Learning
Automatically Title Casing Titles in WordPress
If you’re anything like me, you’re a little lazy when it comes to title casing text in WordPress but as we all know, it’s really important to be consistent across your web pages, so what’s the answer? As I often comment … it’s time for technology to come to the rescue.
How to Get a Page Rank of 5
This is a quick overview of what I’ve been doing to earn a quality Google page rank, and also how I pulled my web site up 2,060,529 rankings on Alexa over the past three months.
Making Money Online the Old Fashion Way
Locals are paid to produce Excel spreadsheets outlining Facebook profiles email addresses, school, work and interests then that information is processes and affiliate style emails are sent out to promote items of high interest to those users.
Qualities of a Good Site
“Fundimentally, you need something interesting that sets you apart from the pack”. Makes perfect sense really, it’s all about making your web site better for people, not Google.
The Dark Side of Facebook, How Social Marketing Will Go Wrong.
Months ago, there was a popular web site called idont.com, an anti-ipod web site setup by an anti-fan to bash the popular music device. Thousands of people read it, lots of people agreed and many of them took the time to contribute their own anti-ipod opinions to the blogger, or so they thought. In reality idont.com was a setup, a meat puppet, a lark … operated by the SanDisk Corp. to promote their own digital music player.
Donate Your Links to Charity
As of this morning, Google reported that 78 other web sites link to me. That’s pretty good but I’d love to see that number five time higher so I’m willing to give away something valuable to me in return for you giving me your link.
Search Engine Optimization Services
Now that the Christmas rush has passed, I started to look at some of the services offered by web companies and was surprised how good some of them seemed to be.
How to Make Awesome 3d Icons in Adobe Fireworks
Welcome to my very first, very long and very … very rough attempt at a video tutorial. In it, you’ll learn how to convert a boring old square icon into an exciting 3D logo.
Barack Obama’S Use of Technology to Take the White House
I’m not much of a political junkie these days, in fact other than being pinned to the TV everyday, I didn’t really care about the US elections.
Add a Digg Button to Your WordPress Web Site
This tutorial is super easy and takes about five minutes.
Using WordPress to Manage Your Web Site
You may have thought DNS servers were the hard part but, it’s your content that’ll really be a challenge.
How Do You Put Together a Great Web Site Without a Web Designer?
Welcome to my blog, please feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed or leave a comment.All this week I’ve been posting about how easy it is for non technical people to register their own domain name and how to setup a web site using Blogger, WordPress.com or even BlueHost but what about the [...]
It’S Easy to Setup Your Domain Name You don’T Need to Be an Expert.
Setting up your domain is easy, let me walk you through the steps.
Using CSS to Disguise a Link.
There are a lot of times when we want to link things for SEO reasons but don’t want the general public to be confused by too many links, here’s how we make them look normal.
Anybody Can Register a Domain Name, it’S Quick and Easy.
Register your own domain name to save time, money and frustration.
You don’T Have to Be an Web Expert to Setup a Great Site.
I know somewhere out there, web designers are going to kill me for telling you this.
How Often Should You Publish a Blog?
When it comes to publishing content for your web site, how often is best?
Document Structure vs. Document Appearance, the Power of CSS
I lied to you and most of you didn’t even know it. It wasn’t a big lie, in fact it was more of a minor deceit and it was for your own good, well technically it was for my own good but it didn’t hurt you and nobody but Google noticed.
On Expertise, Self Promotion and WordPress
How to become an expert on just about anything using WordPress and a little bit of your own time.
Laid Off Technology Workers Find Work Online
Working online is the way of the future for technology workers so how do you get started?
How to Make a Web Site Look Good in Multiple Browsers.
Why do web pages look different in different browsers and how do we fix it?
What Is RSS? How Can You Use It for Your Business?
One of the hardest concepts for business owners to learn is that we (the public) really want to know more about them.
The Business Impact of Social Networking
I came across a paper on the AT&T web site that I thought my readers might like.
Save Flash Video Games From the Internet
Saving an SWF to your computer is simple if you take just a couple of minutes to understand HTML.
Eight Ways to Make Money Online
The secret to making money on the Internet is that you can make money while you work on other things, or even while playing with the kids.
Placing Page Content in Adobe Dreamweaver
Part Five in my ongoing tutorial on building properly structured web sites in Adobe Dreamweaver.
Make Great Money Selling Online
Building an online empire might not be in your future but helping to pay the monthly bills is easy with the Internet.
Search Engine Optimization Tip - Quality Back Links
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a back link is a link from another web site to your own.
Everything I Needed to Know About Running a Business I Learnt From Warcraft.
How a simple game changed the way I understood business.
Adding Rollovers to Your HTML Without JavaScript
Three simple CSS tags to make your page more usable.
Fixing Duplicate Content So Google doesn’T See It.
