNN.com and learn more about why these websites are protesting this new bill:

Wikipedia, other websites go dark in anti-piracy bill protest

Happy Holidays from Sitemast.com!

admin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:20:59 +0000

Wishing everyone Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year from Sitemast.com!

Web Writing Guidelines

admin — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:57:08 +0000

Writing for the web is different from writing articles in magazines and other media. Jakob Nielsen has collected a great digest of advice for those who write for the web. Learn which of your grammar school rules to break when writing for a fast-moving internet audience: Use It

Examples:

Show numbers as numerals
Passive voice is ok (in headings)
When to use old keywords

Learn about writing for Mobile, Twitter, Social Media and more.

What is SEO?

admin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 21:28:27 +0000

I often tell people that having a beautiful website is like having a shiny new sailboat in the middle of the Pacific ocean. It’s very nice, but unless someone knows where to look, they will never see it.
Finding your website is the job of search engines and helping you with this task are experts in the mysterious world of SEO.

Are you new to the topic of search engine optimization (SEO)? You’re in luck.
Search Engine Land has prepared a short 3-minute video to get you in the know.

What? You can’t edit your own website?

admin — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 22:06:32 +0000

The August 2011 issue of Entrepreneur magazine carries an article, “The digital handshake”. If your website does not generate the leads you want, author and blogger Ann Handley suggests that you may have one or more problems. The potential maladies listed include two that are close to my heart:

#5 You can’t update your site without the tech guy

The solution to this is a Content Management System (CMS). Don’t build another website without using a CMS foundation. WordPress is the world’s leading solution in this category for small companies, followed by Joomla and Drupal.

#8 You aren’t measuring anything

One solution to this is Google Analytics. With this tool, you can see how many visitors you have, how they found you, and what they looked at. This information is invaluable for anyone seeking to maximize their website as a lead generation tool.

Quick CSS Layers

admin — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:52:17 +0000

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) possess more power than many of us ever use. One reason is that coding CSS styles — fancy ones, anyway — can be very tedios, with lots of trial and error.

LayerStyles.org provides a tool that quickly generates visually interesting layers for use in your stylesheets.

The online tool includes power to define:

Drop Shaddow
Inner Shadow
Background
Border
Border Radius

No registration is required and you can copy the CSS code and go!

Pick Your Favorite

admin — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 12:11:59 +0000

Zig Ziglar tells us that he buys his suits differently than most of us. His favorite salesperson calls him up and says something like, “Mr. Ziglar, I just got in some fabulous suits that I know you’ll love. I’m going to send you three in your size. Pick the one you like and send the others back.”

What is Zig missing out on here? His choices are certainly reduced by having only three suits to choose from. But think about what else is missing… trudging from store to store trying to find the suit he wants, frustrated and tired because they all tend to look a like after a while, dealing with one store after another that doesn’t know anything about him. Zig’s favorite suit salesman knows what is important — understanding the customer and saving them time.

When we take on a new customer at SiteMast, we comb through hundreds of themes using a large collection of WordPress theme sites. We then present about 10 themes that we know will be suitable for the new client. Thus, the job becomes a game of “pick your favorite” instead of trying not to drown in a sea of options.

Where is my web designer?

admin — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 02:32:29 +0000

Do you like long, messy design projects? Do you enjoy writing big checks before you see anything produced? Do you thrill to the chase of hunting down a web developer after your project is finished?

If so… please continue to use my competition, because we don’t offer any of those opportunities.

Why so long?

Website design projects can drag on endlessly for several reasons. Even with a talented, responsive designer, you can still waste a lot of time going back and forth over little things:

Which shade of green best compliments our logo?
What font or mixture of fonts should we use?
Should the slideshow take up 25% or 35% of the home page?
…and dozens more.

Matters of taste and style can take a long time to discuss. The designer walks a tightrope somewhere between approving nonsense and calling your baby ugly.

Why so expensive?

Custom design work requires time and expertise. When designing from the ground up for one website,

Why so elusive?

Firms that do project work are often primarily sales organizations. They WOW you with the portfolio, crank the project out, and then they are on to the next sale/client. Meanwhile, you need some tweaks. That lovely green color you spent two hours debating isn’t as pretty when viewed on a different monitor. There’s a typo in the company email address. The contact form is going to the design firm and not to you. Your emails, however, go unanswered and the phone calls end up in voice-mail. Two days, three days… no response. Did they get the email? Do they know you’re trying to run a business?

Websites need to grow, adapting to changes in your company, in your industry, and to the internet marketplace. Instead of a once-and-done project that leaves you wondering when your next big website expense will come due, it just makes sense to have an ongoing service relationship with your website company — one that offers “assisted autonomy” like SiteMast.com.

Ask your existing website firm if they can provide such a service… if you can find them.