How to fix your blog so Google only sees one copy of each post on your web site.
Adapting My Holiday Logo Rotator for WordPress
Making my holiday rotating script work with WordPress.
How to Center Content With CSS and HTML
Using simple CSS to solve complex design problems. Tableless, easy to implement design.
Search Engine Optimization Tip - Deep Linking
Deep linking your way to profit and better usability.
Structuring Your Web Site With Adobe Dreamweaver
The third part of a ten part series where we learn to build better web sites with Dreamweaver.
Preparing a Web Site in Adobe Dreamweaver
Part one of a ten part dreamweaver tutorial in which we learn about using Dreamweaver to build web sites.
Obama Makes the Most of Facebook
Using new technology, Obama-Biden take control of FaceBook
How to Rotate Your Logo on Holidays.
Using simple code to improve your web site and make it more fun for your readers.
Tapping Into an Online Phenomenon More Popular Than Porn.
How your business can benefit from being part of Facebook.
Search Engine Optimization Techniques for WordPress
Optimization tricks and techniques to help your WordPress blog.
Why Your Search Engine Rank Depends on Your Competitors.
How those around you, including your competion can influence your ranking with Google.
Google Talks About the Myths of Dynamic URL’S.
The battle between dynamic and static URLs and how Google sees your web site.
Increase Your Web Traffic for Free
We all want to increase our traffic but how can we do it for free?
How Barack Obama Uses Online Marketing
It’s Burnout Paradise for Barack Obama when he uses online video game marketing to reach a new audience.
How to Run a Successful Web Site for Your Church
Church was the original social marketing complete with blogs, events and groups.
Five Tips to Ensure Your Search Engine Optimization Firm isn’T Scamming You.
Google takes a moment to post warnings to users about Search Engine Optimization cons.
Adding a Favorites Icon to Your Website Is Fast and Easy, So Why Don’T You Have One?
FavIcon’s help brand your business with very little effort, find out how.
Google Changes the Way SERP’S Are Displayed
The new changes include information on changes, how long it’s been since the page was updated, the number of people who have commented … pretty cool for the blogging world.
Using MAMP and LAMP for WordPress Development
My FTP program is a time thief, it’s time to save time.
Adobe Dreamweaver Tip for Working With WordPress
One of the big problems I’ve had with WP over the past could of years however is a less than reliable WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor
Meta Tags That Kill Your Blog
Some SEO experts will tell you that meta tags are useless but that’s not true, they’re simply not as powerful as they used to be.
Three Awesome WordPress Designs
There are a lot of great WordPress blogs out there and some amazingly cool designs.
Rednecks for Obama
I’ve got to say, maybe as a Canadian I have had the wrong idea of Redneck all this time.
Google Launches AdSense for Video Games
25% of Internet users play online games every week, which is over 200 million users worldwide.
WordPress SEO Tips - the Title Tag
Optimizing your Title tag will help increase your business.
Can You Put Up a Web Site for Less Than $100?
As a web professional, I love nothing more than opening my email first thing in the morning and having somebody ask me if I can build them a web site for $100.
Better HTML Helps Search Engine Results
For the best search engine rankings, you need to understand that search engine robots are not as clever as people.
Yahoo Launches Web Analytics Beta
In a weird twist of marketing, Yahoo! has decided to brand the web site to look a little like My Little Pony.
Simple Design Ideas to Increase Your Web Sales
How can a simple web design help increase your web sales?
How to Increase Your Web Traffic
When we talk about how to increase traffic to your web site, the first thing that we have to decide is what type of traffic we’re looking for.
Do Web Graphics Increase Sales?
How important are graphics to the success of a web site? There are a couple of schools of thought on this subject, the first is that content is what matters on a web site.
Five Techniques to Increase Web Traffic
Getting people to your web site is critical but those people have to be the right people.
Matt Mullenweg Previews WordPress 2.7
Here’s a great video of Matt Mullenweg going over the new feature set of WordPress 2.7. Some of the highlights include a lot of great attention being paid to the admin interface.
How Can You Make $500 a Month Part Time From the Web?
Using the method below, I easily make $500 each month from my own web blogs and it’s really pretty easy. I spend about 10 hours a month working on my sites, you can do the math.
How Should You Hire a Web Professional?
I was reading a wonderful article about hiring web professionals today and thought I’d share a few of my own comments and observations for people looking to hire a web designer or developer to work on their next project.
Search Engine Optimization and Dynamic URL’S
How dynamic URL’s can help increase Google’s understanding of your web site.
Web Based Heuristics
As a web designer who started created sites way back before recorded time began (1996) I rarely gave much thought to the methods behind the madness until stumbling upon Dr. Neilsen’s Ten Usability Heuristics while preparing for an Interface Design class I was about to teach.
Increasing Website Traffic for Free
Everybody on the Internet wants more web traffic and we’re all looking for the cheapest way to get it. Here’s my personal take on how to do it, how to keep it and most importantly … how to avoid paying for it.
Web Sites for Artists
We had a great meeting of the Fredericton Designers Group in which I promised a number of the new members to post a little more details about web hosting, web sites and web marketing. This tutorial is meant as a high level introduction to the concepts of hosting a web site for artists.
Adobe Dreamweaver Tip - Cleaning Up Unused Files
Here’s a great tip for Dreamweaver users, ever finish a web site design and then not know which files are active and which are not?
Code Free Pong
Pong, the timeless classic that started it all and the first Torque Game Builder tutorial that I’ll tackle. This game is a simple virtual tennis game in which two players (represented by paddles) bounce a ball towards each other.
Creating a Splash Screen in Torque Game Builder
Torque Game Builder from GarageGames is one of my favorite development suites, it’s straight forward with a low learning curve and an easy to navigate user interface but there are a couple of things that are a little tricky and take getting used to.
Learning Web Design for Print Designers
For those who don’t know the dirty little secret of designers, here it is … there are web designers and there are print designers. Rarely do the two specialties cross but it doesn’t have to be that way, great print designers can easily learn to be wonderful web designers without having to know a lot of coding and technical garbage.
How to Create Reflective Text in Adobe Photoshop CS3
This is a simple tutorial used in some of my classes to help first year design students understand the basics of Adobe Photoshop as well as how to use Layers properly.
First, lets start by creating a new document using the CTRL-N button and we’ll set the size to 200px wide by 100px high. This will give us a simple work space to create our document from.
Making Images Print Friendly
Aaron Gustafson has produced a wonderful article on replacing web images with images suitable for printing, the iIR: img Image Replacement method allows web designers to create pages which look great in both web and print.
Adobe Master Collection Install Failure (Mac)
While installing the Adobe Master Collection CS3 for the Mac I got all the way though the first disc and then a blank window popped up, stopping the installer dead.
Web Design Services in Fredericton New Brunswick
Fredericton New Brunswick is located on the Saint John River in Eastern Canada, about an hour East of the State of Maine. It is home to both me and my business as a web consultant and graphic designer. From this sleepy little town, I create and consult with business and government leaders from around the world to produce exciting web sites using on standards based design.
Tips for Hiring a Good Web Designer
Trust me, your web designer can turn your ideas into magic but you have to let them do their job.
Helping Users Remember Their Email Addresses
I’m a strong believer that users shouldn’t have to think in order to use my products. In fact, I proudly sport my copy of Don’t Make Me Think to just about every party I venture to.
Directory Tips for Web Designers
Building a great web site is about a lot more than putting together a bunch of text or graphics on a page, it’s critical that a web site be manageable and expandable if you want it to work properly in the future.
Does the Meta Tag Still Matter?
Does the old Meta tag still make a difference? How we use it properly.
Top Three osCommerce Upgrades for Small Business
A great little article I found in my old archives.
Creating a Cache on phpWebSite
I’ve been going nuts for the past month or so, looking for a static cache for phpWebsite, a great CMS application.
In the end, I’ve hacked together a little something and it works perfectly, all you have to do is paste this code in your index.php file, and create a file called “staticindex.html” in your root [...]
How Much Should a Designer Charge?
Graphic Designers have asked this question in every forum and every meeting I have ever attended and the answer is surprisingly simple … Designers should bill the rate that their market considers fare and that they, as professionals are comfortable accepting.
That’s pretty simple eh? Well, it’s not really and I know that you’re looking for [...]
Five Low Cost Tips to Promoting Your Online Business
A great little article I found in my old archives.
What's my site about?
seo themes WordPress Free Downloads plugin Marketing Advice Plugins Portfolio search links comment blog google adobe template graphic design advice html tutorial traffic do-it-yourself Facebook php Just for Fun widget adsense Business Advice stats blogger analytics dreamweaver rss advertising iphone hosting website css wordcamp content usability meta godaddy nofollow apple spamAbout Me
My name is Christopher Ross, in the past I have made a living by picking grapes, catching chickens, working in a warehouse, cutting vinyl, designing logos, teaching college, writing manuals, taking photographs, giving lectures, pushing pixels, selling radios and flipping burgers. Jobs are like a pair of socks, if you don’t change them once and a while you get stuck in one place. Here’s my bio.
Need Help?
The web isn’t complicated, only web developers are. I take the mystery out of web sites and build online environments for business owners. Building web sites is a lot like tossing a frozen turkey, it’s all about getting a grip on the problem and being sure you know what to do next. My job is to make your business grow by knowing the tools, the tricks and the tactics for building a success business on the Internet. Learn a little more about what I do, or contact me if you’d like to talk about your needs.
Free Stuff
Fundraising Thermometer Plugin for Wordpress
A new CSS powered fundraising thermometer plugin for WordPress.